Difficulty learning by reading

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Does anyone else find it difficult to learn something new (especially if it's technical) by reading about it? I don't mean simple information, like the news and such, I mean like a textbook.

I do well with visual representation of information, but reading is too exhausting. The problem is that everything is in text, and you couldn't pass in school for instance if you had trouble reading the textbooks.

Is this something I should just train myself to overcome? Or could I find a way around it?

What kind of subject are you studying? Every single university textbook I have has tons of picture diagrams.

Is the problem with processing written words, or with processing words in general?

I hate textbooks, too. I'm terrible at learning any way except hands-on and foundations first. You can give me a hundred books on watches, show me the inside of a watch, and tell me what each part does, but until I can put my hands on that watch to see how all the different gears and bits interact with each other under different circumstances to form the whole and different parts of the whole I won't understand how a watch works except in theory.

I wish I had a way around this. If you're similar and you can find any working examples of what you're learning to interact with that helps. If you look online for relevant terms you can probably find more diagrams and videos.

Words in general. In order for me to understand something, I have to produce a mental image of it, and if a sentence is too complex, my mind would get stuck on it, and I experience anxiety. It just feels inefficient and exhausting.

Programming. Pictures and diagrams are pretty limited in this field.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. Thanks.

Computer programming? Look for the Head First technical book series. They have a lot of pictures. I don't know if they have it in your language, but it would be called something like Head First Java. And their website is: http://www.headfirstlabs.com/readme.php

Also, I found

The Visual Guide to Visual C++: The Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Windows Programming Language

C Programming: Visual QuickStart Guide

Also, check the library for educational DVDs or CD-ROMs.

Thanks a bunch! I will check it out.

My sympathies for a number of reasons. Most online resources for programming I've found are messy and lack precision, context, and background.

It might help to work on small projects over studying sometimes so you can see what you're learning in action or look at fully-functional code to get a better feel for some of the ways it can be used.

I've been trying to do that, but unfortunately when you go deeper, there is just too much that requires explanation.

For me, I cannot remember information verbally given to me but I remember it better if it's written down and I read it over and over until the information is imprinted in my brain. The only subject that is exempt from that is math. I have to be shown the process of solving equations while someone explains it to me otherwise I won't understand how to do it.

Do you learn better by hearing the information or having someone show you how to do it?

I'm similar to you in that I need sensory-based translations of words to understand them -- usually imagery or spatial concepts. When I can't produce a translation of the words I sometimes get frustrated and angry. The translation process is exhausting for me as well.

I have never found any particular way around this problem. Whenever possible I try to have people to show me things and try to find ways to learn by trial and error and hands-on activities. I also search for visual materials (videos, diagrams, websites). Sometimes I'll read as many different books as I can find about the same thing -- that way I can sometimes use repeating word-patterns to help put together the fragments of understanding I have from various sources. Sometimes I make sketches/doodles/drawings and diagrams as I go along trying to understand what I'm reading, to hold the pieces "in proximity" to each other (not "held together"...to be "held together" means I understand how the pieces go together in the first place) ...sometimes this helps and sometimes it doesn't.

Oh gad, yes, I have that problem big time! By the end of the sentence I usually have no idea how it started or what I just read when I have to read textbooks.
Fiction on the other hand doesn't come with that problem (unless it's one of those really boring, pretentious novels about nothing).


If you're able to overcome it, go for it. I wasn't. The textbooks we had in physics and chemistry as well as maths (which would be text and tasks), might just as well have been written in cuneiform. But even in subjects where I was strong, I had problems getting through the dry dictionary style text in the books.