For Background (general interest) interest ...

A background on the combination of physical and digital including future languages e.g. Spimescript isprovided here. The presentation from EuroFoo is below.



The scenario for Any Given Tuesday is provided here. There is a slidedeck from 2005 for this and at some point I'll post it, however it's not necessary.

For the interactive book (physical + electronics), then the following video from 2008 gives a good enough description.



You'll also find discussion on thefuture of booksalong with various reports of mine (from 2002 to 2006) on 3D printing and techniques behind this e.g.


So, what's this got to do with Solid and IoT.

I’ve begun reading a very interesting book by the brilliant Steven Landsburg, entitled The Big Questions.  I find that we share a taste for contrarian opinions.  Of course Steven is much more skilled at defending his views.  Here’s something that caught my eye:

I sometimes hear economists defend the unrealism of their models thusly: “Economics is an infant science. Today our models are unrealistic; a decade from now, they’ll be a little so, in a decade from then little less. Eventually we’ll have realistic models that make accurate predictions.”

That, I think, is pure poppycock. Our predictions are not, and never will be, based on models; they’re based on informal reasoning. We study models because they own our reasoning skills. We can figure out what happens in these models and thereby develop a good intuitive feeling for what sorts of reasoning are likely to be productive.

In this we are no different from, say, physicists.

. . .

When economists can’t do is tell you what interest rates will be eighteen months from now. Neither can the physicists. You could, I suppose, point to that as a failure of modern physics. After all, interest rates are determined by physical processes in the brains of bond traders; isn’t that the stuff of physics? The answer, of course, is that physical (or economic) models are not designed to make precise predictions of complicated phenomena outside the laboratory.  They are designed to hone the intuition.

Great stuff.  I used to complain that physicists were horrible at predicting earthquakes, or the weather next month.  Steven has the courage of his convictions, and finds even deeper flaws.  :)

So I decided to sit down and try to make a list of my money/macro toolkit.  Here’s what I came up with off the top of my head:

1.  The hot potato effect (AKA Quantity Theory of Money.)

2.  The interest elasticity of money demand

3.  Value of money = 1/P (or 1/NGDP, or 1/forex prices)

4.  Money neutrality

5.   The liquidity effect

6.  The income effect

7.  The price level effect

8.  The Fisher effect

9.  Money superneutrality

10.  The Natural Rate Hypothesis (Exp. augmented Phillips Curve.)

11.  Sticky wages and prices.

12.  Nominal debt contracts

13.  Non-indexed capital income taxes

14.  Money illusion

15.   Purchasing power parity

16.   Interest parity theorem

17.   current account deficit =  capital account surplus

18.   Consumption smoothing

19.   Okun’s law

20.   Wage tax =  consumption tax =  universal 401(k)

21.   Exchange-rate overshooting

22.   Balassa-Samuelson effect

23.   Optimum quantity of money

24.   Efficient markets hypothesis

25.   Arbitrage

26.   Asset purchases =  asset sales

27.   Ricardian equivalence

28.   Crowding out

29.   Monetary offset of fiscal policy

30.   Policy impotence under fixed rates

31.    Temporary versus permanent monetary injections

32.   Downward-sloping labor demand schedule

33.   Expectations hypothesis of the term structure

34.   Liquidity premium hypothesis of the term structure

35.   Laffer curve effect

36.   Solow growth model

37.   CAPM

38.   Tax equivalence: consumer and producer taxes

39.  Tax equivalence: import and export taxes

40.   Export subsidies neutralize import taxes

41.   Zero bound on nominal interest rates

42.  Wicksellian equilibrium interest rate

43.  Identification problem

44.  Lucas critique

45.  Rational expectations

46.  AS/AD model

47.  Policy credibility

(I’m sure there are dozens I’ve forgotten)

Some of these tools are based on more basic tools.  Thus Dornbusch’s overshooting model relies on the QTM, PPP, liquidity effect, price level effect, ratex, and IPT.

Some economists are really good at zeroing in the the proper tool to employ in a given situation. Paul Krugman is perhaps the best in the macro blogosphere. Among academics, Bennett McCallum is excellent.  Keep in mind that this is just one skill among many.  Thus about 90% of the time I would agree with John Cochrane on policy issues more than with Paul Krugman, and yet on methodological issues I’m far closer to Krugman.  I tend to think the profession overrates the importance of things like micro foundations and general equilibrium, although for certain problems a GE model is appropriate.

Regarding Landsburg’s opening remarks about progress in economics, I can’t help thinking of Milton Friedman’s claim (made in the 1970s) that in the past 200 years macroeconomics had merely gone one derivative beyond Hume.  Today I can proudly say we are ahead of Hume in three areas, monetary superneutrality (the extra derivative), rational expectations, and the EMH.  The latter two also represent advances over Friedman.  Unfortunately, on the liquidity trap the profession still lags behind John Locke.  (Yes, Landsburg’s point was slightly different.)

Over at Econlog I repeat the Landsburg quotation, and apply it to a specific example.

PS.  David Beckworth has recently been showing off his artistic skills.  I’m honored to be portrayed here and here.

Update: In this op ed, John Cochrane shows off one of his best skills, brutally skewering Keynesianism.

Mindspace is wide and deep. “People are different” is a truism, but even knowing this, it’s still easy to underestimate.

I spent much of my initial engagement with the rationality community feeling weird and different. I appreciated the principle and project of rationality as things that were deeply important to me; I was pretty pro-self improvement, and kept ‘tsuyoku naritai’ [link] as my motto for several years. But the rationality community, the people who shared this interest of mine, often seemed baffled by my values and desires. I wasn’t ambitious, and had a hard time wanting to be. I had a hard time wanting to be anything other than a nurse.

It wasn’t until this August that I convinced myself that this wasn’t a failure in my rationality, but rather a difference in my basic drives. It’s around then, in the aftermath of the 2014 CFAR alumni reunion, that I wrote the following post.

I don’t believe in life-changing insights (that happen to me), but I think I’ve had one–it’s been two weeks and I’m still thinking about it, thus it seems fairly safe to say I did.

At a CFAR Monday test session, Anna was talking about the idea of having an “aura of destiny”–it’s hard to fully convey what she meant and I’m not sure I get it fully, but something like seeing yourself as you’ll be in 25 years once you’ve saved the world and accomplished a ton of awesome things. She added that your aura of destiny had to be in line with your sense of personal aesthetic, to feel “you.”

I mentioned to Kenzi that I felt stuck on this because I was pretty sure that the combination of ambition and being the locus of control that “aura of destiny” conveyed to me was against my sense of personal aesthetic.

Kenzi said, approximately [I don't remember her exact words]: “What if your aura of destiny didn’t have to be those things? What if you could be like…Samwise, from Lord of the Rings? You’re competent, but most importantly, you’re *loyal* to Frodo. You’re the reason that the hero succeeds.”

I guess this isn’t true for most people–Kenzi said she didn’t want to keep thinking of other characters who were like this because she would get so insulted if someone kept comparing her to people’s sidekicks–but it feels like now I know what I am.

So. I’m Samwise. If you earn my loyalty, by convincing me that what you’re working on is valuable and that you’re the person who should be doing it, I’ll stick by you whatever it takes, and I’ll *make sure* you succeed. I don’t have a Frodo right now. But I’m looking for one.

It then turned out that quite a lot of other people recognized this, so I shifted from “this is a weird thing about me” to “this is one basic personality type, out of many.” Notably, Brienne wrote the following comment:

Sidekick” doesn’t *quite* fit my aesthetic, but it’s extremely close, and I feel it in certain moods. Most of the time, I think of myself more as what TV tropes would call a “dragon”. Like the Witch-king of Angmar, if we’re sticking of LOTR. Or Bellatrix Black. Or Darth Vader. (It’s not my fault people aren’t willing to give the good guys dragons in literature.)

For me, finding someone who shared my values, who was smart and rational enough for me to trust him, and who was in a much better position to actually accomplish what I most cared about than I imagined myself ever being, was the best thing that could have happened to me.

She also gave me what’s maybe one of the best and most moving compliments I’ve ever received.

In Australia, something about the way you interacted with people suggested to me that you help people in a completely free way, joyfully, because it fulfills you to serve those you care about, and not because you want something from them… I was able to relax around you, and ask for your support when I needed it while I worked on my classes. It was really lovely… The other surprising thing was that you seemed to act that way with everyone. You weren’t “on” all the time, but when you were, everybody around you got the benefit. I’d never recognized in anyone I’d met a more diffuse service impulse, like the whole human race might be your master. So I suddenly felt like I understood nurses and other people in similar service roles for the first time.

Sarah Constantin, who according to a mutual friend is one of the most loyal people who exists, chimed in with some nuance to the Frodo/Samwise dynamic: “Sam isn’t blindly loyal to Frodo. He makes sure the mission succeeds even when Frodo is fucking it up. He stands up to Frodo. And that’s important too.”

Kate Donovan, who also seems to share this basic psychological makeup, added “I have a strong preference for making the lives of the lead heroes better, and very little interest in ever being one.”

Meanwhile, there were doubts from others who didn’t feel this way. The “we need heroes, the world needs heroes” narrative is especially strong in the rationalist community. And typical mind fallacy abounds. It seems easy to assume that if someone wants to be a support character, it’s because they’re insecure–that really, if they believed in themselves, they would aim for protagonist.

I don’t think this is true. As Kenzi pointed out: “The other thing I felt like was important about Samwise is that his self-efficacy around his particular mission wasn’t a detriment to his aura of destiny – he did have insecurities around his ability to do this thing – to stand by Frodo – but even if he’d somehow not had them, he still would have been Samwise – like that kind of self-efficacy would have made his essence *more* distilled, not less.”

Brienne added: “Becoming the hero would be a personal tragedy, even though it would be a triumph for the world if it happened because I surpassed him, or discovered he was fundamentally wrong.”

Why write this post?

Usually, “this is a true and interesting thing about humans” is enough of a reason for me to write something. But I’ve got a lot of other reasons, this time.

I suspect that the rationality community, with its “hero” focus, drives away many people who are like me in this sense. I’ve thought about walking away from it, for basically that reason. I could stay in Ottawa and be a nurse for forty years; it would fulfil all my most basic emotional needs, and no one would try to change me. Because oh boy, have people tried to do that. It’s really hard to be someone who just wants to please others, and to be told, basically, that you’re not good enough–and that you owe it to the world to turn yourself ambitious, strategic, Slytherin.

Firstly, this is mean regardless. Secondly, it’s not true.

Samwise was important. So was Frodo, of course. But Frodo needed Samwise. Heroes need sidekicks. They can function without them, but function a lot better with them. Maybe it’s true that there aren’t enough heroes trying to save the world. But there sure as hell aren’t enough sidekicks trying to help them. And there especially aren’t enough talented, competent, awesome sidekicks.

If you’re reading this post, and it resonates with you… Especially if you’re someone who has felt unappreciated and alienated for being different… I have something to tell you. You count. You. Fucking. Count. You’re needed, even if the heroes don’t realize it yet. (Seriously, heroes, you should be more strategic about looking for awesome sidekicks. AFAIK only Nick Bostrom is doing it.) CFAR has tasked me with finding ten of you.

I’d like, someday, to live in a culture that doesn’t shame this way of being. As Brienne points out, “Society likes *selfless* people, who help everybody equally, sure. It’s socially acceptable to be a nurse, for example. Complete loyalty and devotion to “the hero”, though, makes people think of brainwashing, and I’m not sure what else exactly but bad things.” (And not all subsets of society even accept nursing as a Valid Life Choice.) I’d like to live in a world where an aspiring Samwise can find role models; where he sees awesome, successful people and can say, “yes, I want to grow up to be that.”

Maybe I can’t have that world right away. But at least I know what I’m reaching for. I have a name for it. And I have a Frodo–Ruby Bloom and I are going to be working together from here on out. I have a reason not to walk away.

The comment thread on my post Founder Suicides is vibrant and full of lots of different things, including plenty of challenging stuff to read and figure out how to respond to.

My inbox was also full of private notes over the past few days. Many of them were thank yous for writing about this, some were suggestions, and a few were angry reactions to what I wrote. Regardless, I read them all and thought about them, what they meant, and what I could continue to do to be helpful on the topic of mental health, especially around entrepreneurship.

The suggestions were generally interesting. Some resonated with me and would be helpful when I’m depressed (which I’m not right now). Others wouldn’t have helped me, but might help someone else.

This morning, as I was reading through my email, I came across this one, which I decided to post as an example. It’s thoughtful, has several specific things I’ve done when I’m depressed (spend 1:1 time with friends, drink green drinks, stop caffeine, do little things that create joy for me), and represented the constructive tone of so many people that I interact with.

I hope it’s helpful to you. And – to the person who wrote it – thanks for sharing and taking the time.

———-

“I can’t tell you how much it has meant to me that you have openly discussed depression and suicide. I would like to share with you the following if you wanted to post it on your blog anonymously –perhaps it could be helpful for someone:

What does help someone contemplating giving up on life? Looking on my facebook notifications this morning, there were two posts –one from my daughter who survived an alcohol overdose as a suicide attempt five years ago, and who I believe is grateful to still be here, and another post from a family notifying their son’s facebook friends that he had ended his life on September 30th. There but for the grace of God go I as a parent. Furthermore, I have been at the door of suicide contemplation this past year myself. I feel like I know exactly what Robin Williams was thinking before he took his own life. My depression is not the gray, non-feeling that another writer described, it has been active pain. Pain so hard and awful that you just want it to stop. The universe is punishing you and it seems like it will never be any different. So what would be helpful to me at these rock bottom times? Not well-meaning platitudes, not “change your thinking, change your life”, not more words assigning responsibility to me for creating my reality.

There are a couple of things that I have actually found to help change my spiral. Engage me in small tasks, easy tasks; chopping carrots, washing dishes, some light bookkeeping on quickbooks, something that physically engages me, or lightly mentally engages me. Even if I don’t feel like doing it, get me actively doing some rote work with my hands.

Mention to me a time when I was happy- an actual memory of a good moment. Bring that picture back to my consciousness. Remind me that there have been good times even after I have been down, they do come back. Help me see the pictures in my mind of things that have made me smile before – my cat splayed out on a lounge chair like a drunken squirrel basking in the sun for example.

Ask me to fill my body with a deep breath and let it out, emptying my belly of breath several times in a row. And then to focus on a good image. The beauty of gorgeous fall leaves that I saw on my bike ride, for example. (From the book, Forgive For Good)

For the longer term, spend time with me. We don’t have to have deep talks, just companionship. Alone-time is obsessing time, spiraling down time, too much wine drinking time.

I heard the Dalai Lama’s longtime translator speak recently and he pointed out that depressed people revolve in their cocoon of self-obsession. Compassion is a way out. I used to volunteer my time a lot, and grew away from that somehow in my life. I used to get so much from hanging with the 3-5 year olds at my church’s childcare room. What natural joie de vivre radiates from a five year old! “Would you like to do the hokey pokey? Sure!!!!” I have signed up to look into volunteering in the play room at the Ronald McDonald house. Yes, even for busy people with important jobs and positions, make time to give of oneself where you can be in the moment.

And most importantly for the long term, look at your diet and exercise. Get a coach. Someone you have to report to. I found that I had been draining my adrenal glands from too much exercise, even though I didn’t think it was too much or too hard. The first thing my health coach did was to get me to drink a green drink every day (juiced kale, celery, apple, etc) and to get in as many greens in as I could in a day. Greens chase away depression. Her philosophy is to add things first, not take them away. Over time, I have on my own started to reduce the caffeine, which could be draining my adrenals as well. I had an incredibly happy day yesterday. I want more happy days like that, so it becomes easier to give up the things that could be causing me physically to slip into the bad space. Unfortunately a lot of us rely heavily on the substances as coping strategies, so it is baby steps at first. Add in the good stuff, maybe be a little lighter on myself on the exercise piece, and let me evolve to better choices.

Thanks, Brad. I realize that everyone has different experiences of depression and pain. My little suggestions could completely not work, but if they helped someone at all change the direction of a spiral, they were worth sharing. Perhaps, you have suggestions of your own, perhaps your blog readers do – and not the naturally happy readers trying to help, those of us who have been right there, at the door of ending it. I thought your sharing of your pact with your wife to share when you were thinking suicidal thoughts was powerful. Thank you.”

The post What Helps You When You Are Depressed? appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

This single interview with Tracy DiNunzio, founder of Tradesy, was recorded in three short parts.  You can:

• Listen to all three on iTunes
• Download them as MP3s (right click “save as”): Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
• Download the transcript (PDF, Word)
• Or stream them now below (If you’re reading this in e-mail, please click here to stream):

This podcast is brought to you by The Tim Ferriss Book Club, which features a handful of books (4-6) that have changed my life.  Here is the list, including free samples of every one.

Also, how would you like to join me and billionaire Richard Branson on his private island for private mentoring? It’s coming up soon, and it’s all-expenses-paid. Click here to learn more . It’s worth checking out — trust me. and have your mind blown.

Now, on to this episode’s guest…

Tracy DiNunzio is a killer. She’s the self-taught founder and CEO of Tradesy.com, which has taken off like a rocket ship. She’s raised $13 million from investors including Richard Branson, Kleiner Perkins, and yours truly, and board members include the legendary John Doerr. Tradesy is on a mission to make the resale value of anything you own available on demand. Their tagline is “cash in on your closet.”

Tracy is in the trenches 24/7, making it the perfect time to ask her… How has she created such high-velocity growth? How did she recruit the investors she did? What’s been her experience as a female founder? What are her biggest mistakes made and lessons learned? This multi-part series, fueled by wine, will answer all this and more.

Even if you have no desire to start your own company, this 3-part series will get you amped to do big things.

This episode touches on a lot of cool stuff. It’s a mini-MBA in entrepreneurship, hustle, and tactics.

Scroll Just scroll below for all show notes.  Tons of amazing links and goodies…

Enjoy!

Who should I interview next? Please let me know in the comments by clicking here.
Do you enjoy this podcast?If so, please leave a short review here.  It keeps me going…
Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes.
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Show Notes and Select Links from the Episode

• Tracy DiNunzio’s unlikely resume
• How her business model reflects her lifestyle, and why that’s intentional
• How another startup (and her bootstrapping) helped her find her husband
• The story of bootstrapping her first company, Recycled Bride, and how she traded skills for food
• Why the current day is the best (and worst time) to start an online company
• How she funded and launched Tradesy
• Why she chose venture capital rather than continuing to bootstrap
• The trade-offs — the cons — of venture capital
• Common mistakes Tracy made when she began pitching to investors
• How the rules of dating apply to pitching investors
• The creative way she found her CTO and technical co-founder… on Craigslist
• Addressing the pink elephant in the room — What’s her experience as a woman in the tech start-up world?
• The “Hail, Mary” that kept Tradesy going before its upswing
• What attracted iconic investors like Sir Richard Branson and John Doerr to Tradesy
• How to spend 13 million dollars without blowing it
• Numerous resources for would-be entrepreneurs
• Tracy’s advice to anyone who is unhappy in their current career

LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Visit the Tim Ferriss Book Clubto find a new book each month (or so) that’s changed my life
• My book selection on Audible
• Learn more about Shima-uta (The Boom song) 
• Get more information about Rokudenashi Blues 
• Tradesy
• Check out the deals I’m involved with in the startup world 
• Learn more about Kay Brothers Amery Vineyards Block 6 Shiraz Vintage 2010 and other wines by Kay Brothers 
• Airbnb.com
• Uber.com
• More info about Chromatik 
• Learn more about Big Frame 
• Get more information about ChowNow 
• Listn – Listen to your friends’ music for free
• Venture Hacks
• Angel List
• Learn more about Randy Komisar
• Jobs at Tradesy
• Tradesey iPhone App
• Tradesey on Facebook
• Tracy DiNunzio on Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Books Mentioned in the Episode

• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!by Al Ries
• The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar
• Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great by Jim Collins
• The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone

###

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What startup resources (books, articles, interviews) have you found most helpful or inspiring? Please share in the comments!

By Jean Fan

There’s been an explosion of school-like learning programs in the past few years. Programming boot camps are trendy. Entrepreneurship programs are everywhere. What is hard to find outside of the college system, however, are learning boot camps for people who want to immerse themselves in other areas of study. What is also hard to do is participate in these learning boot camps with limited resources — they cost a lot of time and money.

Going into my gap year, I took interest in participating in a formal boot camp program. I planned to work really hard to save up money. The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized that it wasn’t the right choice for me. I harbor a strong dislike for externally-imposed structure, and wasn’t very interested in the end goals of existing programs (e.g. doing a programming boot camp to land a job at a tech company).

More importantly, if I wanted to do immersive learning, I could just cut to the chase. I didn’t have to save up money and then participate in one of these programs. I could just get started now, and do it on my own.

Among hackademics who are coming out of the traditional system, there’s a tendency to shun school in favor of school-like programs. It’s comfortable. Structured. Easy.

They can also be, in my opinion, kind of a cop out. If you want to truly hack your education, you are doing yourself a disservice if you jump from program to program, always outsourcing your education to other people. There is obviously value in structured programs. But there is enormous value in completely designing your own learning experience.

So now I am: a few weeks ago I wrote a post about hacking an education in AI and nanotechnology. There’s a lot I want to learn, and the rate at which I’ve been learning is underwhelming. I’m not dedicating myself enough, because I haven’t created an adequate structure for myself to do so.

In the past two weeks, I’ve been designing and piloting my own learning boot camp. Here’s how you can do it too:

1. Find a mission that excites you.

Think about why you want to spend time dedicating yourself to intense learning. What do you want to create or contribute to? Choose a mission that is worth investing a significant amount of time into, and then choose your fields of study.

My mission, for example, is to expand human capacity for learning. I’ve been doing this through advocacy for the past two years; now I want to contribute scientifically. People are doing cool things in AI, IA, and nanotech that relate to my mission, which is why I’m excited to learn about these fields. Contextualizing my learning like this is a tactic I use to stay motivated.

2. Compile your own list of resources.

Make a list of books you want to read, MOOCs you want to take, people you want to talk to, organizations you could get involved with, and so forth. Don’t bother designing your own curriculum (you’ll inevitably get off track and lose motivation). Instead, always have a list of resources on hand that you can use. This process of curating resources is a key learning experience in itself, because you have to figure what is relevant to your mission and what is not.

3. Decide on your deliverables.

What will you have created? Finished? Learned? Come up with a list of 5-10 tangible things that you will have to point to after this learning expedition. This is as much for yourself (so you don’t feel like you’re actually accomplishing something) as it is for other people (who will only see the results of your bootcamp, and not the process).

4. Keep a work-progress journal.

Divide each page in a notebook into three columns. The first is “date.” The second is “work planned.” The third is “work completed.” Fill out the first two columns at the beginning of each day. At the end, either check off the third column or write an explanation as to why it didn’t get done. A work-progress journal is a great tool to confront laziness (writing down “It was too hard and therefore couldn’t focus” is shame-inducing) and staying motivated to do hard learning.

This is a key piece of advice I picked up from Cal Newport, who has been instrumental in shaping my perspective in the past few years and who is one of my favorite writers. Although he seems fiercely pro-college, his advice is applicable for all high-achievers, regardless of their chosen path.

5. Write publicly about your learning.

Specifically: keep an online learning journal. Share your journey with others. Write about things you discover, realizations you have, as well as questions you ask. It will keep you on track.

6. Set your hours. Define your dates.

It’s easy as an ambitious learner to feel guilty when you’re not spending time learning. To eliminate the anxiety that you’re not doing enough, specify when you will be learning, and when you can feel comfortable clocking out. For example, you can choose to set weekdays from 7am-9am and nights from 8pm-10pm as your key learning times. The key is to schedule less than you think you need, but to non-negotiable stick with your learning times.

Also: make sure to set beginning and end dates for your boot camp. This enables you to delay gratification and put your head down and work hard, because you have set a date when you can stop.

7.  Don’t set time-based goals.

In school, the curriculum moves at a set pace. If you don’t understand a topic, you have until the day of the exam to figure it out, after which the teacher moves on, and it doesn’t really matter if you actually know it. If you want to actually apply your knowledge, however, this approach is terribly ineffective.

Setting goals can detract from learning if it’s done at the expense of real understanding. Recognize that you’ll encounter roadblocks. Give yourself time to figure out what you don’t understand, instead of trying to force “Unit 1 Chapter 1” in between the hours of 4-5pm.

8. Find your ideal workspace.

Some people enjoy silence, and work in libraries. Others prefer background noise, and work in cafes. Many crave a social scene, and work at a hackerspace. Choose a space outside of your home where you do your best work and work there every day. Avoid working where you sleep. It’s too easy to crawl into bed when learning gets tough. And it will.

9. Automate as much as possible.

If you spend a lot of time deciding what to wear, for example, choose an outfit that you know looks good on you, and wear it every day. If you spend a lot of time deciding what to eat, choose a few meals to eat over and over so you can divert less energy to the endeavor of eating. Spend as little time thinking about things that don’t matter as possible, so you can spend more time thinking about learning.

10. Take care of your body.

Eat to optimize your brain for learning. Fresh fruits and vegetables, lean protein, and healthy fats will keep you physically prepared to push through your learning boot camp.

11. Choose what to say no to.

If you really want to commit to your learning boot camp, you have to change aspects of your current routine to reflect that. Cutting down social engagements, for example — or at least limiting them to specific hours of the day — might be necessary. Going out with friends and not getting enough sleep every day will hinder your ability to learn effectively. This is a learning boot camp that you’re designing, after all, so take it seriously and build a habit of saying no.

12. Get comfortable with uncertainty.  

One of the most difficult parts of self-directed learning is the inherent uncertainty. As you learn, you learn more and more about what you have to learn next. But you never have more than a few steps of foresight, and that’s okay. Unlike when you’re enrolled in a formal program, where the curriculum has already been designed, a self-directed mode of learning can be more fluid. If you give yourself the flexibility to change gears and allow yourself to almost stumble your way forward (given proper reflection along the way, of course), your learning boot camp will be less predictable but perhaps more effective.

13. Get comfortable without stimulation.

Learning is difficult, and a lot of the time, quite boring. Especially when you’re building technical knowledge, which often requires just a textbook and time for memorization, it can be quite boring. You’ll have the urge to procrastinate, to quit, to check Facebook, to go buy something, etc. It’s a difficult process, but creating a successful learning boot camp requires that you get comfortable without this kind of stimulation.

As James Clear put it: “[R]eally successful people feel the same boredom and the same lack of motivation that everyone else feels. They don’t have some magic pill that makes them feel ready and inspired every day. But the difference is that the people who stick with their goals don’t let their emotions determine their actions. Top performers still find a way to show up, to work through the boredom, and to embrace the daily practice that is required to achieve their goals.”

 

The post Design Your Own Learning Boot Camp: A 13-Step Guide appeared first on UnCollege.