Problem

You attempt something new and it turns out crappy, so you quit. Or perhaps you expect a certain result to come too quickly and get frustrated when it takes much longer.

Solution

Two things; pace yourself and be forgiving.

Discussion

I recently resumes exercising after a early 15 year break. I knew from experience that progress would be slow (particularly so since I want to avoid injury and at 50+ I know any injury will take longer to heal than that same injury when I was 20). So, I started out with a deliberately slow approach and a plan for three years. Yes, you read that correctly, three years!. Now, obviously I have a lot of milestones along the way in mind but I’m in no hurry. Starting slowly and building gradually is the name of the game. If I miss a milestone it’s no big deal. I’m happy to forgive myself, reset my expectations and resume the longer journey.

The same approach applies when learning new things (like taking a Salty Vagrant course). Don’t expect to become expert overnight. It takes time to learn the fundamentals and this can be a frustrating time because you often feel like you’re achieving little for a lot of effort, but this is your foundation and without it you’ll never really learn the more advanced material. It takes time to integrate this knowledge and to start using it in new ways not taught directly. I know, I’ve spent many weeks learning some new technology or technique then many more weeks or months integrating that knowledge before finally feeling that it is ‘part of the stuff I just know, it becomes obvious’. (On a side note, when you look at someone else trying to learn something and think ‘but that’s so obvious’, try to remember back to when it was not so obvious to you—this is tough to do sometimes, even now I forget that things that are obvious to me may not be so obvious to students.)

Of course you need to temper the ‘forgive yourself’. Too much self forgiveness can turn into laziness; ‘oh I missed my deadline, no worries I’ll do it tomorrow’ can quickly degenerate into something always being done tomorrow (my garden knows this well, I’m always planning to tidy up, mow the lawn etc. ‘tomorrow’).

My point is that you should not be too hard on yourself. Don’t beat yourself up because you just can’t ‘get it’. Ask for more information. Ask the tutor to clarify. Look at other courses or just search online and see if someone else is teaching that thing in a different way, you never know that may be the way the clicks for you.