Learning more and Knowing less

Why Just Reading Isn't Growing.

“Reading too many self help books is the same as reading none at all.”

― Don’t know who said.

There’s a phenomenon in computer science when as a beginner you watch so many programming tutorials, you get stuck in a loop called tutorial hell where you never end up being anything more than a beginner. At some point in your journey either as a programmer or as a human being who want to grow you realize the more you consume tutorials and self-help books and the rest, you get to a point where all you have to show is an abundance of quotes, unused know-how and wasted time. Every additional information serves as a direct contradiction to the one truth that’s supposed to help you move forward.

It’s always been that simple. Not easy, but always simple.

As a person, the moment you start to complicate your growth and overanalyze the journey, you’ve already missed the point. When I first picked up programming, I wasn’t thinking of what the best language to learn was. I was just interest in problem-solving itself and didn’t bother about the specifics. This was one of my more interesting learning periods as it turns out because the process was all so simple. I just learned stuff, applied it and reiterated. I seem to skip the last two steps when it comes to self-help and growth, and so do a good amount of others.

We seem to be perfectly content with perpetual learning without meaningful progress. We keep reading the same message - about consistency, self awareness and mindset shifts - from different messengers and mediums without actually getting up to do anything about it.

Realizing that learning about how to grow is just a small part of growing, is an important thing in of itself. So whether you’ve read one book about self-help or a hundred, maybe it’s time to close the book for now and focus on how to use what you’ve learned to grow.

Thanks for reading. If you at any point suspect that this is one of those self-help posts about not needing self-help, I will neither confirm nor deny your accusations.