I often think that the real magic is finding the time to take the next step.
Everything* is learnable
You simply can’t learn everything and some things are very long undertakings. There are contextual limits too – some things are very expensive to access for example. However, my general approach to things personally is that things are learnable until proven not to be. I accept that I’m extraordinarily privileged to rarely hit the contextual limits of this. For people who experience these sorts of constraints much more regularly it must be very difficult to adopt this mindset.
Oliver, I really enjoyed your reflections on mindset and learning. It is always intriguing watching things like 16 Levels of Piano. I think that the issue sometimes is that we do not know the next step. This inability to break things down leads people to talk about supposed magic:
Thanks Aaron. Great point that I didn’t really consider in this context – that breaking things down is all about the quality of resources or support for learning. I guess seeing something impenetrable broken down enough times makes it seem more doable and this could contribute to the ideas I write about. Breaking things down into manageable and logical chunks is often quite a challenge, and might need some input from someone who knows the area better than you. Certainly don’t think everything is learnable on your own, but there is so much support that can be sought out on many things these days.