The science of self-learning: how to teach yourself anything

Chapter 1. Principles of self-learning

Self-learning is a pursuit that isn’t new, but what’s new is how possible and attainable it is. The world is your oyster, courtesy of the Internet, and we have the ability to learn anything we want these days. Traditional learning has some positive aspects, but it also severely limits our approach toward education and how we seek to enrich ourselves. To combat this, we must first take a cue from autodidacts and understand the difference in mindset between reading and regurgitation and intellectual curiosity.
The learning success pyramid accurately lays out the three aspects of learning, two of which are typically neglected and thus serve as enormous barriers for most people. First, you must have confidence in your ability to learn, otherwise you will grow discouraged and hopeless. Second, you must be able to self-regulate your impulses, be disciplined, and focus when it matters—you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Third comes learning, which is where most people tend to start—to their detriment. Learning is more than picking up a book and reading, at least psychologically.
Self-motivation is related to self-regulation. It’s an essential aspect of self-learning because there is no educator to impose rigidity upon you—just yourself. You are both the teacher and the student, and that comes with the task of self-motivation. There are three main aspects of intrinsic motivation to keep yourself moving toward your goal of self-learning: autonomy, mastery, and purpose/impact. The intangibles tend to be far more powerful than what you would traditionally consider motivating.

Chapter 2. Interaction with information

Interaction with information—in other words, how to take something that’s on the page and screen, understand it, and make it usable to yourself at a later time. That’s learning in a nutshell, but there are best practices you should embrace outside of the traditional classroom setting.
First is the SQ3R method. Use it. It stands for survey, question, read, recite, review. This is not just a process for attacking a book, but rather a plan for attacking entire disciplines and fields—and whatever you are trying to learn for yourself. Most people will use some elements of the SQ3R method, such as the read and review portion, but without the other elements, deeper comprehension is rarer and more difficult.
Second is Cornell notes. Use them. Cornell notes split your note-taking into three parts: taking notes, writing cues, and summarizing. In this way, you create your own study guide, with the ability to go into as much detail as you want on command. The fact that you’ve gone through the information three times also doesn’t hurt.
Finally, self-explanation. Do it. When we are forced to try to explain concepts through self-inquiry, we will quickly discover what we do know and what we don’t know at all. These are called blind spots, and they are far more common than you might like to think. Can you explain why the sky is blue or how gravity works? Probably not off the top of your head, even though you think you understand those concepts. The Feynman technique is an offshoot of self-explanation that helps find blind spots as well, with an added component of using an analogy to explain what you think you know.

Chapter 3. Read Faster and Retain More

This chapter is geared toward imparting how to read faster and also retain more information at the same time. It sounds like a tall task, but it’s unlikely you’ve learned much about reading since when you were learning the alphabet—that is to say, not much. There are a few important aspects to reading faster.
You must stop subvocalizations. This is when you mentally read words out loud. You can think and process faster than you can read out loud. This means instead of sounding out and pronouncing words, you must imagine their meaning in their place. It’s a tough habit to break.
Second, you must train your eyes. After all, each eye has six muscles that control its movements. You must train your eyes in two ways: to move less and to look wider with peripheral vision.
Third, you must learn how to strategically skim by avoiding useless words, focusing on important words, and ignoring words at the edge of the pages.
Finally, you must learn how your focus and attention works in regard to reading. Give it the respect it deserves and take scheduled breaks, make games to read faster, and eliminate distractions.
How do you read a book? A final section details the four levels of reading as articulated by author Mortimer Adler. The levels are elementary, inspectional, analytical, and syntopical. Most of us only get through the first two levels and don’t engage with the material and have a conversation with it. That’s where deep, true comprehension comes from.

Chapter 4. Skills and Habits to Teach Yourself Anything

There are certain skills and habits you must cultivate in your quest for self-learning and self-education. Many of these stem from the simple fact that with no one else to regulate you, you must do it yourself. Again, the theme that you must be both student and teacher rears its ugly head.
First, plans, schedules, and goals should all figure heavily into your self-learning. In fact, they should be one of the first things you create—all three of them. Take a page from Benjamin Franklin (twice) and implement a daily schedule that simplifies your decision-making, as well as a plan and schedule for accomplishing your goals. Make sure your goals are challenging enough to be motivating but not so impossible as to create discouragement. Think SMART.
Information itself is not going to teach you. You must have a dialogue with the material you discover and interact with it in a way that makes up for not having a stimulating teacher or professor. You must pull information out. You can accomplish this through asking critical and probative questions—the goal is to gain understanding, context, and perspective, not to seek a correct answer. As long as you focus on the overall purpose of finding a nuanced and three-dimensional view of a topic, your questions will be well-guided.
Research. It’s not as simple as going to the library and checking out a book or consulting Wikipedia and calling it a day. In the same vein as the previous point on pulling information, you must ensure that you are finding a complete and thorough understanding of a topic through five steps: gather, filter, find patterns, seek dissent, and put it all together.
Self-discipline is needed in heavy doses because self-learning is not innately a pleasurable pursuit. It’s work. And it can induce anxiety, stress, and discouragement that ultimately lead to giving up. Look at your moments of anxiety and view them as temporary and passing. The pain won’t last forever, you’ll grow accustomed to it, or you’ll solve it. These are all acceptable outcomes to the occasionally painful process you must endure.
Deep learning and surface learning are different. Deep learning comes from understanding concepts and patterns, and often, then supersedes the need for shallow, surface learning. The same parallel exists with regard to trying to memorize something, versus trying to understand it. If you simply prioritize concepts and understanding, you’ll be able to fill in the blanks of specific information by yourself.
Before you self-learn, your mindset must allow it happen. You can either possess a growth mindset or a fixed mindset—the former recognizes that growth will occur with sufficient effort (growth=effort), while the latter believes that growth is not a function of effort, rather luck/fate/innate talent (growth=luck). The growth mindset is what allows you to learn effectively because it espouses the belief that you can do it. Whether you can or cannot, you are correct. All the techniques in the world won’t make a difference in your learning if you don’t think it will ultimately happen for you.