I've noticed a strange trend in my learnings over the years, which I like to call the Chapter 3 Roadblock. You may be able to guess the premise via the name, but I'll still explain this. It's quite easy to pick up a textbook and start learning. The first level of just reading or skimming the pages, is actually quite an easy hurdle to pass. The next hurdle is actually sitting down to do the problems at the end of the chapter. This is where I used to frequently close the book at, and I suspect this to be the same for many others. Learning is supposed to be hard. If it were as easy as just reading the textbook, well everyone would be learning. But doing the tough part of getting a pen and paper, and doing problems 1-9, including every subproblem a-j is hard, and is supposed to be heard because this is where you truly learn. Now, assuming we can actually get through the problems, we move on from the introductory chapter 1 to chapter 2.
Chapter 2 proves a new struggle, as now we have to learn something new, but also build upon what we've previously captured in the introductory chapter 1. This would be akin to having learned the alphabet, and now we're learning how to put letters together to make words. This is of course difficult, but doesn't feel impossible. With enough throwing of random letters together, we can piece together rudimentary words, and even give a shot at the "Advanced Problems" section.
Now we turn to chapter 3.
Chapter 3 is the highest level boss at the end of the dungeon, wielding a 20 foot obsidian sword engulfed in violet flames. Chapter 3 is where we start the meat of the textbook. And this proves to be the biggest roadblock of them all. The beauty of it though, is that once you can get through chapter 3, there's a very high likelihood that you finish the textbook to completion. Because once you finish the problems in chapter 3, that obsidian sword is in your inventory.
So my takeaway here is this: always finish chapter 3.