Ask HN: What are the obstacles to learning on your own?

14 points

13 years ago

There’s never been more great content available for free (or at very low cost) to teach yourself anything you’d ever want to know (the MVC JS framework of the week, Mandarin, string theory, string instruments, juggling) BUT the fact is we don’t learn everything we’d want to know.

Why is that?

Sean (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=SnootyMonkey) and I are passionate self-learners, and we struggle with this too. We have ideas (and prototypes) for a couple solutions that might go a long way towards helping self-learners overcome their obstacles, but we want to validate that we’re on the right track.

If you regularly try to learn stuff on your own we’d love to learn about your learning routine and obstacles. What makes it hard to start learning something new? What slows you down? What makes it harder than it should be? What makes you give up when you do?

If you only have a moment for us, leave a comment here.

If you have up to 5 minutes, please take our very short survey here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UXZygDbvjSyDhWpUxYPMUN-_7F01svwRuHU3bKMNAKc/viewform

If you have more than 5 minutes, we’d love to chat with you over Skype / Google Hangout / phone call / smoke signals / face-to-face (you can tell us you’re willing at the end of the survey).

Thanks! Happy learning.

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