Quick snippets from my morning read on Sunday, 18th October 2020
Full article: “Learn Like An Athlete”
“Even among the most ambitious individuals, learning plans are rare. Most people are reactive. They don’t plan. Like surfers in a violent ocean, they surrender to their environment. They direct their attention towards the never-ending shouts of email newsletters, friend recommendations, and social media feeds.
We can do better.
What Should You Do?
Learn in three-month sprints and commit to a new learning project every quarter.
Even the longest projects are simply a collection of short term tasks. Knowing that, you should break down the project into daily increments, and create a series of daily and weekly goals to learn the skills required to complete the project on time.
(Solomon: I particularly like this as it echoes the idea that big, tough goals can be achieved easier and faster by breaking down the task into management chunks).
The end goal should be clear. Start by writing down a positive vision of your future. Focus on the end goal, not the skill itself. For example, instead of “I want to learn how to draw,” decide: “moving forward, all the charts, graphs, and images on my site will be hand-drawn.”
Everybody loves novelty. Even if your learning plan is bounded by a strict goal, the details should be flexible. The activities should be cohesive enough to keep on track, but diverse enough to stay interesting.
For example, if you want to learn about the Space Race between America & the Soviet Union, you can read books, watch documentaries, listen to podcasts with astronauts, and explore newspaper articles from the time-period. Choose what excites you, as long as it serves the end goal.
Share your learnings. Publish an essay, a book review, an art project, or open source your code. Sharing your ideas will help you digest them, and if your posts are interesting, you may attract experts in your field of curiosity.
Sharing your work is like inviting friends to your home. It forces you to be clean and double check everything, which accelerates the learning process.”
