What I found to be surprisingly helpful in not just learning, but also doing anything for an extended period of time is having a beverage next to me I can keep sipping. In my case that’s usually a beer. Table IPAs (very low alcohol: circa 2%), shandys or radlers, or entirely non-alcoholic beers, do the trick for me, but I would imagine the same would work with anything else really.

Learning as an adult tends to be seen a little bit of a historical and cultural or social anti-pattern as well. Most of my and the previous two generations were raised with a very linear approach to life: you study, you use what you studied while applying it at work for 40 years, you retire, then you die. I see a lot of people very surprised when I tell them I am studying something. To them it sounds alien and unnatural. Studying to them is a mere stage, a prerequisite to the rest of their lives. That has a changed a lot, especially in tech and medical sciences. In fact historically speaking scientists used to be the only ones who kept learning all their lives. It’s kind of cool that we now get to do the same!