8 ms·

I don't care about learning Mandarin, I want to find out how this guy's motivation system works and then download it into my brain. Doing a PhD and learning Ma

I don't care about learning Mandarin, I want to find out how this guy's motivation system works and then download it into my brain. Doing a PhD and learning Mandarin as a side project?! Doing hours of Anki practice and new note taking, some of it while running on a treadmill? There's just a crazy amount of drive (and what sounds like an epic memory) here. I don't think people consider base motivation enough when thinking about processes and this guy won some kind of biological and/or upbringing lottery.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
layman51 2y ago
It’s interesting that you mention motivation/drive on a post like this. I have similar thoughts whenever there are posts about personalized learning technology or improving public education.
trhway 2y ago
>download it into my brain "it" is the youth. The guy looks to be mid-20ies. Back then in those years i could go for 3 days without sleep while working, studying, drinking, etc. and many of my friends and classmates at the University were similar.
- seper8 2y ago
  Noone goes without sleep for three days and doesnt pay a severe heavy price for it. Stop it with that dumb sleep machismo...
  - trhway 2y ago
    Man, have you ever been 20smth years old? Do you really remember it as the time when you were thinking about "heavy price" beforehand and were suppressing your "machismo"?
    - cupantae 2y ago
      The point you’re making is ridiculous though, because what Isaak has done is clearly an unusual accomplishment. You’re actually just making excuses for yourself, being too old to have the motivation. It’s a less helpful explanation than just plain curiosity - and that’s available to all age groups.
    - komali2 2y ago
      Yes, yes, and yes? People use youth to excuse all sorts of unhealthy behavior. Some of my friends smoked cigarettes but most of us didn't because why would we harm ourselves on purpose like that?
      - trhway 2y ago
        >all sorts of unhealthy behavior How we know of that unhealthiness? Because some people have explored those options, and we learned the result. One can say those people did public service for our species. >People use youth to excuse You're either doing strawman by substituting excuse for explanation, or you're arguing against evolution and natural selection which placed the peak of exploration/exploitation behaviors ratio at the youth time, be it our species or say wolves or cats, etc. I think there are a lot of good reasons why that peak is at the youth time. >Some of my friends smoked cigarettes but most of us didn't because why would we harm ourselves on purpose like that? Well, cigarettes is established harm. Took decades of years and millions of people, and as result we call it an obvious harm today. It looks though to me that there are greater harm out there which can be observed these days - the more and more suppressed exploration instinct which over the generations will result in tremendous negative impact on our civilization, and bringing it back wouldn't be so easy as say quiting smoking (did it myself 22 years ago after a decade of pack-a-day smoking)
        komali2 2y ago
        > How we know of that unhealthiness? Because some people have explored those options, and we learned the result. One can say those people did public service for our species. We've known cigarettes are unhealthy for a very long time. We'd know sooner if it weren't for cigarette company lobbying. And we didn't need to wait for people to die of cancer, a look at the label is enough lol. > or you're arguing against evolution and natural selection which placed the peak of exploration/exploitation behaviors ratio at the youth time This is at least as fallacious if not more so. I don't have a name for this odd "because of evolution" argument but I hear it a lot when discussing sociology. "Kids smoke cigarettes because cavemen wanted to explore the horizon" isn't a coherent causal explanation at all. > Well, cigarettes is established harm. Exactly, and very well established by the time I was a teenager in the 2010s. > . It looks though to me that there are greater harm out there which can be observed these days - the more and more suppressed exploration instinct which over the generations will result in tremendous negative impact on our civilization Ok so what I'm getting is that you have a pet theory that kids not smoking these days is a symptom of an overall rejection of some form of naturalism that you believe is overall harming our society somehow. Is that the case?
  - unethical_ban 2y ago
    I didn't take it as machismo, more like "you can do that when you're young"
    - seper8 2y ago
      But you can't. It's like saying "we used to have to bike uphill through a storm to get to school! Both ways!"
      - trhway 2y ago
        You're doing classic strawman. The other 2 guys arguing against me are also doing strawman. I can only wonder why that my lighthearted recall of my youth struck so much nerve in you and those other 2 guys.
almostgotcaught 2y ago
> Doing a PhD and learning Mandarin as a side project?! his matriculation year is 2024 (and fall classes haven't even started) so he's doing a PhD like the pre-med kids were "doing" med school freshman year. people that brag like this don't finish - there were a few in my cohort too that washed out after quals.
- serf 2y ago
  as someone with lots of impressively credentialed braggart friends.. that's not always the case. although w.r.t. myself? absolutely agree with the sentiment. I would wash out in half a week with that kind of workload.
- wenc 2y ago
  Author also graduated high school from Austria early, and finished a Berkeley math degree in 2 years. I’d say author is gifted. That said, technical PhDs often require a combination of raw mental horsepower, persistence and luck. (Working for the right advisor in a promising area) I brought about the same smarts as my peers but they graduated in 5 years whereas I did 8 years because I didn’t have the most promising area of research plus I got unlucky.
jcla1 2y ago
Do not underestimate the urge to procrastinate (by still doing productive things, like learning Mandarin) while pursuing a PhD. I am not sure if this will be the author's experience too, but pursuing a PhD will often leave you exhausted without any hope of ever finding "the final missing ingredient" to solve the problem you are currently tackling. So turning to entirely unrelated problems, however productive they may seem to outsides, suddenly becomes an attractive alternative in order to procrastinate.
- niek_pas 2y ago
  I am currently learning to color grade, am an active bedroom musician, enjoy cooking and learning about food science, and am training for my first half marathon alongside my PhD. The side project thing is definitely real.
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  Having something to procrastinate on is half the reason I’m going to grad school while working full time. It truly is an excellent hack.
  - accurrent 2y ago
    Same here. I don't know how to fix my PhD, so let me just make my sponsor's code run faster and make a hundreds of open source PRs...
- TheEzEzz 2y ago
  I wrote my own dynamic keyboard layout to optimize typing speed while procrastinating on my dissertation. 15 years later I'm still using it. My dissertation not so much. Procrastination is (sometimes) awesome.
  - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
    Structured procrastination is highly underrated.
hintymad 2y ago
I'm guessing for someone learning a new language is relaxing and therefore helps recharging the person after hours of intense PhD work - things like enjoying daily progress, discovery of foreign culture, the euphoria of being able to read and watch new stuff...
- fn-mote 2y ago
  Exactly this. Unlike the PhD, they make daily progress on the language. Success is visible. (Edit: ok, the truth is they were not doing this at the same time as the PhD. I still like my comment.)
- latentsea 2y ago
  Learning a new language is a stressful grind. I've studied CJK at a similar pace as this article, and it's equal parts exhaustion as it is elation. Not for the feint of heart.
helge9210 2y ago
I emigrated twice within ten years (move, learn the language, find a job, than find a job, move, learn the language). I sometimes wonder how does it feel not having to run and push all the time just not to fall behind. The price for the motivation could be higher you're willing to pay.
Metacelsus 2y ago
He wasn't doing a PhD at the time he was learning Mandarin (he's just started his PhD).
shepherdjerred 2y ago
> Doing hours of Anki practice and new note taking, some of it while running on a treadmill? I studied with Anki on long 1hr walks and it worked incredibly well for me. I’d definitely recommend trying it! Some things I learned were DS/algos, Greek alphabet pronunciation (so that I could read math symbols), the periodic table/chemical properties, and misc LeetCode interviewing stuff.
- kenrick95 2y ago
  > DS/algos How do you study that on Anki?
  - shepherdjerred 2y ago
    I started with these decks: https://github.com/teivah/algodeck https://github.com/teivah/algodeck https://github.com/teivah/designdeck https://github.com/teivah/designdeck Essentially I'd have a question like "invert a binary tree", "implement union-find", or "structure of a topological sort". All of these are small enough that I can keep them in my head. For small algorithms I would just regurgitate the code line-for-line in my head. For more complex ones I would just go over the structure (not actual code), e.g. I know that topological sort can use a stack or queue, you need to track indegree, add nodes to the stack/queue when their indegree == 1, and so on. I also used this to help learn (and really understand) common runtimes which helped me when deriving the runtimes of my own algorithms. Since I started with premade decks I had to look at lot of things up during my walks, but that slowed down as towards the end of my studying. I did all this to prep for interview (which I wrote about on my blog: https://sjer.red/blog/2024/job-hunt/ https://sjer.red/blog/2024/job-hunt/) -- I would say it worked fairly well for me though you definitely need to pair it with LeetCode or similar.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      That blog post is unbelievable. It looks very/eerily similar to men dating online in the 2020s.
      - deleted 2y ago
Barrin92 2y ago
I think an increasingly big difference isn't so much drive as it is sort of the inverse, lack of distraction. A lot of people's attention is just permanently dispersed. What's very effective is just cut all low quality or non necessary media or apps out of your life or limit them to say 15 minutes a day. Then when you have inevitably nothing to do you can either throw in 10 minutes of doing anki flash cards or doing nothing, and that'll lower the bar to learn immensely. If I had to guess one thing that Isaak doesn't do is scroll for hours through newsfeeds or TikTok. With myself and most people I know that's by far the biggest thing to eat time.
- StefanBatory 2y ago
  Absolutely - I'm vouching for this comment.
naming_the_user 2y ago
For what it's worth I've been through periods of this multiple times with different things and it never really feels like discipline is required (aside from on some _really_ busy days), you just want to do it if you're actually interested. I likely couldn't force myself to learn, say, Spanish, if I tried despite it being technically far easier. It's just not interesting to me in the same way.
10xalphadev 2y ago
I use ChatGPT/Claude in bed...
musicale 2y ago
https://structuredprocrastination.com https://structuredprocrastination.com See also "The Art of Procrastination" (2012).
- spongebobism 2y ago
  Thanks, that was a great read and resonates a lot with me. Looking back, most of my learning new languages, getting in shape, playing the guitar, and making new friends was structured procrastination.
Agingcoder 2y ago
Not really - I’d say he just really wants to. Just like when you meet someone and want to spend time with them, are binge watching a show, playing a video game, reading a book, writing code : you want to do that thing again, here learn mandarin. I’m a lot more familiar with Japanese than with mandarin (and use srs), and it’s worth noting than srs essentially turns anything into an extremely satisfying game : you learn quickly, you really wonder how far you can go, so you keep playing. I believe that’s the killer combo : really wanting to do something, and having that something turned into a game to avoid giving up.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

layman51 2y ago

It’s interesting that you mention motivation/drive on a post like this. I have similar thoughts whenever there are posts about personalized learning technology or improving public education.

trhway 2y ago

>download it into my brain "it" is the youth. The guy looks to be mid-20ies. Back then in those years i could go for 3 days without sleep while working, studying, drinking, etc. and many of my friends and classmates at the University were similar.

seper8 2y ago
Noone goes without sleep for three days and doesnt pay a severe heavy price for it. Stop it with that dumb sleep machismo...
- trhway 2y ago
  Man, have you ever been 20smth years old? Do you really remember it as the time when you were thinking about "heavy price" beforehand and were suppressing your "machismo"?
  - cupantae 2y ago
    The point you’re making is ridiculous though, because what Isaak has done is clearly an unusual accomplishment. You’re actually just making excuses for yourself, being too old to have the motivation. It’s a less helpful explanation than just plain curiosity - and that’s available to all age groups.
  - komali2 2y ago
    Yes, yes, and yes? People use youth to excuse all sorts of unhealthy behavior. Some of my friends smoked cigarettes but most of us didn't because why would we harm ourselves on purpose like that?
    - trhway 2y ago
      >all sorts of unhealthy behavior How we know of that unhealthiness? Because some people have explored those options, and we learned the result. One can say those people did public service for our species. >People use youth to excuse You're either doing strawman by substituting excuse for explanation, or you're arguing against evolution and natural selection which placed the peak of exploration/exploitation behaviors ratio at the youth time, be it our species or say wolves or cats, etc. I think there are a lot of good reasons why that peak is at the youth time. >Some of my friends smoked cigarettes but most of us didn't because why would we harm ourselves on purpose like that? Well, cigarettes is established harm. Took decades of years and millions of people, and as result we call it an obvious harm today. It looks though to me that there are greater harm out there which can be observed these days - the more and more suppressed exploration instinct which over the generations will result in tremendous negative impact on our civilization, and bringing it back wouldn't be so easy as say quiting smoking (did it myself 22 years ago after a decade of pack-a-day smoking)
      - komali2 2y ago
        > How we know of that unhealthiness? Because some people have explored those options, and we learned the result. One can say those people did public service for our species. We've known cigarettes are unhealthy for a very long time. We'd know sooner if it weren't for cigarette company lobbying. And we didn't need to wait for people to die of cancer, a look at the label is enough lol. > or you're arguing against evolution and natural selection which placed the peak of exploration/exploitation behaviors ratio at the youth time This is at least as fallacious if not more so. I don't have a name for this odd "because of evolution" argument but I hear it a lot when discussing sociology. "Kids smoke cigarettes because cavemen wanted to explore the horizon" isn't a coherent causal explanation at all. > Well, cigarettes is established harm. Exactly, and very well established by the time I was a teenager in the 2010s. > . It looks though to me that there are greater harm out there which can be observed these days - the more and more suppressed exploration instinct which over the generations will result in tremendous negative impact on our civilization Ok so what I'm getting is that you have a pet theory that kids not smoking these days is a symptom of an overall rejection of some form of naturalism that you believe is overall harming our society somehow. Is that the case?
- unethical_ban 2y ago
  I didn't take it as machismo, more like "you can do that when you're young"
  - seper8 2y ago
    But you can't. It's like saying "we used to have to bike uphill through a storm to get to school! Both ways!"
    - trhway 2y ago
      You're doing classic strawman. The other 2 guys arguing against me are also doing strawman. I can only wonder why that my lighthearted recall of my youth struck so much nerve in you and those other 2 guys.

almostgotcaught 2y ago

> Doing a PhD and learning Mandarin as a side project?! his matriculation year is 2024 (and fall classes haven't even started) so he's doing a PhD like the pre-med kids were "doing" med school freshman year. people that brag like this don't finish - there were a few in my cohort too that washed out after quals.

serf 2y ago
as someone with lots of impressively credentialed braggart friends.. that's not always the case. although w.r.t. myself? absolutely agree with the sentiment. I would wash out in half a week with that kind of workload.
wenc 2y ago
Author also graduated high school from Austria early, and finished a Berkeley math degree in 2 years. I’d say author is gifted. That said, technical PhDs often require a combination of raw mental horsepower, persistence and luck. (Working for the right advisor in a promising area) I brought about the same smarts as my peers but they graduated in 5 years whereas I did 8 years because I didn’t have the most promising area of research plus I got unlucky.

jcla1 2y ago

Do not underestimate the urge to procrastinate (by still doing productive things, like learning Mandarin) while pursuing a PhD. I am not sure if this will be the author's experience too, but pursuing a PhD will often leave you exhausted without any hope of ever finding "the final missing ingredient" to solve the problem you are currently tackling. So turning to entirely unrelated problems, however productive they may seem to outsides, suddenly becomes an attractive alternative in order to procrastinate.

niek_pas 2y ago
I am currently learning to color grade, am an active bedroom musician, enjoy cooking and learning about food science, and am training for my first half marathon alongside my PhD. The side project thing is definitely real.
shepherdjerred 2y ago
Having something to procrastinate on is half the reason I’m going to grad school while working full time. It truly is an excellent hack.
- accurrent 2y ago
  Same here. I don't know how to fix my PhD, so let me just make my sponsor's code run faster and make a hundreds of open source PRs...
TheEzEzz 2y ago
I wrote my own dynamic keyboard layout to optimize typing speed while procrastinating on my dissertation. 15 years later I'm still using it. My dissertation not so much. Procrastination is (sometimes) awesome.
- AlchemistCamp 2y ago
  Structured procrastination is highly underrated.

hintymad 2y ago

I'm guessing for someone learning a new language is relaxing and therefore helps recharging the person after hours of intense PhD work - things like enjoying daily progress, discovery of foreign culture, the euphoria of being able to read and watch new stuff...

fn-mote 2y ago
Exactly this. Unlike the PhD, they make daily progress on the language. Success is visible. (Edit: ok, the truth is they were not doing this at the same time as the PhD. I still like my comment.)
latentsea 2y ago
Learning a new language is a stressful grind. I've studied CJK at a similar pace as this article, and it's equal parts exhaustion as it is elation. Not for the feint of heart.

helge9210 2y ago

I emigrated twice within ten years (move, learn the language, find a job, than find a job, move, learn the language). I sometimes wonder how does it feel not having to run and push all the time just not to fall behind. The price for the motivation could be higher you're willing to pay.

Metacelsus 2y ago

He wasn't doing a PhD at the time he was learning Mandarin (he's just started his PhD).

shepherdjerred 2y ago

> Doing hours of Anki practice and new note taking, some of it while running on a treadmill? I studied with Anki on long 1hr walks and it worked incredibly well for me. I’d definitely recommend trying it! Some things I learned were DS/algos, Greek alphabet pronunciation (so that I could read math symbols), the periodic table/chemical properties, and misc LeetCode interviewing stuff.

kenrick95 2y ago
> DS/algos How do you study that on Anki?
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  I started with these decks: https://github.com/teivah/algodeck https://github.com/teivah/algodeck https://github.com/teivah/designdeck https://github.com/teivah/designdeck Essentially I'd have a question like "invert a binary tree", "implement union-find", or "structure of a topological sort". All of these are small enough that I can keep them in my head. For small algorithms I would just regurgitate the code line-for-line in my head. For more complex ones I would just go over the structure (not actual code), e.g. I know that topological sort can use a stack or queue, you need to track indegree, add nodes to the stack/queue when their indegree == 1, and so on. I also used this to help learn (and really understand) common runtimes which helped me when deriving the runtimes of my own algorithms. Since I started with premade decks I had to look at lot of things up during my walks, but that slowed down as towards the end of my studying. I did all this to prep for interview (which I wrote about on my blog: https://sjer.red/blog/2024/job-hunt/ https://sjer.red/blog/2024/job-hunt/) -- I would say it worked fairly well for me though you definitely need to pair it with LeetCode or similar.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    That blog post is unbelievable. It looks very/eerily similar to men dating online in the 2020s.
    - deleted 2y ago

Barrin92 2y ago

I think an increasingly big difference isn't so much drive as it is sort of the inverse, lack of distraction. A lot of people's attention is just permanently dispersed. What's very effective is just cut all low quality or non necessary media or apps out of your life or limit them to say 15 minutes a day. Then when you have inevitably nothing to do you can either throw in 10 minutes of doing anki flash cards or doing nothing, and that'll lower the bar to learn immensely. If I had to guess one thing that Isaak doesn't do is scroll for hours through newsfeeds or TikTok. With myself and most people I know that's by far the biggest thing to eat time.

StefanBatory 2y ago
Absolutely - I'm vouching for this comment.

naming_the_user 2y ago

For what it's worth I've been through periods of this multiple times with different things and it never really feels like discipline is required (aside from on some _really_ busy days), you just want to do it if you're actually interested. I likely couldn't force myself to learn, say, Spanish, if I tried despite it being technically far easier. It's just not interesting to me in the same way.

10xalphadev 2y ago

I use ChatGPT/Claude in bed...

musicale 2y ago

https://structuredprocrastination.com https://structuredprocrastination.com See also "The Art of Procrastination" (2012).

spongebobism 2y ago
Thanks, that was a great read and resonates a lot with me. Looking back, most of my learning new languages, getting in shape, playing the guitar, and making new friends was structured procrastination.

Agingcoder 2y ago

Not really - I’d say he just really wants to. Just like when you meet someone and want to spend time with them, are binge watching a show, playing a video game, reading a book, writing code : you want to do that thing again, here learn mandarin. I’m a lot more familiar with Japanese than with mandarin (and use srs), and it’s worth noting than srs essentially turns anything into an extremely satisfying game : you learn quickly, you really wonder how far you can go, so you keep playing. I believe that’s the killer combo : really wanting to do something, and having that something turned into a game to avoid giving up.