The Illusion of Learning and the Power of Self - Study
We often think we are learning, but in reality, we may be just following orders. Many believe that reading can change their fate, yet most of the books we read are not even our own choices. It seems like we are picking books, but it's society that sets the curriculum for us. So, today we are going to talk about the concept of self-study. It's not about methods, but about a way to break free from this illusion.
The Story of Christopher Nolan: A Self - Taught Filmmaker
Let's start with the growth story of a person. Little Nolan had a great passion for movies since childhood. He didn't just watch them; he used his father's camera to shoot short films. At the age of 6, when the end - music of Star Wars played, his heart raced, and he stared at the rolling credits, eager to understand how movies were made.
He spent a whole day in the backyard making spaceship models with cardboard, glue, and toys. His brother became an actor, "floating" in space by holding a rope. Nolan, on the other hand, adjusted the camera angle with his father's 8 - millimeter camera. Despite having no funds, no team, and shaky footage, he enjoyed it.
As he grew up, his academic path had nothing to do with movies. He majored in English literature in college, but his love for movies never faded. He used school equipment and resources to shoot short films, involving his classmates and friends. Once, for an ideal shot, he and his friends sneaked into the subway station at night and filmed all night with weak lights.
At 18, he spent a year shooting his first feature film, saving money bit by bit and shooting only on weekends. The filming equipment was so simple that there was no extra film to waste. Every frame needed to be precisely designed and perfectly shot. Eventually, his efforts paid off. This low-budget film with a budget of only $6000 made him崭露头角 in the film industry. Later, he directed many epoch-making movies and became one of the most distinctive directors.
Nolan is a self-taught person. There was no one to arrange his success, no roadmap, no mentor, and no advantage of a prestigious school. He just relied on himself to piece the world together.
What We Can Learn from Nolan's Experience
From Nolan's experience, we can see two important qualities: internal drive and creativity. Internal drive, as I've discussed before, is the ability to continuously regain energy through certain things. Creativity, in essence, is cross-border thinking or interdisciplinary thinking. Nolan not only focused on movies but also integrated literature, science, and psychology into his creations, making his works deep and diverse.
These two qualities can be acquired through self-study. Only by constantly trying can we know what we like. Nolan was lucky to love movies from a young age and became even more passionate after trying. Ordinary people usually need to try different things to determine their love. Love is the source of internal drive. And creativity requires us to be aware of the existence of various knowledge to establish distant connections, which means we need to have a wide range of knowledge, and that also comes from self-study.
The Limitations of School Education
School education is far from enough. Nowadays, college students are everywhere, and even graduates from prestigious schools may not have enough competitiveness in a certain industry. The competitiveness lies in creativity.
I studied for a master's degree at Moscow State University, which has cultivated many top-notch science talents, including 11 Nobel laureates and 6 Fields Medalists, as well as literary talents like Turgenev. But I dropped out halfway because the school's teaching couldn't meet my needs. I wanted more challenges and external pressure to stimulate my motivation. At that time, I realized that my college classmates who had started working were progressing much faster than me in the real world. They were training problem-solving skills, cooperation models in complex systems, while I was still memorizing textbooks in the library for a theoretical course. I was one of the top students, but I chose to drop out. It wasn't giving up; I just didn't want to continue in a closed environment for simulated competition.
Academic qualifications are useful, but not as crucial as we think. They can give you a better start, but in the end, everyone faces the same problems in society.
The Case of the Yale Graduate
Let me tell you about a friend I know. She is a Yale graduate, very smart and excellent. We once cooperated on some offline activities, but after that, our team no longer chose to work with her because she had a very strong ego. When we expressed different opinions at work, she had a big emotional reaction. Later, she seemed to set up her own reading club and accumulated a good number of members by constantly promoting her alma mater. But then I heard from some seniors that she behaved very badly in several cooperation activities, such as crying and making a scene. After this news spread, many people were reluctant to cooperate with her. At that time, I felt that the Yale degree might be a curse for her. She didn't seem to understand how the complex world works.
Academic qualifications are useful. Otherwise, she couldn't have attracted so many reading club members. But whether you have a high degree or not, you still have to face the same problems in the real world.
The Importance of Self - Study in the Knowledge - Explosion Era
We are in an era of knowledge explosion. We need to know which knowledge and models to choose to solve the complex problems in the world, such as emotional problems and ego problems. No matter how good your academic qualifications are, you still have to deal with these problems, and self-study is the only way.
A senior I know, a Peking University doctor, once said that graduating from a prestigious school only means one thing: the person is relatively self-disciplined. That's all. She consumed the reputation of Yale but didn't build a system. This senior has always been disdainful of the current education system because after getting a degree, he found that what the school taught was useless. It just strengthened his ego and brought more problems. While people without high academic qualifications still yearn to use high academic qualifications to package themselves. Academic qualifications are not poisonous, but ego can turn them into poison.
How to Become a Qualified Self - Learner
American educator Susan Kruger proposed the "Success Education Pyramid" theory. Learning behavior is the top of the pyramid. To learn efficiently, we need to prepare the two bases below the pyramid: self-confidence and self-management ability.
Self-confidence means not being a perfectionist and seeing every specific difficulty as a challenge. Don't always think "I'm not suitable for this" or "I'm not suitable for that." Self-management ability is easier to understand. In short, self-confidence solves the psychological obstacle of "Can I do it?" and self-management ability solves the behavioral problem of "How can I do it?" Only by solving these two base problems can we enter the state of self-study.
Nolan is a good example. He never doubted his ability and was extremely confident. He could also plan his time for filming movies in college.
The Example of Nassim Taleb
Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, came from a prominent Lebanese family. His father didn't care about his ranking in traditional education and only gave him two choices: either make money or do academic research. Taleb chose the latter. He thought what the university taught was too shallow and just perfunctorily completed his degree. He spent more time on self-study, reading 30 - 60 hours a week and delving into Western classics, from literature to mathematics, science, history, and philosophy.
After immigrating to the United States at 18, he still maintained this marathon - style learning. Although he finally obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of Paris and an MBA from Wharton Business School, what really ignited his passion was probability and risk management. Dissatisfied with the classroom explanation of "small - probability events," he decided to self-study probability theory, ordering almost all books related to "probability" and "randomness." He spent five years studying random phenomena, which laid the foundation for his success in the financial and academic fields and made The Black Swan a classic.
Why There Are Few Successful Self - Learners
There are two reasons why there are few people who can really succeed through self-study like Taleb. One is that many people haven't solved the problems of the two bases of the pyramid. The other is that there are problems with self-study methods.
Two Methods for Successful Self - Study
- Initial Knowledge Gathering and Classification When you start self-studying, you may not have a clear direction. You read books related to the field randomly. At this time, you need to be able to grasp the main points of a book or even a paragraph immediately. What value is this book conveying? There is no right answer. You summarize the value and take notes on the core points. Then read another book and take notes again. After reading a certain number of books, look back at these notes and classify them.
For example, some books may be about various psychological biases, like Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow and Noise. Over time, you will find that your classifications are increasing, and some classifications are closely related and can be connected. Classification is essentially connecting and integrating scattered knowledge, which is similar to the "analogical thinking" I mentioned in the creativity video, finding the deep - structure similarities between two things. If you just collect a bunch of golden sentences without connecting them, it's not self-study but a collection illusion.
- Knowledge Refinement and System Building After having the first ability and classifying a lot of knowledge, you have initially established a knowledge system of your own. But this is not enough. Now it's time to do subtraction. For all the knowledge you have classified, you need to take notes and write down your own insights, which are examples from your own life.
For example, you can write about a certain psychological bias you fell into when chatting with someone and how you should deal with it next time. When you do this, you will find that some knowledge may be useless to you, far from your goals, or you are not interested in it at all. At this time, you need to make appropriate deletions and get rid of the "noise." As the system improves, your knowledge map will become more and more complete. You will know which scholars and writers to pay attention to in this field and naturally follow their latest research and new books. This ability to choose books is very important because there are too many shoddy books on the market. The system is not summarized but deleted. True learning is knowing what is useless to you and daring to throw it away.
The Importance of Output
Even if you have achieved the above steps, the difficulties have just begun. If you want to become a top talent in this field, the road is still long. The reality is cruel, and the effort we need to put in is often hundreds of times more than we imagine.
I am practicing these two methods through making YouTube videos. Many viewers may be confused about what my channel is about. It sometimes talks about learning methods, sometimes about psychological effects, and even touches on philosophy. This is the process of building a system. As I do it for a longer time, I will definitely make the system more perfect, and the program classification will also be more detailed. But I will not lose the core purpose, which is to explore and summarize this super - big topic bit by bit. Currently, I can only present it to everyone in a fragmented way, but in the future, this map will become more and more complete.
However, all of this needs to be completed through a key action: output. You can take notes or become a YouTuber like me. The output method is not important. Just do it.
Don't wait for someone to teach you or for the textbook to tell you what to do. Build your own system and find your own path. No one will prepare for this war for you. You need weapons, not comfort. Self-study is the only weapon you can rely on. You are no longer a consumer of knowledge but a builder of the system. When knowledge explodes, academic qualifications depreciate, and platforms collapse, the only card you can keep is your own system.
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