Your post here made some self-contradictory-seeming claims. I’m not criticizing, just suggesting that you may benefit from additional work to clarify and articulate a coherent account of what you’re struggling with. For example, the title of your post is “Why does anxiety (?) make me dumb,” but that overemphasizes anxiety as a hypothesis relative to the rest of your post. You also claim both that “I’m stuck at… ‘understand the content of the statement’” and “I have no trouble understanding reasonably complex concepts, but just never will discuss them, think about them, or even apply them,” and characterize yourself as a “human encyclopedia.” Often, articulating the problem accurately means you’re 90% of the way to solving it.
I have personally experienced that a multi-year project of deliberately trying to learn how to learn has yielded massive improvements in my ability to both learn and think. There were a huge number of mistakes along the way, but it all has culminated into a level of skill that I’m really proud of, and has come despite the fact of me aging and the clear loss of certain mental faculties I possessed at a younger age. I think I am worse at automagically learning the way I used to, but better at learning overall via deliberate conscious effort. Yet my effort in this area depended a lot on the ability to use self-reflection and rational thinking to introspect, propose hypotheses, try things out, iterate and improve, and if you’re feeling bottlenecked in that area you might need to work on that.
The points you make are interesting, but the reason you’re making them is more my lack of clarity than an actual disagreement, I think? Might be wrong, though, of course. I agree I’m overemphasizing anxiety as a possible explanation (but then, it does seem likely). But I see no contradiction in what you highlight: what I meant in both these sentences was that I can understand, say, the content of my courses, the point an author is making, whatever ; but that once understood, I tend to just accept them as true unless there’s any red flag ; and usually neglects to actually apply them. I include them in my worldview and then they sit there doing nothing. And about deliberately trying to learn, that sounds like something I should be doing, thanks for giving me some motivation to do it. Writing this sentence makes me remember that I’ve often expressed the problem I’m discussing here in terms of ‘lacking motivation’. And I know that even when I say “learning to learn is something I should do”, there’s probably a 70% chance I’ll start doing it, and a +90% chance I won’t keep doing it long enough. So, maybe ADHD, maybe something else, I don’t know.
Yes, I was unclear on what you were saying because of the wording, which seemed self-contradictory. Your description here is more clear and consistent.
It sounds to me a bit like you don’t feel goal-oriented—as if you are following certain passive routines and distracted impulses, but don’t have a feeling of striving and progress toward a meaningful end. You clearly feel dissatisfied with your current state, but don’t see a specific alternative to strive for or don’t see yourself as capable of putting a plan into action because of your distractibility.
I have personally never struggled with that particular issue, although I have many other challenges that I’ve had to work through in my life. So I may not be in a position to give advice—I have always been a pursuer of goals.
One thing you could try is working on that problem directly. For example, you say you fail to apply new ideas. I don’t mean this in a rude way, but based on that, it seems like a fool’s errand to give you yet more advice that you will likely fail to act on. So here is a very small thing you could do to show yourself that you’re capable of acting on an idea: after you’re done reading this sentence, stand up and take a (healthy and appropriate) physical action that’s very unusual for you, which could be anything from singing a song to doing a pushup. Just show yourself that you’re capable of reading something on your computer screen and acting on it.
If you can do that, then you can do bigger and more meaningful things. So you might want to try making a daily practice of listing some new ideas you would like to try, or goals you would like to achieve, and then trying at least one of them. They can be very small and simple, as long as they are novel, breaks from the current routines in your life. As you gain more skill in goal-oriented behavior, you can start to consider larger strategies. What are bigger accomplishments you would like to achieve in your life, and what sub-goals would let you move in that direction? Then do those things.
The keyword here with respect to LessWrong is “rational agency,” or just “agency” in general and also the idea of “winning.” You can probably find some interesting ideas to read by searching it, although the real test is to do it and incorporate it into your own life—which of course is the main challenge you are working on. Best of luck!
I have two points/notes:
Your post here made some self-contradictory-seeming claims. I’m not criticizing, just suggesting that you may benefit from additional work to clarify and articulate a coherent account of what you’re struggling with. For example, the title of your post is “Why does anxiety (?) make me dumb,” but that overemphasizes anxiety as a hypothesis relative to the rest of your post. You also claim both that “I’m stuck at… ‘understand the content of the statement’” and “I have no trouble understanding reasonably complex concepts, but just never will discuss them, think about them, or even apply them,” and characterize yourself as a “human encyclopedia.” Often, articulating the problem accurately means you’re 90% of the way to solving it.
I have personally experienced that a multi-year project of deliberately trying to learn how to learn has yielded massive improvements in my ability to both learn and think. There were a huge number of mistakes along the way, but it all has culminated into a level of skill that I’m really proud of, and has come despite the fact of me aging and the clear loss of certain mental faculties I possessed at a younger age. I think I am worse at automagically learning the way I used to, but better at learning overall via deliberate conscious effort. Yet my effort in this area depended a lot on the ability to use self-reflection and rational thinking to introspect, propose hypotheses, try things out, iterate and improve, and if you’re feeling bottlenecked in that area you might need to work on that.
The points you make are interesting, but the reason you’re making them is more my lack of clarity than an actual disagreement, I think? Might be wrong, though, of course.
I agree I’m overemphasizing anxiety as a possible explanation (but then, it does seem likely). But I see no contradiction in what you highlight: what I meant in both these sentences was that I can understand, say, the content of my courses, the point an author is making, whatever ; but that once understood, I tend to just accept them as true unless there’s any red flag ; and usually neglects to actually apply them. I include them in my worldview and then they sit there doing nothing.
And about deliberately trying to learn, that sounds like something I should be doing, thanks for giving me some motivation to do it. Writing this sentence makes me remember that I’ve often expressed the problem I’m discussing here in terms of ‘lacking motivation’. And I know that even when I say “learning to learn is something I should do”, there’s probably a 70% chance I’ll start doing it, and a +90% chance I won’t keep doing it long enough. So, maybe ADHD, maybe something else, I don’t know.
Yes, I was unclear on what you were saying because of the wording, which seemed self-contradictory. Your description here is more clear and consistent.
It sounds to me a bit like you don’t feel goal-oriented—as if you are following certain passive routines and distracted impulses, but don’t have a feeling of striving and progress toward a meaningful end. You clearly feel dissatisfied with your current state, but don’t see a specific alternative to strive for or don’t see yourself as capable of putting a plan into action because of your distractibility.
I have personally never struggled with that particular issue, although I have many other challenges that I’ve had to work through in my life. So I may not be in a position to give advice—I have always been a pursuer of goals.
One thing you could try is working on that problem directly. For example, you say you fail to apply new ideas. I don’t mean this in a rude way, but based on that, it seems like a fool’s errand to give you yet more advice that you will likely fail to act on. So here is a very small thing you could do to show yourself that you’re capable of acting on an idea: after you’re done reading this sentence, stand up and take a (healthy and appropriate) physical action that’s very unusual for you, which could be anything from singing a song to doing a pushup. Just show yourself that you’re capable of reading something on your computer screen and acting on it.
If you can do that, then you can do bigger and more meaningful things. So you might want to try making a daily practice of listing some new ideas you would like to try, or goals you would like to achieve, and then trying at least one of them. They can be very small and simple, as long as they are novel, breaks from the current routines in your life. As you gain more skill in goal-oriented behavior, you can start to consider larger strategies. What are bigger accomplishments you would like to achieve in your life, and what sub-goals would let you move in that direction? Then do those things.
The keyword here with respect to LessWrong is “rational agency,” or just “agency” in general and also the idea of “winning.” You can probably find some interesting ideas to read by searching it, although the real test is to do it and incorporate it into your own life—which of course is the main challenge you are working on. Best of luck!