When trying to learn something new, I sometimes find myself re-reading the same line over and over and not comprehending it because my mind is elsewhere. There is nothing in particular that is distracting, my mind just opts to be distracted. Ideally, we’d be at 100% all of the time, but we have to deal with our imperfect minds and develop strategies to compensate for those shortcomings.
Personally, the problem extends to other tasks, so even when writing I go through drafts in my head until I find a phrase that properly conveys meaning (It took me 6 minutes to get this far). However, with the Flatiron Labs, I find it easier to shoot from the hip with what I think and let the test tell me if I got it right. It’s a helpful way to learn how to properly use the syntax of Ruby and to learn how to develop, but sometimes when I can’t find the proper syntax, I’ll Google it and sometimes get an answer that passes the test but I don’t understand the reasoning behind it (NANP Regex, anyone?).
That’s when I can slow myself down and focus on a problem other than the prompt. I see that the mountain has been climbed, yet I do not know how. That allows me to search for the individual elements of the solution I found and research those until I feel like I understand them. It distracts me from the immediate task and helps further my understanding of the language. Being productive means more than checking off a box or getting through a page. Sometimes slowing down helps wonders.