School of Life

It is becoming increasingly important to keep growing effectively, not just ad hoc or out of necessity but intentionally maintaining a dedicated effort and directing it to where personal growth can make the biggest impact both to yourself and those close to you.?

Here are some of my notes on becoming a lifelong learner and student.?

Foundational Mindsets

• Foster a Growth Mindset where you see your capabilities are not limited to what you can do now. Never "I can't" but rather “I can’t yet…”. Success is achievable, not by wishful thinking but by growing and breaking through your current ceiling.

• Foster curiosity and stay humble. You can have informative discussions with people you would normally avoid and make you aware of learning opportunities you would normally miss. You just need to frame situations in a way that peaks your curiosity.
• Learning (as a lifestyle) builds momentum behind your efforts, and over time that makes you a force to be reckoned with (Positive feedback loop)

How to learn?

• Learning must be a habitual process engrained in our daily interactions and weekly schedules and routes.
• Learning is incremental in nature. We can only learn that which we almost already know (Answer to Meno's paradox)
• Stages in learning, decide what is needed up front for this round of learning (Competence Competent ladder) - Only learn what is needed in time for when it is needed.

• Explore new high-level understanding across a wide domain (more) during the early stages gradually moving to exploit existing knowledge (more) later. (Explore vs Exploit Tradeoff / Hill climbing)

• It is normal to feel less confident in your knowledge the more you know. Don't trust people that make absolute claims of truth.?

• Have a backlog for learning that you prioritize weekly for short-term (3-6 months) and monthly for medium-term (~5 Years) goals
• The act of reminding yourself of your learning goals will drive better unconscious decision-making in the present (Time Perspective)
• Monitor your learning investment (Level of current understanding vs what is needed, prioritize the backlog, etc.)
• Learning is an investment, evaluate expected effort with not just opportunity cost but also how long it will yield results. (ROI)

Tooling: Suggest creating a personal constitution to visualize your goals, Kanban boards like Trello can also be used for prioritization and tracking progress.?

Create a schedule for intentional learning efforts, it could be:

• Listening to Audible books or podcasts while driving
• Dedicated reading as part of your morning routine,
• Blocking out time in your calendar for learning effort

?Important! The higher habitual frequency with shorter sessions instead of cramming is better in the long-term

• Gather Knowledge from external sources. Evaluate the expected return (opportunity/risks) and investment (time and money) to make investments that yield better lifetime rewards.
• Online communities, articles, podcasts, and news feeds are good places to stay current and generate awareness.?Taking time to identify trusted sources to follow and relevant hashtags is a good way to improve the quality of content.?
• Books (Audio, hardcover, e-book), Short Courses, Studies, and Whitepapers are good ways to explore ideas in more detail but require more time to work through. Make sure you screen them by following the recommendations of experts and recent good ratings.

?How to retain knowledge?

• Note-taking, I suggest using a Taxonomy structure. Ontology might be more natural but is less helpful in organizing your thoughts and structuring incremental efforts.

• Play around with your categories, it will always be a work in progress
• Include an INBOX section for each category, and drop ideas here for future unpacking (Need access to this from your mobile)
• Ideas build on ideas, include areas where you can mature ideas over time e.g., Axiom > Work in Progress > Article > Subject > Book?

Tooling: I prefer OneNote but there are many note-taking tools available that support multiple levels and give cloud access across devices. Only make physical notes if you convert them digitally later, if you can't search or modify them, they will go stale.

• ?Our minds forget knowledge over time, the Spaced repetition method gives guidance to retain gained knowledge by repeating the learning at specific intervals.?
• Sleep helps 'save' new information from working to long-term memory. Linked to frequent small batch learning.?

How to utilize knowledge

The goal of learning should not be gaining knowledge but personal growth. Growth usually requires change, something that is much harder.

Some types of knowledge can be recalled when required for this you only need to know when to retrieve it e.g., IF I need to calculate gross profit margin THEN I can use the formula I saved in my Finance Section.?

Other types of learning require us to change how we see and interact with the world. We need to know it, believe it, and then do it (Head, heart, and hands).

For this type of learning, I recommend using Deliberate Practice.?When we practice intentionally over a period we train our autonomous System 1 from our conscious System 2, and over time our unconscious capabilities multiply even though we only consciously work on one or two things at a time (the ones being assimilated through practice).

My first version of "School of life" was written 9 years ago, I am glad to see that my approach has changed and am sure it will be refined even further.

What do you do that helps you on your journey of growth? Let me know in the comments of this Article.