Learning by doing

A small reflection on learning German, hesitation, mistakes, and becoming more comfortable with not knowing.

I’ve been learning German for a few years now.

And I still hesitate.

Sometimes I know exactly what I want to say, but I pause because I’m trying to find the right way to say it.

Sometimes I know the grammar rule but can’t remember it when I need it.

Sometimes I start a sentence, realise halfway through that I’ve constructed it incorrectly, and then have to figure out how to finish it.

And sometimes I say something that is simply wrong.

I’ve noticed that I don’t particularly like these moments.

Not because anyone is necessarily judging me. Most people are actually quite patient.

I think I don’t like the feeling of temporarily being someone who doesn’t know.

I catch myself trying to avoid mistakes

When I’m learning something, I tend to want to understand it properly.

That has served me well in engineering.

If I encounter an unfamiliar codebase, I want to understand the architecture. If I learn a new technology, I want to understand how the pieces fit together. If something doesn’t make sense, I want to keep digging until I have a mental model for it.

But I’ve noticed that this instinct doesn’t always help.

Especially with German.

There are situations where I already know enough to say something, but I hesitate because I want to construct a better sentence first.

I mentally rearrange the words.

I search for a better expression.

I check the grammar.

And sometimes, while I’m doing all of this, the moment disappears.

I knew enough.

I just didn’t trust what I knew enough to use it.

The strange thing about mistakes

When someone corrects my German, I usually remember the correction.

Much more than I remember something I studied from a grammar book.

There is something about making the mistake myself that makes the information stick.

I might say something incorrectly and someone responds with the natural way of saying it.

And suddenly I notice the difference.

Not because I have memorised another rule.

Because I needed the sentence.

That has made me look differently at mistakes.

I still don’t enjoy making them.

But I’m starting to see that a mistake contains something useful that a correct answer doesn’t.

It tells me where my current understanding ends.

I don’t actually know as much as I think I do

There is another uncomfortable part to this.

Sometimes I recognise a German word immediately when I read it.

Then, a few days later, I need the same word in a conversation and can’t remember it.

I know it.

But I don’t know it yet.

At least, not in the way I want to know it.

This distinction has become interesting to me.

There is knowing something when you encounter it.

And there is being able to reach for it when you need it.

The second kind seems to require a lot more exposure.

And probably a lot more failed attempts.

This isn’t really about German

The more I notice this, the less I think it is a German problem.

I’ve seen the same thing in software.

I can read documentation about a framework and feel like I understand it.

Then I open a real project and realise that I don’t understand nearly as much as I thought.

I’ve done this with codebases too.

I’ve read through an architecture and thought I had a reasonable mental model, only to make a small change and discover that one of my assumptions was completely wrong.

There is always a moment where reality tells me:

“That’s not quite how this works.”

Those moments can be frustrating.

But they are also useful.

My mental model has just become slightly more accurate.

I am beginning to like the second attempt

The first attempt is usually awkward.

The second attempt is interesting.

After making a mistake, I now have something I didn’t have before.

I have information.

I know what didn’t work.

I know where I hesitated.

I know what I misunderstood.

The second attempt isn’t starting from zero.

It is starting from experience.

I think this is one of the reasons I have become more interested in learning through doing.

Not because doing is always faster.

But because it exposes the gaps in my understanding much more clearly.

There is still a lot of hesitation

I don’t want to turn this into a neat story where I discovered the secret and now happily make mistakes all the time.

That’s not what happened.

I still hesitate.

I still overthink sentences.

I still sometimes choose not to speak because I don’t know how to say something.

I still occasionally walk away from a conversation thinking:

“I should have just said it.”

And perhaps that’s actually worth writing down.

Because I don’t want this blog to become a collection of lessons that make everything look obvious in retrospect.

The interesting part, for me, is the uncertainty while I’m actually going through it.

Trying before understanding completely

I’ve noticed another pattern in myself.

I often want to understand something before I try it.

But sometimes trying is precisely what would help me understand it.

That sounds obvious when I write it down.

It doesn’t always feel obvious in the moment.

With German, I could spend another hour learning vocabulary.

Or I could have a conversation and discover the five words I actually needed.

With a codebase, I could keep reading.

Or I could trace one user flow and discover where my mental model breaks.

With almost anything new, there seems to be a point where more preparation stops being preparation and starts becoming avoidance.

I’m not always very good at recognising that point.

Being wrong is part of knowing

I think I’m slowly becoming more comfortable with the idea that understanding something doesn’t mean having a complete explanation for it.

My current understanding can simply be my best model so far.

It can be wrong.

Someone can show me something I missed.

I can change my mind.

I can try again.

There is something freeing about that.

It means I don’t have to protect the things I currently believe.

I can let them be provisional.

Why I’m writing this down

This is also part of why I wanted to start this almanac.

I don’t want it to be a collection of conclusions.

There are plenty of places for polished explanations.

What interests me more is the trail that leads to them.

The things I tried.

The things I misunderstood.

The questions I keep returning to.

The ideas that sounded good until I actually tried them.

The small discoveries that changed how I think about something.

And sometimes, simply writing down:

I don’t know yet.

I think there is value in leaving some of the thinking unfinished.

For now

I’m still learning German.

I’m still making mistakes.

I’m still learning how much I don’t know.

And I’m still trying to become a little less concerned with getting everything right before I begin.

Maybe that is the more interesting part of learning:

not reaching a point where mistakes disappear,

but becoming comfortable enough to keep going when they happen.

I’m not sure I have fully figured this out.

That’s probably why I’m writing about it.