Do you start learning with the wrong foot?

Here's how to know and not waste time

Hey there, friend!

In this week’s issue:

• A better way to get started with a new skill.

• Mid update of the experiment.

• And some resources for you.

Let’s dive right in.

Diving into this issue like…

Main quest 🛡

Let’s say that you want to improve your skill set to not depend on a job/build and launch a project/get a side hustle/insert your goal here. 

But getting started is always the hardest part. Most advice out there is around taking the first step, a little one. 

There are quotes about it like:

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Or this other famous one:

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

And so you take that advice and plan to get started right away with it.

But the first step in this case, ironically, is not starting from the beginning.

“Have you lost your mind, Juan?” — I can hear you saying.

And no, I haven’t (at least not yet).

But let me ask you.

What does that completed goal looks like?

How do you know once you’ve reached the finished line?

Starting from “the beginning” is terribly hard. Not for the lack of resources or materials out there.

But because you have an almost infinite range of possibilities.

You can start by doing one of these things:

• Reading a book.

• Watching videos on YouTube.

• Buying a course.

• Asking someone who has a lot of experience on the field.

• Tapping into your network to find someone you can get help from.

• Attending a live stream/workshop about the topic.

• And on and on and on…

If you instead start from the finish line, there’s no confusion. There’s only one outcome.

Let me give you an example here, a personal one.

The last project I did, around October/November of last year, was about short-form video editing.

Something that I had not a single clue about.

I could have gone the traditional route of taking online courses, figuring out what equipment I need, what editing software to use, and all that jazz.

But instead of doing all of that, I went with the “goal-oriented learning” route.

What was the outcome I had in mind?

I wanted to create and upload short videos to promote affiliate products (but useful ones).

Knowing that, I found out that the best way to get started was to learn the basics of CapCut and create TikTok/YouTube shorts.

There were 3 particular things I needed to learn:

• Proper videoclip selection.

• How to overlay & sync subtitles with the video.

• How to use effects to make the clip “pop”.

Long story short, it took me a week to find out that doing that work and having enough material to upload consistently was waaaay harder than I anticipated. And was one of those cases where “the juice is not worth the squeeze”.

Was it a “failed” project?

No. Quite the contrary.

It only took me like 6 days to figure out that’s an area I don’t want to be in and can use my time better somewhere else.

I didn’t leave any online course half started or half done.

I didn’t buy any extra stuff I wasn’t going to use.

I didn’t do a big fuss and wasted resources unnecessarily.

But the reason why I could do that was cuz I had a specific goal from the start.

Some people would say that is a “SMART” goal.

And yeah, they would be right. SMART goals are the training wheels of goal setting. 

So, if it helps you get started with the right foot, all the better for you.

---

When you start from that finish line, you can relate it back to where you are start to see what you need to learn to get there

And in this case, you want to only learn what directly contributes to your goal. 

My friend

Chris Wong

says this is called “Just in Time” knowledge.

I looked it up on the internet and it’s a perfect way to put it.

This kind of knowledge is heavily “biased towards action”.

That’s what we want to have in this learning approach.

We don’t want to learn a bunch of stuff to see what will maybe appear in an exam.

We want to take action on the knowledge and do something with it.

Besides, you don’t want to be like me and get the brain filled with different kinds of information “just in case” you’ll need it in the future. 🙄

And so…

Next time you embark yourself in a learning journey, have a clear goal for why you’re doing it in the first place. And think about what the desired end state looks like.

This way you’re sidestepping all the noise out there and have a better chance at achieving your intended outcome.

Experiments 🧪

Here’s a mid update of the “bulking experiment”.

So far it’s been more difficult than I anticipated. At the start I thought “it’s such a small thing to do, I don't think that “eating more eggs” would be worth all the fuss”.

And then, I kept doing it. 

The whole point has been to increase the amount of eggs (because protein) from 2 a day, the usual amount, to 6 per day.

The first week everything went well. I was in the headspace of doing it and since I talked with my family it was an “experiment” then everyone was cool with it.

But this past week, the 2nd one, I’ve missed the quota in 3 days already. Another thing I didn’t have in consideration was the meal schedule on training days. I go to the gym in the afternoon/evening and after that I have a “super shake” (like my friends over at Precision Nutrition would call it).

So, if I don’t hit the quota for the day before the gym, I’m definitely not hitting it afterwards.

Here comes the big importance of planning when introducing new habits or making lifestyle changes.

At first, everything works and goes well. But later on you get back to your own routines, your ruts, and start to struggle.

Still have 2 weeks more to go so let’s see what happens.

Power-ups ✨

In line with the power-ups of last week. 

Did you know there’s a way to have multiple AI models working for you or have a parallel chat with them?

Here’s the thing. Not all models are optimized for chat (and it’s good this is the case).

Some are better at following prompts and instructions. While others are better at conversation.

The good thing is that now you don’t have to choose either/or. You can have both. And if you’re a little tech inclined…

You can create your own project to solve a particular use case you have.

Check out the playground and read the docs to know more. 

Soon enough you won’t have to depend on “ChatGPT’s whims” to get better work done faster.

From the vault 🏛️

You can find out more about “just in time” learning from WIkipedia.

And here you can read about what will make your practice sessions more effective.

---

That’s all I have for you this week.

Thanks for reading all the way. I hope you find it all useful.

Catch you next week!