The dark side of selfstudy is when you’ve spent 100s of hours mastering a subject and nobody takes your knowledge seriously because you don’t have a degree in said subject. 😢

I started selfstudy mathematics and physics seriously at 27, to get into University. It was very very hard. I remember I was checking some of your videos when you had only a few thousand subs, cause I was so interested and amazed by the math magic. Now im going to the third year of university physics and astronomy. Took me about 3 years of selfstudy!! Even a few hard failures, I actually failed an important math exam three times, which was asked to get in. Some people even told me to give up, even my mother, but my father believed in me, and I think I might have been close to giving up. But I didnt give up and suddenly I got a 73% and accepted to the study which was an old childhood dream. Now im working with one of the most respected physicist in my country on a breakthrough paper related to unified field theory, which is completely from my idea. I still have issues with studying on time and primarily the discipline to do homework :)) I hope people read this comment because I believe it can inspire anyone and I'm still not believing whats happening, the love of my life helped me motivate me a lot though

one of the problems for self-learning is that many authors of math books omit many steps in the demonstrations and that is where the difficulty of studying oneself begins.

I'm in my early 40s and decided to get a computer science degree. I had to go back to high school algebra and study all the way up to trigonometry to be able to understand calculus. It was a lot of work and took me a while. My only help were people like yourself and your videos. I even left a comment on a video of yours about a couple of years ago or so because you explained some concept very clearly and i was finally able to understand it. Now I'm just 3 or 4 month away from graduating. Many thanks for making math interesting and understandable for people like me.

Summary: 1:55 - Self Study is challenging to do when you're not getting things on your own 2:10 - Realise that Self Study is Challenging and create a Game Plan for yourself 2:56 - Go in with the mindset that it will be difficult and you may feel stupid, but you'll put in the efforts regardless and get better 3:48 - Can't Focus in Self Study - Endless choices and Tough to stick to a guide 5:00 - Pick a Game Plan and Do It! 6:00 - Self Study can make you feel Lazy and Unmotivated - IF you don't do it 6:40 - The fact that you're thinking of doing Self Study makes you already better than the remaining 90% of people that don't 7:50 - If you aren't able to follow up on a plan, don't give up entirely, just adjust your plans more realistically and go forward 9:00 - Everything you study in Self Study stays with you a long time, so it's absolutely worth it.

I've self-studied most of my way through life in computer science. I think the toughest part of self-learning a new thing is getting past simple, fundamental problems as soon as you try to add complexity. Having a mentor to simply explain WHY you need do something can be as valuable as 10 books telling you HOW.

My father had a degree in physics and taught me from a very young age how to play chess, guitar, and taught me bits of math and physics as well. And even though it was nothing too complex, it was still extremely difficult for my age, so he taught me how to be okay with the fact that it takes time to learn things, which I think was by far the most important lesson. I feel extremely lucky to have had him as my dad, and even though he's gone now, I can still find him through math. Whenever I learn something new I can occasionally recall lost memories of him explaining it to me, then it eventually makes sense, and I find that truly beautiful. I hope I can do the same for my children one day. Edit: I think I left out the most important part about my dad in all honesty, which was he strongly believed in Jesus Christ as our savior, and taught me a lot about the Bible when I was young. I didn't really mention that before because I didn't think this comment would be so popular, but I guess we all have more influence than we realize. So it's very important we lead others in the right direction, and I do truly believe Jesus is the light and the way. He's more than just a name, and more than just a man. He is the son of God, and you can find him everywhere. His name is synonymous with love and peace.

For me, another huge darkside with self study, especially in engineering with hundreds of ways to solve prpblems is the fact that I don't know what I don't know. At a school, a teacher or professor can help you learn the areas that you never knew existed, but when doing a coding project on my own, there are dozens of tools or methods I should use but am not even aware exist. Luckily I'm about to start college so that will help a ton. This is a bigger problem in general for civilization and the whole point of progress and exploration though, to learn that which we don't know we don't know.

The advantages of self study are: You can afford it, and it fits into your schedule. The disadvantage is that it's hard to find the appropriate sources of information on an unfamiliar subject.

Great advice. My biggest problem with self-study is getting stuck on a problem/proof and spending too much time on it. After several hours and sometimes days, I know I should just move on but failure at getting the proof is exceedingly disturbing and demoralizing. So I created a separate folder called "unsolved problems"; document the problem and hope latter in life I have time or get enlightened to return to it. Any suggestions on this?? Thanks.

This video hits me right in the feels. I spent about 20 years trying to self-learn programming, feeling lazy and stupid the whole time. I just finally got a job as a programmer about a year ago, was quickly promoted, and still find myself explaining stuff to the senior members of my team almost daily.

I don't know if anyone will ever read this, but I think I have to get it off my chest. I resonate with everything you said in this video. Throughout my late teen and early twenties I didn't know what to do, first was illustration, then filmmaking, then psychology, and lastly I ended up in programming. I had no prior experience, unless you consider being fine at maths one. I decided to go to university for either maths or computer science, and ended up failing the entry exams (same exam for both fields). This happened in 2019. Shortly after a "Beginners Python Course" appeared out of nowhere in my KZfaq feed, and I decided to try on my own. It didn't take me long to realize that this is what I needed my whole life, coding is extremely fun and solving a problem is such a satisfying feeling, one that I never felt before. However the good times came to an end shortly after. I realized how vast of a topic computer science is, it was, and still is, so overwhelming. The though of me not being good enough crippled in shortly after, "I'll never be as good as those programmers" I thought to myself. I tried my best to keep going but I wouldn't code/study often, and, just like you said, I'd feel horrible about it. Sometimes when I look at my progress I feel ashamed that "this is it", I feel like there's nothing impressive or worthwhile in my "portfolio". I feel like I wasted my time, almost three years of it. I tried getting better at Python (still learning new things) and started (almost finished by now) a C course, but, and this is the part that I feel I can't tell anyone, I almost broke a couple weeks ago... I almost quit programming as a whole... yet I didn't. A couple of days passed and I felt like I couldn't do it, I can't take away something that brings me so my joy. Some days are fine, some are horrible, but I want to keep going. One day I want to make something that I'm proud of; something that others admire just a little bit; something fun. I know your channel is about maths but one of the fields I want to get into is AI/ML so that's why I'm here. I'll keep going, or at least I'll try. Thank you for this video, I think I'll keep coming here ofter.

For me it's the opposite. I don't feel stupid when self-studying. If I don't understand something, I just retry again after a break. With the University, on the other hand, it reeeally depends on the professor. Some professors make it really easy for you, while others make you suffer and give you bad grades if you don't understand the concept on the first day they explain it. University is like a gamble of whether you'll get good professors or not, while self-study is more like farming - you plant stuff, and some of it might wilt and die, but with enough care and time, your labor always gives fruits.

I feel like every stem degree should require at least an entire semester focusing on self-study because after whatever degree(s) you get, after that you're completely on your own, wheather you're going into research or industry or teaching, you're gonna have to teach yourself whatever stuff you wanna learn on your own.

Even though this video is 2 years old on KZfaq now, you are talking exactly about how I feel these days.

I have been self-studying at home for a year and everything you said was like.. exactly how it is. I definitely found myself collecting all these resources to amazing courses and then doing a lot of different things, getting lost in the variety of information available. I'm now a jack of all trades, master of none. And even when you find something you want to focus on and study that particular subject, you still get distracted by all these other interesting topics.

This is so true, and so validating! I feel like I could cry! It's especially hard when working long hours at a job that isn't good for me. After work, I only have so little time and energy left and I can barely keep my eyes open. That's all made it take so much longer and feel even harder to build the competency necessary for getting over my math phobia. But I can honestly say that I'm so happy with and proud of how far I've come! I've managed to teach myself trigonometry and precalc for the first time all while slowly working through the early chapters in my calc books on limits and differentiation. I'm so excited at the idea of moving on to integration next and then making it to differential equations!!! After that point, I want to start volunteering as a math tutor, because I don't want anyone else to go through anything like the kind of struggle that I have!!!

Always feel like you're cheering me on even though we've never met. I was never good at math in school but professionally I've tought myself a lot of math and it's the best part of my day now. Learning Geometric Algebra for fun, too :)

You know what else makes me feel stupid? Still have student debt after 10 years, if end result is the same, I would rather self study without student debt.

Another thing to consider is that even if you are in college, self studying could help you get a leg up so you don’t feel overwhelmed learning everything in that short time span from scratch

Man as a software engineering 25 year old drop out I am juggling between statistics for engineers and mathematical statics and recently started learning about Real analysis. It’s true that I feel scattered. This video is a reminder to be more focused and less time on feeling lazy. Thank you Math Sorcerer 🧙‍♂️

About the "laziness", I think it helps to subdivide a big project into small steps. Small enough that we don't mind taking them. That's how I overcome my inertia. When we have a big project it can feel daunting and paralysing. So breaking it into small pieces makes it manageable.

Somethings i noticed that not many people talk about self study is the importance of keeping a routine and being constant,not to mention the importance of always making sure to know FULLY well the basics before you can move on to the next chapter

I love this guy, it feels like he's talking to me directly. Like a one on one coaching session. Thank you.

I find this video frighteningly relevant. I'm a 40 year-old with a GED, and no higher education, but I've always loved STEM and computers. I stumbled onto Cyber-sec recently, and I'm also interested in machine learning. I found your channel because when I googled "self learn mathematics", and your video on the topic gave me what I need to solve my own problems. I can't afford university, but I'm not really a good student anyways. I do love to learn things however, and ML and C-Sec are really interesting to me right now.

The problem with self study is what I call the lone racer issue, when you do a marathon alone you somehow never do anything CLOSE to what you would be doing while running in company.

I'm 16, and whenever I become self aware of my negative thoughts (e.g "I'm so stupid (in math) and useless compared to people my age") I always come back to this video 'cause it reminds me that I'm not, and that I can probably figure it out in a matter of time and that it's not too late to learn and catch up. Amazing advice, thanks for this 👍💚

This video literally made me laugh out loud at just how true all these points are. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who goes through them. The proliferation of books and ideas just makes me stand still a lot of the time.

Self study is extremely complex and it requires more discipline and creativity to get understand the subject.

Your second point resonates with me. The hardest part of self study for me is not going down rat holes. Frankly, i think the entire value that schools bring to the equation is that courses are focused and that the instructor will keep things focused and bring things back on track when they do go off in the weeds. The discipline to do this yourself when no one is directing you, is really the hardest thing for me.

I've been self-studying for about three months and taught myself to code. Even after all this, I used to feel bad, like I am not doing enough. Neither am I getting any support from the people I know. I don't remember someone complimenting me on the things I learnt. This one video. This one video made me smile. Thank you.

I am self studying some math now, at 50 years. Your videos and book suggestions are what I use. Thank you!

You're everything I want academia to become. Supportive, helpful, intelligent, and perhaps above all interested in the shared pursuit of knowledge. Appreciate you. ❤️

Super underrated channel, whenever I feel difficulty in my studies this guy has such wise words, makes my worries go away

humility is necessary in mathematics (but not sufficient) only hard work AND curiosity are both necessary AND sufficient....subbed!

I recently started to self-study and had a rocky ride. Thank you for making me realize that all the terrible feelings I have from self study is actual normal! It is a huge relief.

I've been doing math every single day (currently on day 58), and I've gotten to the point where I'm feeling a little scattered. I have self studied Calc 2 and the first chapter of Diff Eq, and I'm starting Linear Algebra as well. I'm all over the place. With LA and Calc 2 on the way this autumn I need to be ready and focus, but it is hard with all of the available options!

When I was younger I used to enjoy math and science, but my instructors weren’t the best and fell off. I got a degree in something non-math related but now that I have more free time, I’ve been thinking on going back and start learning math once again. Thanks for this advice.

I have been self studying maths and engineering stuff after my bachelor degree in Automotive for a couple of months now and here I will share my experience. First some pros followed by cons. Pros 1. Learning at your own tempo. You have the time really digest and understand what you are doing. Tackling fundamentals in school is very hard, because you have many subjects and little time. With self study you have more control and you can continue when you truly feel like you understand something. It also gives this crazy confidence boost once you truly understand that little thing, that was considered obvious at first! 2. Better inter-disciplinarian understanding. Point 2 is related to point 1. You learn things on a more fundamental level in my eyes and your awareness of inter-disciplinarian relations come to live. This makes your understanding of matter much better compared to your peers (even though you might not notice it). 3. The studying part is more fun than at school. Because you study for yourself and choose your own program, it's genuinely more interesting. 4. You will truly learn how to learn. You have full freedom to experiment with this and I can't imagine it dragging you down academically or as a person. Cons 1. It's LONELY. School may not seem perfect, but for most people the social aspect is key. You can measure your level to others or the classes and you can just have fun in the mean time. I learned that feeling (too) lonely will drastically impact your learning performance and mental health. So keep meeting people and having fun. Having fun and socializing is VERY important. 2. Days go by extremely quickly and it sometimes feels as if you haven't accomplished anything in the last week for example. It's important to periodically reflect on what you've learned to not feel like you've wasted time. 3. You might question the path you chose. Because self study in itself is an isolated activity, it sometimes might feel like you are falling behind on your peers or it feels like a different path was better. That is a problem I am going through right now and I honestly have no real answer to how to deal with it yet. In conclusion, self study for me works fine for now. Learning matter more fundamentally is fun, challenging and very rewarding, as it will stick with you forever. The biggest downside is that you might feel isolated from society if you don't do anything other than self study. It will depress you sooner or later if you don't take this seriously.

Good video! Thanks! Other challenges with self-study are: 1. Not knowing what we don't know - not knowing what topics to pursue in a subject can mean we waste time on stuff we don't need, and even miss some important stuff altogether; professors in unis make sure to touch on all the important points at each level of study 2. Not knowing which authors to read - not knowing who are the respected experts are verses those who are fringe or too ideologically driven can mean studying the wrong people, especially in the humanities but also in STEM topics; professors focus on the current consensus within recognized and reputable scholarship 3. Lack of companionship - in school, we're studying along with others and we can talk with them about what we're learning, and we can also commiserate with them if the prof sucks

Very inspirational talk. I left school back in 1984 and have recently rediscovered my interest in maths. The trouble that I've found is that I wasn't really taught correctly back in the 70s and 80s. Teachers back then, here in Australia anyway, tended to dismiss those students who didn't show an aptitude for a subject, or who were not in the schools good families list. So I am finding that I need to go right back to the foundational subjects of maths. And that can be hard. Especially in finding the motivation to go that far back.

This video touched my heart so much, I got a little emotional. All the things here I already knew with my common sense, but hearing them articulated so clearly and in an organized way, really touched me, because of the place I am right now in this point of my life. Beautiful, thank you.

I feel so motivated after watching this video, thanks a lot sir, i am 17 year old suffering from asthma, and a bunch of other diseases since i didn't take care of my health the last 2 months, The drugs i take make me feel dizzy, but when i feel bored, i just go to youtube, and watch solutions to some good olympiad problems, learning tips, and i also go through ebooks that i have on my phone, just scrolling through them gives me some sense of peace, I can't get myself up to the table to study, but i am trying my best for what i can do from my bed

Hey man, I really needed to see a video like this. I'm 22 years old and I'm trying to self study math because I really enjoy it and sometimes I feel like I'm behind compared to other student (I'm in college, but during high school I really did not care about math so I don't remember anything pretty much about it). Truth is, it's really hard sometimes, and some days I fell like the process I'm making per chapter is very small and I frequently question my capabilities or my intelligence. Seeing this video was very beneficial to me, it gave me motivation to endure the hard times and after watching I feel more confident with my choice of learning by myself. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic. Have a good day sir.

I'm finishing my masters and starting my PhD in the fall. My biggest concern about self study is that you're presented with the information but not in the same way a professional would. A professional knows what's important and where to focus on learning things so the study is more efficient. A textbook usually just gives you enough problems to master the whole topic and it's very overwhelming. The moving goalposts given by the range of difficulty of practice problems doesn't help.

I've been studying to get a GED for quite some time now. I basically flunked school, and have been working to do better ever since. I was so bad, I didn't even really understand linear equations. So I set out on a journey to fix that, with the goal to not just do Algebra 1-2/Statistics/Etc, but to complete them. The problem was, that I didn't even really know what I was missing(I also really disliked Mathematics at the time, so that certainly didn't help). So I decided to start over from the very beginning, regardless of whether I already knew the material or not. I felt incredibly dumb for doing this, but now looking back, I feel like this may have been a really good/smart decision. It allowed me to go back, and fill in the holes I left in my education. I did a lot of this by myself, due to a lot of other stuff that was going on in life. So I continued on my math journey, still not liking Mathematics. But then I got back to Algebra/Geometry, and for some reason things were different, and I began to LOVE Math! I worked through Algebra 1-2, Geometry, and Trigonometry to completion. I even did a little bit of Linear Algebra! Now I stand ready to take on Statistics, and even Calculus. Even so, I still wonder if it's enough sometimes. There have been quite a few times I've gone back through each of the subjects I've already done to refresh my memory. I consistently seem to do pretty well, although I still feel that urge for perfection. That ability to just, not miss a question anymore. And so the cycle continues. This is actually one of the reasons I have yet to touch Calculus. So why did I talk about all of that? Well, quite simply, I have felt pretty much everything you just talked about in this video before(and still do to some extent). For quite some time now, my life has been lots and lots of studying. Now at those times I wasn't studying, I felt very lazy, and still sort of do to this day. And yes, I've felt like a complete idiot more than once. But just like you were saying, I too think it's important to take a step back sometimes, and realize that it's okay to take a break. This is very hard for me to do still, but I am starting to see some truth in it as time goes on. One thing I would like to mention though, and it might be just me, but I got kind of lonely when I did this for quite some time. Everyone around me pretty much isn't as interested in math as much as I am(through no fault of their own), and so that makes it kind of hard to hang out sometimes. I suppose my recommendation would obviously be to find someone who likes the same things, but that can also be easier said than done. :P So yea, no idea if anyone will even see this comment or not, but amazing video! Everything said is very, very true, and it's good to address this. Thanks for making this!

As a person who self studied tons of topics especially on biology, this video exactly describes what I've been through in my journey of self studying. Thank you very much

Thank you for this video. Spot on in so many points related to my struggles self-studying advanced math. "Pick a game plan and DO IT". Awesome advice. Thanks.

This video should be for anyone studying any subject, because all of this applies for me while self studying for data science. Great video, wish it could reach a broader audience outside of math.

When you go to college you are teaching yourself. YOU GET TOLD what to learn but you are teaching yourself. And more importantly you are tested on your knowleddge thereby holding you accountable for that knowledge. If you sit at home all day and study nobody is holding you accountable. Nobody is testing you. You can skip whole sections of calculus and nobody will know. It may be a rewarding and intellectually stimulating but don't expect anyone to hire you when you say , " Oh no I'm an engineer. I'M self taught. You can trust my bridge designs"

This video for me was a hand-holding session more than anything else. There are hard moments when you need someone to hold your hand and stop you from feeling bad. Great video! Thank you!

I so agree with the whole: “create a plan only to not follow through with it”. But what made me actually study on my own was when the curiosity about the subject just popped into my mind. For example, one day about three years ago I was laying on my bed at seven in the morning and suddenly I got curious about how light is emitted by electrons going from an excited state to ground state. I was so curious, grabbed my chemistry textbook and just sat by an open window and blasted through the chapter on electron configurations. It was so much fun. I think when it comes to self-study it shouldn’t feel like you are forcing yourself, but that you genuinely want to know because of curiosity. If you can’t find the curiosity to read a particular chapter, usually the opening page has a summary about the material covered. Try to see whether this material, if you had known it, would make you curious about something that matters to you regarding the field on which the textbook is attempting to elucidate. For example, if you think learning about vectors is boring, but you are curious or love thinking about how planets orbit around stars, then that could motivate to you enough to not see vectors as boring, and then you’d want to know it so then you can think about planets orbiting in a more informed way.

I often combine self study with university so that the feel of loss of self study gets resolved by getting down to the uni's specific curriculum, and the hot feel of the uni's rush and bizzare grading system gets resolved by the true self evaluation and engagement in the field (no pun intended) with self study.

You really have a good point there. I always recommend to do self study with friends, colleagues or anyone who wants to listen to you. Explaining and discussing stuff helps a lot in your learning experience. So let's go to the bright side of self study :)

Cons of Self-Study: 1- Makes you feel stupid once you don't understand anything. 2- Lack of focus because you have too many ideas. 3- Self study can make you feel lazy and unmotivated and can make you worse if you don't do it if you don't get your goals done.

I love this video! You are absolutely right. I have been self-studying Russian for over a year and it can be very intimidating. As comedian Steve Martin once wrote in one of his books, "Perseverance is a great substitute for talent." Sometimes I also experience burn-out or get a sense of being unmotivated. But perseverance will pay off in a BIG way. I can now pick up about 30% of a Russian discussion. It is such an empowering feeling, and I got this far all on my own. I honestly believe that our brains need a little quiet time, or a break of a day or two to "gel" to make sense of all the new information. Thank you again for the great advice!

I self taught myself the entirety of undergraduate math but im kinda hardstuck on differential geometry and this video really resonated with me.

Great video. Self study is one of the most enlightening and at same time one of the most humbling things in existence.

Thank you for this video I'm beginning a career change at 27 and have started learning Python Programming and Data Science on my own, my friend Jameson is studying Python in a graduate program and is currently working as a Data Analyst for a large energy company. I currently have gotten back into the Tech Industry after working a Blue Collar job as a Mailman during the Pandemic, but my thirst for knowledge and learning hasn't stopped and I want to pursue a career in Data Science like my friend Jameson is. Learning Python isn't easy but it is incredibly rewarding and I enjoy the challenge of figuring things out that at times I don't understand but will eventually with practice and repetition. I wish more teachers and educators thought like you did and didn't make kids and adults who are learning feel stupid when they don't understand something but rather enforce the fact that it is ok to fail and not understand something, that is critical to learning as you have pointed out in this video. Thank you for the encouragement and your videos and please keep making them as they help people like me who want to learn, grow, and always improve. Much Love, -Sam :)

This made me cry. Thanks for the reminder. Good video. Good message.

You've got to really believe in your own intellect to succeed at self-study, and that's what makes it so hard. We usually don't have that kind of confidence and our culture doesn't encourage it. And the real confidence doesn't come until after we've already found a way to make progress without it. 😅 In my case, I just had to rely on persistence and hope long before I ever developed enough competence for confidence. 😅

Even when I was attending classes in person, I would often buy different used textbooks for each subject. I had 5 calculus textbooks. That's because different authors had different ways of explaining the same things, and one was bound to be more understandable. Considering the cost of tuition, buying the used textbooks is worth the investment.

Even though my field is computer science this video helped me a lot. It’s my final semester for my integrated MSc degree and the need for self learning has woken up and with that so is the “dark side”. I did a lot of self digging and the words the sticked out the most were the ones you mentioned, “stupid”, “unfocused”, “lazy”, “lost my charisma” and all of this because I didn’t accept that some things are just difficult. I realised that if the expectations from yourself are above the limit you can’t think right, instead of thinking creatively to solve the problem your thoughts are filled with negativity and disappointment because “it was supposed to be easy”. I keep a lot of things from your video and sorry for my low donation, I wanted to show an act of gratitude.

I love self study. I take courses online without scheduled classes from a community college. I can study on my own pace. Luckily we have homework and tests, these are some sort of drive for me to stick to my study plan. I never felt I was stupid, sometimes we have to read the problems and books again and again to really understand what they are about. Also, there are SO many resources online.

Self study is the only way to learn. There may be others to teach you, but only you yourself can learn what they teach. Whether the author of the book is your teacher, or someone else talking about the ideas found in books.

1. Self study makes you feel stupid. Get over that feeling. Accept the fact that it’s going to be difficult for you to study. It’s hard for everyone. 2. You can’t focus, because you have too many ideas. Pick a game plane and do it. The best moments are spontaneous. 3. Self study can make you feel lazy and unmotivated, if you don’t do it. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t do it. The fact that you’re thinking about self study is courageous enough. Thank you 🙏

Beautiful. The counterintuitive nature of how "berating ourselves for self-studying badly" causes us to ultimately discourage ourselves out of self-studying is huge. Reminds me of my recent studies in the dangers of "overimportance" and how we can reach things easily by "imagining they have already happened". Vadim Zeland and Neville Goddard ideas. The beauty of these approaches to the future are they "inoculate" you against causing damage to your own self-belief when you inevitably want it too badly and in your own "wanting", you cause yourself to lose faith in your new venture. The common thread in our unconscious reactions to new ventures is... of course, since we never did this before, our minds will predict we will fail. And it wants things to be predictable and for you to be right. So it predicts that you will fail and convinces you of this. And then, you quit! To counteract this, we use our imagination and give ourselves the triumph of accomplishing our goal now. And with this new juicy memory, you simply can live into your already-experienced future. You are not struggling towards your future... rather, you are living into your already-certain future.

I’m not here for mathematics but rather language learning, but what your saying applies to almost anything, like working out.

i have adhd and can't listen in class enough to learn anything. if i don't get the whole picture, i don't understand at all and i can't spend 80% of a lecture asking questions. not to mention they sometimes use a language i don't understand yet, i'm in a different country. all this, i have to learn everything on my own or i won't get anywhere. while it's been great these 2 years of uni, i'm getting to the point where i just don't get it at all. this video was a great lifeline, thank you

Love your practical advice man. I am currently self-studying several fields of math at once and I am using several of your book recommendations. A tip I have for fellow self-studiers: Let's say you have a lot of ground to cover and are trying to keep parallel tracks moving in several topics so that steady progress can be made over time. You might think "I'm doing to do 1 hour of algebra per day, 1 hour of calculus per day, 1 hour of linear algebra per day..." etc. Instead you should group those times together each into one 3-5 hour sitting per week. For example, one day do 4 hours of Calculus, then the next 4 hours the main topic you need (say Statistics or something). The next day do 4 hours Linear Algebra, 4 hours Statistics. This way you are not switching topics constantly, which can make your brain tired, and also you learn more in a prolonged session. And like the Sorcerer says, you must do problems. Do as many as you can find, if there aren't enough problems with solutions in your text search for more elsewhere. The problems are what instills true understanding along with allowing you to memorize the content with the least amount of effort. I have found that after doing 50-100 problems the material has been memorized without me trying. Contrast this with note-taking which slows you down a lot and only barely helps memorization in my opinion. Only take notes on something you can't remember easily. If you have pdf books a quick way to take notes is to simply screenshot the theorems and paste them all into MS Paint. Boom, instant notes.

This was awesome as a college student I’m spending the summer teaching myself python and it is often disheartening but knowing that despite the difficulty others were able to do it before me, gives me motivation. Thank you

Another point that goes along with point 3 is to allow yourself to feel happy and satisfied even if you didn't do the amount that you set out to do. If you beat yourself down for not doing enough or not being as far along as you wanted you are more likely to just quit altogether, but if you allow yourself to feel good about the amount you did you might even set yourself up catch up in the next session because you allowed yourself to enjoy doing whatever it is you are doing.

I'm a recent statistics bachelors graduate, and I've been job-hunting for about the past month. One of the things I've started doing in my free time to still feel motivated and get out of my own anxieties is self-studying Latin on my own as a sort of personal hobby. I think the most important thing when self-studying is having access to really good materials that are beginner-friendly. I know it might not be applicable to those learning mathematics on their own, but I do think it's probably the most important thing, sometimes it might not be you that's stupid, but the book that expects a certain level of familiarity with the subject before you're really able to understand anything. The book I'm using, Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, is written in such a way that one can figure out mostly by context and practice what the words mean and the grammar structure, and it's extremely gradual. I found out about it by looking at self-study groups online and seeing what textbooks people recommend and why. I'd imagine similar information exists out there for almost every subject. Thanks for this video!

Another spot on advice bro! I feel like you're reading my diary. hehe. Everything you said is exactly what I'm going through. It's a relief to hear someone else experiencing the same way. Procrastination is the biggest obstacle to succeeding in math and in life in general but you have laid it out so insightfully nobody else did. The best part of everything you said is that 'inaction doesn't mean failure.' That is something I haven't really realized, heard or given much thought about in my 40 plus years of existence. That was a big one! The bottom line here is to always remain positive no matter what the circumstances you're in. Inactivity or laziness is a negative thing but realizing that it doesn't mean failure is one of the most positive ways one could make as an initial response to overcome it and prevent yourself from going down the rabbit hole. You can be a philosopher/psychologist as much as you are a mathematician. God bless.

This is one of the most authentic videos I’ve seen on KZfaq in a long time. Definitely subscribing after this 👍🏾.

If one has never failed at anything they will never be able to learn.

Great talk. There are people of all ages, from all backgrounds, who want to approach more technical subjects. But the leap from watching 10 minute youtube videos to reading textbooks and practice problems is quite an incline in the learning curve. It's a wonderfully humbling experience tackling some of it on your own.

You're like a wise Kermit the frog. I'm Australian, and I only just realised why you seem so familiar to me, it's that you sound a lot like Kermit! Love your videos, I watch every single one that comes out. I was home-schooled and am studying mathematics now, and by far the most useful advise anyone has given me, has been from you, it's "Don't spend too much time on a problem." My biggest problem is that I can easily spend days on a problem, but I can't seem to switch off from it. It's a work in progress, but I'm getting there. I have a physics exam tomorrow, so wish me luck!

The problem of self-study is when you feel stuck of get bored of studying you would stop, this repeats a lot of time, whereas in class even if you don't feel like to study, you can't stop, you have to continue, and after finishing the semester you would be grateful to those moments when you embrace the pain of boredom and keep going

I'm self-studying chess at the moment. Unfortunately I've found out that my true passion in life does not involve any of the STEM fields which I've always excelled at in school. Fortunately I did find a passion in life, and for the past year or two it's given meaning where previously there was none. I've encountered all of the things you've mentioned, and for a lot of other things I've tried in my life they were barriers which I dealt with by giving up. After seriously starting to learn chess, I can confidently say that getting good at something more than anything involves not giving up where most others have. Every barrier you face in whatever it is you're learning - understand that a myriad of people before you have encountered it, failed and given up. The ones who mastered the field also encountered those barriers, failed, but they kept going anyway. When you encounter something which makes you think: this is impossible, sometimes it's important to ask: but what if I do it anyway?

Awesome video. You literally described everything I’m struggling with right now. I’m self studying differential equations in order to test out of it at my university. I’m three weeks in and I’m still at the beginning of the subject because I keep changing which books to read. However, I’m now going to stick to one book based off my university’s syllabus for the class. Also, a technique I use when I don’t have motivation is I start to read the book and take notes as I read because it will get me hyper focused on the subject. I sometimes start off without trying to comprehend everything but eventually I’ll start to actively think through the theorems and problems.

I want to like this video at least 3 millions times. I feel so optimistic after watching and relatable with it far more than expected. Sometimes I've been learning a topic for an hour and still didn't understand it at all so I doubted my ability and even thought that I couldn't learn it no matter how long I took. But you made me realise and think from another point of view. Like, look! there's a bunch of people out there struggling with something too and someone haven't ever thought of studying in the weekend which I don't mean that they're wrong or lazy. I just feel like I am doing a thing, something big enough for me to appreciate myself and feel proud. Thank you so much for the video! And have a nice day to everyone who sees my comment.

Although I don't do math, I can relate to this topic in the form of becoming a musician. Self taught and still learning, I often have times where I feel lazy because I can't do something creative for a period of time. I'll have times its really hard to create something, and even when I sit down and try, nothing I do seems to sound right. Recently I've been learning to just let this period of creative draught unfold and to trust the process without feeling like I'm wasting my time. Thank you for the insight :)

Thank you for this video. I'm about to self-study mathematics as I never could learn it properly in school and this gave me motivation to not give up. Also, I completely agree about things you learn on your own sticking with you for the longest time and making you feel good about yourself.

Thank you for raising this issue. I agree with you, entirely, man. Not easy indeed, and I can tell you that because due to the fact that I live in the country that I live, which, back in my teen-age times, offered too few options and opportunities, I had to develop an ability to study on my own, and through self study I taught myself English, electronics, computer programming, and mathematics, etc. I studied a lot through correspondence. It's not easy, but true, you can do it, even as I write theses lines I'm about to complete a BA in Business Administration, online. Got other degrees and certificates, all by correspondence and now, online. Thank you for your encouraging words!

I'm teaching myself Measure Theory right now and the "feeling stupid" part really hits since so much of the material seems unmotivated. The cool thing with self study is I can hop between materials as I please and not necessarily incentivized to practice from one text for a class, so having a good book on Lesbesgue Integration to motivate the subject and a good book on measure theory ( honestly I have multiple of each :) ) the grind is paying off. Halmos was absolutely correct in digesting as many resources as possible, authors can frame topics in so many different ways and some vibe with some more than others. Also to all the other self studiers, ambience is really important, especially for marathon sessions.

I'm glad KZfaq recommended me this channel.

This is a very deep and wise look at the world of self studying. I can relate to those feelings when I first started self studying Computer Science. Sadly, I had to learn most of those things by myself, and I think you gave the BEST advices to people trying to learn something by themselves. But I can assure you'll feel great once you finish a book and realize you've learned something with neither a teacher nor a "standard" study plan. And to those who are worried on getting a job, generally it's more valuable having actual knowledge than that "piece of paper" you are awarded with from studying at the University, (at least in Computer Science and IT sector). Also in Europe, I don't really know how it is at the US. Thank you for giving these very valuable advices.

As a tutor, I've taught/tutored a wide variety of math/logic-related and analytically intensive subjects, many of which I've had to learn on my own for various reasons (high school was terrible and I had 0 motivation, or I agreed to tutor a subject I didn't know enough about). There are 2 big questions along the self-study route that I keep running across but haven't quite found a reliable/accurate answer to: 1. In math (other subjects I'm sure could also apply), when you're studying a textbook alone and run into a problem you can't figure out (one that has a solution available with an explanation of it) at what point do you stop attempting the problem and read through the solution? Is there an optimal amount of time or effort to put into solving a problem before checking the book answer? 2.How do you keep yourself from forgetting crucially important concepts or ideas that you were able to teach yourself in the distant past? (I'm thinking of Multivariable Calculus specifically, due to its SUPER BROAD spectrum of topics, some of which aren't built upon or referred back to as much as foundational topics like vector calculations and 3-D integrals).

You, sir, are a man of tremendous wisdom. Thanks for the cool advice mate :)

It's a testament to KZfaq's algorithm that this showed up on my recommended videos. It really knows us so deeply!

A candle by your lamp always seems to help me relax

Most of what I learned about mathematics was not in the classroom. It was learned in self- study before the age of the internet.

I have a BS in computer science and had to push through a lot of math. Private tutoring and self study were immensely more helpful to me than the actual curriculum. Yeah, I took tests at the university, but I really feel like my learning was more along the lines of self-studying. Not really sure if schools exist to teach or to make money at this point.

This speaks to me. Thank you for making this video. It applies to my experiences learning languages on my own. The thing that helped was that there was an online community of such audiodidacts here on KZfaq.

thank you for explaining the challenges of self-studying. it is relatable

I think the worst part about self studying advanced math (like algebraic topology or several complex variables etc) is that there are very limited resources to practice on what you learned and zero chance to get any help and feedback when you stuck. So if you start a book and you cannot solve any exercise or make any proof, you are in a big trouble, because you cannot move on further and you cannot learn the material. One solution would be the math stack exchange, but you will never get a full answer or explanation or they will move you… I have been on this stage way too many times trying to understand various object and it is truly very demotivating and despairing. … And of course there are the books that have zero examples, zero exercises, and their proofs can only be understood by the higher Gods of mathematics, since they skip so much steps, that not even them that made the proof, can understand their thought process (if it is even correct e.g. Hörmander Complex analysis on serveras variablers)

While it might be "simpler" in mathematics, another danger of Self-Study, regarding other subjects, is the veracity of what you are learning. It's really terrible when you learn something that you think it's true but has been already debunked, invest on that knowledge, only to learn years later that the foundations for your current ideas on a subject are wrong. Another tip I'd like to give is, before committing to Self-Study, if it's not something as "structured" as Mathematics, a good practice is to investigate if the subject is a "lingering" idea, or if it has solid foundations to continue to be researched.

A great video. I am not young. I study by myself since 30 years while working. The biggest problem by self studying is the goal setting and keeping up the motivation. It is not good to change the goal, nor the book you are using. You will not achieve your goal. It is also very important to set a feasible goal, you must have the necessary back ground, otherwise you fail. If you do not make these mistakes you can learn anything and it is wonderful. You can learn until you are about 80 years old. Learning is enjoying and it empowers you. Keep on self studying! 👍

Your videos always make me wish we were having this convo over a coffee so we could talk for hours. Soon to be taking your courses. Right now self-studying algebra I, then II before I start with your college algebra course. Just completed a basic math book! Starting from foundation!