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Comment by johnny_castaway | Hacker News Reader

> Old fashioned discipline starts in the mind. You must be ruthless with yourself, and make a determination

Well, I think we're kind of in agreement here. I'd now need to essentially torture myself to do something that used to be a fun hobby, and required zero effort.

> I'm reading this book

Ok, but the problem is, _which_ book?

Let's say you search for a JavaScript book on Amazon. It seems to yield more results than all the books they had in my local computer bookstore! Pick one at random? But what if it has low reviews? Pick one with the highest rating? But maybe it was published 2 years ago, so maybe it's already outdated? Anyway, I saw on HN that everyone is using Rust now, so perhaps instead I should read a book about that? That's the analysis paralysis I mentioned.

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> Ok, but the problem is, _which_ book?

I have solved this particular problem but have myriads of others. (See my main comment on this thread.)

First, when you are looking for a book in a particular topic, search Kagi/You.com, and sneak into 4/5 lists quickly. Some books will appear in almost all lists. Take a note.

Second, append reddit to search term and look into 3/4 threads. Take a note of highly upvoted or "+1"d responses.

Third, ask people you know who are experts in that topic. Ask 2/3/4 persons. They likely have read many books on that topic. Take a note of their top recommendations.

Fourth, there are some titles ubiquitous on HN, twitter, Reddit, word-of-mouth in academia/industry. Such titles are The Algorithms Design Manual, Designing Data Intensive Applications, etc. When you look into a new topic, there will be 1/2 titles that you will instantly recognize. Take a note.

Now you have narrowed down to 3/4 titles. Find them. Taste them, couple this with Third, and you find the most appropriate book for your situation.

The whole process takes 20-25 minutes excluding the calls with people IRL.

This is a perfectly good advice.

But my point is, note just how many separate bits of information you're looking at to make the decision. 4 threads on Reddit, 4 threads on HN, and you're already in the hundreds of different opinions! All of them coming from people you don't know, with different background, different learning style, etc.

Compare to going to a book store with ZERO external information, and picking the one YOU seem to like reading the most, without those hundreds of voices in your head.

> and you're already in the hundreds of different opinions!

No, you aren’t. Beause there are overlaps. (Seen Venn diagrams, btw?)

> with ZERO external information

This is a very bad advice. When you don't read those threads or blogs, you are not taking advantage of accumulated human knowledge over the years.

And this approach will more likely to lead to poor choice of books.

____

One method I forgot to mention- I also look at reputations of publishers/series. If a book is coming out of Green Tea Press, Pragmatic Bookshelf, or Manning, I will tend to favor them more.

> No, you aren’t. Beause there are overlaps. (Seen Venn diagrams, btw?)

Sorry, I meant different as in distinct, coming from different people.

> When you don't read those threads or blogs, you are not taking advantage of accumulated human knowledge over the years.

I agree, that's why I keep reading them. But more often than not, I feel like I end up with more questions and uncertainty than I started with.

> And this approach will more likely to lead to poor choice of books.

I don't think it's so obvious. Maybe that "average" book that matched your particular taste, would actually be more useful than the "perfect" one, which felt mundane? Simply because the first one would be more engaging, and you'd have higher chance of finishing it. But if you had read the reviews beforehand, you'd end up feeling bad both about the one you liked, and about the one that others recommended, and eventually wouldn't read either.

> One method I forgot to mention- I also look at reputations of publishers/series. If a book is coming out of Green Tea Press, Pragmatic Bookshelf, or Manning, I will tend to favor them more.

Agreed on this one!

But the problem is not the book itself. It's what you are looking for.

If you are just starting into any given topic, then you just need a good book, not the perfect book. And the advice parent gave you I think is more than enough for that. In any case, after you read the book, you can always purchase another one.

I have a friend that does this same thing. If we decide to learn how to play tennis, then he takes a month, does extensive research and purchases the most expensive and professional tennis racket around. Then when we get there, I use the racket that the tennis court lends you if you don't have any, and then I proceed to kick his ass!*

The same applies to my field (embedded/electronics). There are people that goes around in circles for months doing research for the perfect soldering station or oscilloscope (to start learning). Just purchase a decent one and move on!

Your abilities (in this case learning/knowledge) don't always come from the things you have or purchase. Whatever you use, it has to be just good enough for the task.

*PS: I don't mean you need or want to spend a lot of money.

> There are people that goes around in circles for months doing research for the perfect soldering station or oscilloscope

Guilty as charged. In my case, I don't so much as lust after the perfect machine (anymore) as I want to make sure I'm buying a durable, well-priced product that is sufficient for future tasks. There are many dimensions to consider in a purchase so as not to buy twice.

>torture

It's not torture though, its a fight. Your mind is lying to you. Right now, you're not in control of your attention, and your mind doesn't want to give up that control. It's a mutiny! And you'll enjoy being the captain!

>Ok, but the problem is, _which_ book?

It seems you're a beginner programmer; you could do worse than "Eloquent JavaScript":

https://www.alibris.com/booksearch?mtype=B&keyword=eloquent+...

The tricky part is that you'll want to do some exercises, which means turning on the computer, which means a risk of distraction. Go ahead and turn off the network when you're not using it; you can also modify your hosts file (look it up) to "uninstall" distraction sites by redirecting their name to 127.0.0.1.

You may also want documentation while offline. You can do this by following the instructions here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/plus/docs/features/offli...

> It's not torture though, its a fight.

Either way, it's a struggle!

Btw. I've been toying with meditation and mindfulness on and off for a few years now. It's definitely hard work. So far I haven't succeeded in sticking to it for more than a few days at a time.

> It seems you're a beginner programmer; you could do worse than "Eloquent JavaScript":

Oh, sorry for not expressing my thoughts clearly enough. I'm a senior dev, I self-taught myself almost everything from books, starting before I even knew what Internet is, and later from early-Internet-era websites. Again, never considering it a chore, not preparing for a job, it was just a fun way to spend long winter evenings!

I only mentioned JavaScript as an example, slightly ironic, because you used to learn it from a few page long tutorial. The tutorial didn't need to be longer, because JS was mostly used for creating hover menus and animated snowflakes. You could go over it in 30-60 minutes and call it a day. And frankly, there were years when knowledge in that tutorial would be enough to land you a well-paying job. Today you have to push through 21 long chapters (of that book you mentioned), and it's still only the beginning. I feel genuinely sorry for people who are starting these days, web-dev in particular became so complex.

Well, you have your advice. You can either take it, or not. But you need to choose and stop thinking about it. Good luck!

You're not really fighting only your mind, you're fighting psychology experts who dedicate their lives to most effectively exploit your attention.

The problem is that it's hard for you to take decisions. You should try to decide faster. Even if the decision isn't the best, chances are it isn't the worst either. Doing something is much better than not doing anything.

>Let's say you search for a JavaScript book on Amazon. It seems to yield more results than all the books they had in my local computer bookstore! Pick one at random? But what if it has low reviews? Pick one with the highest rating? But maybe it was published 2 years ago, so maybe it's already outdated?

As a beginner I would pick the highest rated amongst the newer ones.

>Anyway, I saw on HN that everyone is using Rust now, so perhaps instead I should read a book about that? That's the analysis paralysis I mentioned.

I would ask myself why I want to learn a programming language. What I want to accomplish with it. And see if Javascript is more suitable or Rust is more suitable.

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