Ask HN: How to manage studies when you have a lot of interests? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to manage studies when you have a lot of interests?

25 pointsin917 comments

I have a lot of interests. And this goes byeond tech. Math, science, history, etc... A bunch of things that I would love to grab a book, or take a course on just for the hell of it. And all of this interes sort of create a cripling anxiety that doesn't bother a lot, but its there.

I know that I could find a way to balance and prioratize them in a way that makes me confortable which is a valid idea. Heck i even considered re-reading "Refuse to Choose" or getting into "The Education of the will" and it sort of developed into another interest :D

But this lefts me wondering, how do you guys manage having many interests?

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You'll have to choose. Eventually. Allocate time and resources to learn what you want to learn, but set your objectives. And stick to what you have set to yourself. Any choice or lack of has opportunity cost. You can go wide, at the cost of not going deep. You cannot "balance" and "prioritize". At least not that much.

Initially most of the skills, sports and subjects have very fast learning curves. You learn a lot in a short amount of time, and every hour, every day brings you something new. Eventually, your "ROI" will decrease, and you'll have to dedicate more time to keep improving. At some point anything becomes a full time job.

So try what you want to try, set objectives, but consider how good you want to become. It's fine to remain an amateur, to stop and try something else. But if you ever decide to master anything, you'll want to invest weeks, months and years to do just one thing. Many other people did dedicate their entire lives to that subject/skill/sport. If you ever want to be as good as them, you'll have to match their effort.

Also remember that often it's not important how much you learn, but if you apply it in your life. You don't need to be a great athlete to enjoy biking. Sometimes all you need is get a bike and get outside.

I am very interested in knowing this, too.

I have so many interests, it's sometimes crippling.

How I somehow, barely manage the situation now:

- Do what I have a deadline for.

- Start or join a study group with enough members that at least 5% of them are seriously motivated. Or ONE serious study partner.

- Learn in the public. Pick a subject, force yourself to write and share summaries, notes, etc. publicly. And promise the next "issue" on a set date.

- Rather than finding a subject, find a person who matches one of your interests and learn that with them. Having a person keeps you motivated. And not continuing makes you lose face. I always wanted to learn German and Spanish. I am finally putting effort for German because I have recently reconnected with a friend who learned German in college. I started learning Guitar recently even though I am more interested in Piano because I have a friend who came back to town who is an okay guitarist, and can teach me regularly, rather than having to rely on Skillshare courses.

- Timeblock specific days and times of the week. Hell or high water, do that.

- Having specific goals help. "Have enough knowledge about this so I can write a Quora article in it", "Know enough about Fast Fourier Transform to be able to code it in Python and explain to a college Freshman", "know enough of X to be able to do Y". This removes the initial inertia.

- Another very helpful thing is- just starting. If you just start doing something you have waited for long to start you are building more inertia, and adding newer items. My advice to you and myself is to just start. When you start, you actually stop liking ~70-80% of the topics. That way you remove clutter. When you haven’t started something, you have a rosy picture of that. Once started, you know the reality.

These are the ways I try to deal with this. Would love to know better ways.

I just don't care about the interests I'm not interested in at the time. The issue I used to have was that spending time on A meant I wasn't doing B. Now I'm in my thirties and I just don't care about B, as long as I'm finding my time rewarding. Across the years the literal item A might have become item B or vice-versa and it just doesn't matter. If there's something specifically and directly relevant to work or getting work that's a different matter. But interests? Fk no, I'll follow my impulses there like a child, only sometimes will I cajole myself into doing something challenging for interests.

I'm really good at time management.

Outside of work I love reading history, working out, I paint and write and do swordfighting and reenactment, which means i need to make a lot of stuff (learn leatherwork, clothes making, and do research!)

I try to be efficient with my time. I don't particularly enjoy watching TV or movies so that helps. A typical day for me is catching up on a history book while commuting, working, then gym for hour and a half (I use this time to listen to podcasts on history or art or whatever I feel like learning), then commute and reading, get home and do some cooking, and work on my art projects/writings until I'm sleepy. On the weekends I do swordfighting and then work on whatever project I need to get done before summer reenactment events happen.

But the key to all this is to do what I genuinely enjoy doing. I don't read because I want to be smarter than some voice in my head, I do it because I genuinely enjoy learning. I don't work out 5 times a week because that's what fitbros tell me to do, I do it because it relaxes me. I don't force myself to be "productive", I just do what I want to do and feel like doing and call that productivity.

Edit: one last thing to mention is that being constant matters more than investing significant chunks of time on it. People who believe you "need to choose" just can't keep a proper routine in my opinion.

For me, I have a lot of interests that are tied to projects. Having an audience in mind can help to keep you on track towards completing a project. Eg: if you're doing graphic design work for a friend or are running an advertising campaign for a small community, there's often a clear end to when it's done. Things like open source project maintenance, on the other hand, can get trickier to cut off, depending on the project and its goals, so I have only chosen those on occasion

I often don't return to a project to keep it going in the same way since my projects are meant to be bite-sized. They will satisfy a curiosity or creative need, then I can move onto something else

That said, a break can also help to pivot on a previous project in some way. For example, maybe I want to create a library to experiment with HTML5's AudioContext API to try out some software synthesis. Once that's in a ready state, I could consider that complete, then focus on creating a UI to interact with it as a new, separate project

Overall, the thing that helps the most is keeping a schedule. It doesn't have to have hard deadlines (at least not all the time), but in keeping projects small enough without getting too simplistic, it helps to keep the projects satisfying without turning into a chore while giving me a sense of accomplishment as well as new things to look forward to

So, we might have different interests but I'm generally just interested in learning everything.

What I do: I needed a fence, instead of paying someone I learned how to build a proper fence. Submitted plans to the city. Researched wood, researched fasteners, etc.

For me it is generally easier to stick with it when I force myself into it. Books are a good learning tool but jumping in deep works for me. Obviously, this may not work for learning history, but I guess you could set your sights on writing a document on some part of history and then just research for it. Writing it would cement your knowledge.

I have basically learned to work on cars, paint cars, plumbing, some electrical, anything inside a home really. Initially, I was forced to do things on my own because I was broke. Now, I have money but still refuse to pay for anything and just DIY on the extreme as I will really dive deep and learn best practices etc.

It has been really fun. If I could make what I make as a dev building fences I would probably do it.

I prioritize my interests and try to reevaluate what I'm doing periodically. This is by no means a serious process for me. I have a note where I have the things I want to do listed, sorted by priority in descending order, and I may not actually look at it again for a while. The priority is determined by my level of interest, probable duration, potential cost, potential return, and whether it creates life opportunities. That means some of those interests will never be done, but that's probably a good thing. When I find an interest is either taking longer than expected or my satisfaction is declining, I think back to my list and go "ok, maybe this actually isn't the most optimal thing I could be doing" and switch to something else.

I've accepted that I'm going to ignore a certain interest for months, maybe years, and then come back to it when my energy for that subject comes back. Of course this means that I have a lot of books and stuff...

In recent years I've gotten better about hitting the library first instead of buying books. It imposes a natural deadline on things: if you couldn't be bothered to start reading in 3 weeks, then maybe it was just a passing fancy.

Getting older helps too. I feel like I have less energy, which needs to be spent more carefully. But there's also perspective that comes with maturity, and the willingness to forgive myself for not being maximally "productive".

Incremental learning. It's come out of the spaced repetition movement (SuperMemo really). The algorithm presents you with something that you flagged as interesting. If you're truly interested, you engage with it (and notify the algorithm) otherwise you move on to the next subject/item. It doesn't solve the problem of having too many subjects/areas but it does allow you to keep a running list of items you want to explore.

Incremental reading [0] is the source of this approach, but spaced repetition like approach can be used anywhere, including learning.

Priorize studies. It sucks but it's more important than personal interests. I know I had to do that decision from time to time at uni and the way you stay focused on actually finishing uni is that you don't slack off with other more fun stuff.

Yeah you won't enjoy it as much.

Yeah you need to finish your studies to have more chance of succes in your life.

Figure out [where and how] your interests intersect. What is the nexus, and how will it benefit you in the longrun? Does the nexus of your interests align with your lifetime goals? Maybe try to construct a mental model for how educating yourself across many disciplines will help you achieve your goals, then start progressing.

On top of all other advice here: choose your learning material wisely. Ask the existing communities to point you to the best resources for your objective and skill level, then use those resources for a fast-track dive into the topic rather than wasting your time on less helpful material.

Where the concepts of majors and minors helps at university. You focus on a topic over weeks and months and years with an experienced guide. Doing that on your own is tough because even if you stick with the material, who do you ask questions of?

I don't know. I have ADHD and this seems impossible to me. Good luck.

Can we get in touch?

sure! You can find me on twitter @gui42

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