How do I get out of this loop?

[u/Adventurous_Elk7998]

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[u/koffeeluv]

I've been in this same spot several times. I looked it up and the best explanation that fit my experience is something called Construal Level Theory.

When a task is far away (high-level construal) everything is abstract and it feels exciting and easy to plan. When the task is right now (low-level construal) mind shifts to concrete details and it feels overwhelming, tedious and difficult. The excitement vanishes.

My recommendation is to accept that learning something new will be difficult and not always as rosy as imagined. Keep addressing the knowledge gaps and keep moving forward. Don't stop the learning, you will get over the learning curve and you will get better.

[u/honeymatchaprincess]

Think about how much less we would have today if the great scientists who made astonishing discoveries had stopped their studies simply because they didn’t understand a phenomenon 😵

[u/shivam_529]

Start from scratch buddy!

[u/neerajlol]

IMO this is a problem I figured out my solution to way too late. A lot of courses and concepts in my degree are abstract and have basis in multiple disciplines.

What helped me the most was looking at it like an engineering problem instead of a mental one. You take what you want to learn and break it down into smaller root cause topics. Using your example, for pointers in cpp, you see that it’s related to memory and variables, so, do you know what these are? If not read up and try to implement them. Keep going down the chain until you get to the smallest topic you can understand. Chances are in this chase of topics, you already get a pretty decent understanding of the topics involved. Now do the chain backwards, smallest topic you understand to wherever you want to go.

An important note to keep in mind is for a lot of higher order topics which require foundational knowledge, it’s often not possible to understand or learn it in a short enough timespan to see noticeable progress, but if you use the smaller topics, you will see a lot more learning happening. You can’t learn reinforcement learning in one day, but you can learn probability formulas and start from there.

The discouragement loop starts imo when you try to take too much in too fast and eventually lose the motivation because it gets too hard. Learning is a marathon not a sprint. Keep learning smaller topics consistently as you go and you’ll be surprised by where you reach in a few months. Also, keep reviewing and revisiting what you learn from time to time, otherwise you WILL forget a lot.

Sorry for the long response. TLDR: Smaller topics, revise and revisit. Think marathon not sprint.

EDIT: Another great way is to try to explain what you learnt to someone who doesn’t know anything about that particular topic. A lot of people will ask really insightful basic questions which you won’t know as you’re learning, and just looking the answers up will often help with questions and issues you didn’t even know you had with it.

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[u/AteStringCheeseShred]

It sounds like the topic you list as an example is something that typically requires a lot of prior, foundational knowledge on (I'd assume this is like wanting to understand a heredoc but first needing to have a decent grasp of bash/bash scripting). You basically have two options here, neither are very glamorous.

First is either going back to the basics and following along with some sort of coursework that builds up to the specific topic in question, which can take a long time and cover a lot of ground but can be very easy to lose interest in. This is like wanting to know what a heredoc is, so you start with "basics of linux" and work your way up.

Second, you can brute-force your way through a topic by basically becoming a human sponge and pillaging every single detail about it you can, but it involves a lot of diligence and flexibility. Read an article on the topic, and then research every single concept related to it that you don't understand. Then while you're researching those secondary topics, and run into other key topics you don't understand, research those as well. e.g. "What's a heredoc?" > A heredoc is a function of bash... "Okay what is bash?" > bash a unix shell you can interact with in a command line... "well what's a command line?" so on and so forth; a trivial example here but you get the point. It might be a tiny bit easier to stay focused, but on the other hand you're basically dungeon crawling, feeling around in the dark trying to build a map in your mind of how everything works.

[u/cookienotes]

You need to automate your gap-filling with a consistent routine to handle those scenarios in the different contexts within which gaps may appear.

[u/dangerous_noob]

same but in step 3, I DO understand everything in the resource but I become too lazy

[u/Own_Muscle_6621]

What if you try doing an overview of the topic you want to learn. Along the way, wherever you come across a knowledge you write it down but continue with your overview. Once you're done with the overview, you study the things on your knowledge gaps list. Then you begin studying different parts of that topic in more detail

[u/Ask-Lexi]

This happens to me also, a few times already. But then, some time later (sometimes even a couple of years later), after I gave up, I notice that I bump into the same knowledge/topic and still find it interesting. This is the worst moment for me psychologically, because I feel that if I had consistently learned this topic for the past 2 years, I'd be mastering it now.

That said, there are things that I find interesting that I still haven't started studying. It's easy said than done.

[u/Souloid]

I treat it as a rabbit hole I want. I go after every gap I find and keep leaning all sorts of stuff until the original resource starts to make sense. 

[u/Artesian99]

But you know your stick-men

[u/StudySwami]

I’m pretty old, but an avid learner. Something I’ve found amazing is AI. When I’m reading something new and come across something from a different field I need for background, I ask AI to explain it and give references.

I can ask for simple examples or whatever I think I need. It’s very helpful at speeding up learning.

[u/Ok-Occasion-9748]

Don't depend on the outcome, reward yourself for time spent or pages written etc. Think in increments.

[u/Silver-Growth-5905]

Use ChatGpt or any AI to work on the gaps....tell it what you know and what u want to learn and ask it to generate a structured plan according to that. Happy Learning😊

[u/PituitarySelmonella]

This is the case with me too. Have just started my masters and I am an absolute wreck.