Learnings come from Execution.
Learning is a myth ~ here's the secret to learn anything you want to.
Hey Guys,
Aaditya here 🖖
I have a Free Guide for all of you at the end, but you’ll probably enjoy this newsletter as well (5 minute read)
So last week — I receive a DM on LinkedIn from a freelancer. I’ve received a ton of these messages, but this one led me to writing this Newsletter. Here’s how to conversation went:
Him: Hey Aaditya, can I ask you a question?
Me: Cool — go ahead.
Him: I’m a freelancer and wanted to learn copywriting. What course did you take?
Me: I didn’t take a course — just learned on LinkedIn & Twitter.
Him: How can I learn then?
Me: I don’t know, perhaps trying out things?
Him: You can tell me if you don’t want to reveal, don’t give excuses.
Me: **** Blocked Him ****
After going through this, I realised that I hadn’t taken any paid courses or mentorships — but still figured out how to get paid and have 700 people reading my Newsletter (that’s you).
To be honest, this goes beyond freelancing or business. People have forgotten that learning is a self-initiative. Here’s a stoic way to say it:
Everyone wants to be taught, but few want to learn.
Here’s my thoughts on how to learn almost everything in life!
Here’s what we’ll be discussing today:
Heuristic ~ learning approach
Positioning ~ framework for learning
Action ~ framework for experimentation
Mistakes ~ framework for reinforcements
The Heuristic Learner
Today, learning is a favour. The schools want you to learn math and the priests want you to learn religion. Everyone wants to teach, but no one wants to learn.
You can differentiate yourself from others, by becoming a learner. Someone, who wants to learn by choice and upskill themselves.
But that isn’t enough, here’s the problem…
For the past few centuries, humans have focused more on theory. We give an exact framework of thought to students and don’t allow them to figure stuff out on their own — and that’s when things get scary.
The word Heuristic means learning by doing, unless you try something and figure out how it works — you can’t call it learning. For example:
Let’s say you want to build a website.
You could either wait for someone at college to teach it to you for 4 years. Or you could get on YouTube, build a GitHub profile, talk with a bunch of people, try making something, fail and try again.
I’d prefer the latter ;)
If you can become someone who Figures sh*t out, you’ll have a superpower.
Positioning
Theory is bad, but also important. If you don’t have an idea of what you’re aiming to learn — you won’t get it.
Positioning begins way before you sit at your desk and wonder how to do something, it is actually a perpetual process.
I look at positioning as consumption, surrounding yourself with the right Community and Content to fuel your curiosity.
Read good books.
Watch great cinema.
Network with smart people.
Share Content about your interests.
All these things will keep you in the loop and you’ll never know when an opportunity will present itself — and that’s the fun of it!
Action
This is where you start working towards your goal. You can spend your time studying a skill and learning everything about it, but unless you get in the trenches and try things out — you won’t actually learn.
Freelancing is the perfect example for this. How many so every courses you take and videos you watch — you won’t know squat unless you do something. Reach-out to people, send proposals, take calls, loose clients and make every possible mistake.
Action = Experimentation. Essentially, you are generating Data about your field. As a freelancer, you might understand the type of services of demand or recent client expectations.
Don’t complicate it. Do something other than reading about it. Could be writing a tweet or an article or building a website. Anything that gets you into execution mode.
Write that Book
Create that Blog
Build that Website
Grow your audience
Launch and scale that product
There’s endless things you can do!
Mistakes
If you take actions, you’ll make mistakes. That’s just how it works. But mistakes are the best part about learning — because they are the reality.
If you every need a fact-check, just make a mistake. Here is the simple framework for heuristic learning:
Action → Mistakes → Iteration → Repeat ♻️
Mistakes is essentially reinforcement learning. Do something. See what works. See what doesn’t work. Focus on what works and repeat the cycle.
Especially in your professional journey, you’ll make a ton of mistakes with your choice of organisation, relationships and interests — but make sure you’re learning every time and improving as you go!
Those were my thoughts on learning, but here’s something interesting…
So this week, I launched my Content Calendar as a guide to my followers. This is a Notion Template to manage + schedule your content in one place.
I’ve decided to give it to my Newsletter Subscribers for free!
Here’s the link ~ hope you enjoy it!
Alright guys, see you next week :)
Position, Practice, Learn.
Very helpful. Thank you🌟