Self-Directed Learning
The most intuitive learning paradigm that fosters — skills that sticks, makes learning a passion rather than an obligation.
TL;DR
Through this blog I hope to capture the sense of what self-directed learning is — reflecting upon my own personal journey so far, and I am sure lot of folks who might read this blog would be able to related to some of the things I have tried to capture here.
Looking back — I never had a good academic track record, but by happenstance or what, I have done extremely well in doing stuff that I was intuitively directed to learn. And happenstance again — the stuff that I have been self-directed to learn have not always been conventional and had challenges of getting broader approval and many a times that sort of approval issues surfaced even from my near and dear ones too.
But now at this stage of my life and career, how I sustain or rather thrive can be 100% attributed to the skill capital, network capital and every other worthy capital that I have acquired as a result of my self-directed learnings, explorations and the many meanderings taken in life.
Listing here some of the “crazy” stuff I have excelled knowingly or unknowingly as a result of my self-directed excursions.
- Learning to drive our Ambassador car at the age of 13, that too driven a 100KM stretch all by myself at 14. Was a fully self directed passion (wouldn’t recommend this my kids or any kid ;) )
- You don’t believe — I didn’t know how to read normal English text with speed, not even at ease, and let not the second language which was Malayalam till my 3rd year in Engineering College. Because of that limitation, my learning exposure through reading books and comprehending things through written literature was very limited. That was evident in my overall academic performance right from school days — and during my 3rd year in Engineering, I got exposed to Christian faith and the Bible. That passion sparked in me a thirst to know more about God and faith and the only means to learn that was through reading the Bible and other Christian literature. That led me on a path of ardent reading of those literatures — started off slow paced, but eventually my reading improved and within a short span of time my reading comprehension skills significantly improved and could read any english literature at ease. My learning from that was — if you have a mental model about the subject in question — it is much easier to learn the skill. BTW — the same year that I discovered God and passion for the Bible — I ended up spending most of my time reading the Bible, to the point of total neglect of my studies that I ended up flunking in 4/5 subjects that semester in College (S6). But on the other hand, I learned a new skill I believe has been a great value add to the rest of my life compared to any of the subjects I would I have learned in that semester — however I could quite well catapult back the next semester by clearing those arrears.
- Touch typing — In the gap after I finished my engineering studies and landing my first job — got a chance to spend couple of days with an old school friend and learned that he could type without looking at his key board. I was motivated to learn that skill, I came back home and downloaded few free touch typing learning PC apps and started practicing the skill — It was a gamified app that I got hooked on it and learned the skill quite well. And coincidentally my first job that I got was in Tech. Support where we had to log the call details very quickly and this skill came very handy. This has been a foundational skill that has tremendously helped me in my coding skills and efficient production and delivery of digital solutions in my work and hence a big productivity booster.
- Long story short — I have acquired many other skills along the way and the place where I am now in life and career — at my 41, I am at the early stages of an exciting entrepreneurial career in software technology consulting, a self taught fitness and science behind human physiology and biology enthusiast and a family man.
My Insta status sums it up in a nut-shell what I have come to be:
All of what I am in life today and the learnings that has stuck with me has been largely through self-directed explorations. I wouldn’t say that it is the best approach for everyone, but for guys like me, who finds it a challenge to learn through formal systemic learning means — I feel this is the best formula for success — but people who can crack the formal education system and learn quite effortlessly acquiring new skills learning comes quite natural and they fair quite well too. Nevertheless I would want my kids to strike the right balance between both — I must confess, and thank my Mother who pushed me to do Engineering even though I was so wavered at that point in life not been able to decide for myself what I wanted to do — I feel striking a right balance at least in the case of my kids in their formative years will benefit — also tweaking up the approach a bit keeping their individual personalities in mind.
One great resource I came across for Self-Directed Education paradigm for kids is a book called Unschooling to University by Judy Arnall.
On the other hand it wasn’t always been hunky dory — I can also acknowledge that my self directed explorations has landed me in lot of trouble and set me down the track of getting hooked on a lot of bad habits too, and one can only imagine the consequences of those — so unless one is mature enough to handle this kind of learning paradigm it can land you in some good trouble as well. But on the whole it is a journey — you learn, unlearn and iterate till you find your purpose and true north for life.
Having said that — I now have started to also appreciate the benefits of putting some formal framework and structure for learning (The best frameworks for learning that I have come across are — Ultralearning , The only skill that matters) and my resent areas of learning interest has been:
- Learning to play Tennis — A recent hobby that I am trying to develop — has enrolled for Tennis training along with my daughter for thrice-a-week classes — loving the game so much. Cant wait to make progress to reach some professional level in the sport.
- Taking some courses in Biology and science — through Khan Academy
- Wanting to learn the art of investing and capital markets — Found the stuff at Zerodha Varsity the best so far for that
- Learning Math from perspective of it’s practical application for Analytics and Business Intelligence — Math, Analytics and BI
- Block chain and Bitcoin
- Metabolic health and improving the cell mitochondrial health
- Some new fitness modalities and strength techniques — kettle bell training and more TRX moves.
- Studying the Scriptures systematically — Wayne Grudem
