Ever had that weird, sinking feeling in your gut during a Tuesday afternoon where you realize you’ve been practicing a new skill for three months but feel exactly as "bad" as you did on day one? It’s a specific kind of mental fog. You're putting in the hours. You’re reading the books or hitting the gym or staring at the code, yet the needle won't move. You start to wonder you’re learning at all, or if you’re just spinning your wheels in a very expensive, time-consuming mud pit.
It's frustrating.
Actually, it’s more than frustrating; it’s the primary reason most people quit right before the breakthrough happens. This isn't just about "staying positive." There is actual neurobiology and cognitive psychology behind why your brain hides its progress from you.
The Illusion of the Flatline
We like to imagine learning as a nice, 45-degree angle pointing toward the sky. In reality, it looks more like a jagged staircase designed by someone who hates architects. You spend a lot of time on the "treads"—those long, flat stretches where nothing seems to change.
🔗 Read more: Using a credit card for free trial offers: Why your wallet keeps getting drained and how to stop it
Researchers often refer to this as the plateau effect. George Leonard, in his book Mastery, talks extensively about how the majority of any journey toward expertise is spent on these plateaus. If you only feel like you’re succeeding when you’re on the "riser" (the sudden jump in ability), you’re going to spend 90% of your life feeling like a failure. That’s a recipe for burnout.
Think about the last time you tried to learn a language. For weeks, you might struggle with basic conjugation. You wonder you’re learning because you still can't order a coffee without stuttering. Then, suddenly, one morning you wake up and the sentence structure just... clicks. Your brain wasn't doing nothing during those weeks of silence; it was engaging in what scientists call synaptic pruning and consolidation. It was building the infrastructure. You just couldn't see the construction site because it was underground.
Why Your Brain Liars to You
Our brains are remarkably bad at self-assessment. This is partly due to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, but not in the way most people think. While the effect is famous for making incompetent people feel overconfident, the flip side is that as you gain a little bit of knowledge, you become hyper-aware of how much you don't know.
The more you learn, the more the "horizon of ignorance" expands.
- You start as a "unconscious incompetent" (you don't know what you don't know).
- You move to "conscious incompetence." This is the danger zone. This is when you wonder you’re learning because you’ve finally realized how high the mountain actually is.
- It feels like regression, but it’s actually the first sign of real growth.
Take a professional golfer changing their swing. Their scores almost always go up—meaning they play worse—for several months. If they judged their progress solely by the scorecard, they’d quit. But the "worse" performance is a necessary byproduct of breaking down old, inefficient neural pathways to make room for better ones.
The Role of Myelin
If we look at the biology, learning is about myelin. Myelin is the fatty tissue that wraps around your neurons. Think of it like insulation on a copper wire. The more you practice a specific move—say, a specific finger placement on a guitar—the thicker that myelin sheath becomes.
The thicker the myelin, the faster and more accurately the electrical signal travels.
✨ Don't miss: What Time Does Burlington Close on Christmas Eve? What Most People Get Wrong
But here’s the kicker: you can’t "feel" myelin growing. There are no nerve endings on your neural insulation. You are physically changing your brain structure every time you struggle with a task, but because the "output" hasn't caught up to the "input," you feel stagnant.
Real Indicators That You Are Actually Growing
Since feelings are unreliable, we have to look for "leaky" signs of progress. These are the small things that happen when you wonder you’re learning but the reality is that you're evolving.
- The "Slow Motion" Effect: When you first started, everything felt fast and chaotic. Now, even if you can't do the task perfectly, you can see the mistakes happening in real-time. This means your processing speed has increased.
- Recovering Faster: You still mess up, but you don't spiral. You recognize the error, fix it, and move on. That’s a massive sign of "fluency" that we often ignore.
- Mental Fatigue: If you feel "brain fried" after a session, that’s actually good. It’s a sign of neuroplasticity. Research from Stanford University, particularly by Dr. Andrew Huberman, suggests that the "agitation" we feel during a hard task is the chemical trigger (involving epinephrine and acetylcholine) required for the brain to change. No agitation, no change.
- Boredom with the Basics: When the things that used to terrify you now feel "boring" or "routine," you've hit a new baseline. We tend to forget that the baseline used to be a ceiling.
The Cognitive Load Problem
Sometimes you wonder you’re learning simply because your "working memory" is full. Imagine your brain is a computer with only 8GB of RAM. If you’re trying to learn to drive a manual car, you’re using 2GB for the clutch, 2GB for the gear shift, 2GB for watching the road, and 2GB for panicking. You have 0GB left for "feeling" like you’re doing a good job.
Only when the clutch and gear shift become "automated" (moved to long-term procedural memory) does that RAM clear up. Suddenly, you feel like a "natural" driver. You weren't a natural; you just finally cleared some space in your head.
How to Stop the Mental Spiral
If you're currently in a spot where you wonder you’re learning, you need a strategy shift. You can't just "try harder." That usually leads to more frustration.
📖 Related: The UGG Tasman Slipper at Macy's: Why It’s Actually Harder to Find Than You Think
Stop measuring the outcome and start measuring the intensity. Instead of asking, "Did I get better at Spanish today?" ask, "Did I spend 20 minutes in a state of high-focus frustration?" If the answer is yes, you won't see the result today, but the biological "order" for more myelin has been placed.
Record Everything
We are experts at forgetting how bad we used to be. Keep a "Done List" instead of a "To-Do List." Look back at what you were doing six months ago. Usually, the stuff you struggled with then is now so easy you don't even think about it. That is the only honest way to track the trajectory.
Actionable Steps to Keep Going
When the doubt hits and you wonder you’re learning, use these specific tactics to ground yourself:
- Shrink the Feedback Loop: If you're working on a massive project, find a tiny sub-skill you can master in 10 minutes. This gives your brain the dopamine hit of "completion" it’s starving for.
- The 24-Hour Rule: Sleep is when the actual learning happens. Your brain replays the day’s failures at high speed to "code" the correct movements. If you’re struggling today, don't judge it until tomorrow morning after a full REM cycle.
- Vary the Context: If you’re stuck, try practicing the same skill in a weird environment. If you’re learning to code, do it in a coffee shop instead of your desk. If you’re practicing an instrument, do it standing up instead of sitting. This forces "interleaving," which strengthens the memory.
- Embrace the "Ugly" Phase: Accept that for a significant portion of the process, you will look and feel incompetent. This isn't a sign that you're failing; it’s a sign that you are currently in the "loading screen" of a new level of skill.
The next time that doubt creeps in, remind yourself that the feeling of "not knowing" is the sensation of your brain literally rewiring itself. It’s not supposed to be comfortable. If it were comfortable, you wouldn't be learning anything new; you'd just be repeating what you already know. Trust the biology. The results are coming, even if they're currently invisible.