This post is part 5 of a series of posts, discussing some lessons in my 3-week long exploration of Skillshare courses.

Background

For the past month, I have been writing about the lessons learnt from a Skillshare subscription I took in the past month. This post would be a meta-reflection on what I have learnt from them.

If you are interested, the other posts can be found here.

  1. An introductory post
  2. Skillshare Chapter 1: Productivity with Ali Abdaal
  3. Skillshare Chapter 2: Productivity with Thomas Frank
  4. Skillshare Chapter 3: Essentialism with Greg McKeown

The inspiration of this writing experiment was this blog post by fast.ai co-founder Rachel Thomas, who advocated blogging for the sake of learning and helping the people one step behind us.

This is a reminder that I should not restrict my learning to the professional life, and to continue growing in other domains as well.

  1. Background
  2. Lesson 1: Drop things quickly
  3. Lesson 2: Learning may not be unless you have created something out of it
  4. Considerations for future writing

Lesson 1: Drop things quickly

There is an endless volume of content available via Google, whether there are in text, or in video. If attention is not captured, move on to the others

Many courses were paused at an early stage. It wasn’t because of the course quality. The problem laid with the timing. I discovered the ideas at the wrong timing, when I did not know how to apply the ideas.

Lesson 2: Learning may not be unless you have created something out of it

I find I internalised the lessons deepest when I applied the lessons immediately into a project I was working on.

Examples of what can be created:

  • Writing a program after learning a programming language
  • Writing a journal entry or blog post to reflect on a learning experience
  • Practising a technique shown in a tutorial

Considerations for future writing

This series of posts was a fruitful experiment in the articulating my ideas and putting them in prose. Some of my ideas have also been developed over the course of drafting and editing.

In continuing this process, I may choose one of the following to explore.

  1. Consolidating my book notes: In the spirit of creation to consolidate my thinking.
  2. Evergreen ideas: Exploring some core ideas that have been relevant to me for a few years.
  3. Curation of resources: Sharing resources showing a 360 degree view of a big idea

Let me know what you think in the comments.