The Button That Didn't Exist
I was staring at my screen for a solid three minutes.
ChatGPT had just told me: "Click on the Settings icon in the top right corner."
Simple enough. Except... there was no Settings icon. I scanned the top right. Nothing. I scanned the entire top bar. Nothing. I zoomed in. I zoomed out. I started questioning whether I was on the right page, the right app, the right dimension of reality.
So I did what I always do when I'm lost: I took a screenshot and sent it back.
"This is what I see. I don't see the Settings icon you're talking about."
And ChatGPT replied: "It's right there. Third icon from the right. The gear symbol."
I looked again.
There it was. Exactly where it had always been. Exactly where I had looked seventeen times.
My eyes had seen it. My brain had not.
The Learning Paradox Nobody Warns You About
When you're learning something new—a new tool, a new IDE, a new interface—there's a phenomenon that happens that nobody prepares you for:
Your eyes see the page. Your brain sees chaos.
This isn't a failure of intelligence. It's not a sign that you're "not technical enough." It's how human perception actually works.
When I first opened VS Code, what I experienced wasn't a code editor. It was an overwhelming wall of panels, icons, tabs, and tiny symbols that might as well have been hieroglyphics. My eyes saw pixels arranged on a screen. My brain saw *noise*.
The same thing happened with PowerShell. That dark terminal window with its blinking cursor? For the first few weeks, every time I looked at it, my brain registered it as hostile territory. The information was there. My eyes were receiving it. But processing it into something meaningful? That took time. A lot of time.
Why Your Brain Can't Keep Up
Here's where it gets philosophically interesting.
Our brains don't actually show us reality. They show us a *processed version* of reality—one that's been filtered, interpreted, and filled in based on what we already know.
Think about this: The images your eyes capture are literally upside down. Light enters through the lens and projects an inverted image onto your retina. Your brain quietly flips it right-side up without ever telling you it's doing the work.
Or consider color. Most of your color-detecting cells are packed into a tiny spot at the center of your retina. In your peripheral vision, you're mostly seeing in black and white. But we perceive a continuous, full-color world because the brain fills in what it expects to be there based on context and memory.
And here's my favorite example: piano music.
A piano is technically a percussion instrument—hammers striking strings, each note a separate impact that immediately starts to decay. Yet skilled pianists can make it sing as smoothly as a violin. How? Partly through technique: overlapping notes, careful dynamics, and pedal work create the physical conditions for smoothness. But the brain does the rest. It groups those discrete sounds into a continuous stream—the same way it perceives smooth motion in a film made of still frames. What you hear isn't quite what's there. It's a collaboration between the instrument, the player, and your perception.
This is what's happening when you're learning something new.
Your brain hasn't built the patterns yet. It hasn't learned which signals matter and which ones are noise. It hasn't figured out how to connect the dots into something that makes sense.
So you stare at a page full of information... and see nothing useful.
The Frustrating Middle Part
Here's what the learning curve actually feels like:
Week 1: ChatGPT says "click here." You can't find "here." You take a screenshot. You go back and forth four times. You finally find it. You feel exhausted by something that should have taken two seconds.
Week 3: ChatGPT says "click here." You only need *one* screenshot this time. Progress?
Week 6: ChatGPT says "click here." You find it on the second look. Your brain is starting to recognize the patterns.
Week 12: ChatGPT says "click here." You already clicked before it finished the sentence.
That progression is real. But when you're in Week 1, Week 12 feels impossible.
What Nobody Tells Knowledge Workers
If you're a knowledge worker trying to learn AI tools, Python, automation, new software—anything technical that didn't exist in your world six months ago—I want you to know something:
The difficulty you're experiencing is not a sign that you're bad at this.
It's a sign that you're doing something genuinely hard.
Your brain is literally building new pathways. It's learning to recognize patterns it has never encountered before. It's trying to make sense of visual and conceptual information that doesn't connect to anything it already knows.
That takes time. That takes repetition. That takes patience.
And most importantly: *that takes doing the thing badly for a while.*
What Actually Helps
A few things I've learned from being the person who couldn't find the button:
Take screenshots constantly. Not because you're failing—because you're communicating. When I send a screenshot to ChatGPT and say "This is what I see," I'm not admitting defeat. I'm giving my AI assistant the context it needs to help me.
Narrow it down. When you can't see what you're looking for, zoom in. Literally and figuratively. Focus on one corner of the screen. One menu. One section. Don't try to process the whole page at once.
Expect the back-and-forth. In the beginning, nothing is quick. A task that will eventually take 30 seconds might take 15 minutes when you're learning. That's not wasted time—that's your brain building the shortcuts it will use later.
Trust that it gets easier. Because it does. The interface that looked like chaos becomes familiar. The terminal that felt hostile becomes a tool. The code that was illegible becomes readable.
Not because the thing changed. Because your brain did.
The Gift of Patience
I used to feel embarrassed when I couldn't find something that was "right in front of me." I thought it meant I wasn't cut out for this.
Now I understand: my eyes were seeing it all along. My brain just hadn't learned to process it yet.
That's not a limitation. That's how learning works.
So if you're in the middle of learning something new, and you're frustrated because you can't find the button, can't parse the code, can't make sense of what's on your screen—give yourself grace.
Your eyes are doing their job. Your brain will catch up.
It just needs a little more time.
Still taking screenshots, still asking "where is this thing you're talking about," still trusting that eventually I'll see what was there all along.
P.S. That Settings icon I couldn't find? I can spot it instantly now. But I'll never forget the seventeen times I looked right at it and it was invisible to me.
P.P.S. To everyone learning something new who thinks "I should be faster at this by now"—no, you shouldn't. You're exactly where you need to be. Keep going.