Why you shouldn't start a blog

So you want to get onto the blogging train? Thinking what lies ahead is a replacement for your boring office job? We all have strong delusions that easy money is just around the corner as a side gig. However, anything that starts as fun becomes a job when you get onto the treadmill.

My blog started around April 2017, having no idea what to expect. My only real goal was expressing myself and talking about subjects that I’m passionate about. I broke all the rules. First, I didn’t pick a niche that would narrow my topics. Second, I didn’t give a crap about SEO and at the time of starting, I didn’t even know what it entailed. Third, I never put ads, affiliates or sponsorships on my blog. I do have a ‘donate’ button on the side somewhere, but no one has ever clicked it.

I get a decent amount of readers that I want to please and projects that I’m working on. Some of my posts have gone viral I’ll admit and I get a good volume of emails about my blog post topics or projects. I’m making an impact on some people apparently, but I’m not making money. And I don't care.

This blog for me was mostly about expressing my freedom. I bravely talked about elements of my personal life, controversial topics and subjects that no one cared about. I knew that someone might read it, but probably a few people at most. With where I am right now, I’m pretty content with what my website has become. It has become the portfolio that I show off to those who want me to get onboard their team.

Reasons not to blog

Throughout the past few years, I’ve been teaching people how to start and write blogs, what platforms to pick and how to maintain a good writing style and most importantly practice. However, I noticed that people’s intentions seemed inadequate and honestly, unrealistic. I started to collect their ideas and putting the in the worst reasons to start a blog:

Writing for Popularity

I know it’s really tantalizing to become famous and be known in various communities driving recognition for yourself. However, keep in mind you’re competing with millions of blogs, with people who have the same desire for notoriety. Every day, someone pushes the WordPress button thinking that have found a topic so narrow that no one has ever discussed it before. However, unless you’re a university researcher who is used to searching for very particular studies, an average search engine user is probably not going to even find your blog. You might be on page five of Google search results, but do you really think that people will go that far to find your supposed gem?

It is very important to write for your audience no doubt, but getting so specific will turn off many people off because it just doesn’t feel right to read. You’ll be working hard coming up with clickbait titles but it will cause your visitors to bounce back very quickly as the article doesn’t fulfill the promises that your title made. Those so called top ten lists might make for a lot of clicks, but people will skip headline to headline and promptly forgot everything you wrote. Even memorable images won’t stay in their head.

Writing for Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization is a hotly debated subject within the blogging community. The perfect storm of keywords, headers and design choices should make your post be the first one on top of search results. However, it probably won’t and consider how unlikely someone is going to be searching for “motherly tips to deal with pets during the pandemic” rather than “covid symptoms”.

Again, like I said before, write to entice and engage your readers. Keep them in as you get them interested into subjects you’re passionate about. Compose for them because they should be your number one priority. The ‘customer is always right’ philosophy really fits in well here.

Keep in mind that getting people visiting your site is only a small part of the endeavour. You want them to read what you want to say and come back over and over again. Give them a good reason to stay and participate in your discussions.

Think about it, who’s going to read your posts? A robot or a person?

Writing for Money

This is many of my students dream, someone quit their boring white collar job for miraculously making 100k$+ per year income. I’ll admit that I know some people who have done it but they’re very few. As with smartphone apps, clothing products and what not, there’s a huge luck factor and survivorship bias that comes into play.

You’ll likely need to sell more than just your blog to make some acceptable amount of money, assuming it has a good value proposition. These can include things like books, swag and other material that is actually tangible. It takes effort (and money) to get things like this going and it’s a risk anyways.

Things like ads, sponsorships and affiliates will actually end up annoying your readers. Unless you have something as popular as Facebook, no one is going to click on your ads. Keep in mind for things like technical audiences, they likely already have an adblockers that even strips referral URLs.

Passion at Your Pace

If you do things at your own pace, you’ll be avoiding the content treadmill that many prolific content creators suffer from and complain about. You have to be really consistent with your product and constantly produce articles. Your hobby will essentially become a job and you might even miss your previous white collar job.

We all have something to say whether it’s mundane, important or just plain funny. Let your blog be the avenue to self-expression and discuss what’s on your mind. After all, shouldn’t everything be done with passion and love rather rather than regurgitating the same stuff that everyone else is. Perhaps, for me, as it is for many other small blogs, it’s a way to express your freedom and talk to your audience no matter how small it is.

By forgetting all the weak ambitions above, you might find yourself getting what you’ve been dreaming about!

Something to think about and reflect on.

You can’t afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected.

Us denizens of the Internet have become familiar with concepts that were foreign more than a decade ago, one of the most that causes the most influence is going viral. There’s so much variety on the web with content providing the impression that anything could essentially make you rich. However, hidden behind the curtains of survivorship bias is a massive community of people that practice art and express their creativity in a way that’s absolutely thankless.

Due to the accidental underground nature of an artist’s work, it’s unlikely that they will make any dough out of their production. Seems like in order to practise their art, they need a reliable but remedial job to pay the bills. Unfortunately, the nature of that kind of work is energy depleting zapping any creative juices needed for the concentration and initiative to produce content. Let alone something of high-quality that doesn’t exude fatigue.

Turns out, for most of us, we can’t afford to be artists, authors and creatives. Having full control over your processes comes at a cost of uncertainty and instability of money supply.

I was a deluded believer at one point that what made things so popular was the quality of a project. Eventually, I realized that it’s not the best work and most original that makes it to top, but rather the mediocre. Luck plays a big part in climbing the ladder in addition to slick marketing. The creatives with eccentric personalities often fail. Why?

My walks across the web has exposed me to obscure concepts that I found serendipitously. It was exciting to find a new favourite music track only to discover that the video accompanying it to have only several hundred of views. In fact, seeking refuge in Spotify divulges no result for which to add to my library. Going back to our question, what makes things fail? I have the impression, as some others have taught me, rather than through my own intuition, that what ‘makes it’ is something that fits the most common denominator.

These include things like food where tasters spend weeks finding the bliss point, or a pop artist using the same chord progressions over and over again; with lyrics they probably didn’t even write. Or perhaps another sitcom with yet another ironic love triangle with predictable outcomes and endings so obvious that spoilers are not even warranted.

I grew respect for many of these artists and people who radiate originality. Writing another exciting book or a low-budget movie with a more esoteric story. Rather than feeding themselves, they are feeding us, unintentionally, or even unwillingly. They bestowed us with gifts that fit our niches so we can distance ourselves for yet another mediocre work.

Some of these types have divulged the differences between being unknown and popular. Many have revealed to me that if they get big enough, their fans’ expectations of a constant stream of content puts them on a production treadmill. As a result, turning their passion into yet, another job.

Many creative types, and arrogantly putting myself into that bucket, hope for some kind of impossible miracle of some type of passive income that will keep us alive with much initial effort but eventually getting big enough to put it aside but give us a positive cashflow.

I can see my projects present hints of tiredness of the obligatory 8 hours and I see it everywhere too. The inertia of the energy is no longer there anymore. What they had time for before moving out have become an insufferable chase for free time that simply cannot be filled with anything else of lifelessness.

Although I can throw the idea of donating to someone you like, it results in absolutely nothing. Even very popular, say bloggers, don’t get much money from donations. Ads and sponsorships work, but my inclinations whisper to me that it’s not kosher. Going back to my first blog post, I alluded that the nature of our jobs no longer matches its own output when it comes to money. I can’t think of a solution because abuse will be rampant. Say we introduced a pension for artists, it will be used by the same people who defraud for disability pay or early retirement.

The only thing I have right now is thankfulness and gratitude to the many obscure artists who keep me entertained and for free. I don’t want to sound cheesy and say that you’ll end up somewhere and to work even harder.

However, you have been so late and never attempted to defend yourself. Think of the world’s unions protecting workers in order to keep their job a bit more sane. Lobbyists have the power to push governments to submit to them. Too bad nothing like that can exist for my most loved makers.

There’s no judgement for the popular ones, but I implore that those who work white-collar jobs to have a bit more respect for something they take for granted. Endlessly rich CEOs, don’t look down at someone who is trying to make their voices and guitar solos heard on stage. If you don’t want to help, and I bet most of you wouldn’t even help yourselves, at least, give their content a chance. Take a break and admire, there’s much love in there. They are the true evangelists.

I believe it would be a very interesting topic to gather up ideas on potential ideas that would allow people to express themselves without having to suffer too much from the universal grind. Leave comments below.

Much discussion flourished on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32487190

How to Learn...

“You can do anything if you put your mind into it”

Some Optimist - Many Years (Eons?) Ago

The infamous quote is thrown everywhere so much that it has become sort of a platitudinal stereotype. However, it skips on one thing: the effort required to actually “put your mind into it” and what steps and procedures you’re actually supposed to take. Learning takes copious time and unending dedication to the point where you may have to sacrifice parts of your life to get to where you want to in a practice, art or field. You may face obstacles you believe that you can’t surmount and face fears that have never been shown to you.

Turns out, it’s not that easy.

The Dangers of Specialization

Universities aren’t the best place to learn - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 by barnyz

As our world steers into a specialized one, where one only masters one very particular topic to detriment of ignoring everything else, we are losing our generalists who can be pretty good at many things at the same time. For the past few centuries, several institutions notably universities, how been touted as the primary way of learning. Amassing knowledge is expensive, time consuming and often loaded with boring lectures and unending sprint of assignments.

Intellectuality without the Formal

What a fancy diploma looks like serving but nothing as a decorative piece - CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 by mag3737

Many of the concepts I’ll be presenting here are based on anecdotes rather than hard science. I’m doing this on purpose because I saw what some have become although they didn’t even complete high school. I’ve met many people online and offline who have amassed quite some knowledge in addition to healthy critical thinking dipped in reason and even some emotionality. Some of the most intelligent people I’ve met have no semblance of any credentials such as diplomas still having a hunger for knowledge.

These people have become intellectuals without the need for anything formal. There’s a fine line between intelligence and intellectuality. The former is essentially a status that is achieved and grown through intellect; it’s the measuring stick. Being an intellectual represents a deep hunger for knowledge usually seen as simply a means to an end. In other words, learning for the sake of learning.

The average person has limited their knowledge to what their formal education has taught them, much of the content actually forgotten after the exam, and work in fields completely unrelated to what they studied. On the other hand, specialists are too engrossed in the tiny subject that they are obsessed about. I fail to see how these knowledge perspectives can actually be steps toward building a solid intellect. I’ll actually argue that they are both the same, they’ve hit a wall with no doors to newness or curiosity.

Neglecting Learning

Boxed and scared in by not learning - CC BY 2.0 by admiller

Knowledge a few centuries ago were limited to the elite who could afford to travel to absorb books and meet scholars. However, with innovations such as the printing press, known as the printer today, knowhow and many topics became accessible to many more. Oddly enough, libraries are frequented by few people being full with unread books collecting nothing but dust. There’s a few statistics about this, but I’ve been given the impression that few people read. Their bookshelf is nothing but a showpiece and the Kindle was a useless birthday gift.

Self-Learning

This is where self-learning comes into place. Rather than spend thousands of dollars to hear tasteless lectures that induce sleep better than most hypnotic agents, you can acquire knowledge and learn new arts on your own. The difficult part is the discipline needed to keep going. The avolition that stems from a fatiguing life steers us toward Netflix rather than say a book or a documentary.

Most will agree that the Internet has brought a paradigm shift to how knowledge can be acquired. Many resources are becoming free or simple to pirate bringing a endless world of paths towards expertise. Books are getting cheaper than ever with the advent of online stores and enjoyed in many formats from text to a talking audiobook. Google has made it possible to find things so quickly (at the price of losing any sense of privacy).

Approach

What I’m going to be touting here is an approach to learn, and learn quickly. I will be trying to combine effective techniques that modernity and technology has presented to us in addition to ancient proven methods that made our notable figures in history as polymaths.

Pick Something You Want To Learn

For me, this is the easier (or day I say. the easiest) part of the entire endeavour. Look at the many around us who can produce music in short moments or an author who writes world-renowned books. What about the more mundane such as knitting or geocaching? Do you want to become a simracer who tops the multiplayer charts or even learn how to fly an airliner in a flight simulator?

The end goal can be whatever you like but keep in mind that failing at achieving it isn’t the end of the world. You can always reset your compass whether you want to move to something else or find a new objective. Some of the more shallow purposes such as money and fame are more luck-based and will often lead to disappointment. While some other ideas such as developing your intellect and stimulating your brain can be more figuratively lucrative. Maybe you want to use those new powers for helping others or perhaps just for a sense of fulfillment. This is something that no one can pick for you and left to your own imagination and worldview.

Momentum

How momentum plays a role in learning - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 by Chris Devers

Like I mentioned before, learning resources have become so abundant thanks to our modernity and technology. They can come in so many forms that are easy to find, affordable (or even free) and copious. Formats are also of many mediums and styles.

The discipline will be difficult to develop and I can’t tell you how to forge it into your lifestyle. Everyone is geared to a method that only works for them as a means to success. Productivity isn’t found in a self-help book but rather through experimentation. I’ll admit that school forces us to discipline because we’re chasing a good grade but that is honestly quite artificial. Rather, try something more novel. Here are some ideas:

• Finding an accountability buddy where you can make promises to keep about a step you want to take. Either offline or online will probably work.

• Sharing your experiences with others ideally like-minded. Admitting grudgingly, I used to believe that no one was interested in the obscure things that I did, it turned out that many were lit up by it.

• Turn your learning into a game using perhaps a todo-list or a calendar. Keep track of your success of a reminder of your progress.

Many people talk about motivation and concentration to obtain a dopamine rush but we are not automatons who can enter learning mode in an instant. Through personal experience, I realized momentum played a more important role into actually doing something. In the likeness of pushing a heavy boulder at first seems unsurmountable but once it’s starts moving, it’s easier to keep it going. I’ll admit that this is my biggest challenge but I realized that it’s like your appetite. It doesn’t start until your first bite and then you keep going. Once you surmount your first steps, you develop a quasi-addiction that you can even claim to be enjoyable. You start looking forward to it all the time.

How?

Reading is one method of learning - CC BY-SA 2.0 by benuski

• Reading is the classical way to acquiring knowledge and even entertain ourselves. The advantage is that the subject is covered in-depth spread across hundreds of pages. No one is forcing you to read so you can develop your own pace that works with your life. However, in my opinion, this is probably the method that needs the most concentration and dedication. I didn’t mention a medium on purpose because there’s so much such as books, newspapers, blog posts, Wikipedia and countless others.

• Listening seems to be a very popular method to learn even for the more visual. The success of audiobooks is a clear sign that it seems to be working for many. A great advantage is how it can be integrated and mixed with other mundane tasks such as driving home from work or cleaning the house.

• Watching is an obvious one and we know how popular it is through the infiltration of cable TV at everyone’s place and the universality of streaming services. Documentaries are a great way to amass knowledge and the abundance of it means you can enjoy different perspectives of the same thing. I did say that it was boring, but that was my view, recorded lectures can now be found for free.

• Kinesthetic learning involves going through the motions of doing what you’re learning. It’s both a form of starting from scratch and practice towards expertise. Just like watching, it can be done alone or in a group. For those with more social predispositions, this might be very effective.

• Meetups are a great way to get exposed to a field quickly. It’s akin to diving into a cold swimming pool. There’s many places to find them such as Meetup.com or Facebook groups where you can meet like-minded people who have the same cravings as you. Some are more freeform while others more serious. Debate groups are abound and you’ll be forced to give in your two cents or ask difficult questions. This is ideal for the extraverted.

Now, I’ve heard so many claims about how one method leads to more retention than a another but these are based on simplistic views of psychology. The truth is that everyone has a different personality structure that prefers one method over another. The most effective technique is probably doing a combination of the above to make use of the advantages of each other.

Ducking Academia

As you may have noticed, I totally ducked the whole idea of academia. This isn’t an accident or an exercise of forgetfulness. We have been blessed by our technological advancements that make learning so cheap (or even free). No need to pull out a mortgage for tuition and putting ourselves in crushing debt.

One thing I would like to mention briefly, don’t put yourself into a money pit. Don’t go on a book shopping spree or buy the most expensive camera equipment for your new found love of photography. If you can, try to start with what you already have and control your spending. Many hungry knowledge seekers are young and don’t have any income as a means to purchase equipment. I’ll leave to your online search skills to find way to get things for cheap. At one point, once you’re in the zone, it will make sense to spend a bit. Remember, the equipment isn’t for showing off, but should be seen as method to become better at what you do.

Multitasking

Our minds work like single-core processors - CC BY-SA 2.0 by loan Sameli

Our brain is like a single-threaded processor, it can’t do exactly do two things as one. While you can do what most operating system schedulers do, switching between one task and the other constantly, it will lead to concentration issues and loss of the momentum I just mentioned earlier.

This doesn’t mean though you can’t dedicate yourself to more than one thing. You can alternate between many things over time and find yourself learning even more, widening your skillset and become an expert in many trades. The statement “jack of all trades, master of none” is a big fallacy in my view as I’ve seen people who’ve mastered many things. Look at our historical figures who were polymaths innovating in many fields and being pioneers in all sorts of arts.

Me

Personally, I was never satisfied enough with what was brought to me by high school or university. My diplomas are fancy papers that I hang on my entrance but don’t define my field or even my identity. As one of my favourite managers put it, I’m always “stuck in learning mode”. It’s an obsession where every question that pops up in my head must have an answer by the end of the day, otherwise I’ll going into a deep downward spiral (maybe this is a bit of catastrophizing). I enjoy the exercise of coming up with more questions on the spot. I find my browser full of tabs of keywords that I came up across up on Wikipedia. One article keeps leading to another. There’s a ongoing joke which is partly true that every link path links to philosophy.

This is a list of things that I’m trying to learn right now:

Learning how to use automatic landing in a crosswind on a 767 - Copyright 2022 Ahmed El-Hajjar

One of my aspirations is to become an author - CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 by vogmae

• Improve my writing skills which I’m doing through my blog and social media presence. I aspire to be an author and have many subjects in mind but I can’t pick yet. I feel like I’m still a mediocre writer so I’m reading as much as I can to determine what structure is ideal. On the other hand, I still want to have my special touch.

• Read more. I’ve been a lazy reader for a good part of my life and eventually realized on how much I was missing. My goal for 2022 was to read a book a week and so far so good. I’m managing to read two books a week sometimes. I mentioned that I wanted to become a generalist before, but this is the path I’m taking towards that goal. I’m a non-fiction lunatic and will read anything that isn’t a biography.

• I want to drive better. One of my hobbies is driving and it’s something I do daily despite not always having a destination. Learning better car control, improving observation skills and knowing local laws better. Most importantly, I want to drive standard transmissions more smoothly and use advanced techniques. I’m just about to do my first mod to make heal-toe easier with a pedal bracket.

• Learning more about flight. My first experience with flight simulator was when I was nine. Back then, I would constantly crash the plane on takeoff and couldn’t even do a simple pattern. I’m at a point now where I can do some procedures for different kinds of planes and have basic IFR navigation skills. I’m learning ATC phraseology so I can go on the VATSIM network.

• Making gadgets. I started with a free piece of software called Fritzing trying to design circuits. I kept it as simple as possible using the simplest of tools to make things. I can now program microcontrollers and design basic circuits. I’ve procured a cheap refurbished 3D printer having learned some 3D modeling.

A Desktop Application that I’m currently working on. - Copyright 2022 Ahmed El-Hajjar

• Make user facing applications. I spent a good part of my life doing web servers and APIs in the corporate realm. I want to make something that has a visual aspect to it. I’ve started to learn UI libraries in languages that I already know but also look at embedded web frameworks.

• Learn more about myself. This is very difficult for me because I only recently started to face the fears that I had about the various worldviews that life had for us. Finding out what I liked and what didn’t through experimentation. I feel like I’m nowhere near my maximum potential but I’m finally learning labels to describe my story.

Conclusion

My article doesn’t have the objective of telling you exactly what to do in order to learn and become proficient at something. Rather, try to build a framework that works for you and your unique personality and style. Most importantly, remember to enjoy the journey rather than zone-in on the goal. Trust me, it will eventually become an addiction to the point of having a faith that dictates what your life should look like: one that is as fruitful as possible. Self-learning is where it’s at!

Gems

A plug to my Gems List, except mine are coloured and much cheaper than these diamonds - CC BY-ND 2.0 by Kim Alaniz

I have compiled a long list of resources where you can learn different things for free on my website. This is a shameless plug for my Gems List, which is growing all the time.

Click HERE FOR Gems!

I Want To Be A Generalist

I decided to become a generalist.

Discovering My Interests

It took a while to discover a very important aspect of my life. I didn’t want to have laser focus on only one aspect of the world, something that I was stuck in for a long time. I realized that I want to do a bit of everything and that was being more honest with myself. I felt like I escaped this illusion of life that I had and everything became so much more interesting.

Looking Back Into the Past and Now

The Past of Polymaths

If you search some notable persons on Wikipedia, you’ll notice that they hold multiple denominations such as scientist, philosopher, inventor, artist and so on. What you realize, these people have been from the deep past where being a polymath, someone who’s an expert in many areas, was actually quite standard. Despite the limited access to knowledge and no Interest, these people travelled far and wide to expand their knowledge eventually writing about it in exquisite texts that are so insightful that they are still canon and reference material today.

Our Present Of Specialization

In the past few hundred years, academia has developed a ride towards specializations. We are thought from elementary school that our way to success will involve picking a narrow field, mastering it and finding a job in that area. Although our school adventures starts with a balance of several subjects, as we progress through the grades, things start to narrow down. Once you reach the PhD level, your worldview seems really narrow and it’s seems that your subject is all you can talk about. As our modern times go by, it seems that the specializations are becoming even narrower to the point of making our views on aspect of life very binary and shallow.

Losing Your Advantage

The biggest disadvantage of specializing becomes the fact that what you learn might be irrelevant in just a few years in our fast paced world. If you studied about fourth-generation programming languages, well guess what, today it’s almost irrelevant and few career opportunities will allow you to use this out of date skill.

Leaving My Comfort Zone

Just like many, I was brainwashed to believe that the only way to success and fame was through university. As time progressed, I felt like I wasn’t being squished into a really narrow corridor. The illusions provided by past school became disillusionment.

I went to lounges for graduate students to learn more about their lives. Technically I wasn’t allowed to be there but the people I met were friendly and very open. I started to realize that their entire lives were dedicated to something very narrow. I tried to initiate discussions about something else but it would be awkward and unnatural. It wasn’t until I discussed their favourite subject. They lit up and had so much to say.

Exiting the Path of Specialization

The diplomas handed out at a long party started to seem irrelevant to me. It didn’t even mean I was good at something. I was just complacent ready to be obedient at some job. As one of my physics professors said “when you get a diploma, it just means congratulations! you've memorized fifteen books”.

This whole idea started to become a nightmare for me but for some reason I kept soldering on. The culmination of finishing my courses lead to a very anti-climatic event when I was handed my piece of paper. It was the result of 5 years of boredom that I spent so much money on.

After a long of only doing one thing in my life as a software developer, the shallow perspective of life made me feel incomplete. The world seems so full and colourful, good and bad, things. I left the shackles of my tiny little field and decide that I would like to know a bit more about this planet we live on.

New Careers and Hobbies

I decided to leave the software engineering to try other things. I wanted to do a bit of everything. After trying to bud myself into a field that I had no credentials, I’ve become a technical and content writer, as a freelancer. I left myself to do technology gigs despite my departure from programming doing mostly IT services. I’ve even started driving for Uber with a 10 hour shift every Saturday.

Volunteering was something I took on. I explored taking part in humanitarian efforts, animal conservation and even eccentric meetups. I’ve managed to start my own social club that’s been solid for more than two years with weekly meetings and over 600 members.

Many of these activities took much of my time and didn’t pay near as much as my old software consulting career, maybe even half. However, I feel more content with what I’m doing not only because of the enhanced freedom these opportunities provided but also erasing boredom due to the fact that I was doing something different all the time.

I’m not done yet on seeing what other things I can do. I have on my mind things like real estate and home decoration. Another thing that tickles my mind has a big stigma behind it. Becoming a cuddle therapist…

Fear

I didn’t know how to face my desires and the changes required to move on to something else. The risk was really big and the uncertainty uncomfortable. I was trying to hold something full-time while I looked but I was started to focus less and less on it. Instead, I was exploring the other avenues and doing many interviews that lead to failure. I felt like I had to go back to software but I eventually got my first writing gig. It was a roller-coaster because I was doing something I wasn’t qualified in but after finishing the projects, I was proud of what I did. The impact on the company was obvious.

Irrelevancy

This is a purely anecdotal experience. I noticed that many people worked in fields that have nothing to do with their diploma. Theologians becoming software developers. Electrical engineers doing sales for life insurance. Mathematicians stuck in a job filing tickets for a broken payroll system. Social scientists feeding city hall with wasted time. Uber drivers with advanced diplomas in mechanical engineering. And so on.

Job search has become so difficult that finding something that exactly matches your studies is really difficult. No matter your level of education, there’s a high chance that your intelligence won’t count compared to another candidate who’s less qualified but has more charisma and cheat his way through the interviews.

Learning and Learning to Learn

Academia

While some people want to collect diplomas like Pokémon cards, I thought that academia was probably the worst way to learn. The main problem is cost but also the outdated nature of the form of education. Most of your time was swallowed by boring lectures and endless assignments. Even worse, it cost so much money to the point where in some places around the world, you need a mortgage to study.

Unfortunately, depending on your field and work arrangements, some might be still asked to provide that magic piece of paper. Apparently, it’s a right of passage proving that you learned and mastered something. Nothing could be further than the truth however. Most students worked for grades rather than learning. Cheating is abundant. Professors are incredibly incompetent because they have no experience in the real world. When you escape university after a grueling four to five years, you realize that you’re not ready for the real world.

Self-Learning And Curiosity

This is a path that I’ve taken a decade ago. We live in a blessed age where knowledge is so accessible. Book stores and libraries everywhere with resources ready to have explore the world outside yours. Our biggest blessing is probably the Internet. Content for all sort of interests and often cheap to take part in, in fact sometimes free. You can pick your learning style whether it’s reading a book, doing exercises online or even boring lectures if that what suits you.

It takes much motivation and discipline to learn something. However, once you get into it, it becomes an addiction. Your thirst for knowledge grows and grows.

What will fuel your learning adventure the most is your curiosity. Sometimes you look at something as simple clock and start wondering how a quartz stone can accurately measure seconds. What about the intricate workings of a society you’ve never heard of? Do you want to memorize pi to a thousand places or be a fact machine for the capitals of each country in the world? The possibilities are endless.

Best part is that you can use this knowledge to teach others and make yourself a nice career with some variety. Maybe you won’t have diploma or anything but you just need to sell yourself well. If you’re lucky, some online courses provide certificates which can be added to your portfolio.

Learning on my own has opened my eyes to so many things teaching me so many facts. My sense of culture grew massively and suddenly I was more qualified in something that I didn’t even know existed as a skill a few moments before.

I can’t let go of that anymore. As one of my managers put it so well, I’m stuck in learning mode.

Time Investment

This desire to learn on the other hand required so much time from me. I had to push myself so hard to read Wikipedia all the time and feeding myself with books. I’m entranced with books now reading one or two books every week. I’m a non-fiction lunatic that will read anything (except for biographies). I let my impulsive nature pick the book for me.

My main method of learning is definitely reading. I am a faster than average reader peaking at 700 words per minute so that speeds me up a bit. However, I spend at least two hours everyday reading.

Other people prefer documentaries, lectures, audio books and so on. It doesn’t really matter what you do as long (as you feel that) you’re benefiting. See what you’re willing to invest time in.

Don’t worry about retention but focus more on comprehension. We all forget so easily but an experience will stay with us forever.

Practicing A Skill

Much knowledge requires another huge piece of time investment. If you’re learning about a musical instrument you probably want to practice often. Personally, I’m infatuated with flight and aviation. Learning procedures in a flight simulator can take some time and so much knowledge about the plane. The quirks of landing a plane need to be measured so you can successfully put the plane on the ground.

Of course, the best part is you get to choose how much time you want to spend on something.

Critical Thinking and Creativity

Having been exposed to many subjects, you develop new ways of thinking. Your perspectives are much wider and have new ideas that came to mind that you never even imagined. This sharpens your thinking skills. In fact, you probably just start to think more often instead of being bored staring at the wall. Eventually, that forces to change your perspective all the time and think from many different angles. This fuels your critical thinking skills and you might even become a better debater.

When it comes to creativity, this is really obvious. Having many ideas presented to you on a consistent basis, you develop more curiosity. As you have more ideas in your head, they can become a catalyst for new concepts. You will activate many parts of your brain and link things together that were seemed irrelevant on their own.

Combining Many Subjects

Specialists have rarely explored other subjects in detail. They never get a chance to combine multiple perspectives in one so they miss the chance for innovative thinking and freedom.

For example, if you are familiar with Toyota’s KANBAN methodology, you might fight that it is a good software development methodology as well. Perhaps your knowledge of Non-Euclidean geometry can help with that machine learning algorithm that you are developing.

Conclusion

Learning what I wanted to learn has changed my perspective drastically. I was finally starting to discover myself just a bit more and what my desires and aspirations actually are.

I really wanted to become good at things. Many things in fact. Nothing left as a black box opening things and analyzing their internal mechanisms. I need to be balanced so I can have interesting conversations and debates with all sorts of people. As a result, I became more comfortable with myself and even enjoy my own company.

The biggest change for me is the amount of activities that I can do now. I’m never bored and always have something to explore. I do multiple and different kinds of jobs now. I volunteer and host my own things.

For those who read my blog regularly, you will notice that I’m directionless (unlike many more popular bloggers focusing on a single niche) and quite haphazard sometimes. The subjects I cover are all over the place and this is due to my unending curiosity for learning and practicing a new art. When I learn, I want to share that experience and teach it to other people.

Top 10 Tips to Make a Top 10 List

1 - Start with an irrelevant life story.

You need to start your blog entry with something that has nothing to do with your list. Make sure it’s long, unengaging and most importantly: fill it with run-on sentences. Describe how some trivial event in your life changed your whole worldview. Include stories about your grandmother or paternal aunt that you claim inspired you. Get some ideas from online recipes where the back story is longer than the recipe itself. Trust me, this fluff is really important for a successful blog. The introduction should include how these tips have changed your life and made you a famous superstar.

2 - The list should be about something grandiose filled with platitudes.

Don’t discuss actually interesting and specific things like lists of the most useful instructions for a Motorola 68000 processor. Keep it generic and make sure it’s about some major aspect of our lives such as vague success, making a ton of money and being ‘smart’. Pretend that the reader has never thought of these ideas. Bonus points for something clickbait.

3 - Don’t do any research or give out references.

A successful list should be filled to the brim with inaccuracies. Things that win people over are usually brain chemistry and hormone claims that will activate us and keep us healthy. Say generic things and use original research with expressions such “research has shown” or “scientists have demonstrated”. Don’t ever include references to actual sources, you’re not writing a Wikipedia article here.

4 - Claim that you found a way to become a millionaire with some trivial work.

Everybody loves get quick rich schemes especially if they’re easy to do. The truth is, these schemes actually do work and world economists don’t want you to know this. They want us to be slaves to this insipid 9-to-5 grind. Show off your bank account with photoshopped balances. Fabricated or unproven passive income tips will win you a lot of readers too, trust me.

5 - Try to shove your book into their throats.

Every famous blogger has written a book about obvious things and included this list in it. Don’t make the book too long; keep it superficial. Ensure that your poor writing skills demonstrated by your blog are well reflected in that book. Sell, sell and sell this miracle that you’ve created. Unlike the ads and sponsorships on your blog, the book is what will make you a bit of disposable income. Even better, have a plug for an eBook reader that has the ultimate features despite it being too simplistic.

6 - Include stolen photos.

Photos are a great way to space out an article and make it look longer than it actually is. Don’t use your own photographs because your photography skills are above and beyond what the article deserves. Use your Google Photo search skills and copy and paste whatever you find. Don’t pay attention to the fact that some photos need attribution and royalty-free ones actually cost money to include.

7 - The list should introduce nothing new.

Medium has shown how popular blog posts that are carbon copies of another. Repeat what others have said and keep it short because you don’t want to expose your lack of knowledge in a certain subject. Somewhere in your list, you should highlight the importance of sleep and eating vegetables. The best tips are the ones that are not actionable. If you’re making a list of content such as books, just pick some random ones from a Goodreads list and even better, some that you never read yourself.

8 - Claim that you have overcome a serious and chronic condition.

Everyone wants to live a great healthy life and not bogged down by diabetes. Mental conditions are starting to surface in discussions. For example, if you’re bipolar, make sure to write that you conquered it while you’re having a manic episode. Forget the relapse that you’re already having and stop taking your medication. Great ideas are using untested and poorly research homeopathic medicine and supplements. Include a conspiracy about big-pharma and how they want us to stay sick. I mean you can sell them yourself. You need to go against the grain when it comes to what it contains. Good examples are “gluten-free”, “grain-free”, “meat by-product free”, “no genetic modifications”, “organic”, “keto-friendly”, “vegan” and so on.

9 - Fill it to the brim with conspiracy theories.

Our world is full of fear and unknowns. Why not abuse it and create some juicy conspiracy theory. There’s so many of them online with movements promoting them. Using misinformation will empower your readers and in fact keep them coming for more. Don’t be surprised that people love the craziest of ideas, especially when they’re too good to be true. People will believe anything with a good production value.

10 - Say that social media is bad for you.

So much research has been done (see, I’m not referencing anything here) to show that social media is dangerous for our well-being. Include a variation of the previous sentence and add some pizzaz to it just to make a bigger impact on your visitors. Keep the hypocrisy going with having a strong social media presence and asking people to read your tweets, follow you on Facebook and subscribe to your amazing vlogs on your YouTube channel.