I don’t mind taking a class now and then, or looking through an instruction-style book, but I find that I pick up most of what I do manage to pick up these days by hanging around people who know what they’re doing. Osmosis … Imitation … Play and fun … Gabbing with the knowledgeable … Works for me.
Or, works for me as well as anything does these days. 90% of my learning seems to be over. When you’re young, your brain is gobbling up new info and new skills. Its appetite for them slows down … and then by the 50s it pretty much switches off. You’ve done all the learning and adapting that you’re going to be doing in this lifetime, I guess.
My brain’s in pretty good shape generally, but the slow atrophy of short-term memory and the shutting-down of the “learning” capability are really something to experience.
I google a bunch of sites, go on Amazon looking for good intro books, and then — depending on the skill — have some fun browsing and shopping for equipment and other materials.
A couple of months ago I sorta got into electronics and Arduino. Plenty of great resources on the web for both. Taught myself to solder and bought a bunch of parts, but I haven’t tried to make my own gizmo yet. I get distracted by other things pretty easily.
I hate classes, hated school…I just dive in. A few years back when I got a wild hair about playing some quite complicated Bach keyboard music, I just got the sheet music, which I could barely read, and plowed on through. Obsession does the rest.
That said at the tender age of 47 I think I can feel what Paleo talks about coming on.
I don’t mind taking a class now and then, or looking through an instruction-style book, but I find that I pick up most of what I do manage to pick up these days by hanging around people who know what they’re doing. Osmosis … Imitation … Play and fun … Gabbing with the knowledgeable … Works for me.
Or, works for me as well as anything does these days. 90% of my learning seems to be over. When you’re young, your brain is gobbling up new info and new skills. Its appetite for them slows down … and then by the 50s it pretty much switches off. You’ve done all the learning and adapting that you’re going to be doing in this lifetime, I guess.
My brain’s in pretty good shape generally, but the slow atrophy of short-term memory and the shutting-down of the “learning” capability are really something to experience.
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Hands on and with repetition. The same way I got to Carnegie Hall.
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I google a bunch of sites, go on Amazon looking for good intro books, and then — depending on the skill — have some fun browsing and shopping for equipment and other materials.
A couple of months ago I sorta got into electronics and Arduino. Plenty of great resources on the web for both. Taught myself to solder and bought a bunch of parts, but I haven’t tried to make my own gizmo yet. I get distracted by other things pretty easily.
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While being fellated.
Sadly, I’m not getting much learning done lately.
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I hate classes, hated school…I just dive in. A few years back when I got a wild hair about playing some quite complicated Bach keyboard music, I just got the sheet music, which I could barely read, and plowed on through. Obsession does the rest.
That said at the tender age of 47 I think I can feel what Paleo talks about coming on.
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I’m 51 and couldn’t agree more. Whatever my strategy for the next 20-30 years is, it’s not going to involve learning a lot of new stuff from scratch.
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