Learnability. Development is the best game!
Self-learning
In an interview, Elon Musk said that at the beginning of the SpaceX launch, no one believed in commercial flights into space. Cool engineers didn’t want to work with him. So, he decided to become a chief engineer himself and started reading books. He just sits there and calmly tells me that he decided to figure out rocket science. Not just to figure it out for yourself, but to do something that no one has ever done yet. What will the majority answer if they are offered a new profession or to learn a new difficult topic? We will hear that “it’s too late, the brain doesn’t work like it used before anymore, I could, but only if…” — and so on.
There are some people who like to study, and everything is fine with their motivation, but they do not know how to approach a difficult topic and study effectively. Everything is simple here, there is a lot of content. There is no need to be Elon Musk. You need to take the time and learn to learn. New experience and knowledge are a challenge. Such calls are very useful. When a person is capable of self-learning, he can do anything. To understand new things and acquire skills on your own is a huge bonus to flexibility. The responsibility for your endless learning is only up to you. In our world, there is already a question “how to learn faster?”, and not “how to study constantly?”. So don’t hesitate to get this skill.
“Development is the best game”
Peter Klimov
Synthesis of information
To learn new things or immerse yourself in a subject area, you need to study a lot of information. It is important to be able to catch the main thoughts from the information and compress them into understandable theses. When we analyze information, we divide the whole into parts, and synthesis helps to put a new whole back together from the parts.
This is how understanding is formed, not memorization. At the university, I saw excellent students who could memorize the material, but did not understand it. With any questions outside the topic of the learned material, they had a system failure. Don’t do that. There is more and more information in the world, and you need to learn how to work with it. Group, classify, compress, highlight rules, laws and systems. Information synthesis is a mandatory part of self — study.
Read articles with basic techniques and methods. Then plunge into a part of an unfamiliar area, figure it out and practice explaining using the Feynman method. It will take time to develop the skill, since it is not only technical techniques and algorithms. Thinking plays a significant role in synthesis. And you already know how to optimize thinking.
Reflection
The previous chapter is devoted to this skill. I want to draw your attention once again that reflection is a vital skill that has a tremendous impact on a person’s life and results. By the way, when you are asked about failures at an interview, they want to make sure that you are reflecting, and not blaming the cruel world and falling into a trap.
