My Biggest Weakness

One of my biggest weaknesses is that I’m impatient.

I don’t know what it is, but for some reason I feel like I’m always anxious.

This “anxiety” is especially manifest when I’m learning.

For example, this Winter break I decided to learn HTML, CSS and Javascript so I could begin building my own websites.

Except that most frustrating to me is that I don’t have the knowledge yet. Of course I understand that I can’t possibly master all the nuances of web design in a few weeks. That would take years of work.

But it is still frustrating that I cannot just do; I need to learn.

I think I feel this for two reasons: first, I, and I’m sure many others, are used to instant gratification.

Think about it. How many books or online guides have you seen that claim to help you learn something in a matter of days or weeks? Probably too many to count.

The second reason I’m frustrated is that for many of the 21 years I’ve lived, I’ve never really known what I wanted to do or learn.

If I’m not interested in something, I won’t put my full energy into it and as a result I won’t have the patience to learn because I’m not enjoying myself.

That’s just who I am as a person.

So when I see people make it big, like my buddy Mike Posner, or read about the success story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, I become envious.

Envious that I had never learned and mastered something really well when I was young.

Now, I’ll teach myself, but if I wanted to become a master programmer or musician, it’d be many years before I could realize it.

And this all frustrates the heck out of me. It frustrates me so much sometimes that I’ll procrastinate instead of working on my projects.

So to combat these feelings of frustration, anxiety and hopelessness, I’m setting goals for myself to achieve by certain ages.

This way I can look forward to reaching the pinnacle, and therefore the journey I take to get there will be that much more rewarding.

How do stay focused on learning?