Do you ever feel like you want to learn everything?
Do you ever feel as though you want to learn everything?
I enjoy learning. I wouldn't say I crave it but I love finding out about new things or learning how to do something I don't know how to do. Almost anytime I see somebody talking about or doing something that interests me I think, "I could learn to do that" or "I should read up about that." This ranges from anything to my own personal pursuits (of which I have too many due to this feeling and thus never sink enough time into any... different topic) to my friend's career paths or interests, to all of you on Tildes, you cool bastards. My partner is studying medicine. Shit, I haven't learned anything bio/health-science related since college Freshman year Chemistry class but I was just googling "free [biology|physics|intro to medicine] textbooks online" because what she's learning sounds awesome and like some really beneficial stuff to know about. Every time I read the "What are you doing this weekend" or similar threads on here I just think... damn, I'd love to contribute to open source maps (shoutout u/hungariantoast) or play that game or learn to fix up my car or ... you get the idea.
Does anyone else feel this way? How do you cope? Want to vent and relate? I know of priority lists, I have made plenty and they have both helped and not helped me solve this. I guess I'm just destined to try learning everything forever.
Shit yes. When I'm overcome with a thirst for knowledge I typically take to the internet these days. I'm lucky in that most of the time I had the idea BEFORE I go looking to learn something, but the following sites have been of incredible use to me over the years, and they're all (largely) free:
Upskill - If you want to learn anything about web development, including but not limited to coding in various languages.
Khan Academy - If you want to learn anything about...well, anything.
Project Gutenberg - A entire virtual library full primarily of literature for which US Copyright has expired, which ends up including the vast majority of classic literature. For many books they will also carry copies in different languages as well. No sign up, no cost. Great for learning about literature or reading a good classic. If you're in the mood for something more modern, might I suggest your local library? Chances are they use the Libby or Overdrive apps (or have proprietary software you can obtain) to distribute ebooks and the like.
Study.com - Formerly, "Education Portal". Offers free courses on a variety of subjects. You used to be able to pass exams on some courses and earn genuine college credit, not sure if they still do that though.
Open Yale Courses - Free courses offered by Yale and taught by the same professors who proctor them on campus.
Thanks for posting some good resources, I always save these sort of lists for sometime. The issue that I have is I've never actually returned to any of these saved lists because my personal list of things I want to learn about is already so expansive that I never have the time to look at through these sites and go through a really great Yale course or an awesome library book.
That's more a personal thing though, so I'll leave my response as a thank you for posting and perhaps I will get around to actually checking out these sites for once!
Be careful, it sounds like you are like me, a collector of information. It is something I struggle with because it is something of a trap. I used to collect books on things I was interested in, I then go into downloading "hording" ebooks, pdf's, online courses and other such knowledge repositories. I would feel smarter because I had these things, but I would rarely put in the effort beyond just reading through them to gain more then a surface level of understanding.
There is a chasm between information and knowledge/experience gained using information and there is an even deeper Chasm between Experience and Mastery.
Sorry that might be worded horribly, hopefully my point is coming across.
And remember there is beauty to found in the grind.
The first part of your paragraph is something I am well aware of. It's a sad but true realization to make for people like ourselves. But the quote there, that's beautiful.
I had a conversation about a year ago about the goal of life and finding happiness and how they are related. A common thread I had discusses in convo was how if we could ever prescribe a "goal of life" then finding happiness is probably one of them and perhaps it's a grind to get there for most people. But this one friend of mine told me how his happiness was in the grind (which I realize is not a rare opinion, but perhaps rather uncommon). I loved the way he worded it and described his reasoning and I look to remind myself of that at every opportunity. Hell, I almost try to put myself into more of a "grind" sometimes as I can envision myself succeeding in my future and want to look back at those times when I was "grinding away" at learning something, etc.
Well said, i can fully relate to what you are saying. Hopefully we will be able to stumble upon something that actually interests us on a deeper level though, and start our journey though those chasms in a particular subject/field, how would one find the subject otherwise, if not through curiosity and the chase of knowledge?
This is all going to only be tangentially related to your post, so I'm sorry for that.
I feel similar but not the same. I went to college not because I wanted a degree to get a good job, but because the thing I enjoyed was learning new things. I've always been a pretty quick learner. It takes a lot out of me to learn something fast, but I can do it usually. My biggest struggles are (1) I am very competitive and hate being wrong, so it is easy for me to get discouraged and drop a topic (2) I have to learn new things almost every day at my job, so it burns me out to learning new things in my free time. I just feel so exhausted, it feels like climbing a mountain to try and learn a new skill or hobby or new area of information. It definitely sucks.
I don't know if this would make things better or worse for you OP, but I found it makes it better for me: I try to get people to talk to me about their passions. There is something electric when you watch someone's eyes light up and hear their voice change a bit as they struggle to slow down because they are so in love with what they are talking about. I find its a win-win. I'm learning something new, and I have someone to ask questions if I get confused, and usually, a person will do a much better job selling me that a topic is interesting than an article or blog post. And they get to talk about something they love, and hopefully, I ask a very simple or stupid question that inspires deeper thought about the topic and they grow in their knowledge. It is not a perfect solution, I still have a long list of topics I want to learn about, but I've learned a lot, made a lot of friends, and I hope I've helped make people's day a bit better by letting them talk about their passion without making them feel bad/nerdy/weird/<insert_negative_emotion_here> because I've found a lot of times, I'm the first person to be genuinely interested in hearing what they have to say.
I think about that pretty frequently. I saw your reply in the "what is/was your education like" thread about finding a lot of that which you're describing at a liberal arts school, but struggling to find that elsewhere. That's intriguing to me, as I went to a large state university yet most of my friends from high school went to small liberal arts schools and have since spoken of the same exact thing you describe. So I suppose that begs the question: if you don't pursue further education but go into the general workforce, how do you reliably find that same drive for passion? It's tempting to say that everybody has some interesting passion that we can all listen and learn about but it seems from my experience that some simply don't have any passions or any they believe are worth sharing (which is completely fine, but maybe doesn't fit what you and I are looking for).
I had some more to say, but I couldn't find the words to say it so I'll leave this question to ponder for now. Overall, I love the way you describe how people talk about their passions. I enjoy that too, and I also think about that frequently - I prefer getting people to talk about themselves in conversation than anything else.
I actually like being ignorant about some stuff and just taking wild guesses at things. I miss the pre-Internet times where people were fine with not looking stuff up. Every time I bring this up, I realize I have a very minority viewpoint here. I liked it better when crazy rumors would spread and nobody really knew if they were true but they sure were interesting.
That is such the opposite of me, can you explain more what you like about not knowing? This perspective for me is refreshing and would like to hear more about it.
It's a lot easier to dismiss stuff so you don't have to worry about it. Like, if someone's talking about, say, the intricacies of brewing beer, I can just chalk that up as something I don't know about. I don't care to learn about it since I have no interest in actually doing it. Here's another example. People were recently debating (online, not sure if anyone did this in real life) about if that Billy Ray Cyrus song is really country. I'm not a big Top 40 listener nor a country afficionado, so I choose to remain ignorant on that because it doesn't affect me in the slightest.
I feel like these days with so much information available so easily, people feel like they need to be up-to-date on all the new stuff. It's so much easier on the brain to just ignore the vast amount of things that have no relation to my life.
The more you learn the more fun it becomes to guess though. That´s how new ideas are found really, at it´s core, is it not? You just described that you enjoy the process of science.
I like to guess as well, just using what you have learned, even though it might be minor, just common sense sometimes, and then later look it up to clear things out.
I love this mindstate. I really do, and despite my lust for knowledge I do partake in a little but of wild-guessing and rumor milling. Sadly, I can also be the one who pushes up the metaphorical glasses and says "well, we have the whole world's wealth of knowledge in our pockets so let's just look it up"
I have always felt this way, and it's one of the reasons for which I give the side eye to those who say "eternal life would be so boring". Most of my free time is spent reading, and I'm no stranger to WikiWalks: I used to keep a Wikipedia dump on my HDD, and that might just have saved my life.
It irritates me that I have to give up eight hours every day. It hurts me that I can't focus as well as I'd like to, or as well as I used to be able to. I hate not knowing something, and I hate forgetting things even more - or just having to deal with having the memory of a mere human. I want to be able to trust my memory, but I know I can't, and so I write down almost everything I see, do, think or feel during my day.
I don't really have a solution. I cope by slurping interesting links and snippets to an org-mode file, by writing down things I learned inside my own personal wiki, and by trusting myself to not let go. I know that not knowing something will nag at me, and that if I won't get it the first time I'll just keep on trying. It might take me multiple attempts spread over years, but eventually I'll break through.
Right now, I'm trying to learn German, Esperanto and Toki Pona. I have a small Anki deck I seldom add cards to, I have a library of books in the gigabytes, I follow a few courses on Khan Academy, and I'm experimenting with Common Lisp, Nim, and Haskell.
I sympathise so much, I can't put it into words. I have mostly avoided work up until this point. And I want to become a researcher so that what I love to do, learning and researching and teaching, becomes my job so that I don't resent it every second of those hours. I generally hate being part of hierarchies, and academia is full of hierarchies, but I think it is going to be a good compromise. I hope master's will prove or disprove that to me.
To also shortly answer @botanrice, I feel like I have a lot in common with you and @mftrhu and @firstname, but I am slowly taming my interests and starting to channel my attention to a certain topic: linguistics. I only have so much time on this Earth, a human life is so short. There are a few other things I want to learn: I'll keep up with programming which I like, I want to learn maths and statistics, I want to learn cooking well. Apart from that, I'll still be jumping down the rabbit holes, but I am learning how to not let that consume all my time.
Agreed. I enjoy my work but I get consistently annoyed at the lack of time I have to learn all the things I want to learn. I wish you the best in discovering if research is for you and in finding the best way to manage your (our) hunger to learn!
Thanks!
I think we can relate to each other. It's the common struggle we share. I, too, have been working very hard on finding ways to keep myself rooted - focused on a topic at hand and memorizing the things that are important to me (which unfortunately works best with repetition, which I'm not great at). I think that is the root of it for people like us, as life will always be a constant search and lust for more knowledge. So working hard on finding the best way to navigate those waters may be in our best interest. Thanks for your reply.
Btw, you just opened my eyes to org-mode... whooaaa! It seems like a steep learning curve for someone who doesn't use emacs much, but it may just fit my needs. Gonna take a little look into it.
Have you tried Anki? I think it's pretty good, even if creating the cards can be a bit of an hassle. (Edit: org-mode, also, can help with that [1] [2] [3])
And down the rabbit hole you go. Fare thee well, botanrice.
The learning curve, tbh, is for Emacs and org-mode both. They are incredibly powerful pieces of software, and org-mode can be made to do... basically everything.
Just yesterday, I wrote up and posted on reddit a silly analysis of a large group of tiny hate subs, and I did most of it from within org-mode itself: org-mode has org-babel, which is not just a tool for literate programming but which effectively transforms org into a plaintext Jupyter notebook, and one of the many modules of org-babel is
ob-sqlite, which allowed me to write my queries into an org-mode code block, tweak them as needed, and then execute them withC-c C-c.E.g.,
Org-mode can do this, and much, much more. TODOs? It can handle them. Hyperlinking? Easy-peasy. Do you want your links to do weird things? You can do that.
I was unsatisfied with how links were shown, and I just had to wrote a short function to make it so that org-mode would display them in red if the file they pointed at did not exist.
It is very flexible, and it's because of this that you should be aware of what you do with it. That is, try to spend more time capturing information than fiddling with the underlying system - which is very much one of my problems.
And, if you are really looking for more ideas, you might find How to tell stuff to a computer - The enigmatic art of knowledge representation interesting.
I feel you, i am the same to an extent. I do not feel like i want to learn everything as you describe. But, i do possess a large amount of curiosity for most things i come by.
I often find myself reading up on something, realizing the time is after midnight and that i have spent 6 hours reading and watching videos on some random subject, forgotten to even take a shower before bed.
We live in a time where most answers are in our pocket, which is insane. I think the fact that i grew up with the internet it is to "blame" for all of this. Other then a natural curiosity combined with healthy critical thinking. The downside is that i loose interest way to fast and never really get very good at anything.
It does not help that i have manic/hypomanic episodes due to my bipolar disorder, during those i often get obsessed with a certain subject. Or ten of them at once, which is not ideal. It´s interesting how it affects learning though, since your brain is overactive it gets easier to learn. At the same time you pay the price and suffer brain damage from it, so the things you might have learned, might also leave the memory over time.
That's actually one of the biggest issues I am facing right now. Some of it is some good ol' adhd but I do sit down and think, "man, learning about ___ is so cool and interesting... but there's also <my favorite thing to learn about>, <my second favorite thing to learn about>, <real responsibility>, <more fav things>."
Having the internet at our disposal likely makes matters worse in this regard, because I can find out about things that I never knew I'd want to learn or, like you, can learn an insane amount about one thing for six hours at a time. Thanks for responding.
I have sudden thirsts for knowledge occasionally where I will consume content on the topic, sometimes manically, until I have hit a point of boredom or a wall. When that happens, I typically have to take a break until the spark has been lit again. The most recent being Python where a year ago, I really only knew how to use PyAutoGUI to move my mouse around. Now I am decently fluent in Pandas and have built a good enough vocabulary to google what I am trying to accomplish or get around.
And in general, if I hear something that I know very little about in conversation or passing, I will spend a few minutes googling the topic or the question I am asking.
I've been looking for a gui automation language that works on linux -- can't believe I never thought of seeing if there was something built into another language. Thank you so much!
You are welcome!
It is a really handy module! The only downside is if you are using screenshot matching for screen coordinates, the screenshot has to be a pixel-to-pixel match on the screen. I ended up having to mix it with OpenCV3 for fuzzy matching a flash based website that changed the slightest each page load.
I want to, I really want to. I make lists, plans, over-organize everything and end up learning and actually doing nothing. Just planning.
same. My partner said something to me yesterday about that exact topic, since I'm always complaining that I just plan and never have the time to execute. She said something along the lines of "that's just the kind of people we are, we always want to be doing something productive or positive / learning."
That stuck with me a bit. I have to realize that I will always want to do more things than time will allow and instead should work on learning how to utilize that drive into something positive. Haven't figured it out yet, but will get back to you if I do, lol.
Yeah, I get that. The impending dread of knowing that you're obligated to do a thing for a massive chunk of your life is kind of a mood killer when trying to enrich or enlighten yourself. Some days, life is hard and it's all you can do to just hang on tight, and the harder you hang on, the faster it goes until you realize that by putting your head down and doing the needful, you're just fiddling away time and drive from the things you actually wanted to do on this rock. And it kinda sucks, all those sun bleached dreams looked a whole lot more vibrant when you first got them, and through no fault of your own, they're just as plain and utilitarian as everyone else's. You can choose to embrace it, or fight it, or deny it, but to even be cognizant of your options puts a lot on your shoulders. "You had these gigantic ten year old dreams, you either have to figure them out, or make peace with their death. I did it, we all did it, why can't you?"
And it's even difficult to explore yourself to dig up an answer, it's far easier to say "I got work tomorrow," and leave it at that. Just wanted to get that out of my system.
I want to learn a bunch of shit, but only in waves. I'll get big boosts of "Wow, I should do something!", start it, then stop when the feeling fades a day later. It's a wonder I've stuck to playing guitar as long as I have. Though if I tried to learn Music Theory, I'd drop it in a day
Kind of. I think what I'm really wanting is a high.
If someone is infectiously excited about a topic they know a lot about, it makes me want to know a lot about that so that I, too, can be as excited as they are about something they've made a career of; because as stable as my current career is, nothing about it is exciting or educational for myself, and it's filling my head with the most useless, niche knowledge that will be completely useless once I've left this job.
So when I start chasing their high, trying to get into what they've learned a lot about, I'll start by reading some books on whatever their topic is, maybe get a little interested, and then lose interest in learning about it two books deep, typically because the books get so granular and so unforgivingly scientific with what they're going on about that I can't afford to let my attention or commitment to learning about it lapse, lest I lose everything I've learned so far (because what I'm learning about has zero applications in my day-to-day life).
It also doesn't help that it feels like-- on the whole-- I've barely retained anything from my hears in academia, so I also wind up asking myself "what's the point?"
The only things that reliably spark excitement in me tend to be niche games/movies/television bullshit that nobody else in my social circles have the same interests in (except my wife, thank god), which has zero applications to any sort of worthwhile fulfilling career. Granted I could take that excitement and put it into MAKING movies, television, etc., and I have certainly tried/did make one movie, and it was the most glorious experience I've ever had in my life, but that's not really an easy thing to achieve on a consistent basis without more resources, and I'm not certain that's what I'd want to do with my life.
So, I only really want to learn things in the sense that I hope that my learning about them will lead me to find some crazy interesting infinite spiral of enjoyment that I can actually do something with-- which feels like an impossible mission, but when you see people like the ones I'd described earlier, who exhibit an infectious enthusiasm for their niche knowledge, it can't help but make you question "me too?"
Thanks for your reply, you bring up an interesting perspective. I get that. I want to take a moment to point out your penultimate paragraph, because while the rest of your comment talks about struggling to find that thing that brings the "high", you said yourself that making a movie was:
Man. Listen to yourself. You found the most glorious experience of your life! People spend years and years trying to find something that makes them feel that way, and some people never do. SEIZE THAT! It doesn't have to become your entire life commitment where it's the "next thing you do in life", but you can certainly take more time to do it if it brings you that high. Make movies by yourself with your phone camera, or invest in a cheap camera and come up with a script or some ideas on your own that maybe only involve you and a friend or your wife.
I'm not trying to write this to inspire you - but at the same time I am, because one of my biggest pursuits is also my creative outlet: music. It wasn't until not to long ago that I realized, "huh, this shit makes me super happy - I should just not give any damn excuses and do it" and now I make hip-hop. We don't know each other but if you knew me you may not think that I'm a hip-hop artist at first glance. But who cares? I do it for myself, on my own. Never been happier. I hope this doesn't come off patronizing or anything at all - I just have been in your shoes, looking for my passion and an exciting thing to do beyond gaming (no hate on that, still gaming) and I finally just seized it and I never looked back.
Hell, I'd make a movie with you. We could figure it out. Some type of abstract shit where I'll send you clips of my life and you merge them with yours LOL. Anyways, I feel you on your reply, thanks for responding.
I appreciate the support. I'm working on making another one, it just takes time and resources to do it the way that I want to, and I haven't been able to muster either in a timely manner on account of extraneous circumstances. It doesn't help the first one did well enough that the bar feels a bit high to meet it again. Here's hoping it's not too much longer.
Yep, at a certain point putting enough time into each and every one becomes difficult though, which usually means l end up like a "jack of all trades, master of none".
Though right now l'm still young and there's plenty more time. I've realized l can focus a thing and do the next thing later instead of all at once.
Another way to approach this for when you're trying to make something; learn only the specific bits from every field that you need for that project, you'll learn a lot that way.
It's definitely adhd-related though; l have so many interests and hobbies and boxes upon boxes full of stuff for those hobbies that l can use whenever l need it.
And what l think the advantage of the "jack of all trades" thing is, is that at some point you know a little bit about this, a little bit about that, you're aware x technique is a thing and works with y material; you can start combining fields to make interesting things.
l'm setting up a garage workshop with metal and woodworking tools, electrics and electronics and plan to make things using that. Make as many things as possible myself, just because l think it's a fun way to apply learned skills.
This makes me think of something I read once. I don't remember the exact quote, but the idea is that if you eat enough scientific fields then the gaps between them start shrinking until your knowledge is a single coherent, unified whole.
Sometimes I go on learning binges on wikipedia, stackexchange, but most often it's youtube educational videos.
It's fine every so often, but I've found that sticking to one subject/area longer is generally more effective and makes me happy.
Agreed, but that seems to be the trade-off. Get to know something pretty well or learn a little about a lot of things.
True though I find that for the process of learning it pays to stick to something pretty specific for each session, even if you move around a lot between sessions.
Happens all the time. My worst offenders are creative things like photography and webdesign. I manage to get into the technical side, but I just don't have an eye for it. Makes me sad. I know, I could be getting better at it with practice. But so much to do, so little time!
Yeah, a lot of times it will come in a burst of motivation where I try to suck up a thousand topics at once and it just becomes a steaming mess. I have to make a lot of effort to do things in little bits per day rather than going full out when I have extra motivation and then burning out.
The existence of Library Genesis can make me a little woozy. That's a lotta top-grade material. I can't help but use a lot of my spare time reading textbooks on everything I wish I could have taken in college.
As the breadth (not necessarily depth) of knowledge has increased the realization that not only will I not learn everything but that I won't even be able to learn about everything there is to learn about has taken hold. It doesn't really bother me and has instead given me relief that I can find new and interesting things about the world we live in without having to learn everything about those things. I've come to a place where I am content to know about the things that exist without knowing everything about them.
This is probably a common experience for lots of people mostly due to our general pursuit of novelty but it's given me peace because I am starting to see my own limits of both time and ability. I realize that I can't be good at everything but I can become a person who is able to carry on conversations and discuss things no matter how niche they might be.
I definitely have friends that prefer depth over breadth in their knowledge but they are also hyper focused on one area and don't seem to struggle with trying to learn everything there is to learn.
It seems like you've got it figured out. I'm going to bookmark this reply, thank you for providing another side of the answer spectrum here.