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Comment by awb | Hacker News Reader

Two ideas:

1. Keep reducing the goal until it's no longer scary. Instead of "learning X", maybe try "reading about X" or "try X for 10 min". Keep taking more off your plate until you feel that "I can do this" feeling.

2. When a fear pops up, respond to yourself with "I know". For example: "I might waste my time and never get good at X" -> "I know". If you repeat that process some contend that by giving your monkey brain (or flight response) attention and respect it starts to diminish. It just wants you to know how risky it thinks this activity is and can keep repeating or getting louder until you acknowledge that it's been heard.

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In addition to that, it helps me to think of the consequences of failure.

For instance, my wife and I recently redid an entire small bathroom. I replaced wallboard, replaced toilet and cabinet and sink, and laid tile. I'd never done any of that before.

It was incredibly scary at first. But I finally said, "What's the worst that can happen?" We paid a plumber for the hard stuff like moving the shutoffs and replacing the cracked flange (my fault!) and did the rest ourselves.

The worst thing that could happen was that we damage something (which happened with the flange!) or that we decide we just can't do it to our satisfaction and have to pay someone.

The alternative was to just pay someone.

In the end, it was still scary, but it was the logical thing to do, and so I tried it.

It went very, very well. Except the flange.

In case it happens again :-): https://www.amazon.com/Toilet-Flange-Repair-Kit-Flanges/dp/B...

Thanks, but unfortunately that wasn't the part that cracked, It cracked vertically all the way down to the pipe it was connected to. The whole thing had to be replaced to make sure it wouldn't leak.

Damn good advice. #1 is really key for me -- I find that if I decompose a learning effort into the smallest possible grains, I have a much better chance of sticking with it. For example, when I felt intimidated about learning SQL long ago, I said "well let me just learn how to write a trivial query" and then "well maybe I can try some joins," etc etc until I had it near nuff comprehended.

The other half of #1 is keep going. You have to do it every day. You have to do it for a long time. As long as you keep going, you'll naturally grow. Your mind won't stand for doing the same thing every day.

If anyone needs help getting started or keeping going, that's exactly what my project Functional helps with:

https://howfunctional.com/try/read-X-for-10-min

Just wanted to let you know that I opened your site in Firefox Focus on iOS and didn't see anything (it was a blank page after a second or two). Since Firefox Focus has ad and tracker blockers enabled, I presume there's something on your site that doesn't fit.

Thanks for the heads up. There's literally no ads or trackers and everything served from my domain.

I haven't tested in Firefox Focus though (haven't even heard of it), and I'm wondering if it might be because of overly tight security headers.

Right in line with my thinking.

While I'm not a developer, I wanted to learn Python for various reasons. Instead of just learning ALL OF PYTHON, I broke it down to little projects, learning how to do those projects along the way. While still no expert, I can at least handle what I set out to do.

I'd also add immersion, if that's what you would call it. Not really related, but I used to never watch sports, up until the start of this NBA season. I subscribed to podcasts and newsletters and found some sites to read daily. In the beginning I probably knew 5-10% of what was being talked about. But after some months of this I can probably digest a good 70-80%.

I have used these techniques with pretty good results across a very long series of stretch goals. However, rather than use an affirmation of risk with "I know" I ask myself "but what can go well if I try?". It creates a positive energy that counteracts the negative one without dismissing it. Fear always returns so I try to work with it rather than shut it down.

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