Learn Anything
Hacks, approach and resources
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Friends,
In talks that I give surrounding education, tech and the future, I recount the scene in the matrix when Neo (Keanu Reeves) downloads knowledge and learning and ends up knowing “Kung Fu”. Perhaps we might end up in a post-Neuralink world where something like that is actually possible. Maybe this lifetime.
“Stop trying to hit me and hit me”
I got called out on something I said the other day. I said that you could learn (almost) anything with $1000 and a chunk of time. That doesn’t mean you’re an expert, but you quickly get the know-how on context and can talk about a subject area with some level of gravitas. You don’t need to be the 10,000-hour Gladwell expert. You can just spend 20 hours to get the minimum done - if you believe Josh Kaufman:
Kaufman's process involves four steps:
Define the skill you want to learn. What exactly do you want to be able to do? Be as specific as possible.
Find a good learning resource. There are many different ways to learn new skills. Books, online courses, and tutorials can all be helpful.
Set aside 20 hours to learn the skill. This may seem like a short amount of time, but it's enough to make significant progress.
Practice, practice, practice. The more you practice, the better you'll become at the skill. (and obviously, use Quizlet)
So there are also smarter ways to think about “getting smart”:
Hacking: You don’t need 10,000 hours. You might need more than 20 - but what’s key is the process. You’ll find people who are experts in their field. My favourite hack is to download (on Kindle) the top 20 books in a certain niche and then read/skim the first chapter of that book. Downloading a chapter is free - and the first chapter or the introduction is usually the best chapter in any non-fiction book in skilling you up quickly.
Components: If you really need to learn something, you need to define your roadmap for learning. What are the key principles of a specific subject - Once you have broken that down using Google/Bard/ChatGPT - you can get to the inner nuance of what things mean and how they are intertwined with other principles.
Teach: There’s an ad in the UK for the teaching profession with the tagline “Those who can, teach”. I like to reinterpret that for learning. If you can teach the subject, you’ll know it. I remember trying to learn about blockchain from a conceptual basis - and when I flipped my process into needing to explain it to others, so did my brain. Learn to teach to a kid and you’ll get to learn effectively. You may only know the tip of the iceberg, but you then have the agency to decide how much you want to learn.
Sound: Other tools that have helped me (and others) include - using binaural beats for focus. Some people believe that binaural beats can help with learning by increasing focus, attention, and concentration. There is some scientific evidence to support this claim. For example, one study found that people who listened to binaural beats while studying were better able to remember information than those who did not listen to binaural beats.
Environment: The last area is around having a clean environment, both digitally and physically - and spatially. So, clear the docs, tabs and notifications you don’t need - and the junk on your desk - and set a stopwatch to get your Pomodoro on.
Personally, I’m a junkie for the tools of people like Jim Kwik who help to upgrade your technique and brain. If you’re really interested in the space, I would read How We Learn by Benedict Carey which covers the cognitive process:
Learning is not just about memorizing facts. It is also about understanding concepts and being able to apply them to new situations.
The best way to learn is to be actively engaged in the learning process. This means doing more than just passively listening or reading.
Learning is more effective when it is challenging but not overwhelming. If something is too easy, we won't learn anything. If it is too difficult, we will get discouraged and give up.
Learning is social. We learn best when we interact with others and share our ideas and also when Learning is fun. If we enjoy the learning process with others, we are more likely to stick with it.
Those principles are what education companies build on to break down the process of learning. To learn, you need to know how your own brain works, your own learning style and your mode. But going back to my point before, you can find books and tools to really help you learn anything (within roughly $1000).
If you don’t like my Kindle book hack, you can always learn from summaries that will give you the 80/20. Blinkist and Shortform are my favourites. But for scope and scale there are so many online platforms that allow you to “learn anything”
Tech-focused platforms like Educative, Brilliant, Udacity, Datacamp, CodeAcademy, Pluralsight, Treehouse
Broad online Video courses like Udemy, Skillshare , Creativelive, Domestika & LinkedIn Learning as well as niche areas like IdeoU, altMBA
Expert Platforms from Maven, Masterclass
University-level learning from platforms like Coursera, Edx , FutureLearn, Get Smarter or even directly from universities like Insead, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Oxford - or maybe even mobile-only MBAs
I’m currently binging on Mindvalley and Gaia for my own personal growth.
And obviously you can learn a language with Duolingo, Lingopie, Babbel, Rosetta using Prep.ly to connect you with humans who can help.
And remember we are in a world where courses from Khan Academy and Ted-Ed are close to replacing a whole school curriculum - and platforms like YouTube and TikTok have made it possible to learn almost anything. I’m bullish on these “open platforms” and what generative AI can bring to the learning game. Some are waiting for the next AI learning platform - but it’s going to be the large ones with might that will layer up with AI to become GPTpowerful.
AI will be used to improve student learning with personalized feedback on essays, summarised articles, and steps to support problem-solving. This season will start to see how students jump or not jump onto the AI bandwagon. Ultimately they will jump on to the products and courses that will help them learn to their goal. Some students will be able to use AI to cheat - but my points are about learning, not just “passing” a test. And a self-driven student looking to learn doesn’t want to cheat themselves (we hope). We forget that the Internet has really changed the way that we used to learn in the past. Much of this story is about access to new modes, synchronous and asynchronous. Twenty years ago, access to education was limited. Now with internet access comes education access. AI will be the next game changer, but the story is still being written. And maybe just maybe, one day I will learn Kung-Fu from a brain implant.
Stay Curious - and don’t forget to be amazing,
PS Please do comment with resources that I have missed
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Here are my recommendations for this week:
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The Street Price of a Gram of Cocaine - not quite the new McDonald’s index but an interesting lens. (NB - I don’t condone drugs!) Related: I Used to Do Drugs Every Weekend. Here's When I Realised I Had a Problem. (NB. Note not me!) and The History And Potential Of MDMA
28 Questions to Ask Your Boss in Your One-on-Ones….or if you are the boss, to be able to answer
The future is disabled - We need to take steps toward a more inclusive future—one that we all can inhabit
Books with the power to change your perspective - 45 books that have changed people's perspective on something important — novels and non-fiction, classics and little known gems.
We need to reimagine how we organise and act - We have entered a time of increasing disruption, change, and risk. The challenges and opportunities we face today are complex, hyper-connected, and consequential. How we navigate them will determine the quality of life for future generations. Also: Rewired to outcompete
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AI Tool Report: Learn AI in 5 Minutes a Day We'll teach you how to save time and earn more with AI. Join 70,000+ free daily readers for trending tools, productivity-boosting prompts, the latest news, and more. Check it out!
An Interview with Marc Andreessen about AI and How You Change the World - A deep dive with the co-founder of the Andreessen Horowitz. Also see his recent essay that I shared a few weeks ago: Why AI will save the world
Whose generated line is it anyway? AI tries to crack humour’s DNA
A Netflix standup show was ‘written by bots’. A TV writer has scripted joke software. And now artificial intelligence is taking on improv.
In Classrooms, Teachers Put A.I. Tutoring Bots to the Test Public schools are cautiously trying out a new automated teaching aid from Khan Academy. The preliminary report card: “could use improvement.”
AI Leapfrogging: How AI Will Transform “Lagging” Industries - We believe that the same way mobile payments leapfrogged credit cards in some markets, and mobile phones leapfrogged desktop computers in developing economies, AI too will (at least initially) leapfrog more legacy technologies that don’t have a “good enough” palliative (I mean alternative) in place. Also see: AI and The Burden of Knowledge
Google DeepMind’s CEO Says Its Next Algorithm Will Eclipse ChatGPT - Demis Hassabis says the company is working on a system called Gemini that will tap techniques that helped AlphaGo defeat a Go champion in 2016. Also see: The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier
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