u/Fisher844344

This has been bothering me for a while and Im not sure if its just me or a normal part of learning.

Ill sit down and actually learn something properly. Could be grammar, writing, or even something small. I understand it, it makes sense, and if someone tests me on it right after, I get it right almost every time. But when I go back to doing things normally, I fall into the same mistakes again like nothing changed. Its not like I dont know the correct version. Sometimes I even notice the mistake right after Ive already made it. It just doesnt show up at the moment I actually need it. Recently I tried doing things a bit differently. Instead of just learning new stuff, I started paying attention to the mistakes I repeat. I mixed in some small exercises and random practice methods, even tried a few quiz-style things (one of them was called grammarerror, nothing fancy but it made me notice patterns a bit more). That helped a little, but I still feel like theres a gap between understanding and actually doing.

Is this just part of the process, or is there something specific people do to break out of this loop?

I forced myself to stop building in isolation and start talking to real people.

Here’s what happened:

• 2 people were genuinely interested
• 5 said “cool idea” but didn’t really care
• 5 didn’t fully understand what I was trying to do

Honestly, that was more valuable than months of coding alone. I realized my idea wasn’t as obvious as I thought, explaining it out loud exposed all the gaps.

At one point, I was frustrated because nothing was clicking. I tried different approaches: watching random breakdowns, reading other founders’ posts, even flipping through a few structured guides. One of them, i have an app idea, didn’t solve everything, but it forced me to rewrite my pitch from scratch using some prompts. Tedious at first, but it made the explanation way clearer.

A small revelation: the only people who cared all shared the same pain point. Everyone else didn’t. That completely changed who I thought the app was for.

Curious how do you test ideas early without building too much? Do you lean on conversations, mockups, landing pages, or something else?

Looking back, I don’t know what I was thinking.
I had an idea, got excited, found a developer on Upwork who seemed legit, and just… started. No wireframes, no clear scope, no real plan. Just a rough description and a lot of enthusiasm.

Three months and about $6,500 later I had something that kind of worked but wasn’t really what I had in mind. Every time I tried to explain a change, something else broke or the cost went up. I didn’t understand enough about the process to know whether the requests were reasonable or not, so I just kept paying.

I’ve been watching a lot of youtube videos and reading some guidebooks, trying to figure out what I should’ve done first. A lot of the advice is pretty technical, which didn’t help me much. I also came across i have an app idea, which was one of the few guidebooks that looked at it from a non-technical perspective focusing on what you should actually figure out before even bringing a developer on board. I didn’t agree with everything, but it made me rethink how I approached the whole process.

I'm curious to know about similar experiences. If you’ve hired a developer before, what do you wish you’d had ready before that first conversation?