The techniques you learn in this workshop can help you acquire the following Skills, among others:
- [Empiricist] Autodidact skill chain
- [Meditative] Hone Your Craft skill chain
- [Pragmatist] Merchant's Mettle skill chain
Review [5 minutes]
While people are still filtering into the workshop meeting, take five minutes to discuss the previous workshop and how you applied it in your life over the past week.
What is Metalearning, and why should you care?
Metalearning is the art of learning how to learn. It is a skill that translates to every other domain. While there are different steps in learning the guitar vs learning how to code, there are core similarities. Once you master them, they will help you become better at learning anything. As a bonus, you’ll seem superhuman to those who watch you. Our goal is for you to be able to walk away from this workshop with the ability to learn things faster and/or better than you could before.
The skills of Metalearning [45 minutes]
Learn to ask advice from your Cohort.
The Guild has the Cohorts for a reason. It’s a community of people who have all dedicated themselves to improving their lives. This includes the Guild’s principles of Metalearning. This is a Meta-Metalearning skill, as your fellow Guildmates can help you implement or learn Metalearning skills.
Discuss: Choose one skill you want to learn and share it with your Cohort.
Don’t learn things you don’t want to learn.
You only have so much time. Every skill you are trying to learn takes from the resources you could be using to learn a different skill. Also, are you trying to learn something because you want to, or because you feel obligated to? Our workshop on Soul Mapping is a skill that can help identify this.
If you are truly obligated to learn something, keep in mind why it’s important to fulfil that obligation. The key is to operate from intrinsic motivation as opposed to guilt or obligation. You’ll be much more inclined to put in the hard tedious work this way.
Discuss: Is your chosen skill motivated by a sense of obligation? If so, can you either abandon that skill, or identify the intrinsic motivation?
Improving your memory.
No matter what you are trying to learn, the content of the skill needs to enter and stay in your head. There are many different memory techniques, but Spaced Repetition is the king. You have no excuse. Download ‘Anki’ now, and load it up with a pre-made deck for your chosen skill. If you can’t or won’t use Anki, get some index cards and do spaced repetition the old fashioned way. This is actually better in some ways, as handwriting engages the somatic part of your brain.
Students of our Creating an Exobrain course will also understand the importance of relying on our memory as little as possible. Don’t memorise rote facts for the sake of it. Determine the least amount of information necessary that you have to actually remember, and reference the rest.
Discuss: Are there any skills you want to learn that need some rote memorization? If so, go do a quick google search now to see if an Anki deck exists for that skill. Also, if you have a note-taking system, create some repository for information about this skill.
Improving neuroplasticity.
You will learn more effectively if your brain is healthy. Prioritise sleep. Drink water. Eat a common-sense healthy diet (ROSE has a workshop on Nutrition to help you with this). Get blood work done yearly to make sure you aren’t suffering from a deficiency that might be causing brain fog. Exercise your mind by reading many different books. To learn how to read a book more efficiently, I recommend the book How to Read a Book).
Discuss: What is the lowest hanging fruit of improvements you can make for your brain health? What is one thing you can do this week to fix that? When/how will you do it?
Learning to say “oops!”
You have to be able to pivot quickly when a given strategy is not working. This first involves being able to recognize that it is not working, and second being able to admit to yourself that you have wasted some time and need to cut your losses. For the first, seek a mentor. For the second, Soul Mapping will also equip you with the skills needed to question your own motivations and admit defeat when necessary.
Discuss: Can you recall a time when you wasted needless effort on a task or learning a skill, when you would have been better served giving up on that particular task or even the entire skill? Take a moment to reflect on that, or at least the hypothetical future in which you do this, and then write a quick blurb about it somewhere you can easily see at all times when working on your chosen skill. This will help your internalize the lesson and keep it in mind.
Learn how to seek a mentor.
A mentor can be a stranger on the internet, a professional you find at a local club, or the old wizard who lives in the forest dispensing magical wisdom. The important thing is to find someone who can demonstrate skill in the thing you are trying to do.
Discuss: Who are mentors you have had in the past, and how did you find them? Where are some places you could look for mentors regarding your chosen skill? How could you vet them to make sure you choose a good one?
Be able to just shut up and do it.
Oftentimes, we get so consumed by creating a game plan for learning a skill that we don’t end up actually doing anything. Many people spend their whole lives saying they will eventually learn to do X. And then they die. For the final leg of our session, we are going to perform Resolve Cycles and learn our chosen skill.
Break [5 minutes]
Take a 5 minute break.
Learning How to Learn [30 minutes]
Resolve to learn your skill by the end of class. Remember: the mindset that makes resolve cycles work best is the mindset of doing versus trying. You will almost certainly not learn your skill by the end of class, but it's important to get in that mindset. You should at least finish off class time with a clear next action for how to proceed.
Feedback [5 minutes]
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