I feel the same. I think it's mostly "impatience" or the fear of losing time. We get older and busier and the "price" we pay to spend hours on a book gets more and more expensive.
Learning is an investment, and as my salary increases and life gets more comfortable, my brain doesn't feel the urge to learn and prefers leisure.
I'm looking for ways to "hack" my brain and get back into the habit of learning in my free time and wanting to figure things out. When I have kids I hope they will be curious and I'll learn with them.
That's super annoying, because while I procrastinate on reading papers or even articles on the things I want to learn (as in, I feel - at least occasionally - motivated and positive about learning), works of fiction, like novels or short stories, can instantly suck me in for days. Somehow, when it comes to fiction, the beancounter in my head just packs up and goes on a leave.
> I'm looking for ways to "hack" my brain and get back into the habit of learning in my free time and wanting to figure things out
Please share anything you've found. For me:
- discovering Obsidian a year ago was a great boon. It led me to comb through millions of words of old person notes, remembering many different me's interest in different topics etc. When approaching a new topic, I now compulsively take detailed notes and then reform them into "evergreen notes" (google this term) although it's not the same effortless joy of my childhood.
- recently refinding old sites like wiki.c2.com has rekindled a great passion. The style of discussions, without marketing, status seeking, linking to blogs, medium articles etc. is also extremely pleasant and lets the content float up much better. Even modern communities which don't suffer from these problems still seem to have jaded userbases, who are just... Tired and not willing to really revel in their knowledge, but protectedly proactively avoid things.
- really calming myself down before engaging, e.g. closing my eyes for 10 mins in quiet, or just doodling on a paper, maybe stacking some 9 volt batteries into a tower and calmly approaching the topic, reading or such. In this way, reading can almost be like a reverse stream of consciousness. However life quickly knocks, taking me out of this (flow?) state. I recall some researchers discussing how children effortlessly play (so the opposite of the original topic about effortful learning...) experimenting, collecting data etc. to learn and develop their worldviews, but if you impose requirements or expectations on them, they learn slower and don't blossom.
I keep curiosity but lowering the bar and raising the reward. I think that's going to be different for everyone, but for me the lowered bar is by making sure I have concrete "wander" time in my day, and the reward is having someome I'm excited to talk to about the topic. The latter gives me the drive to actually use my wander time on stuff that's interesting, not just faff it away on YouTube.
I also make "grab bags" for everything, I am a perpetually disorganized person but this lets me be prepared. I have a drone bag, an electronics box, a bike toolbox, any significant project gets a bag/box I grab on a whim. That way I lower the preparedness bar and boring organization tasks.
Learning is an investment, and as my salary increases and life gets more comfortable, my brain doesn't feel the urge to learn and prefers leisure.
I'm looking for ways to "hack" my brain and get back into the habit of learning in my free time and wanting to figure things out. When I have kids I hope they will be curious and I'll learn with them.