I feel like there's a barrier in my brain to learning new things. Is this a common experience?

Posted by Tydalj@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 17 comments

I love to learn, which is a big part of the reason why I am in this field.

However, I have noticed that in the past couple of years or so, that I experience what feels like a physical barrier in my mind when I need to learn something brand new that will take a fair amount of mental effort.

I can (and usually do) scale this wall, but it feels like work. This is opposed to earlier in my life or in other areas, where learning feels like fun and adds to my energy levels. I occassionally get feeling of despair when I see a huge problem that I know will take a lot of work that I don't want to dedicate the effort toward solving.

I'm wondering if this might be due to age, heavy workload, or if this is just a normal experience in the field. I have had a heavy cognitive load the past few years, with most of my time both during and outside of work being spent on learning and problem solving with little downtime. I have experienced this recovering when I take significant time off, like on a vacation.

Has anyone experience the same?

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daraeje7@reddit

Perhaps ADHD. Most likely lack of interest. Learning is a straining activity so if you don’t have a strong interest in the specific topic, you will stop.

I can only learn a new language or new concepts when applying them to a personal project that is very niche to me.

For example, i needed to do some auth related stuff at a job but couldn’t get it to “stick” until I built a login page for a hypothetical chat app for book lovers.

My job allows chatgpt usage so I will now ask chatgpt to explain concepts in a way that is interesting to me using analogies

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gjionergqwebrlkbjg@reddit

ADHD is not something happening out of nowhere in the middle of your life.

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PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit

The signs might be there for a long time, they are easy to ignore, especially by the tendency to invalidate said signs.

Similarly, someone that suffers from poor sleep might refuse to say they are tired because they have normalized the feeling.

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TangerineSorry8463@reddit

But it is likely you will start to see yourself become more irritable, angry, losing focus, falling into distraction if you are on a project that is not stimulating.

Source: Myself. I went to the doctor after 2 projects that I spent significant work time on got cancelled.

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mechkbfan@reddit

In saying that, some people manage through childhood with ADHD but once reach adulthood can no longer manage and should seek medical advice

DeterminedQuokka@reddit

Honestly I think it’s probably cognitive load.

I commonly have a similar issue where I’m just too tired to figure out one more thing. I make a slack reminder and keep setting it to tomorrow until I’m up for it.

hippydipster@reddit

It's probably all the plastic.

It's something I wonder about and how much our attention span is destroyed by technology and stress

I say this because when I go on holidays away from home & phone, my brain is firing on all cylinders, it just absolutely loves to soak in information and I'm ridiculously pumped to get back and apply everything

Then once back at work, it feels like a hurdle after hurdle to get even grok most basic shit that seems to come naturally to everyone else

AiCanLickMyBalls@reddit

It's the same for me. Since then i've been trying to incorporate more still periods in my day to day life. And slowly trying to train my attention span.

The Dopamine overflow is really killing me in ways i'm just starting to realize.

I'm especially struggling with this at work. Do you have some tips?

petitlita@reddit

The fact it seems mostly related to work tells me it's probably the fact you have to that causes baggage. Something that helps is putting in time to foster a genuine interest in the subject. Look into it and find things you're genuinely interested in learning about. Watch edutainment videos. Think about it outside of the work context - I use kubernetes at work for eg but I learn it to fuck around in my homelab. See what cool things other people are doing relating to the subject.

Paddy051@reddit

There is a barrier, I have felt it too.

But after years of personal reflection and getting feedback, I was able to overcome it and become truly agile.

The main reasons according to me are

Any change that brings new anxiety. Your brain is trying to protect you. Developing barriers is a way to protect and keep the status quo.
The fear of having to deliver or act on the new learning is another reason. The barrier acts a defense against vulnerability.

Perfect-Campaign9551@reddit

Probably just not sleeping well. Get checked for sleep apnea

kevin074@reddit

Same, whenever I face a problem in code I have this insane amount of impatience and anger that it doesn’t work immediately as I imagined.

It’s annoying and exhausting. The reaction has gone down a little but still there.

Really happy you made this post. Hopefully someone here can help :(

rochakgupta@reddit

Unfortunately, I have been feeling the same way for a while. Spending so many years in this industry has eroded my passion for this field and not a day goes by when I don't think about starting something of my own or just take a break from this field together. The last time I felt this way was when I was thrown into high priority and high impact projects back to back without having a clue where to start. It got better over time but left me devoid of all energy. What helped me get over the hump back then was not getting too attached to the work and channeling that energy into other endeavors and hobbies.

cougaranddark@reddit

This is a very familiar feeling for me, I've been in this 25 years and have periods of being overwhelmed.

The most helpful thing for me was the time I took after a layoff to just get into the fundamentals of the areas that were new to me that I struggled with. In my case, I dug into Apollo GraphQL, NestJS, and took on a new easy/medium Leetcode problem each day. The latter wasn't so much for practical learning as the other things, but I felt the DSA studies helped me to learn to learn - the day to day consistency put me in a state where difficult things were becoming easier, so it started to be fun to see how far I could push myself.

That might have been tough to do while at my former job, which was too demanding to have enjoyable learning time outside of work hours. But if you have good WLB, you can find fun/addictive learning experiences if you set aside enough time to feel it start to be rewarding.

Winter_Essay3971@reddit

I had a lot more mental energy and drive to learn new things when I was starting out in my career because I was still in the mindset of "I'm just a bootcamp grad, I might not actually be cut out for this field, I really need to prove my worth and not be a stereotypical bootcamp grad ASAP".

Now that I have some real experience under my belt and feel like I don't have to be desperate for any job that will take me (I mean I do a bit because of the market right now, but in general), I don't care at all about upskilling. It's not a great attitude for me to have but so far it hasn't bitten me in the ass yet.

Jazzlike_Syllabub_91@reddit

I've had the whole mental block before where it felt like I couldn't learn anything for awhile. There are a series of events that take place as you're learning something new. Usually there is the "struggling, everything doesn't make sense", then as the stuff becomes more familiar and you have had enough exposure, you'll, as you say, "scale the wall". You're in the struggling stage still.

Sit back and enjoy the struggle? In the meantime, google and AI are tools that can be leveraged for advice and other research until you become comfortable enough to attempt a few attempts at doing the thing.