“Do you constantly look back and ask “How could I have thought that faster?”
I frequently ask myself that. The problem for me is: a lot of the time I either don’t know, or are too lazy to think harder about figuring it out. As an example, it’s very useful to do this after figuring out (or looking at the answer after failing to figure out) how to prove a math theorem, both by making you faster next time and by having you understand the proof to a deeper level so that you can compress it.
However, often the feeling of reward of understanding happens at a lower level than what I should be shooting for, and so I’ll fundamentally feel like it’s not worth it to think harder. Compounding on this is the fact that before you come up with an idea, it often feels like there’s no way you’ll be able to and you’re not making any progress (especially since sometimes there may not be some clever way to think about the proof that lets you understand and reproduce the whole thing easily.
I am trying to adjust my expectation of the chance that I’ll come up with something if I try. However, that alone might not be motivating enough—it feels like looking for a jewel that you’re not even sure is in this cave instead of going on to the next new problem.
Even if I fixed my laziness issue there, I’d still have the problem of often not knowing how to change my thinking to be faster next time.
“Do you constantly look back and ask “How could I have thought that faster?”
I frequently ask myself that. The problem for me is: a lot of the time I either don’t know, or are too lazy to think harder about figuring it out. As an example, it’s very useful to do this after figuring out (or looking at the answer after failing to figure out) how to prove a math theorem, both by making you faster next time and by having you understand the proof to a deeper level so that you can compress it.
However, often the feeling of reward of understanding happens at a lower level than what I should be shooting for, and so I’ll fundamentally feel like it’s not worth it to think harder. Compounding on this is the fact that before you come up with an idea, it often feels like there’s no way you’ll be able to and you’re not making any progress (especially since sometimes there may not be some clever way to think about the proof that lets you understand and reproduce the whole thing easily.
I am trying to adjust my expectation of the chance that I’ll come up with something if I try. However, that alone might not be motivating enough—it feels like looking for a jewel that you’re not even sure is in this cave instead of going on to the next new problem.
Even if I fixed my laziness issue there, I’d still have the problem of often not knowing how to change my thinking to be faster next time.