I always used to get by thru classes thanks to a combination of being interested in the stuff I learned and being very good at searching. The only exception was memorization, which I struggle with — especially numbers. I never really prioritized solving that, though — I know about flashcards, but I never _needed_ them, because I figure a 90% is still an "A" and most of the time that's good enough. Like Luhmann, [I prefer to focus on things that are fun, not a chore](https://mindyourwriting.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/how-famous-researchers-work-niklas-luhmann/). That said, one of the words I dislike most is "just." Not in the _justice_ sense, but rather the sentiment that "all you have to do" is "just" this, or "just that." It's the minimization of effort that gets to me. One of the things that I learned as a teacher is that trying to convince a student that something is easy, actually makes them resist doing the work more, because they know in their heart that it's hard and to hear that it should be easy, it's demoralizing. And I've become particularly sensitive to this as a new parent, where people will tell me that all I have to do is shift this or do that, or anything that makes something seem easy, when really, it's not because every kid is different. I have made a real and genuine effort to not blog or write about parenting in general, because there are people who do that way better than I do and it's generally very high-stakes and stressful. But this phenomenon isn't just limited to parenting. What I've noticed this in the tech adjacent communities that I'm a part of is that there's this idea that you can just spin up the ghost instance and it will be smooth sailing because it's so easy (this went [very badly for me](https://www.obsidianroundup.org/billing-error-aka-the-saga-of-eleanors-corrupted-ghost-databases/)), or all you have to do is use Git for version control for your writing (git took me close to a year to become comfortable with and I'm nowhere near proficient), or spin up a website with a static site generator no problem, or whatever. There are thousands of ways that proficient people make something seem easy because it's easy to _them_. Really, though, it's easy only if you've put in the time and energy and effort to already know all of the underlying things like how to use a command line tool or how to take notes. Even things like how to read attentively instead of focusing on the words requires fundamental skills not everyone easily masters — perhaps because of a learning disability, or perhaps because they never needed the skill before. I've discussed [the difficulty of teaching notetaking](https://www.obsidianroundup.org/the-difficulties-of-teaching-notetaking/) before, but the core principles apply to many other things, including programming. I had this epiphany when I read this article [in defense of complicated programming languages](https://viralinstruction.com/posts/defense/), particularly the line about how hard it is to get people to learn something they don't need just because it might be useful later down the line. The author was talking about how video game designers are taught to "show locked doors before you show the key" and how the author struggled to figure out a particular quirk of how python's complex classes helps with code maintainability... because he'd never had to maintain a complex codebase at that stage of his education. A statement like "you simply need to..." no matter what the explanation held would not have helped the author master python classes in his youth, and too much of that sort of thing can demoralize a learner into thinking they _can't_ master the skill — when in fact the issue might instead be that they haven't seen the locked door yet. One of the things that I've really appreciated about the Obsidian community is that nobody ever made me feel dumb for not knowing things about JavaScript, or TypeScript or typed languages, or CSS, or Git or version control, or zettelkaten, or MOCs, or... All those are things that you don't need to know in order to use Obsidian. Like python classes, they can help with the maintainability of your systems, and they often come up when you're swimming in the same waters as people who have been casually writing bash scripts to solve problems for themselves for the last 15 years, or who think that autohotkey scripts are intuitive, and that using text expanders in general are something that of course everyone does. My husband once expressed shock that I had never built my own computer. It was so easy, he thought — something everyone should be able to do before they graduated high school. All his friends had, after all. He considered it a basic skill, like cooking an egg or changing one's oil & tires. I'll confess I've also never done — but I'm very good at changing diapers and other child-related tasks had never come within a mile of before. Tell me, which one do you think is more basic to running a household? And are any of them actually all that easy if you've never seen them done before? If you haven't already run into all the common ways things can go sideways and learned how to adapt and overcome? I'd argue not. Further, I'd argue that if you're struggling to figure out why something as "simple" as a zettelkasten system ("it's just like index cards, they used to teach this method in grade school") or "maps of content" or github or discord or dataview queries ("it's just like mysql") or CSS or markdown syntax (which programmers love because it's "so straightforward and uncluttered") ... ...doesn't feel simple at all, don't feel bad. Don't give up. Just remind yourself that sometimes people communicate in unhelpful ways, and have different backgrounds. Focus less on how easy something seems like it _should_ be and where possible, try to find people to learn from who have similar situations and backgrounds to you, because it's often less frustrating. ## Additional Examples / Resources - [An example of this from Sewing Twitter](https://twitter.com/lingerie_addict/status/1431371309691412494)