Learning to Learn - 0. Intro

So I hit Platinum in Overwatch

I know this is a bit out of left field. Your reaction is probably “who the f*ck cares?“. And rightfully so, but bear with me for a minute. For those not familiar, platinum isn’t a particularly impressive rank, at roughly the 60th percentile. It’s literally just the average rank of the playerbase. Hell, it’s not even the first time I’ve hit plat before. So what makes this time so special? And why am I even talking about it on a blog dedicated to programming? Let me share a little story.

In 2016, Overwatch was released. It was a game that was truly special. While clearly taking inspiration from some of it’s predecessors, it improved on almost every aspect of gameplay, with beautiful looking graphics that somehow ran on even the most low-end of PCs, all packaged into 21 fun and zany heroes to pick between. There was truly something for everyone, and I was instantly hooked. Over the years, Overwatch would end up going through many controversies, from scandals at Blizzard, the content drought that lasted multiple years, to the cancellation of the highly anticipated PvE but my love for the game never died out. The base game was fun, and that was good enough for me. None of that would ever change for me.

There was however, one problem. I was in gold. Not just that, I was hard stuck. At this point, I had put close to 500 hours in but somehow I could never find the way to get out of gold. Sure I did actually reach plat a couple of times. But it was always seemingly because I was playing with better friends and we’d found ourselves a massive winning streak, either that or I would barely graze plat and immediately go on a massive losing streak that sent me to the bottom of gold once again. And it wasn’t for a lack of trying either. I wasn’t just playing casually, I was having dicussions with mates about what strategies worked and what didn’t. I was looking up guides and learning the nuances of hero interactions. I was sitting down and reviewing my games, but no matter what I did, nothing seemed to stick and I could never consistently get out of Gold. All this while I could see the people around me progressively getting better at the game, and not just hitting plat but the ranks above that.

The Seed of Doubt

Now you might be thinking something to the effect of “Welp, you’ve tried your best, but you can’t be good at everything. There are plenty of other things I’m sure you could work on” and at the time, I thought the exact same thing. Overwatch just wasn’t for me, and it’d be something that I’d never be good at. And that was fine. I would play on and off over and over again and everything was fine. That’s what I told myself, but the truth was was that it was always a chip on my shoulder that I held onto for years. Not enough to effect my day to day life, but enough to cast this seed of doubt in my mind. “There are things that for others seem easy, that I can truly try my best in that I couldn’t even get to an average level in”. It genuinely bugged me, my personality is just like that. It was small but insiduous, and as I slowly found more things that I wasn’t able to do well despite trying, the seed blossomed in a way I might have not have liked it to.

Overcoming the Fear

Recently though, I’d been reflecting alot on the way I learnt things. I wanted to get better at programming, but not only that, I wanted to get better at learning in general. This lead me down a path of information gathering and introspection, and along the journey, I thought to myself “why not give getting good at Overwatch one more try?”. I felt as though I had some new tools that would make this attempt a little bit better. And so I started grinding the game once again. This time though, equipped with new knowledge, I changed several things about the way I played. And surprisingly, it worked. Within 2 months, I’d hit plat twice more. However, for the first time in almost 8 years, I felt like I had done it in a way where I was truly deserving of the rank. Instead of having no clue what I had done to get me there, I could point to specific things and changes to my gameplay and learning style that had gotten me there. Instead of the constant fear that I would fall out again if I let up the hard work, I was confident that if I were to fall out again, I would be able to make it back again just as easily. I think it was at this point that I had truly hit plat for the first time.

So what did I do differently this time? That’s what I want to bring to you in today’s post. I’ll be listing a few things that I did that helped me to rank up. And not just get the rank I wanted, but in a way that was sustainable and restored some confidence in my ability to… well learn. While I guess you could just look at this through the lens of Overwatch, my goal is to share insight that can be applied to almost any discipline that you might want to improve in. Though I sometimes do refer to my ranking up experience, I’ve tried my best some of my other interests as examples of how this can be applied to really almost anything in your life, from sports, relationships, work, or creative endeavours.

The Three Areas

Anyways, with that long intro out of the way, I ultimately wanted to highlight 3 key areas that I found had a significant effect on my learning:

1. Consistency
2. Systems
3. Reflection

Over the course of the next three posts, I’ll be unpacking each one of these. I’ll teach you what they are, why they are so important to understand, and hopefully provide some actionable steps that you can take to apply them to your life. Despite the opening story of this post, this is all advice that I’ve applied to other areas of my life not just in gaming, but from programming, sports, and art, and it’s my hope that you can find use for this as well. These techniques aren’t just based on anecdotal experience either. They are backed by science, which means that they are all proven to work not just for me, but for many others as well.

I also want to be perfectly clear that I have not completed this journey. Not by a long shot, and perhaps some of my takeaways may change as I keep going. That being said, I feel comfortable enough sharing my progress so far. Think about as my story rather than a set of instructions from a well learned authroity if that helps. The hope is that this series can resonate with someone like me, who has doubted their ability to do anything. Though I can’t guarantee I’ll change that, I can at least share my own story. If even one person might find the information even halfway useful, I’d consider this a win.

Inspirations

These are all areas which I spent a significant amount of time reading and thinking about. After so much time spent, I think I was able to extract some useful information that I’d like to share. Though I have taken advice from a whole host of educators (and perhaps people who wouldn’t even consider themselves educators in the first place) in many different fields that I am interested in, I’d like to give particular credit to a small fraction of them who influenced this blog, though please be aware that I wouldn’t be able to fit everyone who inspired me in here as the list would quickly grow out of hand.

• Healthy Gamer / Dr K.
  • A channel focused around mental health. Despite the name, the channel consistently covers topics from everyday life unrelated to gaming. I find Dr K. to be a highly empathetic person, and he covers plenty of problems that millions of people struggle with, such as brainrot, procrastination, focus, relationships and almost anything else you could ever want. His explanations are simple, and he gives short actionable steps if you ever find yourself in seemingly impossible situations. I can’t recommend this channel enough.
• Atomic Habits - James Clear
  • This is probably one of the most recommended books in the western hemisphere, but honestly for good reason. There’s fantastic advice packed from cover to cover unpacking why we seem to be able to stick to certain undesirable habits just fine, whilst seemingly doing everything we can to avoid the good ones. It’s filled with interesting stories, examples of successful people applying the exact same strategies to reach their goals, and honestly in some way influenced the writing style of this blog as well. This book should honestly be required reading for all students.
• Justin Sung
  • Though I sometimes find that he uses too much time introducing and motivating concepts rather than explainly plainly how can use them, I still found useful information here to do with how the mind processes information. His talks about encoding and retaining information were particularly helpful in rethinking the way I take in information. If you’ve ever felt something along the lines of “I’m just more stupid than others, my mind is less able to retain information compared to others”, I’d recommend giving this channel a watch.
• Awkward
  • Awkward is a grandmaster in overwatch who makes educational videos where he ranks up from unranked to GM on different heroes. Though the smurfing is controversial, I think he offers education in a way that few content creators do. Many GMs when doing similar challenges fall into the trap of explaining their entire thought process, the problem being that their thought process is optimised for performing well in GM. Awkward was not only helpful in my climb out of gold, but was also a great example of how simple and effective education can be. Also a quick shoutout for Spilo, a coach who serves a more analytical side of Overwatch in an equally digestible way, who also helped in my climb.