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March 12 - March 24, 2019
Seek dissenting opinions. Hopefully by now you’ve formed a working thesis; now you put it to the test by finding well-reasoned opposing viewpoints. Ideally, some of your filtered reading material contains at least one counter-argument that has rationally constructed viewpoints. Alternately, doing a (very careful) Google search might produce some results.
Put it all together. Whether you keep it private or publish it, summarize your discoveries and opinions and keep them closely available.
Make sure you’ve accounted for as many viewpoints as you can from both supportive and opposing viewpoints.
Remember “X, Y, and Z because… however, A, B, and C because…”
The way that we prove ourselves is through rising to challenges that are always going to be presented to us.
What long-term thinking teaches us is that all these individual moments of terror over the uncertain future are temporary. They’re not going to last. By keeping focused on that goal line, no matter how far off it is, those anxious moments will lose their power over time. They’ll all eventually feel like exactly what they really are: temporary setbacks and minor exercises you need to go through to get where you’re going.
build confusion endurance.
This confusion may come as a result of not knowing where to start, being perplexed at how to attack a problem, having a muddied view of what you’re trying to achieve, wondering what resources are available and relevant to the task, and the like. Confusion endurance is all about being able to stay with a task and persisting instead of abandoning it when things get too difficult. It’s about being able to persevere when you have the uncertainty and confusion of juggling multiple balls and not knowing where they will all land. It’s the feeling of coming to a fork in the road with 10 paths and
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Takeaways: There are certain skills and habits you must cultivate in your quest for self-learning and self-education. Many of these stem from the simple fact that with no one else to regulate you, you must do it yourself. Again, the theme that you must be both student and teacher rears its ugly head. First, plans, schedules, and goals should all figure heavily into your self-learning. In fact, they should be one of the first things you create—all three of them. Take a page from Benjamin Franklin (twice) and implement a daily schedule that simplifies your decision-making, as well as a plan
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three main aspects of intrinsic motivation to keep yourself moving toward your goal of self-learning: autonomy, mastery, and purpose/impact.
take something that’s on the page and screen, understand it, and make it usable to yourself at a later time.
SQ3R method.
survey, question, read, recite, review.
Cornell notes.
self-explanation.
Feynman technique
stop subvocalizations.
train your eyes.
strategically skim by avoiding useless words, focusing on important words, and ignoring words at the edge of the pages.
learn how your focus and attention works in regard to reading.
the four levels of reading as articulated by author Mortimer Adler. The levels are elementary, inspectional, analytical, and syntopical.
plans, schedules, and goals
Take a page from Benjamin Franklin (twice) and implement a daily schedule that simplifies your decision-making, as well as a plan and schedule for accomplishing your goals.
You must have a dialogue with the material you discover and interact with it in a way that makes up for not having a stimulating teacher or professor.
You can accomplish this through asking critical and probative questions—the goal is to gain understanding, context, and perspective,
understanding of a topic through five steps: gather, filter, find patterns, seek dissent, and put it all together.
