Lesson 1: Before You Learn Don’t Start Learning
Welcome to your first lesson of Self-Learning Quest! Throughout this journey you'll be venturing into many lands and fighting various bosses. The end destination: The Hellfire Magefield. There lies the end goal of your journey, The Key Of Learning. You don’t know what it does, but you know it will help you with all your self-learning quests.
Taking a deep breadth, you step on the path and off into the sunrise.
After a few hours of traveling a stench swims in which reminds you of dirty underwear. You hear a ghostly sigh come from the left, right, everywhere... The sky begins to darken as if the sun itself is dying.
You've reached the first step in your journey, The Swamps of Disclarity. From behind a tree in front of you glides Nebuloth, The Mistwraith King.
The fog of the swamp and mist of Nebuloth combine to create a maelstrom of confusion. The same confusion that comes from not having a clear map for your Self-Learning Quest. You've forgotten where you are, why you're here. Hopefully beating your foe will make you remember.
To vanquish this foe, you must make it through this lesson and apply the action items.
Today's Challenge: Create A Learning Map
"If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail." - Benjamin Franklin
On October 1, 2011, Scott Young asked himself a question that would change his life: What if he tried to learn the full four-year M.I.T. computer science curriculum in just one year with a budget of $2,000?
He already had a business degree. However, after four years in college and tens of thousands of mullah in student debt, he realized a business degree is really something you get to procrastinate on making a business than actually building one. He wanted to return to college for a computer science degree but lacked the money.
Then, he discovered that M.I.T. posted its entire computer science curriculum online for free. Scott was hopeful--his friends and family preferred the word "insane."
Scott sat down the next day in his apartment and created a gameplan. He scoped out all the classes required for the degree and ordered them based off hours of research for when they should be taken. He calculated the times it would take to watch through all the pre-recorded lectures, take practice tests, do homework and labs, and added room for bullcrap along the way.
It would still take years to finish the degree--he might be done by the next ice age... In that time he would have eaten through his savings from internet writing and perhaps lost interest. Scott reasessed.
What if he watched the lectures at double speed, graded his own work, and worked 60 hour weeks every week? He could optimize his sleep, fitness, and nutrition to make sure every hour counted as much as possible. He could use the Pomodoro technique to give himself adequate rest between learning.
If he did all of this, he might be able to finish in a year.
Twelve months later, on September 26, 2012, he completed his challenge.
It's easy to attribute Scott Young's success to genius.
But that's not at all what he was trying to do. In his own words: "I’m embarking on this experiment because I want to show that learning doesn’t require acceptance boards and SAT tests, thousands of dollars in debt, or even the 4-year pace most students assume is necessary to learn a subject. In the back of my mind, I was interested not only in computer science but in seeing if there might be a new way to master the skills needed in work and life."
Scott showed us that new way: meta-learning.
Meta-learning means learning about learning. It involves seeing how a subject works, how experts in the past have tried to master it, and how you can tailor your learning to your specific needs. Meta-learning allows you to learn more efficiently and effectively while avoiding learning things you don’t need to know.
The main meta-learning principle which helped Scott was creating a meta-learning map.
A Meta-Learning Map is a bird's eye view of your learning goal, why you want to embark on it, gaps you must fill, resources you have, and your plan for using them. I summarize the process of creating your own meta-learning map using the Q.U.E.S.T. framework which stands for:
- Question Your Goal
- Uncover Gaps
- Explore Resources
- Strategize Backwards
- Tackle And Tweak
This is the five-step process I go through for every self-learning endeavor I embark on and the same process Scott used to create a gameplan for his MIT challenge. I call it Q.U.E.S.T. because it makes me feel like I'm playing a game.
Let's learn how to create our own meta-learning map by going step by step through the Q.UE.S.T. framework, using one of my own learning endeavors as an example: learning how to incorporate periodization into my resistance training and dieting at the gym.
Q - Question Your Goal:
Define what you want to learn concretely and why and connect it to something you care about.
For me this meant defining what periodization is. It's a fitness system created by Dr. Mike Israetel that involves the systemic organizing and planning of your resistance training into cycles meant to maximize recovery and hypertrophy (you don't have to know these jargon terms--I promise there's no pop quiz at the end).
Why do I want to learn it?
- For the last year I've been stagnating in the gym and I think it's in large part because I'm not eating enough or giving my body the rest it needs between workouts.
- It will be fun to experiment with a new technique for the gym--four years of the same thing gets old.
- It will make me more physically fit, and, attractive--hey, I’m only human.
U - Uncover Gaps:
Identify new knowledge, skills, habits, routines, environments or tools you need for your learning endeavor. It doesn't matter if your list isn't perfect as you’ll be changing it as you embark on your learning endeavor in the last step.
Knowledge gaps can be split into concepts and facts. Concepts are ideas you need to understand in flexible ways for them to be useful. Chemistry and math, for example, are both subjects that lean heavily toward concepts. Some subjects straddle the concept/fact divide, such as psychology, which has facts like human biases that must be memorized as well as principles that must be understood. In general, if something needs to be understood, not just memorized, it's a concept.
Facts are anything you need to memorize. They don't need to be understood as long as you know them. Languages, for example, are full of facts about vocabulary, punctuation, and to a lesser extent grammar.
For my learning endeavor uncovering gaps looked like this:
Concepts
- Periodization
- Maintenance, bulking, and cutting
- Macros
Facts:
- Niche fitness terminology like M.V.P., R.I.R., Deloads, and more.
Skills:
- Discipline--yes it's a skill especially necessary for a learning endeavor that involves so much physical and mental effort
Routines:
- Regular gym time
E - Explore Resources:
In this step, you gather the best tools, resources, and allies for your journey– articles, books, courses, podcasts, videos, and mentors--mirroring the collection of gear and formation of alliances in preparation for a quest.
Scott Young (2019) writes in Ultralearning about two methods you can use to do this[1]:
- Benchmarking
- Emphasizing/Excluding
Benchmarking involves exploring already established ways people have learned what you are trying to learn to get insight into your own learning endeavor. Examples could be from University curriculums like Harvard, M.I.T., Cornell, etc. or other experts who have documented their learning journeys. While exploring resources for periodization, I found tons of free videos online from Dr. Mike Israetel, as well as his book Scientific Principles of Hypertrophy Training as well as videos from Jeff Nippard and AtleanX.
Once you have benchmarked, you can begin emphasizing/excluding, which involves emphasizing or excluding certain parts of a resource to fit with your specific learning goal. For example, I emphasized everything about periodization because that was the new thing I was learning. Since I know the basics of weight training I excluded anything for beginners in my resources.
S - Strategize Backwards:
In this step, you define concretely how you are going to embark on your learning endeavor by setting higher-order goals all the way down to daily routines and individual tasks.
I recommend you begin with your final objective and work backward--reverse goal setting--which ensures your goals will actually get you where you want to go.
My favorite goal-setting method is from Ali Abdaal (2024) in his book Feel Good Productivity[2]. It's called N.I.C.E. goal setting--isn't that nice?
N.I.C.E. goals are:
- Near-term: next few weeks or months
- Input-based: emphasize the process of getting to a goal rather than the outcome
- Controllable: you can influence them
- Energizing: it get's you excited
So, for my periodization learning endeavor my main N.I.C.E. goals were:
- Complete my first macrocycle and assess how it feels
- Spend an hour or more a day over the next two weeks going through my resources and implementing them in this order:
- Dr. Mike Israetel's free videos on periodization online
- Scientific Principles of Hypertrophy Training
- Videos from Jeff Nippard, Dr. Mike, and AtleanX on discipline, and maintaining, bulking, and cutting
- Write a blog post after two weeks summarizing my learnings about periodization. You can read it here.
- Spend an hour or more a day over the next two weeks going through my resources and implementing them in this order:
Once you have created your plan, you should always know the next step in your self-learning quest so it's easy to get started. The best way to do this is setting an implementation intention: I will do X thing, at Y time, in Z place. After every work session, write one or two sentences saying how it went and what you're going to do next time to make it super easy for your future self to pick up where you left off.
T - Tackle and Tweak:
The last step of Q.U.E.S.T. is to embark on your quest, ready to face challenges and adapt your strategies as needed. This step represents the action phase, where you apply what you've planned and adjust based on feedback and results.
There's one question left to be answered: how long should you plan?
It's a tough question. Planning might allow you to learn vastly more effectively by avoiding material you don't need and emphasizing the material you do. But it can also become procrastination. We all know or have been the person who has said “I’M GoInG TO chAnGe My LIfE, Tomorrow.”
Generally, the longer your learning project, the longer you should plan out how you're going to learn. According to Scott himself, a good rule of thumb is you should invest approximately 10 percent of your total expected learning time into research prior to starting[1]. This is because any mistakes in your map will have a much larger time span to take effect.
Remember, we're creating a learning plan here, not the next Mona Lisa. While planning is crucial, the plan will evolve as you gain more knowledge and experience. You don't need to create every goal, collect every resource, and plan out every step before you get going. It's better to get started with a half plan than not start at all.
When You Learn How To Learn, The World Opens Up
The real benefits of meta-learning don't show themselves in the first learning endeavor you go down.
As you embark on more self-learning quests, your meta-learning skill increases as well. You learn more about your motivations, how to manage your time, your capacities, and more. Ultimately, the beauty comes not in any individual learning project but in the way they cumulatively impact your life.
You start believing in yourself. Your mind opens up. You realize you don't have to go to school and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn something. You can learn it yourself.
Of course, this isn't the same as getting a certificate proving you have learned (although I would argue you often haven't) something from a University or program, but it's learning none the less.
🎯Take Action Today
- Create a meta-learning map using the Q.U.E.S.T. framework for a self-learning endeavor you want to start or for one you are already embarking upon.
After a narly battle, you diss Nebuloth, The Mistwraith King by telling him the dementors from Harry Potter are scarier. He is so throughouly defeated by your diss, he lets out a bloodcurdling scream and retreats back into the forest. You gain a beautiful sense of clarity. You know what you’re self-learning quest will be.
References
- Young, S. 2019. Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career. Harper Business. https://amzn.to/3KjGT0F ↩︎
- Abdaal, A. (2024). Feel Good Productivity: How To Do More Of What Matters To You. Macmillan Audio. https://amzn.to/3UbeEa6 ↩︎