The Five Pillars of Self-Learning

We are entering into a brand-new world! Are you prepared for the adventure ahead?

Our world forever is facing changes, for the Neolithic (agricultural revolution) time to the industrial revolution of the late 1800s to the early 1900s. To, more recent times of the 20th century and the advent of the information revolution.

As you can see, humanity likes its revolutions.

And yet again we face another revolution, the fourth industrial revolution. This is the revolution that will bring about the dawn of robots and artificial intelligence. Worry not, it is a way off from Skynet and the terminator.

However, do not be surprised to have a personal robot at your bacon-call in the next 30 years. The magic year is said to be 2050, in which we are to see the start on-mass of the technological metamorphosis.

A great book on the subject — “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” by Klaus Schwab, the read is almost scary.

The scariest thing about this next revolution is not the potential of the next terminator (though possible — hopefully not), but as an economist put it structural unemployment. For those who may not know what structural unemployment actually means, it is when an industry either innovates or collapses making their labour force redundant.

This is the fear that the fourth industrial revolution is bring; robots and AI’s taking your jobs. Though not all jobs are threatened, a large number are. Jobs that are heavily dependent on manual labour are chief amongst them.

Which brings me to the point of this article, the Five Pillars of education. During the fourth industrial revolution, it is going to be ever more important for people to be able to adapt and overcome the challenges it will bring. People will no longer be able to fall back on being a builder or a plumber or any other manual base work.

Ideas, technical knowledge and expertise, solution-based services, and business analysis are the new gold mines of the 21st century. So, to be able to learn and keep up with this ever-expansive frontier is key.

It is not all doom and gloom; we live in an era of information and information is literally all around us, all we need to do is to absorb it. This brings me to the Five pillars of education, gone are the days of the renaissance man, specialisation is key now.

How can we learn in the most effective way?

Effective learning breaks down into the following five elements: Passion, Goals, Basics of the subject, Practice, and Self-criticism.

Passion

“Without passion; you don’t have energy. Without energy, you have nothing.” -Warren Buffett

We start with passion; it is the cornerstone of any successful endeavour. With passion, we are able to sell ourselves the hope of the future. Passion will drive you to learn even when you are tired or hungry or sad or desperate.

The Passion for any given subject is the glue that makes you keep going. It will give you an insatiable thirst and hunger to seek the knowledge that would satisfy and fulfill that thirst and hunger. Passion will make you read more, work harder; making you want to be better.

“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.” -Ferdinand Foch

The key is exploring all subjects and find that one, which makes you feel the burning desire that only passion brings.

Goals

“This one step — choosing a goal and sticking to it — changes everything.” -Ishmael Scott Reed

It is all well and good to have that burning energy. The problem with anything blazing it tends to consume itself out. We need to continuously feed the blaze of passion to prevent it from going out.

Goals give us miles stone to reach.

Goals break down the complex into manageable chucks. No matter how much passion you may have, trying to climb a mountain in one go will quench your passion or worst quench your life. To get yourself small achievable goals will keep the flame alive.

Many small goals help you to see that you are moving forward or show you what adjustment you need to make. They give you time to correct the error that otherwise, you would miss. If your passion is to climb Everest, then your first goal should be to see if you can carry the equipment.

Goals allow you to make adjustments to the educational journey you are taking.

Learning the Basics

No master ever became a master by ignoring the basics. Basics are the foundations from which everything is based on. If I want to become a world-class economist, yet hide away from basic maths, then that journey will become a fruitless one.

The mastery of the basics will give the mastery of the advanced. If I want to understand how the universe began, I first need to know how to add, subtract, divide, and multiply numbers.

Do not be drawn to the finished product, that is the end goal, work on the basics.

There is genius in the Basics.

Practice

Repetition is the mother of all knowledge. It is not good enough to just know the basics; they have to become a habit, become a part of you. You need to practice the fundamentals until you no longer need to think about them when engaging in them.

This will free you up to tackle the bigger goals without having to lose focus on what you ought to already know. When that would you are learning becomes a habit then you cannot but help you reach the goals that you seek.

“One must always practice slowly. If you learn something slowly, you forget it slowly.” -Itzhak Perlman

Self-criticism

“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talents; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas.” -Albert Einstein

All of the rest of the elements are for nothing if you do not pay attention to the errors you are making. To critic, oneself, is to seek perfection in oneself. Each time you engage in any given task, ask yourself; How can I improve? What went wrong? What went well?

To analyse that which you have done allows you to separate the good from the bad. You focus on the bad first, before seeing what you can improve on the good.

However, this pillar curry’s the most risk. There needs to be a balance and an understanding, you need to know your limits and not focus on things that can not improve. The danger of over-analyzing is real and can be just as if not more damaging than not analyzing at all.

Though we are discussing self-criticism, it would be ill-advised to only limit yourself to that. There are untold benefits of criticizing (constructive) of others. You can learn just as much from others as you can from yourself. Why do that which others have already done.

Always question what you see, to see the better picture.

Summary

The Five Pillars of Learning are.

1. Passion

2. Goals

3. Learn the Basics

4. Practice

5. Self-criticism

Though there is an element of vagueness in this article, the aim is for it to become a template for you the reader to fill in. I’m sure an argument can be made, that more elements can be added to this list. But the five mentioned I’m my humble experience tend to breed excellence (when the hard work is applied).

I hope you got something from this article and if you have any questions that you want to ask, feel free to email me — [email protected] or leave a comment