I never thought I’d moan about having a logical mind. It’s sweet to have logic come easily to me. That means mathematics, chemistry, biology and other subjects have been easy to learn. Same with grammar, aside from the obligatory exceptions – we all have to practice those repeatedly.
This means learning has been easy to me. In school, and out of it.
This Is Problematic
At least to a degree. You see: when you pick up everything easily, you never understand that you have to expend effort to learn. You never have to discipline yourself because it comes to you anyway.
What is homework? I already understand everything we did in class.
Preparing for a test? Bah, I remember, because I understood it in class.
Guess what happens when something doesn’t come easily to me.
…
That’s right! I don’t expend any effort at all because I haven’t learned I need to do that. Usually this means I’ll ignore the thing that’s hard and go for something easier.
So why am I telling you this now? Because this blog was almost in the too hard category earlier this week.
Since I from the start knew this was a possibility, I invested money in the project up front. This gives me an easier time motivating myself when everything is difficult.
What Is Difficult?
First, and most important, is my expectations. They are too high.
I thought I’d breeze through the set up of my blog, the design, the writing of posts, the everything. I believe I was wrong on all accounts, but one. It’s not hard to write posts, or even come up with topics. The part I struggle with is the editing and realizing I’m nowhere near as good at writing blog posts as Brian Clark or Darren Rowse.
(Am I shooting myself in the foot for linking to them this early in my blog’s development? Maybe…first impressions are everything. I just hope mine becomes “Brave”.)
Secondly is that everything (about the blog) is a lot more difficult than I thought. It seems as if for every design part that is easy, there are five things that are hard.
So what have I learnt from this, and what can you learn?
Let it take time. Everything isn’t easy, and the most rewarding things in life to accomplish are the hard ones. Actually, that’s worth repeating.
The most rewarding things in life to accomplish are the hard ones.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Well, it’s never too late to learn how to learn, isn’t it? (Or to learn how to work in order to learn, or… Bah, you know what I mean!)
The blog’s looking really smart – I love the design; the font and the colour scheme are gorgeous. Some graphic wouldn’t be amiss, but that can come later.
BTW, I spotted some grammar mistakes in this post as well (“learning have been”). If you want, I could beta your posts for you?
I know what you mean, and you’re right. I’m learning discipline. And surprisingly I actually like it, the more I do it.
Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I have to figure out how to get a banner up there, but I’ve got time. I’m just gonna tweak how the front page looks tomorrow, and take one step at a time.
Yeah, that would be cool, I’ll send the text for this one to you. (I can update the post, and updating away grammar and spelling mistakes that slip through my proofreading is nice.)