Learning despite the odds

And a practical experiment

How’s it going my friend.

Welcome to the first edition of August.

This time… it’s a quick one for you.

Main quest 🛡

When learning a new skill or completing a project, there’s a set of transferrable skills.

I’ve already talked before about how Supercharged Learning is more a mental game than anything else.

And it involves both the cognitive aspect and the emotional one.

It’s like building a skyscraper. If the foundations are solid, it will stand tall and resilient to shakeups and earthquakes.

In a similar way, with a strong mental foundation, you can take on challenges and projects that for other people will seem crazy or “impossible”.

Here’s a refresher on those fundamentals.

The important is not only to go and attempt ambitious projects, it’s to take on them and complete them successfully. It’s like putting fuel to a small flame. You now become more aware of what you’re capable of and can take on bigger projects.

It’s like building your wall of confidence higher and higher. Of course, there are going to be obstacles and setbacks along the way. But the fact that you were able to overcome the challenge despite those difficulties, should be even greater proof of what we all are capable of doing.

Regardless of a situation’s outcome, there are 2 possibilities for us. We can either win or learn from it.

The reframe is powerful because it allows us to detach from the cloud of emotions that we will experience in the moment. The “experimenters mindset” help us take in everything that happens as data points.

Things are not only “good” or “bad”. It’s all feedback. You know, glass half-full or half-empty.

What can be considered “negative” for someone could be “positive” or “neutral” for someone else.

Even for that same person, in a long enough timeline, the “negatives” can be seen as “positive” because they helped shape the person to become their current self.

So, what I want to leave you with this time, is to cultivate and maintain that mental foundation. That will help you not only to keep moving forward but to take on new challenges, face new enemies, and come out on top.

And as the saying goes “what doesn’t kill me, only makes me stronger“.

Experiments 🧪

This week’s been a pretty interesting one.

Kept on the project I’ve told you about in previous weeks but was hitting a roadblock. And then… I found this tweet from Jeremy Howard about the release of FastHTML.

After seeing the demo, I instantly knew that was the way forward for my project.

I’ve spent most of the week hacking away with it and contributing to the documentation not once but twice 😄

Kinda feel like a kid playing with a new toy I wasn’t expecting.

To consider 🤔

When was the last time you took on a big project or a great challenge and came out on top?

What did you learn about you and your capabilities?

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That’s it for this week.

Hope you’re having a great weekend. I’m off to visit my older brother’s family in a nearby city.

Catch you next week.

Cheers,

Juan.