That is all you need to know to start

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This is a heavily discussed topic when picking up a new skill or thing to do. When do you know enough to start? Subconsciously, by asking this question, many makeup an image of a perfect start they need. Be realistic, that is never the case. If your start is perfect without error, there was no learning, you already knew how to do it.

That is why the conclusion of most is to learn just enough to know what you can do, and little enough that is does not take a lot of time and makes you stop persuing. To show how little you have to know for certain impossible looking skills, here are a few:

Using the keyboard only

Alright, so what is the minimum? And how can you force yourself to learn the skill? Two simple answers:

  • Learn how to open a browser tab and search into your favorite search engine from any Operating System state
  • Unplug your computer-mouse and physically hide it

And boom, either you quit, which isn’t a word in my dictionary, or you come out as a new person that does not rely on the computer mouse.

Before you know it, you will be coding in vim, ranting about how DE’s are bloat and WM’s and Arch are computing perfection.

Using proper Operating Systems only

Be honest, most don’t bother changing the Operating System of the computer they have gotten. Call it laziness, call it ignorance, I call it being stuck in a room with windows, while there is a whole world of alternative out there.

So as the keyboard example, make what you are used to really hard and what you want to use good enough to start and expand within on. For me this meant installing a basic dual boot of a Linux distro, setting GRUB to boot-last-boot and boot into it once.

Conclusions

Setting defaults that work towards your goal are the key. Our minds are chaotic, and rational only at their peak, if at all. The occasional motivation is perfect to set yourself up for success, change your environment for the better. Perfection here is your worst possible action still being a possitive one.