You cannot learn this

304 words | ~2 mins
learning
  • Why?
  • What’s the thing you cannot learn?
  • How to overcome it?

There are unknown unknowns; how to deal with these?

Let’s start in comfort zone:

We roam around known knowns - the space we are comfortable in. You ALREADY learned and use this.

Even in a dev job, we often face challenges we know how to solve - just a matter of time

Known unknowns - skills you haven’t learned YET.

But you know what has to be learned.

Don’t you know how to fix a car? Google some tutorials.

After that, these skills move to known knowns

Let’s keep going - unknown knowns

Unknown knowns are accidental knowledge

For instance, blogging more often makes you think clearer. You don’t realize that until you think about your pre-blogging time. Suddenly, this change is obvious.

This part is most often a byproduct of your activities ;)

Finally:

Unknown unknows - this is the part you cannot learn

Why?

You have no idea it exists. It might be niche, but helpful skill.

Example: once, I didn’t know staring at screens at night wrecks sleep.

Until I read some articles, my sleep quality was poor

What helps here?

To learn something you don’t know it exists, move it to known unknowns part. How?

  1. Take broader area you want to deep dive into
  2. Search for these in a medium you prefer:

Examples of activities to learn from:

  • research
  • books
  • articles (x ways for…)/listings
  • experts in given area
  • exchanging experiences with others
  • infographics
  • online courses
  • checklists

In general: the more you expose your mind to others, the more ideas you get.

Lone wolf working in his own closed basement is a myth here. This type has more unknowns than those who collaborate and talk with each other.

Why don’t you go out of building and learn?

Original Twitter thread