How To Become An Autodidact (Tips For Self-Learning) (Newsletter 16)

Autodidact: “self-taught,” from Greek autodidaktikos “self-taught,” from autos “self” and didaktos “taught”

I used to get tripped up with the term autodidactism because I thought it was self-learning without any guidance. In other words, going completely off instinct or trial and error. To me, that’s a terrible way to go about learning and life.

I've come to learn that autodidacts are individuals who choose the subject they will study, their studying material, and the studying rhythm and time. The “what”, “why”, “how” and “when” are self-prescribed. Who they choose to learn from is also in their control.

Through this lens, I totally identify with the term. I've learned a lot from formal education but much more from teaching myself.

Autodidacticism has been part of my life for a very long time and I've naturally attracted other self-learners into my life.

Recently, I've been making a conscious attempt to see life from others' points of view. In doing so, I've realized that many people are not autodidacts.

To learn effectively, they need guidance and immediate feedback provided by teachers or bosses. They need the support provided by peers. And they need structured, step-by-step curricula supplied by institutions.

We're all affected by the false consensus effect (our tendency to overestimate how much other people are like us). It's been eye-opening to see that this is not the case.

And so I'd like to share a few points on autodidacticism that have helped me in my life, as always, in service of helping you in your life (whether you consider yourself an autodidact or not).

Let's get into it.

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Why Become An Autodidact

In my contemplation of why anyone should become an autodidact (or why anyone wouldn’t be an autodidact), I thought of the following reasons:

1. Schools Are Overpriced

How many people do you know with student loans from programs that aren't tied to their way of earning an income?

Most people my age (I'm currently 32) with a degree are still paying their loans off, nearly 10 years later.

It seems that higher education has largely moved away from the classic mind-expansion model to a student-as-customer model.

• Students are sold on campus amenities (dorms, meal halls, landscaping, nice buildings) rather than on theeducation.
• Tuition prices are sky-high with a half-truth promise of making you more valuable in the market.
• The curricula are often shaped by customer demand (“trigger warnings”, censorship, non-challenging material).
• The normal recruiting of 17 to 19-year-old high school students to study something they'll be expected to do for the rest of their lives is crazy to me.

Furthermore, much of what we learn either doesn't apply to what we end up doing for work or it's outdated information by the time we enter the job market.

I'm not here to undermine the universities, but it seems to me that unless you're getting into law or STEM fields, they're likely not a great choice.

I studied civil engineering and worked my ass off to pay off my loans as fast as possible before switching to audio.

High-quality information is out there if we search for it (it's never been easier thanks to the Internet).

You might need a degree to get into a certain field, and that's fine (I studied civil engineering to get a job in that field). But again, I invite you to look around at how many people are making a “return on investment”, working in the field they spent so much time and money studying.

Side note: some of the “smartest” people I know didn't do well in or dropped out of school.

“”A” Students Work for “C” Students and “B” Students Work for the Government” — Robert T. Kiyosaki

2. We're Moving Deeper Into The Information Age

The Agricultural Revolution saw massive innovations in agriculture technology that allowed food stocks and the human population to boom.

The First Industrial Revolution saw massive innovations in machines and more efficient and stable manufacturing processes.

The Second Industrial Revolution saw massive innovations in technology, communication and transportation.

The Third Industrial Revolution, also known as the “Information Age” is seeing massive innovations in information technology, including digitization.

We're now entering what many call the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where technologies like artificial intelligence, gene edition and advanced robotics are advancing rapidly.

As we move through and beyond the Information Age, we will need to consistently upskill ourselves.

During the industrial age, we would often find employment in factories, performing the same tasks day in and day out. While many of these jobs are still around, we're beginning to see artificial intelligence replace many of the repetitive tasks involved with labour.

Furthermore, schools are having a tough time keeping up with the increasing advancements in technology. What's being taught today may be completely irrelevant in the near future.

I'm not trying to be a fearmonger here, but if you work like a robot, you'll eventually be replaced by a robot. It happened to me when my 143k/year blog was reduced to pennies with the proliferation of AI-generated content (I write about that more in this letter).

The most successful people during these times will be those who can learn effectively and adapt quickly to new technologies and trends. The best way to do this is by developing your abilities as an autodidact.

To me, this includes learning how to orchestrate AI tools. If you'll afford me an analogy, we all remember the work of Ludwig van Beethoven, but not the players of his symphony. The orchestrator of the parts who makes the whole will reap greater rewards than each of the parts. Again, just an analogy—I'm not calling orchestral musicians robots!

3. Our Brains Are Wired For Learning

The human brain has an incredible capacity for learning and adaptation. It's sensible to put our brains to use and continuously learn new things.

Simply put, it feels great to learn new things and makes life a lot more enjoyable.

We're always learning whether we're conscious of it or not. All the trash TV, gossip, 24-hour news cycle (I lump that in with trash TV), shitposts, memes, etc. That's all information our brains process—it's just not useful or productive.

Autodidacticism is a way to choose what we're learning in a way that will benefit us.

4. Increased Autonomy

Practicing self-learning makes you more autonomous. You become less reliant on others and the systems as a whole.

In the Age of Information, knowledge is power. If we look at things from a “means of production” standpoint, we literally own our minds.

“Knowledge work” is any work where people earn a living from thinking. With this style of work becoming more prevalent, developing a self-learning habit is essential to our survival in the modern world.

This applies to the way we earn our income.

“The more you earn, the more you learn”—Warren Buffet

But it also applies to the small things.

• I've learned to change the oil and tires on my car, making me less reliant on mechanics.
• I've learned to grow and preserve my own food, making me less reliant on the grocers and supply chain.
• I've studied the importance of spending time outside, nutrition, sleep and exercise, making me less reliant on the healthcare system.

Of course, I still contribute to the economy to save time with these professional services, but the point is that I'm less reliant on them. No man is an island.

Furthermore, we can learn whatever we want to learn or whatever is most important to us (for furthering our earning potential, helping our community, strengthening our relationships, improving our health, etc.).

We're not bound to someone else's idea of what we ought to know. We won't be trained into a specialized role primed for automation/replacement. We become resistant to propaganda as we practice critical thinking and learning for ourselves.

5. It's Never Been Easier

It’s never been easier to learn whatever you want with the internet becoming more and more ubiquitous in our lives. Nearly all the information we could need is online, and much of it is free if we're willing to search for it.

Furthermore, we can choose the creators we want to learn from online rather than being assigned a teacher. We learn better from the people we like.

I've told this story before, but I did not get along with my engineering professors at university. After being accused of cheating on the very first exam (using a straight edge to draw a line), I went up in front of the class, drew a straight line freehand to prove I didn't cheat, and was met with this line:

“I didn't say you couldn't draw, I said you cheated”

“That's how it's going to be?”, I said. I checked the course syllabus, noted that I wouldn't lose a tremendous amount of grade points if I never showed up to class, and spent the majority of my university time reading the textbooks and watching YouTube videos.

I showed up on exam days, passed in my assignments on time, and I got my diploma in civil engineering just fine (though no glowing references from any faculty).

One major advantage of teaching ourselves is that we choose our sources. This allows us to learn in the style we prefer from people we like to learn from. It also forces us to be more discerning with our sources to find credible material.

6. Gets You More Comfortable With Failing

I remember the first time I failed an exam at university. I hadn't studied and paid the price with a 38% grade.

This was an explicit sign that I didn't yet have the knowledge required.

And what happened after that? The course continued on assuming everyone knew that material. I had to truly learn the previous stuff on my own to catch up (all the more reason to learn how to learn by yourself).

It isn't as cut and dry when learning on your own.

We often don't have the feedback to tell us if we've “passed” or “failed”. Therefore, we must become self-aware and examine our results for what they are.

This helps us get comfortable with facing the inevitable failures in life and understanding how we don't understand certain concepts. It gets us to take even more responsibility for our self-learning and personal growth, and makes us contemplate how to move forward toward success.

Being comfortable with failing and not understanding what’s going on (comfortable in chaos) allows us to relax and take appropriate action. Contrast this with the panic that often ensues from feeling lost.

By taking responsibility for our own education, we become more willing to take risks and try new approaches. Personally, I'm no longer afraid of being “wrong” because I understand that failure is an essential part of the learning process

7. Improves Problem Solving

Self-learning allows you to better navigate situations and solve problems in all other areas of life. The benefit is twofold:

1. We practice solving problems by finding and teaching ourselves information. It takes creative problem-solving to find the right material and truly understand it without professional guidance.
2. The things we learn in one field of interest will often apply directly or indirectly to another field (everything's connected). The problems we solve in one area will prime us for solving problems in another.

Autodidactism has significantly enhanced my problem-solving abilities. When I encounter obstacles, I have the skills and practice to find creative solutions on my own.

This self-reliance has sharpened my critical thinking skills. I've learned to approach problems from multiple angles and consider diverse perspectives.

Self-directed learning encourages me to make connections between different fields of study. This interdisciplinary approach often leads to innovative solutions that I might not have considered otherwise.

The confidence I've gained through successful self-learning has made me more willing to tackle complex problems in other areas of life.

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How To Become An Autodidact

Becoming an autodidact requires dedication, curiosity, and effective strategies. I've found the following techniques useful for developing and maintaining my self-learning habit.

Follow Your Genuine Curiosities

The best part of being an autodidact is that we get to learn what we're naturally interested in.

We aren't told what to learn by a professor or employer. We get to decide what it is we apply our minds to.

Yes, there are specific ways to learn the fundamentals, and I'd always suggest mastering the fundamentals before moving on to more advanced concepts. Fortunately, the fundamentals are readily available for learning online (and are most often free).

Usually, you'll figure out what a teacher would teach you on your own, anyway, if you're truly interested in the subject.

For example, the major scales I drilled during my piano lessons as a kid (which lasted 2 weeks before I quit) have become second nature to me now through my autodidactic pursuit of music theory.

Write More Than You Read

Reading is one of (if not the) most important skills for learning. Being able to look at written words and decipher the ideas they're meant to express is essential.

You can learn by listening to recorded audio, looking at diagrams or experiencing what you want to learn, tactically. But reading is the best option, in my opinion.

So if reading is that important, can writing be even more important? Here's my argument:

1. You can always read your own writing, which is a great supplement.
2. By writing things down, you can work through your preconceived notions of the subject, the new information you're gathering and how it all applies to your life.
3. It's a project that demands active participation (reading and listening fall more on the passive side).
4. Reading too much puts too much information into our minds. Writing helps counterbalance that by getting information out of our minds.

I write about this more in my letter, The Power Of Taking Notes.

Build Projects

Project-based learning gives us something tangible to apply what we're learning in the real world.

True learning isn't about memorization. It's about doing.

“If you live it, you know it. Otherwise, you heard about it, you read about it, or you talk about it, but you don't know it.”—T. Harv Eker

By applying what we learn to a project

Projects provide motivation, a gauge of progress, and often lead to unexpected learning opportunities. They also serve as concrete evidence of your skills.

Projects give us a strong reason to learn and point our learning in the right direction. If we hit a roadblock, we must find out how to overcome it by learning.

• Learning music production or music theory? Build songs with it!
• Learning web design? Build a website for yourself!
• Learning to write? Build a blog, newsletter or book!

This is simple, but not easy. Building projects takes time, energy and dedication. But I assure you, it's one of the best ways to engage in true learning.

Zoom Out

We all have responsibilities and obligations to attend to. Our health, wealth and relationships require consistent effort to maintain and grow.

I'm certain we've all felt overwhelmed with life at one point or another. All the things we're tasked with doing pile up and we feel stuck.

The last thing we want to do in this state of stress is learn something new. Have you ever been stressed about taking a test or exam? How did it affect your learning of the material (true learning, not cramming and immediately forgetting)?

Stress and anxiety tend to narrow our focus on the emotions themselves. If we can learn to zoom out and them as they are—fleeting emotions in a long life—we can build a habit of reducing these negative emotions, helping us to relax and focus on learning.

Avoid Overload

Don’t try to learn too much at once. Cognitive overload occurs when the demands placed on working memory exceed its capacity.

The more information we try to process at once, the worse we perform and remember.

I write about this more in my letter Avoiding Information Overwhelm.

Build a ritual to relax the mind before embarking on a knowledge-gathering session. Meditate, walk, find quiet time away from others—whatever you have to do to help you focus your mind on learning (and note everything else in the world).

On a side note, this is why mastering the fundamentals is so imperative to peak performance. Our conscious minds can only process 40 to 50 bits of information per second (the subconscious can process a whopping 11 million bits of information per second).

If we're focusing on the basics of a subject, it's difficult to think about or execute more advanced concepts.

For example, a great improviser isn't thinking about the mechanics of playing the notes or even the notes themselves. They're simply expressing what they're feeling through an instrument they've mastered.

Connect The Dots Between Subjects

As we learn how to learn, we'll undoubtedly want to explore different topics. When exploring the unknown, it's usefulto tie what we're discovering to what we already know.

Noting the similarities between subjects, especially in the fundamentals, is a tremendous way to create a more holistic worldview for yourself.

Let's connect the proverbial dots between music production, video editing and motion graphics for example:

• All three use a timeline system.
• The keyframes in video/graphics are like automation points in music.
• The layers in graphics are like tracks in music and video.
• Transitions are important to move between sections.
• All have the power to tell a story.
• The file organization is similar between the three.

Finding the patterns and connecting the fundamental knowledge from multiple disciplines.

Create A Living Syllabus

Create a syllabus for yourself (what to learn and when to learn)—this is something the schools do well.

Note that your hitlist of things to learn should be constantly evolving. This isn't only important as you develop new interests, but also as you uncover known unknowns (information you previously weren't aware existed but have yet to learn).

A failure to plan is a plan to fail. Having learning outcomes in mind is sometimes overlooked by self-learners but can be a tremendous help in executing your education.

Include deadlines and milestones to keep yourself accountable if necessary. Be realistic about your time commitments and adjust your syllabus as needed.

Find Credible Sources

Curating high-quality learning resources is essential for effective self-study. I suggest using a mix of media types to cater to different learning styles and reinforce concepts.

Start with reputable textbooks or comprehensive online courses for foundational knowledge. Supplement these with academic papers, expert blogs, and video lectures for deeper insights.

Don't overlook unconventional sources like podcasts, documentaries, or even fiction related to your field of study. These can provide valuable context and inspiration.

Bonus: Teach What You've Learned

The Protégé Effect is the concept that we learn more effectively when we teach or explain what we’re learning to others.

That's what I'm doing with these letters, my blog, and my YouTube channel.

If you want to identify your knowledge gaps and deepen your understanding of a topic, teach it to someone else!

Recap

To recap, here are my top reasons to be an autodidact:

• Schools are overpriced: it's more affordable in money (and time) to teach yourself.
• We're moving deeper into the information age: more and more, our minds are becoming our means of production.
• Our brains are wired for learning: it feels great to learn new things, so why not make it a habit?
• Increased autonomy: having the ability to teach yourself makes you less reliant on others/the system, and what you learn can push this autonomy even further.
• It's never been easier: the Internet has made information readily available for self-learning.
• Gets you more comfortable with failing: you'll feel lost at some points and become more self-aware about your shortcomings.
• Improved problem solving: being able to find credible information and put the proverbial pieces of the puzzle together to create a holistic view of a subject is an invaluable skill you'll develop.

And here are my top tips for developing your self-learning skills:

• Follow your genuine curiosities: teaching yourself is much more fun and effortless if you're genuinely interested in the subject.
• Write more than you read: writing forces you to think through the subject, enhances understanding, and helps clarify your arguments for or against certain ideas.
• Build projects: building a project (even if it's only writing about the topic) gives us something tangible to apply our knowledge to.
• Zoom out: when you hit a roadblock, zoom out and see life from a big-picture perspective.
• Avoid overload: cognitive overload creeps in quickly when we're focused on too many things at once.
• Connect the dots between subjects: find the similarities, especially in the fundamentals.
• Create a living syllabus: know what you need to learn in advance, and adjust it to fit your lifestyle/schedule.
• Find credible sources: it's on you to find credible sources of information from media you can trust and learn best from.
• Teach others what you learn: take advantage of the Protégé Effect to enhance your understanding of the subjects you're studying.