#015: If You Stop Learning You Stop Growing
Educate yourself through side projects — not by chasing diplomas!
All humans want to learn; this is how we are wired — it is natural.
From the moment we are born (or perhaps even before) a combination of unsupervised and reinforcement learning kicks in and triggers our personal growth journey.
From there on, we learn through taking action, trying and seeking (Dopamine-based) reward for it.
Unfortunately, most people conclude that their desire to learn can only be fulfilled by chasing a degree of some kind.
Instead, project-based learning is where you grow the most, especially, if it is based on intrinsic motivation and passion.
The fastest way to learn a highly useful skill is through failure and then retrying.
That’s how we learned to master two of our most important skill-sets in life:
Walking and talking.
Without those we wouldn’t be nearly as capable as we are and they are the foundation for everything we do.
Yet, we never went to school to learn to walk or talk and none of us got a diploma for it.
Instead, we applied what can be called “project-based learning“. Define a project such as “learning how to walk” and then execute on it to get better at it.
The same way you can learn how to ski or to program.
Project-based learning is so much more valuable than a diploma that if you need to hire somebody who masters a foreign language you’d rater hire a native speaker than somebody with a fancy diploma.
The same way when you hire a coder you don’t care about the diploma but you care about the actual coding skills.
Think twice if you want to chase a diploma.
It is very common to hear kids stating that their goal is to go to college.
If you ask why they tell you because they want to get a bachelor’s degree in XYZ.
They might tell you that they want to get a bachelor’s degree so they can go on for a master’s degree or PhD degree.
In a same way many professionals are chasing certificates in hope to boost their career.
A degree is not a valid goal.
The problem is that if you don’t exactly know why you want to chase a degree you might be just fooling yourself.
Peter Thiel made the interesting observation that “education historically used to be an investment, then it became an insurance and now it became more like a tournament“.
There are many possible reasons why a degree might be useful such as qualification for a job: if you don’t have a medical degree you cannot work as a physician.
The same way if you don’t have a pilot or driving license (which is also some form of degree) you are not able to fly a plane or drive a car.
However, the reason you might chase a medical degree is not the degree itself but rather the desire to heal patients.
The reason you are chasing a driving license is because you want to be able to legally drive a car.
In both cases the degree is a means to achieve a higher goal and on your path to learning how to achieve the higher goal you (need to) get the degree.
That’s the reason why people originally were chasing degrees: to learn about a specific topic or subject.
Today that reason is no longer valid.
If you want to learn about a subject you can just read about it on the internet: from history to nuclear physics to biochemistry.
You’ll find every piece of information online and sometimes even taught by the most renowned teachers or professors through courses on Coursera and the like.
So if you don’t want to become a physician or pilot what other reasons might you have to get a degree?
Think carefully.
If you have a higher goal in mind you might not need the degree at all: just start a project.
If you want to learn how to build a robot just start building one instead of chasing a college degree in robotics.
If you want to learn about finance just buy your first stock and learn from the experience.
If you want to learn about online marketing just try to sell a product online as a side-project.
Today, degrees are offered and chased in an inflationary manner.
Everyone has diplomas and nobody can even say if they are meaningful or not (yet most of them come with a hefty price tag).
Sam Altman says “the more credentials the faker the job“.
In other words: the more diplomas somebody has the more this person can hide his or her incompetence behind degrees.
Everyone can get some kind of diploma. Most of them are meaningless.
Instead, have project goals.
Learning through projects is the most efficient way to become skilled.
First, you typically choose to work on projects because you have a keen interest in it.
Second, you learn through trying, failing and repeating; the same way you learned to walk and talk or eating with a fork and knife or chop sticks.
Third, if you really need to prove that you master a skill-set, then, the only way to learn it is through a project anyway.
The degree sometimes is an additional necessary requirement but not sufficient.
Set your project goals to grow
If you want to grow in any dimension, define a project and start executing on it now.
It is the fastest and most efficient way to grow.
And if you have a passion for it it is incredibly fulfilling.
What are your current side projects?
If you don’t have any I highly recommend to start one now.
Happy learning!
Key takeaways
- We all have a natural desire to learn.
- Learning is the key to growing a.k.a. personal growth
- The most efficient way to learn is through projects. Define your next side-project now and start or keep growing.
Don’t miss the next newsletter if you want to get more actionable insights on how I optimize my life.
