Wasn’t expecting an email on Monday?

Me neither.

For context: I’d like to get back into long-form writing for a bit now, because lately I’ve been having a few concepts on my mind that I just can’t not write about. I can’t guarantee I’ll sustain the weekly cadence, but now and then, expect at least 1 long-form essay from me in your inbox (like this one :).

At the beginning of this year, I created a challenge for myself: 

Learn more about business in 2024 than I’ve learned in the past 3 years combined. 

And since I believe that everything is connected, when I say ’business’, that in truth could be anything ranging from technical skills like: 

• copywriting

• sales

• design

To soft skills like

• empathy

• self-awareness

• communication

To different areas of my interests such as

• philosophy

• marketing

• neuroscience

Some might say it’s impossible to master multiple fields & skills in less than one year, while also being able to retain & apply all crucial information. 

But well - I’m here to prove them wrong. 

Introducing…

The Polymath’s Learning Blueprint for 2024

Before we dive into the practical-and-tactical stuff, I want to make one thing clear: 

Our goal is to become an “E-shaped” person: 

Meaning, someone with a wide knowledge base, combined with a deep expertise in 3 (or more) fields. 

We can see it as a compromise between being a generalist, and being a specialist - because contrary to the popular belief, you don’t have to choose either of those. In truth, when you combine them, you become absolutely deadly.

James Altucher one wrote: 

“Take two things. Take three. Combine them. Now you are the best in the world at the intersection.”

Let me explain with an example: 

There’s a lot of good designers in the world. 

There’s a lot of good writers. 

There’s a lot of good biology professors. 

But how many biology professors are writing an entertaining newsletter on biology with cartoon-style designs?

Are you catching what I’m throwing?

By having 2-3 skills where you are at least at the top 25% percent in the world (which is easier than you might think), you become the best in the world at what you do - because you become the only person to do it. 

And the best part is - when you compliment all that with a wide knowledge base from other fields, you add even more firepower to your ’intersected knowledge’.

Now let’s get into the meat-and-the-potatoes: 

Some General Learning-How-To-Learn Stuff…

First I want you to install a few of my foundational principles of effective learning the blueprint uses (some of them are slightly contrarian): 

• Interleaving - A lot of people warn against the “Shiny object syndrome” and tell you to focus on one field/skill  at a time. But from a psychological point of view, by alternating between topics, far better enhance our ability to retain and apply the knowledge. 

• Focus on the core principles. Your main priority when diving head-first into any subject is to distill the core principles which lay the groundwork of it. You do that by consuming content from a lot of different quality resources, until you start noticing patterns. Once you have those down, it becomes much easier to learn about all the nuances and gain deeper knowledge in the field. 

• Books are sacred. It’s true that most books could be compressed down to a blog post. But there’s a reason they aren’t. Books do contain a lot of fluff and are repetitive, but all that serves its purpose. Repetition is the most effective way to engrain all the principles into your long-term memory. More than that, books also tie the main lessons with stories, analogies & examples, and make it much easier to recall information. 

• Intensity vs Consistency.  In most things, consistency works better than intensity, because it also compounds better. But when it comes to learning, almost nothing can beat deep immersion into a subject. A good rule of thumb: Focus on maintaining consistency, but if curiosity pulls you, let intensity take over. 

• There is no speed limit. With the last point being said - there’s no speed limit with learning. If you have enough hunger and allow yourself to get into a flow, you can learn more in 1 day than most people do in 2 months. All you need is to shatter the belief that you can’t. 

6 Steps to Become an E-Shaped Person in 2024

1) Start with a spreadsheet

Start by writing down the skills you already have & and/or the skill you’d like to master into a google spreadsheet (ideally 5-10). 

Now you’re going to rank your ability in each of those using the following system: 

Afterward, you also want to put each one into of the following categories

• Something you already started learning and want to improve at

• Something you haven’t started learning yet, but want to

• Something where you’re comfortable with your skill level, and want to maintain it

• Something you want to go all in

Based on those ratings, you’ll then decide on your next steps. 

2) Brainstorm your resources

As mentioned earlier: 

Books are sacred, and you should prioritize them over any other resources. 

However, I recommend that for every topic, you begin with the ’groundwork resource.’

This is an introductory material that'll give you a brief overview of the subject, and help you get a sense of how all the sub-topics interconnect together. 

It’s important to see those first before you dive into the details and nuances. 

You can start with an extensive blog article, a YouTube video or a free email course. 

As you go through the resources, I want you take a note of the following  areas of the subject: 

• the foundational ones required to learn if you want to master the skill/subject

• the ones that interest you the most

• the ones that form the biggest bottleneck for you at the end

And based on those, you’ll…

3) Brainstorm the books you want to read

Look at the areas you noted down previously.

Now - if you don’t know a lot of books, that’s fine.

Just google „best books on XYZ“ or use ChatGPT. 

For each area, I’d brainstorm 3-5 books (depending on how deep do you want to go).

3-5 is the perfect amount, because it’s enough to distill the core principles, but not too much so you’re not wasting time. 

4) The reading process

Here’s when we start using the power of interleaving. 

The practice works as follows: 

You to carve out at least 30 minutes per day for reading.

But.

You’ll read 3 books per day - each one for 10 minutes.

Wait, I’m not done yet - 3 books on 3 different skills/topics you’ve chosen.

This is where we’re applying the magic of interleaved learning. 

Obviously, if one book grips you and you want to read more, do so.

The point is to hit those 3/10-minute intervals.

5) Don’t make the learning passive

I challenge you to document your learning in public. 

If there's a concept you can’t stop thinking about, write a blog post on it. 

If there’s a quote that grips you, share it on Twitter. 

This is the bare minimum you should do if you want to make the learning effective. 

Some more suggestions if you want to take things to the next level: 

a. Create a free handbook. 

Once you finish reading all the books on a topic, compile all of your learnings into a free handbook/video course (it could be in the form of a blog post or a Notion document). 

This was a challenge my friend gave me when I wanted to dive into copywriting. And the piece of advice he gave me I’ll remember forever: 

It doesn’t have to be the best course. But it has to be your course. 

Remember: The objective her isn’t to create a product you can sell. You don’t even have it share it in public. 

It’s for you to distill all the main lessons, and maybe create a good introductory material for other people curious about the subject. 

b. Outline projects 

The best way to learn something is to outline projects that require you using that skill. This obviously applies the best for skill - both hard and soft skills. 

If you want to improve at writing, start a blog. 

If you want to improve at speaking, start a YouTube channel. 

If you want to improve at copywriting, build a product and write your own sales page for it. 

6) Tying it all together

Remember, our four categories of skills: The ones you want to add, the ones you want to maintain, the ones you want to improve at & the ones you want to go deep in. 

Reading books, distilling your learnings in a handbook & outlining projects should be a priority for all skills. 

The consistency & time horizon with which you’ll keep learning depends on how deep you want to get with the skill. 

If you want to improve, I suggest you conduct occasional learning sprints (or ideally projects that force you to use the skill). 

If you want to go deep, you want to commit to doing that thing at least a little bit, every single day, forever. 

If you want to maintain, make sure you revisit the core principles you learned at least once in a few months. 

Bottom line: 

All of those things might feel like ’too much effort’

But if you want to thrive both in your life and your career - it’s more of a necessity than a nicety. 

More than that - once you get into the process, you’ll soon realize that learning is something you can’t live without.

Alright, that’s it for today.

Talk on Sunday,

— Claudia