On how to learn without getting a blinding headache.

[reddragdiva]

"Think!"
"Buh."

I have never been the greatest learner. I may be searingly intelligent, but systematic learning has always hurt my head. Unless I'm deeply interested already, I can't just read something and have it flow straight into my brain.

This stands me not too well at work. I enjoy my current job — Unix computer systems administrator, company with weird layers of heterogeneous systems, just bought a couple of other companies with their own weird layers of heterogeneous systems, I need to gain proficiency in most of it in reasonably efficient order — because there's a lot to learn, and fast. But I come home feeling like my head's gone five rounds with Mike Tyson. It's preferable to workplace boredom, but it's not preferable to just about anything else.

The trouble is that learning stuff quickly feels like pushing a large, heavy rock. Against considerable friction. Once I've learnt something, I'm fine, but the process of learning it hurts every time.

(The clearest example was learning mathematics at university. Once I'd taken in something, I was good to go. But the process of taking it in felt like I was carving every symbol into my forehead with a chisel. The ease of having knowledge versus the pain of gaining it.)

The Internet lubricates the path to knowledge by being the first place to look once you know the right question to ask. So how do you formulate the right question? And when you can't find the answer easily, how do you break it down into other questions?

There are various quick answers. One is to push ahead in a bloody-minded manner. This works to an extent, but leads to mental exhaustion out of proportion to the results. (It doesn't help that there isn't anything so simple as a clear curriculum.) Another is to find a suitably strong motivation. But when that comes down to "making money to fund my suburban lifestyle," it's just not that convincing a carrot, picture the stick as I might.

(I could try to find a career path I like better, but this one is the only field I've ever found that doesn't make me want to go postal.)

The question I'm asking is not how to push harder, it's how to reduce the friction. And accompaning smoke and screeching noises. Have you had this problem? If so, how do you deal with it?