The following are not written by me, and instead excerpts from others’ posts I have found helpful to keep in mind.
In their paper “Duration neglect in retrospective evaluations of affective episodes”, psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Barbara Fredrickson discuss a phenomenon called “The Peak End Rule”. This is the mechanism our brain uses to summarize our experiences, and which influences whether we would like to have that experience again. Their paper argues that our memories about the pleasurableness of our past experiences is not determined by the overall proportion of pleasure versus displeasure in the experience, or even how long it lasted, but rather that it is almost entirely determined by a few “snapshots” of how we felt about the experience—most importantly how we felt at the (high or low) peak of the experience and how we felt when the experience ended.
Importantly, they observe that our memory of the experience is not based on how we actually felt about the experience on average.
Step 1: Set your learning goals. Don’t underestimate the importance of setting learning goals, sub-goals, and sub-sub-goals. Figuring out the overall goal is usually pretty simple but setting the learning sub-goals requires effort: we often don’t know enough about a field to accurately determine all the learning goals before we start. This means we will have to do a bit of research and figure out what skills will be required for us to reach our overall goal and as ask people who already possess these skills. If you can’t get the perfect big picture, that’s okay! Take what you have and split it into sub goals. You can add the missing sub goals later after you gained more insights and identified your knowledge gaps.
Step 2: Evaluate the importance of each goal. Some topics are more exciting than others. Some topics are more important than others. Take a critical look at the skills you are about to learn and prioritize them carefully. Keep in mind that learning the basics of your skill should be a priority in order to develop a solid basis in the field. If you skip ahead you will often miss important concepts that would’ve helped you understand the more advanced stuff in way more detail.
Step 3: Identify your options. After setting your learning goals you need to find the right resources. Your learning goal will help you set the minimum criteria of the resources you are about to pick. It is usually less stressful and more productive to approach this stage with the “satisficer” mindset and focus on finding resources that are “good enough”. Pick a few resources that meet your requirements.
Step 4: Evaluate how likely each of the resources is to help you meet your goals. After picking several good resources, weed out any redundancy in them. If two resources have overlapping subjects then determine which one is more likely to help you achieve your learning goal.
Step 5: Pick the winning resources. It doesn’t matter if no single resource covers everything you need to achieve your entire sub-goal. By breaking down the sub-goal further, you can cover it with multiple different resources.
Wizard power… is far harder to obtain in great quantity, in our world. Part of the fantasy appeal of wizards is just how much they can do how easily, when in the real world wizard power is so much weaker than in fantasy. It’s being able to weld or sew, knowing how to use CAD tools and 3D printers and CNC machines, working with electronic circuits or writing code, building a house or installing plumbing or wiring, genetically editing bacteria. Even in social domains - e.g. deep knowledge of bureaucratic structure or case law conveys social wizard power, circling and pickup artistry and non-violent communication each convey their own form of social wizard power. Real world wizards do not beat armies. But at least wizard power isn’t fake. It isn’t always fungible across tasks, which means the wizard powers one has aren’t always right for the problem at hand. But at least wizard power is always 100% real; it’s never fake in the way that so much king power is fake.
Seek wizard power, not king power.