How learning to code cured me of a "learning disability"

Full disclosure. I do not have a ‘clinically’ valid learning disability. But if we look closely, we all have a learning disability. Our attitude.

****

OK. I admit it. I love to code. But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, I am a perfect cliché. I started enjoying it only when I stuck with it for so damn long that I started to get the hang of it. To be clear, coding is the only thing I've ever done where one spends most of one's time 'failing' - broken code is the norm, and fixing it, finding bugs, building stuff that works smoothly requires inordinate patience, research, focus, and persistence. But that is also the lesson.

As we get older, the truth is, we acquire a learning disability – our attitudes and expectations. Even if our conscious minds accept the science of neuroplasticity, our subconscious beliefs haven’t internalised this knowledge. In fact, we aren’t even conscious of the litany of excuses that run through our mental operating system as to why we won’t acquire new knowledge or skill. Here are some you’ll recognise:

(i)            You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

(ii)           Only kids can learn new things fast.

(iii)         It’s too hard.

(iv) I hated school/uni.

(v)          Its better to stick to what you’re good at than learn new stuff. Who has the time.

(vi)           You’ve got to be a nerd / genius/ brainiac.

(vii)          You’ve got to have a certain bent of mind / I'm not that 'type'.

Only the last one is true, and not in the way you’re using it.

For years I thought that you had to be “off the charts” smart to be a coder. It seemed an intellectual superpower. It was only when I read about Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, and many others being self-taught, as kids, in the pre-internet era that I started to think – hang on…..that doesn’t add up. If these people could teach themselves as kids, when all they had was school projects and old manuals, then this isn’t about innate genius. This is about persistent effort. I started to research this more, and realised a lot of coders are self-taught, and don’t view themselves to be particularly gifted. Like all skills, the outliers are gifted. But they’re outliers…the good and great ones just kept doing it and got good enough to do whatever they wanted.

I started to see a pattern. As a “recovering lawyer”, I’ve been told that “you must be really smart to be a lawyer”. I disagree. I know plenty who aren’t. I know plenty of fancy executives who aren’t either. I know gardeners who are incredibly technically switched on. I know people who can’t speak English who are ridiculously analytical and clued-in. I know doctors who have no street smarts. I know coders who I would consider weak at almost anything else

Clearly, my beliefs were wrong. “Smart” is a self-limiting concept because it suggests you’re born with it or not. This is a cultural bias – a belief that it is a static, innate, congenital attribute. Actually, “smarts” is always relative to a skill, and is a sliding scale, and you can move up it, in the right direction, with persistent effort.

So, I had fallen into the same error – I assumed you needed to already possess great “smarts” to be a coder, just like others presumed you needed great smarts to qualify in law.

Can you imagine if Henry Ford, Edison, Jobs, the Wright Brothers, Disney and others thought that? What would our world be like?

No. Not worth thinking about. Instead, let’s focus on how we disable and disqualify ourselves from learning through a combination of false beliefs, and false expectations. That way, we self-correct when we disqualify ourselves. Better still we can make sure we don’t infect our kids with our false beliefs.

False Belief 1

Smartness is inherent. 

Nope. Its acquired. And since it’s always relative, you’re always dumber than someone else. So keep growing.

False Belief 2

My brain doesn’t learn as fast as I get older.

Actually, not true. Really. In fact, as you get older you learn how to learn better. Unlike your body, your mind at age 75 can be orders of magnitude better than it was 25. Ask Benjamin Franklin. 

What really happens is that our focus, attention, self-belief and discipline weaken and atrophy as we get older – through lack of exercise. It’s not age – it’s that we’re out of practice. We have become intellectually flabby. For many of us, the last time we really studied something was at Uni, and that was years ago. We kept learning what we loved to learn (hobbies, how to use facebook, open-water SCUBA diving, how to upload filtered pictures on Instagram) because we found it enjoyable. But the stuff that is “work” we tend to avoid, and so lose practice.

You can get it back. And get better with time. Guaranteed.

False Belief 3

It comes easier to other people.

This one is particularly pernicious because it makes us feel inadequate, overwhelmed and hence is incredibly discouraging – to the point that we don’t even try to take the first step. And it’s simply not true. That is just how it appears.

Let me tell you how deceptive this appearance is. 

We tend to judge our insides by other peoples’ outsides.

Read that again. 

We compare our innermost thoughts and feelings with how people appear on the outside. In a world viewed through Instagram filters this will make us all feel incompetent, fat, ugly, stupid, and poor.

In fact, the belief that it comes easier to others is so pernicious, that even my closest family assume I am “naturally motivated”.

Let me put this to rest now. Motivation was the result of applying the learnings that I’m now, finally, spilling out in this blog. It was not the cause. It was a consequence.

Let me labour this point.

It was hard. It is hard. It will continue to be hard. Even today I have an internal struggle, almost every day, on things I’ve been doing for years. Some days I’m motivated, but my mind still wants to seduce me to take the easy way. I don’t always WANT to practice code, read, ride instead of take a tram, go to the gym, abstain from extra pie. I almost never FEEL like it. Every single day my mind comes up with hundreds of excuses or slippery ways to trick me into taking the easy way out. The only thing that is easier, is recognising what my mind is doing.  Because as Tony Robbins says:

" It’s not your mind, it’s THE mind. "

And then I do it anyway. That’s not motivation. That’s discipline. Motivation is a flaky friend that relies on charm to win you over. Instead, discipline wears a smelly hoody, sits in the corner and doesn’t say much, but shows up every time, is reliable and delivers the goods.  

That’s the rule to manage False Belief 3 (you may never get rid of it, so just manage it). It doesn’t come easy to anyone. It just gets easier to manage the more you practice managing it. You’re never going to feel like it – so do it anyway. Just do it. Anyway.

Then others can look at you and say it came easy to you.

Oh, and it’s not just me. Take any person who inspires you. I mean it – any person at all. And ask them. Or read about them. You will see that it looked easy because you only saw the briefest, most superficial sliver of their life. And you saw it through your filter. Behind the scenes they worked and worked and practiced and overcame resistance, negativity, and failure repeatedly with no evidence that it was going anywhere, or that they were making progress.

False Expectation 1

It will get easier.

Yes. But only if you’ve stopped pushing yourself. If you’re finding it easy it’s because you’re on a plateau. Plateaus are inevitable. Just don’t stay there. Level up.

False Expectation 2

It will happen quickly.

No. it won’t. It will be harder than you expect, yet more achievable than you realise. 

Read that sentence again.

And it will take longer than you bargained. That is where most of your frustration will come from – as the passage of time will make you doubt and fear more. You will look for quick wins, and easy trophies. They will come. But well after the point you imagined, and as a reward for persisting past that trough of sorrow, when they can’t legitimately be called quick or easy anymore.

False Expectation 3

Your life will change.

Maybe. Maybe not. Only one thing is guaranteed to change. You.

And seriously, that’s the starting point. From there you can move steadily in the direction of the life changes you seek.

But the contents of your life will not change until you change. And if you have practiced persisting through repeated failure in something like learning a new skill, you will come out of it with insights and confidence that will help you overcome all the other setbacks in your life. And if you’re always trying to expand your life you will always encounter those failures. That’s good. Failure is a sign of progress. Just keep going. And remember Nastia Luskin’s rule…

What inspired me to write this specific post:

(i)            Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory

(ii)           How I built this – Podcast

(iii)         IndieHackers – Podcast with Quincy Larson, and the Indie Hackers community generally.

If would would like to talk about your journey, I would love to listen. Tweet me on @ZubinPratap. Also I add these musings to my Medium blog, so if you think anything I write is useful to someone, please share it.