I think when people say "not enough time", they just mean "uninterrupted time". This is the thing that is extremely difficult in conjunction with parenting (and not just toddlers). There is a close to zero sum tradeoff between being truly present with your kids, and having intellectually high quality uninterrupted time. But there is actually lots of time scattered about throughout the days! It's just in little moments here and there before you hear "dad, can you help me?". I really struggle with this, I have enough time in these scattered moments for my mind to get bored frequently, but I have nowhere close to the uninterrupted time necessary to develop a real serious hobby like woodworking. (Parenting is also the best thing in the world, this is not a complaint about parenting, it just happens to be that the specific topic of this article is the hardest thing about it, for me.)

But even then, it's still the phone, in my experience. It takes up so many hours but you also don't really rest, and it also tends to keep you up too long at night.

If you can replace five hours of doom scrolling with an hour of doing nothing in particular, an hour more of sleep, some time staring at a book page or soduku, some more work on chorse, you'll most likely gain an hour or so to use on something that takes mental energy.

Beautiful quote I strongly relate to. When I was 16, I had a sudden realisation one day that no one knows what anything of this actually is. That was a profoundly defining moment of who I am and the deepest and most beautiful thought my limited mind managed to grasp. It made me become in awe of the universe, inspired me to learn and has been a pillar I could lean on during difficult times. I cherish that thought every day.

Wanna say that this is a much better argument for learning than productivity or "becoming a more interesting person". Sometimes it is simply a way to keep the mind pointed outward

Knowing a lot used to be attractive too, before the septic cavalcade of reddit reduced us to wordcels and the 'actually' meme. The continued pursuit of knowledge for me has been a much more private matter in this last decade of the unravelling academic institutions I once called home.

> Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never <...> be tortured by

Right.

that is beautiful, its something i believe as well but never seen it written so eloquenty. when everythings gone to hell and your backed into a corner, learning something interesting is always there for you.

And even if you don’t get all that good or turn it into a lifelong hobby, that just sounds fun.

Meta learning can be useful, but I take your overall point. You can get lost in the weeds trying to figure out the "best" way to learn something. Autodidacts do have some up-front costs: they have to figure out how to best teach themselves a thing, which usually means researching and trying various pedagogical approaches to find something that might work for them.

Language learning, for example is a huge category. You can get completely mired trying to sort out "grammar translation" versus "direct method" or "comprehensible input" approaches, the pros and cons of spaced repetition vs extensive/intensive reading, phonology & minimal pairs, picking a textbook/grammar/dictionary -- it's a lot. I imagine there are some people who are broadly interested in language learning, and don't actually use that information to actually learn a language. It might be more fun to prepare to learn a language than to get into the challenging and less fun work of actually doing it. I see the parallels with "Gear Acquisition Syndrome".

Technology is a choice. If you speak natively you get completely different immersion in culture.

Imagine your perception as a VR headset, and any gadgets and apps are inserting a layer between you and your VR headset, making it worse.

The same goes with any augmenting technology you perceive not the real thing.

Learning a language is still absolutely worth it. The feeling you get when finally being able to communicate with native speakers is not something you could achieve with technology. Sure if all you care about is exchanging information then translation technology does the job, but if you want to actually connect with people I believe you have to do the talking

I've been learning Spanish and I find a big positive motivator is finding and practicing slang words and vulgar phrases. They usually have cultural roots and are highly contextual, so it requires a deeper understanding than just translation. I only speak them sparingly with my few native speaker friends, who find it hilarious when I inevitably use them incorrectly - or rarely get it exactly right.

> The feeling is that it is pointless since technology would just do it for you.

Why walk or jog of the car can do it for you?

I've been learning Russian by myself since the pandemic and along the way I've picked up bits and bobs about food, history, geography, music, and even electronics. Learning a language is not just about the language per se.

I've even realised a few things about my own language.

Even if so, once I realized how pointless doomscrolling is I figured I might as well use that time to learn something pointless.

It is helpful in such cases to look up, touch grass, and realise that "do it for you" is doing a lot of work there. The technology still can only emit a convolution of its training, and this is an ontological, conceptual limit on the technology, not something that the next model will just overcome. It's not "intelligence" -- you still have to know things.

It's easy to think, reading HN, that we're in some "post-knowledge" apocalypse, but that's just not the reality. It is, however, tragic that the irrationality of capitalism can be sustained so long, perhaps longer than some of us can stay solvent.

LLMs can definitely be helpful, but you need your radar set to 11 because they will convincingly feed you smart sounding nonsense when you are most at risk.

I retired a few years ago and now do a slew of things (photography, robotics, 3D printing, etc.) entirely for myself. I'll start a project, have a blast learning/building, then simply move on to the next thing.

Learning for the sake of learning is one of my favorite things in life.

The only way I ever learned anything or built anything of value (one of those things still accounts for most of my revenue, 10-15 years later) was by blowing off doing what I was supposed to be doing at that moment, in the classic sense described by PG here:

https://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

(Except, his essay insinuates that there is some kind of brilliance at work here. In my own case, that remains to be seen.)

Never have I ever managed to accomplish anything of merit by just heading straight for it in the plainspoken sense. Some people will say that provides the basic architecture of some kind of "diagnosis", but I think it's just a normal human variance.

Learning can be the goal if you're lucky. Maybe sharing your learning is the next step and that's enough too. You don't need to apply it to something someone defines as "worthy" for validation.

Learning is not just strictly studying.

I'd say most of the learning is done by actually doing.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm an athlete who trained all day for years, then before my first professional match, I retired and went off to teach PE."

YouTube has been a godsend for these types of problems. It's like LLM output, you need to validate and cross reference but combined with other sources of information, easy purchase of parts and problems that actually have solutions (vs "buy a new one") I've saved thousands on cars, appliances and home repairs

I had the same with my motorcycle. Every time I brought it to the dealer, they came up enthusiastically with things to spend money on. Your tires are done! Your break pads are gone! With the help of a friend, I got into doing (very) basic maintenance myself. I just replaced the tires. I fixed a problem with the electrical system. And next will be the chain and sprocket.

Don’t be fooled, the first few years you get spoiled with “the first moments” of things. Then suddenly the “last moments” start creeping in, “the last nappy”, “the last car seat”, at first they seem like a god send but then they accumulate like an avalanche.

One day you will pick them up and, and most likely neither of you will know it, but it will be the last time you ever do.

Treasure everything, even the insanity.

Children are not god for peace of mind and a life of liberty. I do not recommend anyone to have children, becaues of how negatively it affects your life, cost of living etc. It is basically just tying yourself down to the wheel of consumption, and in order to jutsify everything, all the struggle, push your hopes and aspirations to the next generation, and then letting them deal with it.

If you are rich, you can get around this by hiring people to take care of the children, so then it could be possible, but it will still be a huge financial burden.

The hobby can be with the kid! E.g. go out on a kayak with them (safety first etc.) or learn to coach sport.

There's something useful about time that is already spoken for. You're on the train, you can't do much else, so learning some Dutch feels easy. At home the same half hour somehow gets fragmented into six different things

I think there's a middle group too: people who like having learned something, but don't really enjoy those first few sessions. For them, just knowing that the initial frustration is normal can help a lot

Nothing is as sad as seeing some young motivated student losing patience if the task doesn't turn out to be a quick, easy win. The saddest however are students so eager for the quick, easy win that throughout their academic career they repeat the pattern and never really dive deep into any topic.

I had a student come to me with essentially the same problem over two years and each time I helped her she was in refusal to listen as she stressed herself to just make it work now. Her problem was that she never took the time to do the basics and rejected any learning opportunity as it stared her in the face.

You get results over time if you dedicate yourself to just doing the thing. For many subjects there is no shortcut, no way to walk the path without actually walking it. Every time you encounter an issue there is a learning opportunity. Use it.

I hate this attitude "it takes years of hard work and dedication..."

You absulutely CAN meaningfully pickup things in a day or two, especially with modern AI agents. 3D modeling is a good example, it is not that difficult! It takes some preparation not to be blocked, and good hardware, but when you actually start it goes fast.

You need a concrete goals, not some nebulous plan to learm one hour a day for years.

This makes me sad. I am very confident it's also wrong; it fundamentally misapprehends what talent is.

As well as not particularly being innate or "god-given", talents tend to emerge only when supported by learned ability. And not even just your own learned ability. Talented violinists exist only in a world that had talented violin makers: you perhaps cannot fully know how society could benefit from things you could learn.

Two of my mini-talents are things I used to think were not just difficult but actually things I would be specifically bad at, like, worse than most people. (Which may for complex reasons be a sign I would not be)

I believe it also misapprehends where the boundary between practice and consumption can sit, too, but that's a longer comment.

No matter which side of the equation you sit, try to unlearn this belief you have, and help others unlearn it.

Maybe other people, besides you; obviously, like doing, knowing or learning things without the need to be the most efficient at it.

Like, in a just having a life kind of way.

But what do I know?