4 TedTalks To Help Declutter The Learning Process
I’ve always been a sucker for learning new things. Over time, I’ve realized that the more I learn, the easier it is to learn new things. This is because:
- Learning in itself is a skill.
- Many things you learn can be carried over, as they build upon the other new things you want to learn, directly or indirectly.
Like many of you, I don’t always have the luxury of time (and money) to keep going to classes, or spend an inordinate amount of time into acquiring a skill, be it related to work or just to satisfy my curiosity.
Sure, some skills are better learned from classes (especially physical ones such as kayaking/boxing), but for the others, there’re tons of online material for us to devour.
So much that it’s daunting to even start.
But since learning IS a skill, it can definitely be broken down into simple, well-structured chunks of content. Which is what schools do in the first place!
So, I’ve rounded up a list of TedTalk videos that I find useful towards setting yourself up for learning. These ideologies can help you declutter the learning process, and inspire you to conquer that seemingly insurmountable stack of knowledge.
I hope these resources bring you from “I wish I could do that” to “how can I do that”. The links to the videos are in their respective titles.
I’ve also italicized the words I paraphrased from the speaker throughout the article, to separate it from my own thoughts.
Let’s get onto it!
1. How to Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals | by Stephen Duneier
I’ll start off with this one because it’s the one that usually stops people from even taking the first step to something new.
Don’t think of it as reading 10 books.
Think of it as switching off your Facebook, opening the book, and reading 1 word. Then 2.
Then the chapter.
Then the book.
Then 50 books.
Instead of losing 25 pounds, find an activity you enjoy. In his case, it was hiking.
Don’t think of it as completing 33 hiking trails. Think of it as getting off the sofa, putting on your shoes, slamming the door behind you, drive to the trail, and take 1 step.
Then 2 steps.
Then 3.
It all begins with a micro-action from the couch. A huge goal is really a huge collection of micro-actions.
When we look at it that way, it doesn’t look that big and ambitious, does it?
Easily break it down into small steps and then proceed with the crucial ones we absolutely need, or the parts that spark our curiosity. That way, the inertia for getting started decreases.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
— Lao Zi
It’s the micro-actions that build up.
2. The First 20 Hours — How To Learn Anything | by Josh Kaufman
How long does it take to acquire a new skill? Research says, 10 000 hours. That’s a full-time job for 5 years!
However, that’s for expert-level performance, to reach the top of the field.
At the beginning for your learning curve, you get good really quick, until you reach a plateau.
From there on, the improvements slow down as you put in more practice time.
Which means, there is a sweet spot from knowing nothing to reaching that plateau.
That is the reason for my “hack” mentality towards the new things I learn. By hack, I don’t mean “I don’t care, as long as it works”. I mean to figure out the fastest way to produce something decent, and pouring in effort to understand why and how these crucial parts work.
Better than a draft, but worse than the majority of the work we see, since most work we see is of professional quality.
That’s the trap of social media we need to avoid, and just apply the 80/20 rule: Find that 20% of work that gives us 80% of the results.
And that coincides with this first 20 hours. Because with such a limited time, we are forced to discover the crucial parts.
As he puts it, you can play hundreds of chords with a ukulele. However, look at most songs, and you will realize that there are only 4 chords you need to know to play at least 50 songs.
3. How To Gain Control of Your Free Time | by Laura Vanderkam
We don’t build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself.
Case study of a time log of an extremely busy woman: She comes home to find her water heater broken. That’s an emergency, with water all over the basement, so she has to fix it immediately. That in itself took 7 hours of that week.
However, at the start of the week, if you had asked her if she could find 7 hours to train for a triathlon, the answer, like most of us, would be “No, I’m busy”.
But when she had to find 7 hours because there was water all over the basement, she found 7 hours.
That shows us time is highly elastic.
We cannot make more time, but time will stretch to accommodate what we choose to put into it.
So, the key is to treat our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater.
This goes in line with Parkinson’s law, which states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.
Discipline is one of the most important factors to pick up a new skill by yourself; no superiors to report to, no customer obligations to fulfil.
Just you and your curiosity.
Which means it’s easy for the procrastinator in you to take over when you actually get down to it.
I’m sure we can all relate to this at some point: We have days where emergencies crop up, and we get right down to fix it. Then we have other days where we have “stuff” to do, but end up wasting the day away.
We all have some extra time every day, even just 5 minutes, that we can use to learn.
Even if it’s something that requires motor skills such as playing the guitar, mental imaging helps.
Ever see golfers practicing their swing with invisible golf clubs?
Personally, I block out a period of time to learn, and treat it as an appointment with myself; I’m going to meet myself for an activity.
That shifts my mentality from learning during my free time to consciously putting time aside to learn.
Find that few hours every week, block it off and dedicate it to learning.
4. Grit: The Power of Passion And Perseverance | by Angela Lee Duckworth
Grit is passion and perseverance for long term goals. Grit is having stamina.
Grit is basically the idea of persevering through something unknown and then acquiring that knowledge.
It is also why we see, in our own circles, that there are extremely talented people that do not necessarily achieve their potential.
Many peers I know are better programmers than me. Some of them have ideas to build their own app, and can definitely pick it up and make one better than mine.
The difference is, I did and they didn’t.
In fact, my published apps became the main thing my potential employers were interested in when I was applying for jobs, as my portfolio consisted of a live app on Google Play.
That’s because I persevered and figured out the things I didn’t know, things I was weak at (especially the non-programming side of things), to reach my end goal of publishing an app.
Grit is usually unrelated, or even inversely related to measures of talent. I agree with the second part, because I always feel the need to work harder than others just to keep up.
Conclusion
These TedTalks helped me set myself up to embrace the newbie mentality that comes with dabbling into new territory. I have come to be better at being a newbie, at picking up what my next step should be and asking the right questions to get myself to that point.
It also helps develop an inquisitive mind, which is a trait that extends to not just learning, but with life in general.
With that, the 4 TedTalks can be summarised:
Discover the crucial parts to get from nothing to something. Distill it down into micro-actions. Make it a priority and set aside time for it.
And most importantly, persevere.
