The Science of Self-Learning: How to Teach Yourself Anything, Learn More in Less Time, and Direct Your Own Education (Learning how to Learn Book 1)

by Peter Hollins

Relevant

Self-learning benefits from a mindset that isn’t always picked up in traditional institutions, but that can prove to be a major advantage in more than just education.

Your mindset helps improve your self learning

That’s the mindset of the autodidact.

Q: What is an autodidact?

An autodidact is, most simply put, a ...

An autodidact is someone who is a self learning or self educator.

An autodidact is comfortable with the notion that they’re both teacher and student, often at the same time.

Autodidact are both a teacher and a student at the same time.

All that’s required is the willingness to actively find new knowledge and to do so with a discerning, evaluative mind.

The autodidact is driven by a strong desire to acquire intelligence and is most successful when they make a concentrated and well-plotted endeavor to do so.

especially effective if they have a strong memory and can direct their own study outside of...

Autodidacts have a desire and willingness to gain new knowledge and skills. They are extremely effective when they have strong memory and are able to study outside of a classroom.

this mindset is how to take your self-learning to the next level.

autodidact mindset. Look more into this mindset

Mark Twain and Albert Einstein, both legendary autodidacts—have

You’re told what to care about and how to think. This just isn’t a sustainable formula for engagement and knowledge retention.

in self-learning you don’t have to follow a strict curriculum. There are no limits to what you can learn, and you can go much more deeply into your subject than your college professor had time for.

You can Master your subject with self learning

You go at your own pace, and you are only limited by your motivation and discipline.

You can develop self-discipline. Charting your own course in education involves planning, personal management, commitment, and execution.

self discipline is what you need to have for self learning

Building self-discipline is one of the handiest “by-products” of self-education because it can be replicated in all other areas of your life.

learning success pyramid, which identifies the necessary elements one must bring to ensure accomplishment in learning throughout their life.

Confidence. At the base of Kruger’s pyramid is the self-conviction that we can learn.

Self-management. The next tier in the learning success pyramid is organizing one’s time, resources, tools, and communication to ensure effective learning.

organizing your time or self management is another principal of self learning

When the front brain is exhausted or depleted, we experience a weariness that prevents us from getting anything done. This is known as ego depletion

The best way to combat this “brain drain” is by working on self-management skills, particularly organization. This simply means taking a lot of time ahead of any task to set up systems, routines, and actions that will make the task easier to execute on an ongoing basis.

set up systems, routines and actions so that you wont drain your brain. Self management skills

Applying this mindset to self-learning, this means putting a framework in place at the beginning that details how you’re going to execute.

Learning is handled by the back brain, which oversees memory, connections, recognition, vision, and meaning, among other functions. This is known as the hippocampus.

Research hippocampus

there are some topics that are indeed better suited to the act of self-education than others—and it boils down to the difference between arts and sciences.

Every subject or discipline is either an “art” or a “science”—not

extrinsic motivation actually detracts from intrinsic motivation:

We’re bred to want independence because it increases our own reserves of self-worth and personal power.

There’s nothing like the satisfaction of knowing you’re doing something well, that you’ve worked and practiced hard

want to believe that we offer something important to the world, that our efforts are making others’ existences more valuable, satisfied, or simply happy.

Purpose

There are three main aspects of intrinsic motivation to keep yourself moving toward your goal of self-learning: autonomy, mastery, and purpose/impact.

Reflect: What are my intrinsic motivations?

Should, should, should—the bane of all reasonable expectations.

His downfall was his expectations of his own initial abilities and how they would react to new knowledge and reading material.

Interacting with information isn’t just about expectations—it’s about planning.

SQ3R method—a method that can be transformative in your self-learning quest.

survey, Questions, Read, Recite, Review

Francis P. Robinson developed a method meant to help students really get the most comprehension from the texts they’re assigned—and,

The SQ3R method, named for its five components: survey question read recite review Survey.

The first step in the method is getting a general overview of what you’ll be reading.

Survey

If you go dive in without surveying first, you are going in blind, without understanding where you are going and what you are trying to accomplish.

Survey the material first to get an overview of what to expect and what you want to accomplish

The survey component is for you to get the most general introduction to the topic so you can establish and shape the goals you want to achieve from reading the book.

You may not need all the knowledge at the moment, but understanding everything as a whole and how it fits together will help you with the small details and when you’re in the weeds.

surveying means examining the structure of the work: the book title, the introduction or preface, section titles, chapter titles, headings and subheadings.

If the book is illustrated with pictures or graphics, you’d review them.

In using the survey step, you’re setting up expectations for what you’re going to be reading about and giving yourself an initial framework to structure your goals for reading the material.

Structure your goals of what you want to learn before you read.

When you survey and know the significance of what you’re currently learning, you are able to instantly comprehend it better.

Beyond books, you should survey all the important concepts in a discipline.

You want to form a general outline of what you’re going to learn.

So in this phase, you’ll want to determine exactly what you want to become knowledgeable about, as specifically as you can make it.

Create questions about what you want to learn.

Then you’ll organize these resources.

Focus on gathering and organizing; you don’t need to touch them yet.

The important aspect is that you’ve surveyed the topic before diving in and thus understand what you’re getting into and why.

During the question stage, you’ll work a little more deeply to get your mind more prepared to focus and interact with the material you’re reading.