How to Learn and Become Skilled at Anything Just Using the Internet — Introduction

This post will be an introduction to a series of articles I’m writing on learning things quickly using just the internet. I wanted to write this series because I’ve managed to learn a lot of things using the internet without having to spend a dime, and I’ve come to realize that many people don’t know how to effectively make use of the wealth of information that is online. This series will also go farther and discuss principles based learning and using analogies and similarities between different skills to make the learning of said skills faster and more effective.

No need to sit in here, classes are a waste of time if you’ve got the right attitude

I’ve planned on 8 posts:

1. How do you think? — discusses base models of understanding and figuring out what you want to learn, along with effective goal setting and getting the right metrics
2. Finding the right mentors — discusses how to find mentors who will get you to the goals outlined in part 1 and the role of mentors off the internet. Will also discuss how to find useful information in a sea of questionable advice.
3. Principles based learning — discusses how to break a skill down to fundamental principles and incorporate it into the way you learn best. Focuses on principles since doing so tends to lead to the most “aha” moments and speed up progress by focusing on the fundamentals.
4. Showing up everyday — we’ll discuss how to create a plan of action that will keep you from procrastinating, and why building momentum and maintaining energy is the most important thing to do.
5. Transferable skills — this post discusses how to leverage your existing skill set in such a way that learning new skills taps into existing principles and mindsets. We also discuss the synergy effect and taking advantage of network effects.
6. Keystone habits— in this post, we discuss habits/skills that positively effect a large portion of other skills. These habits/skills should be in every person’s checklist.
7. Reference experiences — here, we’ll discuss how to best learn from failures such that we can grow as much as possible while not allowing our energy and momentum to decrease.
8. The long haul — in the final post of this series, I’ll discuss preventing burnout and plateaus, and why it’s worth finding a community in real life after a certain point.

I’m really looking forward to writing this series of articles, which will ultimately be turned into an ebook. Learning is something that I spend a lot of time doing, and I’ve always been obsessed with learning effectively. While this series only discusses my own perspective on learning, I believe it can help others learn better as well. If you have questions on the series or want to see certain points addressed, please let me know.