I switched to a much more motivating job, and then later began taking ADHD medication, each of which was a major boost. The change in motivation (when I switched from an academic lab to a small nonprofit) has more interesting factors, so to break those out:
I received more feedback and demonstrated interest from colleagues.
My colleagues respected me more—the new workplace allowed for more specialization, and was less hierarchical...
...which made it much less intimidating to ask for in-depth explanations, so I probably learned a lot faster.
Projects had much more clear-cut checkpoints and endpoints.
Individual tasks didn’t have severe failure points, so if a detail was wrong, I didn’t have to start from scratch.
I switched to a much more motivating job, and then later began taking ADHD medication, each of which was a major boost. The change in motivation (when I switched from an academic lab to a small nonprofit) has more interesting factors, so to break those out:
I received more feedback and demonstrated interest from colleagues.
My colleagues respected me more—the new workplace allowed for more specialization, and was less hierarchical...
...which made it much less intimidating to ask for in-depth explanations, so I probably learned a lot faster.
Projects had much more clear-cut checkpoints and endpoints.
Individual tasks didn’t have severe failure points, so if a detail was wrong, I didn’t have to start from scratch.