Learning Through Conversation 🙇🏼♂️
Reflection, Conversations, and Cool New Courses
Hi friends,
Welcome to November! Every 4th issue from now on will be a shorter dive into the world of learning and cool resources that you might enjoy.
We all consume too much information these days. Thus, slowing down and reflecting is paramount. As you digest the content in this post, I recommend you to take some time (maybe grab a cup of tea and put your phone on silent) and reflect on what you’ve learned this year while consciously planning the next 2 months so you enter 2021 with a bang. There’s also an article linked at the end on how to chill for learning.
-James Clear
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes 28 seconds “The more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”– Dr. Seuss
💬 Learning Through Conversation
I had booked a Lunchclub call (an AI super-connector that makes introductions for 1:1 video meetings) for Friday which I was dreading to attend. Reluctantly, I joined the call and chatted with a 50-year-old stranger (let’s call him Raj) who taught me a thing about talking to people with different experiences.
My last call was a perfect match with identical interests. But I had nothing in common with Raj. He grew up in Bangalore, went to school and college in the same locality, and has been working in the same area for 25 years running a printing business. He told me he hadn’t left the city much in all his life.
I told him about my travels and experiences; he was fascinated and asked me a lot of questions about studying abroad. As I was doubting our mutual interests, he told me about his learning pursuits.
Raj was always curious about stock trading but running the printing business and growing a family didn’t allow him to explore that option. A few years back, he decided to finally learn to trade while managing full-time work and enrolled in evening classes. After 1.5 years of learning and managing his small portfolio, he is now trading professionally.
On top of this, he had a serious spinal injury, and even after regular visits to the physio was not improving. He took things into his own hands and devoured the internet to find a cure. Much like how Scotts Adams did with his Spasmodic dysphonia.
What did I learn from the conversation?
Sometimes you learn based on your interests, sometimes by necessity. Learning never stops.
You can always change your career/profession later in life by investing a few hours daily. We have a tendency to think that we will continue to live or work the way we are doing now for the rest of our lives - things can change, even when you’re 50 years old, but you gotta take ACTION.
Conversing with people from different backgrounds/perspectives is refreshing. Raj was fascinated by my travel stories and this newsletter and I enjoyed listening to his learning pursuits.
Action for you- find someone you think you do not have anything in common with and set up a call with them. You never know where the conversations take you.
You can also join Lunchclub using my invite code.
📽 What I’m learning
I am starting this Lecture Series on Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.
Awakening from the Meaning Crisis is a 50 lecture series - each roughly one hour long - where John Vervaeke provides a whirlwind tour that gradually adds depth to all necessary terms and lays out how the ideas of thinkers like Plato, Socrates, Diogenes, Aristotle, Buddha, Jesus, Kant, Luther, Descartes, Hegel, Heidegger, and Jung can help us to get a better grasp of the current meaning crisis.
Read more here or watch this 3-min intro:
📋 Cool Courses
Online education is evolving fast, who knew there would be courses on travel? BrightTrip creates courses focusing specifically on travel concepts and skills needed to successfully navigate a trip abroad.
For example, there’s a course on How To Pack, Traveling with Kids, and also the history of Ramen 🍜.
Designed as an after school membership club for 8-14 years old but worth checking out. The co-founder Josh Dahn was the director of Ad Astra School, which Elon Musk secretly created for his own kids on the SpaceX campus.
They’re all about educational experiences designed from first principles to nurture innovators.
📎 Something More
THE DRILL OF HOW TO CHILL FOR LEARNING
What’s your chill drill? - Sending Whatsapp messages, surfing the web, and gaming are all examples of active resting. Wakeful resting and just chilling out is simply more effective for learning and remembering. And, even better, longer breaks are better than short breaks!
WHAT DRIVES YOU"I like how I feel when I’m more connected to the things that make me happy. I like how I feel when I think that I am doing things that a younger version of me would be proud of, not the older version."
Something to ponder on: What would you do if you knew you would fail?
Follow it by this short post on How to Fail.
👋🏼 Till next time!
Support: If you have a friend who is looking for learning inspiration, useful tools, and thoughtful articles, please forward or simply share this issue for some support :)
If you have any feedback or comments, I’d love to hear from you, just reply to this email.
*Cover Illustration by Dmitry Nikulnikov from Icons8