Tutorial Heaven?

Okay, let's address the whale in the room- STUCK ON TUTORIALS!!!

See, I get it. Been there. Honestly, still am. Let us talk about it. Why do we do this? Why does it feel okay? (anything bad feels good to do because becoming better requires discomfort) and most important of all, how can we get out of it? (should we though?)

When we are starting, we are all overwhelmed by the amount of tech stacks that are out there, so many tutorials, so many things to learn and we don't know how to navigate through anything, let alone even understand why the subjects in our computer science course are even necessary. they all seem purely theoretical and don't seem to be of any use but let me tell you they are. Haven't studied any of it yet but I will cover every last one of them by the time I am done achieving what I want to.

Now should we start with C, C++, Python, Java or Javascript? What should we do? DSA or Development? Web development or Machine learning or Data Science or Cloud or Mobile Application development or DevOps or the infamous Web3?

I would get to all of it and all the questions. Let me talk about something I read first.

Zeigarnik effect

The Zeigarnik effect is a psychological phenomenon that refers to the tendency of the human mind to remember and remain focused on incomplete or interrupted tasks more than completed ones. It is named after the Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, who first observed and studied this effect in the early 20th century.

According to Zeigarnik's research, when we initiate a task and leave it unfinished, it creates a state of tension or mental discomfort in our minds. This tension acts as a cognitive reminder, causing us to think about the unfinished task until it is completed. In other words, the mind has a natural tendency to seek closure and resolution.

Now this is the thing that I want to talk about. When you are trying to begin, there are so many things that you choose to start with one and you remember about all the other tech stacks that you should be simultaneously learning and you start doing something else and you forget what you learned about the first thing on the first day and you go back to revise it and now you forgot the second and the cycle continues till you decide to quit both and start with something else and the cycle starts continuing even harder.

Why tutorials?

Okay, so we all probably did these weird calculations in our head about how long a youtube playlist is and then assuming we are going to watch it at 2x so a 20-hour course would be done in 10 hours so if we can just watch 10 hours of videos in one go like it's a One Piece marathon, my friend, You are Right. Yes, you can. But should you? My argument would be yes, you should. It exists for our help in the first place but only doing that would give no result. But yes, they are a quick way of learning and cover everything that you need.

Also, there are kinds of people who learn better by watching things than by reading. And I disagree with anyone who says it's not a good way of learning. I would say it is one way of learning but don't stick to just one way. You also have to learn from reading the documentation I know its boring at first but I will walk you through it since I am fixing the same problem myself

Are tutorials effective?

Yes. Simply Yes. They exist to make it easier to understand when we are just too dumb to read the documentation. Binge-watching them does give us a sense of what we are supposed to do and also it is like hovering over the topic. You are an eagle looking at your prey move and do its thing. Watching a tutorial is like keeping an eye on your food and knowing everything it does but when it's time to grasp it, you fail because you never learned to swoop down and get your hands dirty. That is what differentiates a good developer from someone who knows a lot from tutorials.

You need to get your hands dirty because watching how to do a perfect pushup won't get you a good shape because you never got down on the floor and pushed yourself to your limit and went even further.

How to quit the habit of watching tutorials?

Watch another video on it. The irony is you will be watching a youtube video on why youtube videos should not be a way of learning. There are enough arguments and methods out there. I won't be talking about them. I am all for it. They are a tool not an enemy. We have to use them properly to be better.

How I am going to do it?

I am going to binge-watch this like it is my obsession to not have any series in my "Continue Watching" section of Netflix. But one primary rule would be, no matter how large the course is, even though you might find another course with better content or in another language or it seems more detailed, DON'T QUIT. Finish the whole thing, learn everything it has to offer and also do it on your own and then move on.

There are a lot of people advocating project-based learning and they are right but there are people like me who still live by that infamous notion of applying after learning everything else it just feels incomplete to move on. Sadly I am still stuck but I would just adapt it to my good use. So I came up with a plan for people who are stuck with what project to make on their own. People with a creative blockage. I get you. But I would give you easy steps to just get good projects out of your imagination.

I would add the tricks I learned and came up with along the way as I learn a new tech stack and build something on my own without the tutorial ( I would also be doing the projects shown in the tutorials as well because why not?). I would keep updating this blog so that someday when I make it, I can look back and be proud of how far I came and if anyone starting faces the same problem as me, they can have a definitive guideline for it.

Thank you for reading.