One of the more interesting sayings I have come across lately is: People overestimate how much they can get done in the short term but they underestimate how much they can get done in the long term.
I see this all the time with friends who pick up the guitar as a hobby. Often someone practices intensely for one week or one month and then gets frustrated at their progress. That frustration often causes people to give up. Now I see it as a mismatch between short-term estimation/expectations. The frustration is caused by overestimating how much progress they think they should make in the short-term. The quitting is caused by underestimating the progress they could make in the long term.
I've had the same experience with code. I bang my head against my desk trying to do something, go to bed, and do the thing in the first hour of my day. It's like magic.
This is actually one of the reasons I like academia so much. You are effectively paying for a scheduled practice session (ignoring discussions on tuition or the other negatives of college for the moment). Six months isn't enough to master any topic, but it is a organized timeframe in which you focus on X topic for an extended amount of time.
I see this all the time with friends who pick up the guitar as a hobby. Often someone practices intensely for one week or one month and then gets frustrated at their progress. That frustration often causes people to give up. Now I see it as a mismatch between short-term estimation/expectations. The frustration is caused by overestimating how much progress they think they should make in the short-term. The quitting is caused by underestimating the progress they could make in the long term.