Self-Study versus No-Study

As if this guide isn’t controversial enough, I am going to tell you to “no study”. Why?

Whenever I talk about this topic with anyone, they always say something like: “but you just like self-study! You’re an autodidact, you learn best by yourself. This isn’t necessarily true for anyone else!”

This isn’t true. I suck at self-study. It’s not what I do and it’s not what I recommend in this course. But to explain that, we need to define what people usually mean when they mention these terms.

Study

With studying, they refer to the way our educational systems work. They refer to actual high schools and universities, to lectures and classes.

More specifically, it’s the act of

• Following a schedule in which you consume information about a topic (usually textbooks and lectures)
• Doing exercises or homework while not in class
• Learning for a big test and getting graded
• A pass means you’re done, a fail means you need to retake the class

Self-study

So what is self studying? It’s the act of doing this by yourself. You create the schedule. You create the homework. You buy the textbooks and read them at some pace. You decide what the test is.

I tried this for a good while. I have some books in my room about graphic design, writing, and more. Many of my older tutorials came from this structure:

• Read a chapter of such a book
• Test myself by writing the tutorial on that subject
• By a certain date, this meant I had to finish the book and my tutorials.
• Sometimes this ended with a challenge or test to apply what I learned

It seems like a nice structure, right? I thought I was being very disciplined and rational.

But it didn’t work. I hated it. I was bored out of my mind reading the book, and regurgitating that information a short while later obviously did nothing for the learning process. One challenge at the end was not enough as a real test. And any challenge was usually too hard, because I only learned something in theory by reading words.

Soon, I lost all passion for learning and just couldn’t bring myself to “self-study” this way. This time and effort was, to be frank, completely wasted.

No-study

And now we’ve arrived at the crucial distinction: what I recommend is “no study”. There is no fixed schedule. There is no textbook to read or exercises you’re forced to do. There isn’t a single written test at the end. And you’re certainly not “done” once you pass it: learning is a lifelong endeavor.

What I recommend is, well, everything in this guide.

You learn by doing something a lot and in the right ways. Perfect practice makes perfect. Enough time and experimentation with a subject, will always lead to a very deep understanding of it. You’re never “done”.

One test, or a handful of them, is useless. You need constant evaluation. But not in the structure of a “test” or a “grade”. Just a check against your progress and analysis on how to proceed.

This bothers me as well about our education. You have one try to do something. And whether you fail or pass, there are no retries. I can assure you that any student who fails a test first and learns from it, will pass that test with flying colors a few tries down the line. But you don’t get that chance. School isn’t interested in learning—it’s interested in throwing a grade at you.

For some, there can be benefit to a more strict schedule. This might be personal preference, or mesh better with how your brain works. That’s fine! Just do that!

What I’m trying to convey, is that it’s not needed and often harmful. Any structure you come up with yourself, will always be better (and way less strict) than one imposed on you.

Hopefully, you see the key lessons returning in every chapter. Why is study or self-study so harmful?

• It’s predictable, not varied
• It’s focused, not spaced
• It doesn’t place enough emphasis on experimentation and feedback.
• It doesn’t allow making mistake and learning from it, either by design or by time constraints
• It has too few testing moments, applied in the wrong way (using extrinsic motivation through grades)
• You force yourself into something that most likely battles intrinsic motivation

The list goes on. No-study is risky, yes. You lose control. You lose a clear pointer towards progress, such as a grade or a syllabus for a course. But the reward, if you stick with it, is much faster and more effective learning—which is also more fun.

Everybody learns by themselves

And now for the biggest misconception! People who say “I need someone else to learn, I need others to tell me things instead of reading it myself. I need others or outside forces to learn.”

The more correct statement would be, potentially, I benefit from the help of others while learning. This is true for most people. We’re social creatures. We can learn from another’s expertise. That’s fine and even good.

But it’s help. It’s a bonus.

In the end, everybody has to learn everything by themselves.

It’s a simple fact. Nobody else can open up your skull and put information inside it. You can’t download someone else’s brain. Even if somebody gives a lecture, it is you who has to pay attention, do something with the material, actively try to learn it.

All learning is individual. All learning is about something that you must do so that something happens inside your specific brain. There’s no way around it, sorry.

So stop looking for ways around. Stop thinking that joining a program, paying for a course, entering a university will magically do something for you. In the end, you can only benefit from those places if you actively engage your learning mind-set. Using all the tips I gave.

It’s passive versus active learning all over again. Somebody spitting facts at you for an hour will not make your brain remember any of that, especially not if you look out the window and think about what you’re going to have for dinner.

It also means that you shouldn’t measure yourself against others. They might learn something faster, or may seem to understand something faster. They might have become a bestselling author after two years, while you’re in your fifth year without success.

Brains are different. There’s a bit of talent, luck, and circumstances involved. This is also why a strict schedule will never work: the way a university subject is structured might be great for one and terrible for another.

As they say: “eyes on your own page”. Measure your progress against yourself and only yourself. Because all learning is individual.

Homeschooling (and such)

This topic wasn’t broad enough to receive its own chapter, but I still wanted to say something about it.

In this analogy, “homeschooling” is mostly equal to “self-study”. You’re still mostly following those structural ideas from the educational system, just on your own / at home.

Research shows that homeschooled children have developed more intelligence and creativity by the time they become adults. It also shows one major area in which traditional schools have the upper hand: social relationships.

The only big advantage of the (traditional) educational system is that you’re stuck with others your age, every day, for your whole youth. This means you are put into all sorts of social situations and learn how to navigate them. (And it means you might get friends, romantic relationships, etcetera.) The social lessons you learn are far more important than any other lessons you learn. That’s what homeschooled children lack.

This is an easy problem to overcome. There are countless communities or groups one can join as a kid outside of school. Sports clubs, music lessons, communities around (creative) hobbies, scouts, and so forth. Participate in events within the neighborhood, or take your kids with you when you go someplace other people are.

There’s no reason a homeschooled person has to lack social skills.

Additionally, during my research I found other communities such as “unschooling”. In this analogy, that mostly resembles my “no-study” concept.

The things I present in this article aren’t new. As I said, I didn’t invent any of this! I learned it through reading research, talking to experts or teachers, experimenting with the philosophy myself. Most of what I say has been known for decades. It’s just that the educational system pushes everyone in the other direction—and they never recover for the rest of their life.

To most, learning any way but the traditional way is just incomprehensible. This guide tries to nudge you into at least considering alternative paths.