Can i teach myself

It can be done on your own, with a mentor, in school, in a company, any time. Before doing any research on how to do, or how to better do, what you want to learn, you need to create an environment to practice it in.

The sandbox lets you explore, experiment, and fail, without staking your entire future, savings, or reputation on it. Whatever you want to learn, this sandbox must be in place before you get started. In the beginning, the best kind of information to look for is recipes. Clear ways of using the skill that you can immediately incorporate into your sandbox and try out. These typically fall into a few categories:. I love books as a learning resource.

You can also use books for harder skills like programming. But there are still plenty of great, sometimes better, resources to be found on the Internet. Some people have written whole blog posts on how to teach yourself marketing , teach yourself design , learn JavaScript , and if you search around a bit you can probably find a well-written guide to teaching yourself anything.

Some of these resources will explain specifically how to do something, and some, like the ones listed above, will help you navigate everything else out there. The Internet is full of free and paid online classes that can teach you anything from programming, to marketing, to design, to I assume basket weaving. Some colleges, even, have opened up free recordings of their courses. There are also great dedicated platforms for online courses.

There are also plenty of amazing teachers on YouTube like this Ruby on Rails series , teachers on Teachable like Tiago Forte , and teachers who have built their own schools from scratch like Wes Bos. Many of these materials can be expensive, but there are plenty of free online courses too.

However, regardless of what it means, learning on one's own is transformed into a quality that makes human beings return to their constructivist capacity to learn through experience. And even more so in these days when information and communication technologies are so advanced that we have an endless number of sources from which to learn and obtain the necessary knowledge to specialise in a wide range of sectors. So, on the basis that we have most of the knowledge at our fingertips, the question of how to be self-taught is simply reduced to one answer: attitude.

It depends only on one's tenacity to achieve the objective alone, in this case, of learning knowledge and skills. The possibility of being an autonomous person for learning means that we can begin to enjoy a series of advantages that not only serve us for our competencies and work skills, but also transform us as people. From the beginning we have talked about will as the gene that initiates the adventure of self-learning.

The world will be better for it. Go out and test it all. If something tells you there must be a better way, there likely is. Go out and find it. Just because it was done one way for 30 years, does not mean it has to be done the same way tomorrow. In fact, the longer something has been practiced, the more it should probably be questioned.

Record everything. What you love. What you hate. What you suck at. What inspires you. What depresses you. Be careful who you learn from. My personal rule is: once three trusted and admired people recommend something, I do it. The only problem with our new world of self-guided education is that there is more absolute crap available to learn than ever before. There are tsunamis of books being published, blogs being created and courses being offered today.

By default this means the sheer number of mediocre or downright bad content available is going through the roof. Your time and your mind are precious. Find a way to filter what you consume. Analyze every investment.

This and the above go hand in hand. Our time is priceless and our money comes in at a close second. That could be in the people you meet, the businesses you build, the skills you acquire, or anything that you attribute genuine value to.

You decide. In order for something to be an investment, it must have a return. Keep your standards high. Teach others. There is no better indication of true knowledge than when you can genuinely help and teach someone else the material.

Give, give, give. The high is unreal. He hammered home the fundamental truth that we are here to serve and help others. Nothing makes us feel better. You know things that others want to know.

Identify that and find a way to offer it. Use a blog, the web, a community group, your family, anything. Trade knowledge. If you can teach something to someone else, chances are they can teach something to you too. Build things. This starts from day one. If you are reading about how to write, then start writing. People dramatically overestimate how much time them must spend learning before they start doing. The answer is exactly ZERO. The moment you start learning is the moment you must start building and testing.

Break things. The people who break the most things tend to experience the most success. Make money. What if you put a price on your experiments from day one?

Does it help people and will they pay you for it? Efficient is not the same as Effective. Being Efficient is doing things right.

Being Effective is doing the right things. Most education happens outside of the classroom. My best education to date was the years I spent studying at the London School of Economics in a hands-on learning environment and running a small business in Sevilla, Spain. That changed my understanding of the world in a way that I never could have dreamed of. It made all the difference. World travel ought to be a requirement for everyone. Drop a year of school if you have to to save money.

Explore everything. The world. The people you meet influence what you learn, what you believe and who you are. Constantly evaluate what relationships best serve your goals professionally and personally. Keep the best and fire the rest. Everything magical in the world exists because of the people who came together to make it possible. The world begins and ends with your relationships.

You may learn your most powerful lessons in the most peculiar of places. Expect this. Search them out. Have fun with it. What if everyone had it backwards? What if the pundits are wrong?

What would that look like? Invert everything. If you think you need a year of experience to do something, think about what would happen if you started attempting it with only a day under your belt. See what comes up.

Ok, then maybe give it a shot. Try every medium. Read books and articles, listen to tapes and seminars, watch videos and presentations TED Talks are a great place to start , write down ideas and stories. There are so many ways for us to learn. Find those mediums that resonate most. Focus your learning there, but then take in the others to turn things on their head from time to time. Get in arguments. With friends, with smart people, with experts, with everyone. Find people who will test your ideas.

People who will question your beliefs and help you see things from angles you may have been blind to on your own. You want these people around. They make you better. Seek out different ways of doing things. The online world makes this endless. There are a million ways to make a living, change the world and help people. Notice all the ways people have been successful.

Find the tools that suit you best. Devour them. Everything is a lesson. Every person. Every experience. Every hardship. All of it is your teacher. Nothing is certain. Beware of those who are overly sure of themselves. There is always more to learn. The learning never ends. The choice should be pretty clear. Develop a passion for learning like you would for anything else you love.

The only option is to make learning an obsession. Nor will it ever be. If I missed anything you think is core to our manifesto, please leave it in the comments below. Add anything you see fit. And, although I have no memory of this, my parents also inform me that I had taught myself to read before going to school. Self-education is good for just about any branch of knowledge or skills you want to acquire.

Here are just a few starter points of abilities you might want to pick up:. Learning something in only three months takes a bit more than casual trial-and-error. Learn More.