📚 Education & Skill Development

Details, resources, questions, and challenges

(De)prioritizing

Wouldn't you just love to learn how to draw, dance, play chess, cook Italian food, and code COBOL JavaScript - all at the same time?

There is an infamous exercise floating around (with Warren Buffet's name on it) that suggests writing a list with your top 25 goals. Of these 25, you circle the top-top 5. The clever part is that your list of 5 items becomes your priority list, and the remaining 20 items becomes the "Avoid at all costs" list.

For our purpose, 5 skills to learn in a year is a bit of a stretch. 1 or 2 should do; everything else you find interesting is relegate to the afterlife (or next year)

Skin in the game

If you're trying to learn piano, you'll find that it's going to suck at some point and you would prefer to go back to the olden ways

It can be helpful to "tie your hands" in advance of this inflection point by putting some money or honor on the line - see the resources below for 2 sites that can help with that.

🔗 Related life areas

❓ Questions to consider

  • What is your current education status? (In the broadest sense; not just what degrees hang on your wall)
  • What do you know?
  • Are you spending time learning new thing? Systematically or ad hoc?
  • What are you talents & skills? Do you have a skill stack?
  • How many books have you read? How well have you read them? Do you have a system for taking notes & resurfacing and combining ideas?
  • What skills are you planning to develop?
  • Have you considered developing your meta-skills? (i.e. learning how to learn, read, consolidate & compress notes, organize, etc.)

👊 Challenges for next year

  • Identify a skill you would like to develop over the next year & set aside 1 hour every week to practice (And feel free to practice more, if the spirit moves you to)
  • Put some "skin in the game" to ensure accountability

📚 Resources