It isn’t easy to stay motivated and focused when learning.
We have so many appealing distractions around us: games to play, series to watch, and so on.
However, there is no way around spending time and putting effort into learning and practicing to get good at anything.
In this guide, we will break some unhealthy misconceptions about learning. Then, we’ll give you a method to create sane learning habits that’ll make you more productive and help you learn faster.
There are many unhealthy beliefs about learning in general. Many believe intelligence and individual abilities are innate and can’t be improved.
When people who believe this encounter tough challenges while learning, they quit more easily than people who believe the opposite.
As a result, they miss opportunities to improve and develop the skills they’d like to have.
Your brain is malleable. Most of us can learn computer programming.
We don’t mean to say anyone should learn to write math-heavy algorithms in a tough programming language like C++.
But these days, there are plenty of tools that make programming accessible to the vast majority of us.
You surely can use something like GDScript, which we’ll cover in this course, and get impressive results.
What makes the most difference with learning is your mindset and consistency: you need to accept that you can learn, then focus on one thing at a time and practice frequently.
If you want to learn efficiently, you need two things:
You first need material designed to teach you concepts in a good order to memorize things faster. That’s an order in which new concepts naturally pile up onto the previous one.
There shouldn’t be a part that doesn’t make any sense. Also, the material you use should help you understand how all the concepts and techniques relate and combine.
Of course, the information also needs to be relevant and accurate.
Then, as programming is a skill, you must practice to get good at it.
This is your part of the job. If you do not practice regularly and with dedication, you will never get good.
It’s like training in a sport, shaping up in a gym, or even becoming good at a game: you have to put in the time.
There’s a myth that’s hard to bust: that we are good at multitasking. Nope! We suck at it.
Neuroscience shows that when anyone tries to multitask, they split their brain capacity between the tasks.
Worse, the brain needs to dedicate some of its cognition to just coordinating between the tasks.
Concretely, if you try to do two things simultaneously, you’ll have less than half of your brainpower available for either of these.
What a waste!
Trying to multitask hurts your productivity, efficiency, and learning dramatically.
You’re better off practicing just ten minutes without distraction than half an hour with chat notifications killing your attention every few minutes.
You want to get into the habit of working with very strong focus on one thing at a time.
When beginners make their first games, they tend to have extremely complicated ideas to do. Many want to make the next Final Fantasy or Grand Theft Auto.
Those games are made by hundreds of experienced professionals working full-time for years. We’re talking about millions of hours of work.
Alone, you can’t physically do that.
At first, you can’t even make what you would consider a “simple” game. You have to start really small.
You have to break down the learning into small chunks to learn well. Do one small thing, another, and put them together. Then rinse and repeat.
You should embrace that and enjoy the learning. Every little result you get is a step in the right direction.
As a former procrastinator and perfectionist (a terrible combination), I learned all of the above the hard way.
I would constantly go off on tangents and search about this or that thing instead of doing the task at hand.
It took me years to focus and learn to do things one at a time.
This method is a starting point for you if you struggle to learn and stay organized.
There’s no magical hack in productivity, so you shouldn’t expect it to make you productive instantly.
Instead, it’s a collection of suggestions to help you build strong learning habits.
In short, you want to:
Don’t worry if you don’t manage to put everything in place at once.
You want to make improvements every day and get into a mindset of improving your learning and productivity.
It’s with little daily improvements that you become very good at this: aim to become one percent better every day.
You don’t want to work in a chaotic environment. The cleaner your desk is, the easier it will be to focus your attention on the computer.
Remove any papers, books, and devices that you don’t use.
Give everything you use a fixed place: you always want to put your water, coffee mug, notebook, and everything you use in the same place.
The purpose of this is for finding and putting down those items to become automatic.
Keeping your workspace organized helps you shave off friction and focus on your learning.
Also, ensure you really only keep what you actually use to get your work done.
You want to do the same inside your computer. I hide all desktop icons and only keep work programs in the dock at the bottom.
Every other service is doing everything to grab your attention and keep you on their platform.
Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok all make money with your attention.
That’s why they nudge you into accepting popup notifications. They’re a great way to bring you back to their platform constantly.
They’re also a great way to make you lose focus and productivity, greatly damaging your learning.
Turn notifications off. Block them all! Both on your computer and phone.
Also, close your email client and anything that wastes your time and attention while working.
Every time something distracts you, it takes up to fifteen minutes to focus again.
To get back in a state of flow, which is ideal for productivity, it’s worse: it may take you a whole hour to get back into it.
When anything distracts you, you lose focus. And when you do so, you become much slower.
You are never at your full learning potential if you constantly get notifications.
Extra tricks I use daily:
In this course, you will need an Internet connection for the first modules where we use the GDScript Learn app extensively.
However, we provide DRM-free downloads for all the files we can. That way, you can download them to your computer, turn off the Internet, and focus all your energy on the lessons.
While you can use the GDScript Learn app offline, it involves running the client and server locally on your machine. This is a bit technical.
You want to follow a practice schedule to build a strong learning habit.
We human beings have limited willpower: you can think of it as a resource that depletes and recharges daily.
If you need to make too many decisions to get to work, this will already take some of your energy.
We are very efficient when we operate through habits and rituals.
That’s why you want to set a time and place to learn every day. Or at least as close to that as you can.
As little as five minutes daily is much better than nothing. It’s even better than half an hour just once a week.
To me, the ideal minimal study session is at least thirty minutes, as it gives enough time to get into it and get results.
If you decide to do longer sessions, be sure to stay hydrated, as this is important for learning.
Also, take a rest whenever you need it. It’s best to take a five-minute break every twenty minutes and stay fresh rather than keep going to the point where nothing sticks.
Methods like the Pomodoro timer work well for many. The Pomodoro method works with two fixed durations: typically twenty-five minutes of work and a five-minute break.
The timer rings periodically, inviting you to rest at regular time intervals.
I highly recommend this lecture by Marty Lobdell: Study Less Study Smart. He mentions where that twenty-five to five-minute ratio comes from.
After every practice session, you want to take anything you can off your mind.
To do so, take a small notebook and:
That way, you not only work on your memory: you also declutter your mind.
We are social beings, so being part of a community and getting feedback can help us stay motivated.
I recommend a routine like those daily challenges you see often on social networks (like “#100DaysOfGamedev” on Twitter).
After every practice, you could showcase the result and share what you learned. You can make it part of your daily routine and use it to reinforce your learning habits.
That way, you will get feedback on your work, which also helps to keep at it.
To commit to all the above, your task is to write a learning plan that synthesizes all that information.
I prepared a template for you, and all you have to do is fill it out:
It’s short, and it’ll only take you a couple of minutes.
Then, keep it somewhere where you will see it every day. You can print it or make it your computer wallpaper.
Yes, it may look a bit ugly, but at least that way, you have a good chance of seeing it and reading it often.
Here’s an example filled for you.
I want to learn to code because I want to make a game like Monument Valley. To do that, I need code.
When I make this game, I’ll share it with my friends, and hopefully, they’ll be proud!
I will practice at the desk in my bedroom at 18:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and weekends for fifteen minutes.
To avoid distractions, I will uninstall Steam and all games from my computer. I will set my phone and computer to airplane mode before practicing.
To stay accountable, I’ll show my progress to my best friend each week when we have coffee on Sundays.
Be modest with your plan, especially with how much time you will commit daily.
It is better to achieve your plan than never manage to keep to your promise.
If your work and family life keep you too busy, or you tend to procrastinate, try to start with five or ten minutes per day.
This is an amount of time you can always find in your life.
And as you manage to spend more time on your work, you may revise your plan and increase the number.
Please fill out your plan now. Writing a plan and putting it in a place where you can see it daily will help you nudge yourself into building those good learning habits.