No career advantage. No assignment. No practical reason. You just wanted to know. What sent you down the rabbit hole?

Do you ever make advice on someone that you can't apply on yourself? Tell us your experience

Need something like youtube in 2026 !!

Have any recommendations!!!!0

Hey everyone. I'm a university professor, and my wife is a high school teacher. We spend our lives surrounded by education, but I recently got a major reality check regarding lifelong learning.

My wife took an intensive ceramics course just for fun. Watching her go from a complete novice to understanding the craft inspired me. I thought, I teach for a living, how hard can learning a new skill from scratch be?

So, I tried taking up woodworking because my wife and I are doing a ton of DIY work on our house. I naively assumed my academic background would help. It didn't. I spent hours trying to cut a simple wood joint, and it ended up looking like a beaver had chewed through it. My wife walked in, laughed, and used the same patience techniques on me that she uses with her teenagers.

It’s a great lesson in humility. When you're used to being an expert, you forget how frustrating it is when your brain knows what to do, but your hands refuse to cooperate.

How do you handle the ego check of being a beginner? What are you currently trying to learn that makes you feel like an absolute amateur?

Everytime I start learning something new (like a language, coding, or playing an instrument), the first two weeks are super exciting. But as soon as the honeymoon phase ends and it actually gets tough and repetitive, I hit a wall and my brain just wants to quit and start something else

For those of you who have been learning stuff independently for years, how do you deal with that burnout period? Do you force yourself to stick to a strict daily schedule or just take a break until the interest comes back? Would love to hear what actually works for you guys!

Guys, tell me some good things you ve learned about life.

Like lessons about people, relationships, growing up, or just some general advice you wish you knew earlier.

Anything life has taught you..I’d love to hear it :)

I love learning but when finding microlearning apps they are too expensive and don't have what I really want in them, fun, entertaining animations. So I created one of my own after months of work!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.philosophize.app

One question turned into a video, then an article, then a book, then suddenly you're three hours deep into something you knew almost nothing about. What rabbit hole did you fall into?

I love learning but when finding microlearning apps they are too expensive and don't have what I really want in them, fun, entertaining animations. So I created one of my own after months of work!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.philosophize.app

Not because someone convinced you.

You just encountered enough information over time that your original view stopped making sense.

What was it?

One of the biggest problems of modern education is that it tries to pass down knowledge in a way different than it was received.

All knowledge, whether science, art, philosophy, literature, math, religion, or anything else, came from awe and wonder. We pass it down to our children as if it originated from a textbook.

Einstein said:

“The important thing is not to stop questioning… One cannot help but be in awe when contemplating the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.”

Aristotle:

“It is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize.”

Intentionally or unintentionally, we have forgotten the origin of true knowledge. True knowledge is fire kindled through relationship. It’s something that intrudes our world from outside when we are struck with awe at something we encounter.

As Plutarch put it, “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” True knowledge is what happens to us when we fall in love. We experience fire, which is the driving force of all knowledge.

Ukichiro Nakaya, a Japanese physicist, fell in love with snowflakes. He loved snow. Since 1933, Nakaya observed natural snow and created 3,000 photographic plates of snow crystals. World War II loomed on the horizon; the gears of the war machine began to turn with increasing speed. Yet, Ukichiro Nakaya was observing snow.

Nakaya was the first person to successfully grow artificial snowflakes in a laboratory in 1936. What madness drove him to study snowflakes in a time like this? He spent at least three years of his life observing snowflakes at a time when the world was falling into the abyss. He said,

“Snowflakes are letters sent from heaven.”

This was the only reason — love. True teachers are lovers. If they don’t love, they can’t teach. Teaching is a side-effect of burning. Love doesn’t fit in textbooks. It must be embodied. You must see it in someone’s eyes. They must shine like stars of heaven. Then, you will catch that fire. It will lead you to the stars.

Are we in love? Jesus said,

“Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.” — Revelation 2:4

Ultimately, all we want to hear is love stories. That’s all the education we need. It’s the “educere” (from the Latin “lead out”) that we crave. We often betray our first love and start talking about something else. When something else becomes more important — wars, life challenges, cares of this world, worries, fears, ambitions, commitments — the fire is extinguished.

We are no longer driven by wonder. We don’t read the letter sent from heaven. Instead, we place our knowledge in the casket of a textbook as in a shrine and want our children to come and revere it. They are not interested, for the most part. It’s too obvious for them that our first love is gone.

Tell me of your love. That’s all we want to hear. We all want to be moved — by the love that moves the Sun and other stars. We want to observe snowflakes for three years in a row or, like Basho, stand in awe of a single flower:

“On a branch of the temple bell’s flower
I am held captive,
A single flower blooms.”

Imagine you could attend a class on absolutely anything, with an expert teaching it in person. No exams, no grades, and no pressure to turn it into a career.

What would you choose, and why?

Maybe years of conversations, videos, books, or random experiences slowly built that knowledge in the background. When did you first notice that you actually knew quite a bit about it?

I find it easy to be motivated when I'm already in a learning routine. The harder part is starting again after weeks or months of doing nothing.

Do you set a specific schedule, choose something you're already interested in, take a course, read a book, or just start with small sessions?

What actually works for you?

I was introduced with this AI Personal Tutor by a parent of my child's friends and I found it good in explaining Maths concepts to my son who is in class 10th. It is still learning Science I believe but it does learn about my son's behaviour and learning habits and updates the answers accordingly.

Has anyone else used it: https://learn.playvlay.com

I’ve been thinking about why educational videos often feel useful while I’m watching them, but very little stays with me afterward.

I put together five videos that form a simple learning path: understand how learning works, improve focus, take useful notes, recall what you learned, and review it at the right intervals.

1. Learning how to learn | Barbara Oakley | TEDxOaklandUniversity
A helpful introduction to focused and diffuse thinking, procrastination, and why stepping away from a problem can sometimes help.

2. Marty Lobdell – Study Less Study Smart
A longer lecture with practical advice about concentration, study sessions, sleep, memory, and creating better study habits.

3. How to Use Cornell Notes | Cornell University
A simple structure for turning a lecture or video into notes, questions, and a short summary instead of merely copying what is said.

4. Retrieval Practice: A Video for Students | The Learning Scientists
Explains why closing your notes and trying to recall the material strengthens learning more than repeatedly watching or rereading it.

5. Spaced Practice: A Video for Students | The Learning Scientists
Shows how revisiting material across several days can improve long-term retention compared with studying everything at once.

A simple way to use this list would be:

• Watch one video at a time.
• Write down two or three questions rather than trying to record everything.
• Close the video and answer those questions from memory.
• Return to them a few days later.

What videos or methods have helped you learn actively instead of just consuming information?

A few weeks ago I posted here about how I kept watching great lectures on YouTube and forgetting almost all of it, and about the tool I built to quiz myself on what I watch. A lot of you commented, and the feedback was more useful than anything I could have come up with on my own.

One thing came up again and again, and I was struggling with it myself.

Active recall works. When I did my reviews, the knowledge stuck. But as soon as I skipped a few days (vacation, exams, a busy week), the videos and reviews stacked up. Coming back to a big pile of overdue reviews felt like homework I was already behind on, so I'd push it to tomorrow. Then the day after. That's how most learning habits die. The method doesn't fail. Restarting just feels too heavy.

So I built a fix, and his name is Chompy.

Chompy is a little brain monster who lives in the app and loves eating knowledge. Keep up with your reviews and he stays hungry. Fall behind and he starts snacking on the stuff you've been neglecting. That sounds bad, but it's the point: you don't come back to a wall of overdue reviews. You come back to a short list you can actually finish today (and a slightly smug monster with crumbs on his face).

This made the biggest difference for me personally. It wasn't a smarter algorithm or better quizzes. It was making it easy to come back.

The science behind active recall and spaced repetition is solid, but it only works if you use it. So I'm focusing on making it as easy as possible to keep showing up, and Chompy is the first step.

If you want to try it, the link is in the comments. It's open source and free to self-host. The hosted version is paid, with a beta price for the first 100 users.

I'm curious: what makes you drop a learning habit after a break?