Like this. Basic stuff, “I wish I had been taught how to do my taxes in high school” kind of stuff. Long-form video content is preferred but not required.
Edit: I should clarify for everyone in the thread that I could probably work my way up to reading stuff, especially further on when I’ve built up some better habits. Should also mention my executive dysfunction/ADHD issues in this post body
1st rule of an adult: video is an extremely ineffective media for any information except for sport and porno. You’re a grown up now, learn to read.
Reading a manual on how to fix the flux capacitor in my car is MUCH less useful than a video.
With a video, I can see what it looks like, where I can find it and how to get it back in there.
Let’s change it to “in many situations” and yes, learn how to read documentation
I understand and appreciate the intent of what you’re saying, but I have really bad executive dysfunction/ADHD/whatever issues that make this not a realistic choice for me. This post wouldn’t need to exist if I had the motivation to sit down and read my way to victory. Long-form listenable content is also just much easier for me to multitask with.
Rule 2 of adulting: Stop trying to multitask. Multitasking is a myth and impossible for humans to actually successfully do. The more things you try to do at once, the less effective and capable you are at each individual task. Literally not a single human alive is actually good at multitasking. I understand you have issues, but whether you like it or not, you’re reducing your effective capacity to “get shit done” by choosing to try to do this impossible thing called multitasking.
https://hbr.org/2010/12/you-cant-multi-task-so-stop-tr
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7075496/
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/science-clear-multitasking-doesnt-work
https://www.npr.org/2008/10/02/95256794/think-youre-multitasking-think-again
https://radius.mit.edu/programs/multitasking-why-your-brain-cant-do-it-and-what-you-should-do-about-it/
https://neuroleadership.com/your-brain-at-work/the-myth-of-multitasking
OP don’t listen to this shit. ADHD people are the best at multitasking, we thrive at it. In fact jobs will love that you can do it. This poster is just making an excuse for themselves. (Another thing you gotta watch out for as an adult. People are tricky and play their own mind games.)
Jesus Christ, fuck science and evidence, I guess. There’s a reason I included that. But sure, let’s go off one assholes anecdote that “ADHD people are the best at multitasking, we thrive at it” and everyone else is just making an excuse for their shortcoming of not having ADHD. Give me a break dude.
And for another anecdote, literally nobody I know who has ADHD is loved at their job for having it. They all struggle to hold jobs.
Most science about human behavior deals with averages. It’s completely possible that a subpopulation might show an inverse trend. This is especially the case when it’s a subpopulation with known differences in similar behavior. I’m not saying ADHD people benefit from multitasking, but we just can’t say anything based on the general population.
A friend of mine is excelling at sales and that is due to his personality, including ADHD. In most jobs, of course, it’s not beneficial and can pose problems. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find jobs that are well-suited for ADHD people – maybe even better suited than for neurotypicals.
This is a much fairer and more well reasoned take than what the other fellow said.
Somebody did already find it worth a downvote lol.
Sorry to hear that, you got an upvote from me at least. (Downvotes don’t federate to blahaj and you can’t downvote from blahaj)
yeah, it was a bit of an exaggeration. there are definitely aspects that make it hard, but others can be used to their advantage.
Bullshit.
Constantly bouncing between projects and never making meaningful progress is NOT multitasking.
I’m able to multitask and make progress with more than project at once, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
But did you progress more than if you had concentrated on one project at a time? That’s the point they are trying to make.
On what kind of scale?
Can you type an email to one person while speaking on the phone with another?
Or do you mean that you are able to do one task, and then do another task?
Or, when it’s almost time to go home, do you have 30 half written emails, because you kept clicking on random bullshit on the computer and wandering away from your desk?
There really is no universal definition of multi tasking, but every one thinks they are good at it, because we always feel like we have so much going on, and we’re still surviving, so we must be doing something right.
ADHD isn’t one size fits all. Personally, if there’s a TV on in the room, I will be watching it. It could be a golf tournament that I have no interest in at all, and I’ll be staring at it while someone is trying to talk to me. I try not to, because I don’t WANT to watch the TV, but for some reason I will keep sneaking peaks at it. Oh, that guy’s down 3 strokes. I don’t know what that even means, but I must have thought it was important to pay attention to that. 🤷🏻♂️
Fully sympathise. People are giving general advice, and there’s good evidence that it works for most people. I have adhd, and even I know that multi-tasking is distracting and that if I can focus entirely on something I will perform better. But I also know from decades of daily experience that if I try and completely focus on something when my brain is not compliant, then I will do much much worse.
I will learn a lot more by listening to an audiobook while I do chores for an hour, even if sometimes the chores distract me from the content, compared with trying to read a book. Because if I sit and try and read, I will manage one minute, get up and get a drink, reread the same page, want some music to cover up some distracting noise, then rememeber that I’m avoiding distractions so turn the music off… And so on, until after ten minutes I’m only in page 2 and I give up in frustration, drained and demotivated.
As an ever more aged adult, I think the one piece advice I’d give my younger self is “trust yourself”. I’ve wasted so much time trying to follow advice and rules that just never worked for me, and eventually I realise that my instincts were right and I should have just improved my own strategies instead of trying to become something I’m not. That’s not to say you know everything already. Listen to people, try their ideas out, experiment and all that, but don’t feel pressure to do what works for “most people” if it doesn’t work for you.
Don’t apologize for not having the same learning styles that other poster has.
If you’ve got a resource for decent in-depth written how-to guides that isn’t buried under a mile-high haystack of SEO-optimized garbage, fuckin’ post the URL for it!
I learn shit in video format because decent info is a lot easier to find.
I respect these words of wisdom immensely as someone who should have had a mentor spell this out for me years ago. I’m not trying to bothsides you at all because I agree with you 99%. I just wanted to add a few niche areas like appliance/car/repairs/etc, videoform can be lifesavingly convenient in pinches But most importantly reading is fundamental
I think what a lot of people are missing here it’s that it’s a dialectic. It can be true that reading is important and it can also be true that reading isn’t always the best medium for understanding certain concepts. It’s not an either-or situation, rather it’s both, at the same time. I’m glad someone else recognizes that as well.
It’s always hegel. It’s always a fundamental impossibility that exists in everything. Has there really been 0 philosophers of any merit since Hegelian dialectics?
Life is life. No social rule is 100% correct at any time. Exceptions happen. Only mathematics can boast that (sometimes) :)
I’m going to one-up you here and suggest learning to learn. Some people can learn through long form video, some through reading, and some need to take notes and review them later.
For example, I hate all the extra fluff that goes into a written work and frequently need to delete sections until only the minimum information is there. Like deleting the first several paragraphs before a recipe actually gives you the ingredients and instructions!
That’s exactly why I refuse to use tutorials from YouTube. I’m just here to learn the thing you said you were teaching in the title. Im not looking to smash that subscribe button and ding the bell and comment below if I want to see more and see how all your other videos were doing or learn about how you got started in whatever field this is or when the thing was invented or little known facts about the thing that is useless filler to get you up to 10 minutes and im still not interested in like and subscribing and I don’t want to hear about how grateful you are about getting to whatever number of subscribers you have and just get to the fucking topic you promised you bitch
Yup. I find written fluff faster to run through than video fluff
not everyone learns the same and visuals work better in some cases. personally it was easier for me to see how to put air in my tires than read about it.
My advice is still important, though: text manuals are everywhere and about everything. Other formats are scarce and mostly of low quality. So you still should learn to read even if you have “really bad executive dysfunction/ADHD/whatever issues” like OP.
oh for sure. We need better literacy in general.
That’s silly as sometimes video is preferable especially for things like repair and “how-to” instructions.
Not everyone has the same learning style you do.
Last I heard, “learning styles” are a myth
Seriously I will read five pages your bullshit before I spend 45 seconds on your video no problem.
People learn in different ways. I have read many books and also watched many videos, and also been taught by others. All worked in different ways.
This is one of my all-time least favorite takes.
For a lot of stuff, text is a good way to present information. For a lot of other things, information is best processed visually, often in the form of a video. Think repair, building stuff, 3D software, complicated GUI software in general, sports and gym technique, physiotherapy, anything that involves spatial motor skills really.
Imagine if IKEA instructions were text-only?
Illustrations are not forbidden. Every technical non-trivial book has illustrations. That’s normal.
Either way, there is a lot of things where a book, with illustrations or not, is an inefficient way to convey information.
This is such a weird take. Do you learn in school mostly by reading or mostly by paying attention to the teacher and listening? Yeah video is terrible for things like news which just state information and there’s no deep explanation required but visuals, especially moving visuals, supplement the learning process to an extreme degree.
and anything where you’re being given instructions where you’re supposed to copy what the person in the video is doing, video works very well for that too