Mind Your Studying

Please, do as I say, not as I do.

I love studying. It just triggers something satisfying in my brain that feels like progress, progress that’s greater than anything else I could be doing in that moment. At the same time, it’s also quite easy. At least, relatively. Whatever subject you are studying, be it engineering, art, finance, plumbing, how to rob a bank, literally anything you can think of essentially boils down to problem solving. That’s the really hard part. There’s a reason not everyone can do these things, after all. It takes a whole lot of will power to make progress in whatever field you are trying to improve at, because you have to continuously push yourself to solve harder and harder problems, which your brain probably doesn’t like (at least not in the moment). However, this is not the only way to learn.

Researching, skimming articles, watching tutorials, digging through textbooks – these things I’ll call studying – are a rather enticing alternative. “Studying” probably doesn’t conjure up images of interest or inquisition, but if it’s a subject you are genuinely interested in you will find yourself studying without even realizing it (if you have ever looked at a wiki or a guide for something, you have experienced this). Undoubtedly, it’s a whole lot easier than actually doing the thing. Seeing as so many of us struggle with maintaining motivation, that probably sounds great, like a perfect way to get started.

Unfortunately, I’m here to tell you that that easiness is exactly what holds you back. I’m here to tell you that what you thought of as “getting started” might become all you ever do. I’m here to tell you to please, just stop studying and go try.

There’s No Replacement for Doing

not necessarily indicative of every subject, here's an interesting study i found

Studying has a hard limit. It can never convey the full extent of how to do something, and in fact pure study without experience is borderline useless. If you doubt this, I again ask you to think back to school, and what you learned. Think (if you can) of something you got high or decent marks in. You completed all your homework, aced all the tests, and did everything expected of you. Depending on the class, you might have spent hundreds of hours studying this subject. And yet, if you had to solve an actual problem or make a real project using that knowledge you supposedly learned… Do you really think you could do it? I can’t answer this question for you, but at least for me and what I’ve observed of others, the answer is overwhelmingly no. So why is that?

There’s some aspects of being good at something that simply cannot be studied. Even reading exactly what needs to be done, down to the finest detail, is at least one step removed from making the connection in your own mind and actually executing it. Applying what you know is its own skill to be honed, and studying does nothing to for you in that regard.

Additionally, there’s the problem that you don’t know what you don’t know, and so there’s some things you would simply never think to study. No matter how meticulous and thorough you think you’re being, it’s just impossible to study and solve every roadblock in advance before they happen. You cannot predict the future. There’s also the inverse of this: you don’t know what you don’t need. Without experience to color your perspective, you are likely to waste a ton of time on things that realistically don’t help you, just as you’ll overlook many things that do. This goes doubly so for creative endeavors, as those are highly personal processes. Nobody in the world can say what will work best for you specifically, you have to discover it yourself by doing.

You probably already knew everything I just told you, even if you couldn’t exactly articulate it. “Nothing can prepare you for the real thing,” so it is often said. But if these limitations I’ve presented are such common knowledge, why does it not always inform our actions?

Tutorial Hell

This so-called “hell” has become a popular term to describe the cycle of someone repeatedly studying a subject (often through YouTube videos or other content continuously being algorithmically recommended to them) without ever taking steps to get started actually doing the thing they wanted to do. In a way, this phenomenon is actually kind of amazing, almost unbelievable.

I don’t think I have to tell you that the vast majority of people in school regard studying as an incredibly exhausting and boring pursuit. Traditional education struggles so hard to get students to actually want to learn, and yet here’s a ton of people actually learning on their own volition! Surely, schools would kill for this. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is a secret that educators can harness, as it’s really no secret at all: people like some things, and they don’t like others. You cannot will yourself to fancy pure mathematics or the mechanics of writing, and if you don’t, improving at those things is often going to be excruciating.

But if you do have that interest, though, studying will almost feel like leisure. Despite what your experience in school may have led you to conclude, everyone is naturally curious about something, and when you learn to satisfy that urge, it feels good. So good that it’s something you’ll find yourself actually wanting to do, no grades or external incentives required! Far from “hell,” studying something you genuinely like often feels like coasting along, no obstacles in your way.

But this rather subductive property of studying that makes it simultaneously feel both rewarding and easy is what creates tutorial hell, and makes it so hard to escape. You want to do something, but it’s hard, so it’s natural to want to spend some time in order to prepare. You’ll do that hard thing, someday, but not now. As established in the prior section, this is a lie you are telling yourself. You will never ever be prepared, no matter how much you study.

So the answer, then, seems simple: just start trying to do that thing you wanted to do. If it were really that easy though, then tutorial hell wouldn’t exist. Taking that leap of faith to attempt something tough feel very arduous, especially at first. Part of this, no doubt, is because it’s simply easier to continue cruising down tutorial lane compared to actually taking action. But, I think just that alone wouldn’t be enough to explain why it feels so brutally hard to will yourself beyond just studying. There’s a more insidious aspect to tutorial hell that keeps people trapped.

Expectations

Sucking at something can feel pretty rough. There’s this thing that you really like, and really want to be good at, but you’re really… not. Of course, things can get better if you can develop the right mindset, but I think no matter what it’s always going to hurt a little.

But if you’ve studied something a lot, you’re actually setting yourself up for something far far worse. In the ladder scenario, it’s easier remind yourself that you are a beginner and you shouldn’t have any lofty expectations for what you can accomplish right away. This is 100% true, whether you have studied or not. But when you’ve spent dozens, or even hundreds of hours “preparing,” perhaps to the extent that you feel this is even part of your identity, it becomes a whole lot harder to tell that to yourself. This same feeling can occur when you return to something after taking a long break and getting rusty. Expectations tend to create a lot of guilt and anxiety. When you think you should be good at something, but aren’t, it can be downright soul crushing.

The more you study, the higher your expectations rise, and with it, the fear of disappointment grows to match. This, in turn, makes it less likely that you will actually take a stab at whatever it is you want to do. Just the thought of it becomes increasingly dreadful. Studying now serves not as a tool to further your learning, but as an escape to protect yourself and avoid facing that fear. Thus, the cycle repeats.

Breaking Free

I mentioned earlier that there’s some things you simply cannot learn without experience. This is one of them. It’s easy to read words like “forgive yourself” or “focus on small improvements,” but really internalizing those ideas within yourself is a whole different matter that’s personal to you. The only advice that’s really universal is the message of this entire article: try.

That said, there is something related that I believe I can help with, and that’s when and how to study. Because despite all my badmouthing, studying does have a purpose, even if it can also be extremely dangerous. I believe that the key to keeping it in check comes down to one simple rule: study only what you need, when you need it.

This is easy to say, but rather difficult to actually hold yourself to in the age of algorithms constantly bombarding you with content. The cycle of tutorial hell makes it easy to keep studying long past the point where it is even remotely practical for you. Speaking personally, I’ve spent countless hours researching how to market an indie game even though I know I am years, if not decades off from ever making something worth marketing in the first place. Staying true to this rule requires that you be cognizant of the information you take in. Whenever you see something and think it looks useful, that should be a sign to step back and realize that it’s probably not (at least, not to you right now). The goal is to limit your studying to the one time that it is beneficial: when you have a problem you don’t know how to solve, and you are actively searching specifically for how to do something.

Because practice, not preparation, is what's ultimately most valuable. Failing is its own skill, and there's only one way to learn it.

NonGMOTrash
july 24th, 2025