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Here Be Blunders

On the Hacker News front page this week: "What I learned from six months of being stupid on purpose" - stop living in tutorials, build small real things, and treat every error as the lesson.

Here be blunders. That is the route.

Learning something from zero? Chart it as small real things to make, not videos to finish. Each island is one build with a done test, a cap on watching time, the mistake to expect and one beginner question worth asking. The things that usually make you quit are marked on the chart as hazards.

Try a chart:

1 What you are learning

2 Your time and your hazards

What usually makes you quit (up to 3)

3 The chart

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1

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Build
Done when
Learns
Stumble to expect
Ask

Every island

    Hazards on this chart

    Week by week

      4 Plot the route

      One run judges the goal and writes the route: each island one small real thing to make, with a done test, its hours, a cap on watching time, what it teaches, the stumble to expect and a beginner question to ask - plus a rule for each hazard and what to do in your first hour.

      The verdict comes in a fixed order: rethink the X when the goal is not one thing you could make or show (three quick tries and three sharper goals); first leg when the model's rough estimate of the hours the goal needs is more than your total (the route ends on a first real milestone); otherwise reachable.

      Pricing as soon as the session is ready...

      5 Saved charts

      How the numbers are worked out

      Your total is hours a week times weeks. The number of islands follows a fixed rule on that total: up to 3 hours gives 3 islands, up to 8 gives 4, up to 24 gives 6, more gives 8 (a goal to rethink always gets 3 quick tries). The first island takes at most 2 hours, so you land something in the first sitting. Each island allows at most 15 minutes of watching or reading per hour; the rest is making. The starter route splits your hours by weight - 1 for the first island, 2 for the middle ones, 3 for the last - in half-hour steps. The week-by-week plan lays the islands end to end at your hours a week, with week 1 starting next Monday in the calendar file. The model's estimate of the hours a goal needs is a rough guess, not a measurement.