Find a problems you are interested in solving and that you can solve with reasonable effort. That is of course difficult in itself because it can be very hard to know how difficult a problem is. It can also be difficult finding a source of problems.

At least PerlMonks can help out with providing problems. Have a look at some of the questions people have posted in the past. Some of them will match your abilities well. Then either play around trying to find solutions yourself, or try out the solutions offered in replies and figure out how they work. That lets you see a wide range of real world problems with an even wider range of solutions.

I too get bored when I practice just for the sake of practice. When I have something that needs to be done and programming is part of the solution, then I usually don't find it boring. Some of the easiest study I have done is helping others. I often learned more trying to understand them, what they wanted and needed, and how to help them (best I could) than if I had just worked on my own.

Maybe it is a good time for you to step back and look at the big picture - your interests and aptitudes, what you want to be doing for the next few years and what that requires. Also to try to understand why you become bored or distracted. What makes those unprofitable things so appealing?

Many thanks Grandfather and ig for you contribution i am grateful and will act on your suggestions. Once again thanks.

I can only tell you that my principal motivations in school for math and then programing were

• deep satisfaction when solving problems

• laziness (no need to learn many obscure rules or vocabulary by heart like in languages, understanding a basic set was enough¹)

• predictability (no room for interpretation if something is correct, i.e. different teachers same objective mark²)

I can't talk of possible different motivations of others which "aren't bored", I'm curious to hear them.

But if none of these reasons apply to you, you should consider doing something which really satisfies you.

Life's too short to ignore your talents! =)

¹) that's why I dropped organic chemistry in high school

²) essays were a horrible numberwang when confronted with different teachers, but maybe I'm either too autistic or too rebellious in this respect.

hi LanX, thanks for your response. Do not get me wrong i have a genuine love for what i do and that's programming. My area of weakness as a learner is on the subject of boredom or like writers will call "Writers Block" a period when they seem not to have the normal flow of writing which i think is the phase i am currently going through right now. Any way thanks for your comments you spoke right thanks you.

writers block? Try http://projecteuler.net/, or actual physical exercise

I agree with others: practicing for the sake of practicing will almost certainly be boring. If you dont have an important real problem to solve, I find that the best way to make a learning task enjoyable is to make it social.

The easiest means for adding a social aspect to the learning process is to find people who are asking questions, and to try to answer them. Where do you find people asking questions? Others have suggested reading and replying to posts on PerlMonks, and that is certainly one such social avenue to try. Another option is to join a mailing list for a Perl project that you like. You could also join live discussions on irc.perl.org for projects or topics that interest you. (If you don't have an irc client, you can use mibbit.) Finally, exercism is a new option I just learned about, thanks to Gabor's Perl Weekly; a series of increasingly complex tasks are posed and individuals post their solutions for various languages; you can comment on others' solutions and update your solutions in response to feedback you get.

Also Project Euler.

Update: Oops, see this has already been posted.

Just some links:

• Practice
• Mastering Skills
• Patience
• Inspiration
• Kata
• Walter Gieseking

Best regards, Karl