Charting Your Course Through the Knowledge Economy

This is the age of the knowledge economy and the age of the autodidact. Formal education matters less than skills and the ability to think deeply, and to apply one's understanding of an area. Very little of the learning we need to do from here on would be formulaic. Multiple levels of formulaic thinking, with sophisticated patterns, would be delegated to machines and human intellectual power would be repeatedly summoned to solve hard problems. But that journey of a thousand miles would still need to start with a single step. This article is about building the intellectual discipline to absorb and produce knowledge, and hopefully, some wisdom too.

Learning discipline for the attention challenged

How do you study deep when you have attention span issues (like most of the early 21st century workforce) and need to understand and remember quickly? I don't have an answer, I am seeking answers myself. Two things I can think of though, are:

1. Drawing diagrams with labels, *on paper*, illustrating the main ideas, if that's feasible.
2. Avoiding phone, social media, and similar modern day "necessities" at all costs at study time.

There is a third thing, and this was popularized by the course / book on learning how to learn, but is possibly well-known:

1. Recap what you read later (maybe the next morning or the same day in the night) using the drawing, and perhaps write notes. And then of course read this in about a week.

Building a reading list

If you're like me, you'd buy books, but read only a small subset of them. It's not inherently problematic and there is some evidence to say that having books you haven't yet gotten to reading might be a good thing - but it can only be so as long as you read with some regularity and burn down a reading list. Which means sporadic reading is not such a great idea.

An even harder problem presents itself with e-books. We download a great e-book that we always wanted to read and then forget about it. The greatest challenge with e-books is that they are not in front of your eyes, on your bookshelf or table, constantly reminding you of their existence. How does one remember them, and then make a mental note of a plan to read them? Again I don't know the answer, but here is something I can think of.

1. Have a reading list, or rather a few reading lists.
1. For example have a fiction reading list, a self-help / mgmt reading list (if that's your thing), and then stuff that is specific to your domain. If you're into software engineering for example, you would likely have lots to catch up on in various areas: distributed systems, security, concurrency, networking, data structures, operating systems. It's fine to have a list in each area - but make it a really short list.
2. Curate the list. Especially for technical subjects, find those books which would help you learn faster and get to the next level. Be prepared to churn these lists, replacing some choices with others as you figure what works and what does not.
2. Devote some time each day, even if that's 30 minutes, to reading. Identify ahead of time what you would be reading. Make a couple of hours maybe during weekends and holidays, when you can.
3. Keep the books from your reading list close at hand.
4. By all means, catalog your e-books (and physical books too, but especially e-books) in an online catalog such as Goodreads or LibraryThing or some such. And then gawk at your own collection fishing for the next book ideas at least once every week.
1. This requires discipline - every time you download a book, you have to put an entry your online catalog. But then as Pythagoras once said, there's no royal road to geometry, nor to deep reading if I may add.

There is no reading without writing. Taking notes, and thinking about what you read make all the difference. Finding special interest groups / meetups in your locality that discuss what they are reading are a fantastic way to maximize your reading muscle.

Creating a body of work

This is perhaps the most important topic, and the one that requires maximum discipline. A body of work typically means a set of documents of some manner. This could be a set of academic papers, books or monographs, useful blog articles, instructional videos, significant long term contributions to one or more open source (or closed source) software, etc. or some combination thereof. It could even be photographs, paintings, performances as an actor or a musician or in some other performing art. However, here I would mostly focus on the former kind because this article lacks the space or the scope to talk about artistic creativity.

Your body of work is really a document of what you've built with your intellect. Instead of getting too prescriptive, I would like to focus on four aspects that are essential.

1. Have a vision of what purpose your body of work serves.
1. Maybe it teaches people difficult concepts in a simple way.
2. Maybe it reveals new insights about some subject.
3. Maybe it's an aid for other teachers, or researchers.
2. Identify the form-factor of your body of work.
1. Would it be a series of blog articles?
2. Would it be a book, or a book series?
3. Would it be code in a set of repositories?
3. Identify how would build that body of work.
1. Identify key concepts and notions, insights or even discoveries you've made, and start documenting them on an ad hoc basis.
2. Periodically collate your notes and documents, and start building rough drafts of your book / blog / video, whatever.
3. Publish, share with your consumers, and seek early feedback. Even when you want to directly earn money for your publications, this is still viable as lots of highly qualified people would happily read and review your work for free or for a small fee.
4. Make sure you are making progress on building this, every week, month, and year.
1. Progress can be slow, especially in the beginning. Speed (like in running, playing an instrument, or making money) is usually something you leave for later.

This is the undertaking that is the hardest to start on, but has the maximum bang for the buck. Having a vision, and having the discipline to pursue it are the key to achieving these goals.

Postscript

There are many other aspects that I haven't spoken of here. Building focus through mindfulness techniques, building a general outlook in life that is conducive to focus and attention (stoicism, anyone?), and the ability to think critically as well as pragmatically, are all vital ingredients of a solid knowledge career. The above article in some sense is more logistics, than principles. But hopefully the techniques give you a useful blueprint to follow.