How To Actually Self-Educate In A World Built To Distract You

Welcome back to another episode of the Self Work Podcast. This is episode 19. And in today's episode, I want to talk to you guys about something that is very important if you really want to progress forward in life. Your ability to self-educate. And I want to ask you a question and I want you to be honest with yourself. Where you ever taught how to learn. Because one thing I noticed in today's world is the average person doesn't know how to learn. They don't know how to self-educate. I'm not talking about going to school, passing exams, getting good GCSEs and A levels and going to university. Because if we address the elephant in the room and we state the obvious, it doesn't mean much. And I'm not here devaluing education. There's a lot of transferable skills there. But if you think that taught you how to learn your info one because school didn't teach you how to build skills. It didn't teach you how to use your curiosity to navigate your learning and actually become proficient at something. Instead, it taught you just how to follow instructions, how to pass, how to meet a certain standard. It didn't teach you how to think, how to build or how to adapt. Which is why the average person nowadays just consumes narratives and is very reactionary. And now that you're grown and you're out here out of education, you've got dreams, you've got ideas, you've got some sort of a vision for who you want to become. But you've got no real roadmap, no structure, no momentum, and navigating life like that is rough. And on top of that, now we've got brainrock. Attention spans for most people are cooked, even myself. My attention span is nowhere near as good as it wants used to be. I remember when I was doing my A levels, I could sit and study for six to eight hours nonstop. Apart from taking a lunch break or apart from taking a toilet break, I don't think I can do that anymore. Nowadays, everyone's scrolling on the idea of actually sitting down to study or practice the skill is laughable. People think is a joke. But this is the thing in a world that's actively trying to keep you distracted, discouraged, and docile. Self education is one of the most powerful forms of rebellion you've got left. And this isn't just theory for me. This is something I'm deeply passionate about. So let's get into this episode as to how you can learn to self educate yourself in a world full of distractions. First thing that I want to talk about is brainrock. Because brainrock is the primary reason why people can't educate themselves. Is why people feel stuck is why people are very reactionary is why people are always online asking silly questions like how do I go to the gym? How do I work out? How do I read a book? How do I find information? Funny thing is people ask me do you respond to most of your DMs? And when I tell them no, they are like why? And I show them a few of my DMs. People ask me silly questions like, Oh, where do I get information from? How do I get a job? How do I read? If you really think about it, this isn't because you are dumb per se is because you're overstimulated, but it gets worse because chronic overstimulation over a long period of time does make you dumber because you're not using your brain. You're not pushing it. You're not stretching it and you're not challenging it to do anything real. Think about like this from lockdown up until now. That's what five years. If you spend most of those five years just chronic it online on your phone in your bed scrolling, consuming, being plugged in 24/7, but not learning, building and testing yourself in the real world, you've actually trained your brain to rock. We are so plugged into content every single day. Think about you wake up, you scroll through four apps, you check your notification, you watch five reels, you bounce from one tab to another, and then you wonder why your brain feels fuzzy, you wonder why your brain feels like soup. You're constantly taking in but never putting anything out. You're always consuming but never producing and it shows. If you want to know how to spot if someone is a full time brain rotter, just ask them, what have you produced in the last 12 months? Most people can't answer that because we're mentally obese. We binge content all day, every day, but never create, never move, never act. And let me just give you a bit of a story time to show you how deep this goes. I remember back during lockdown right when TikTok became popular. If you were online back then you'll remember that TikTok used to be this weird little app full of Indians. No one took it serious, people used to repost clips onto Twitter and we were just laugh like who the hell uses this app. And then lockdown hit and if you remember India banned TikTok and the app just came straight to the West, like UK, US and parts of Europe. And people started jumping on. The thing about me was though, I didn't get into it at first. I'll skip to go outside while I'm at London, just random app. I wasn't on TikTok until the end of 2020 but I remember watching all of my friends suddenly get hooked. Because you've got to remember, most social media apps prior to TikTok were never that deep. Think about it. People with majority used to use Twitter, they would scroll but it wasn't a thing that constantly kept them in the loop. If you remember even Twitter, the timeline, the feed would end and that is a sign that you need to tap out. But TikTok all of a sudden became this thing where you can constantly keep getting dopamine hits in a video format and people were outside and they were making conversations about TikTok. Oh, have you seen this TikTok? Oh my god, have you seen this video on TikTok? Conversations went from real life to did you see this video. And now here's where it hit me. I used to work night shifts at co-op and I'll be honest, my shifts used to drag. I used to hate night shifts because it used to feel very slow when you were present. Bear in mind, the only thing I would do that was class's brain rot was I guess watch Netflix where if you think about it now, which is so crazy, watching a one to two hour movie on Netflix isn't even brain rot anymore. It actually trains your attention span because of short form. But back then, it used to drag because I would watch one movie, I would read a book, I would respond to some people, I was twiddling my thumbs and things changed the moment. I download the TikTok because suddenly I'm using TikTok everywhere on my break, serving customers, putting away stock. My whole shift started to go very fast. It was that introducing crack to someone for the first time. And something I noticed also recently is I've got a niece, right? And she's about two and a half years old. And I tried this experiment with her one time where I wanted to see the effects of brain rot. If you are an educated parent listening to this, you know that giving kids digital devices like an iPad, a phone or a laptop really destroys their brain. So I remember one time she was being very rowdy, loud, you know how kids are just screaming and shouting, just playing around. And I gave her my phone and I put on minions on YouTube, you know, minions, the cartoon. And believe it or not, she went from running around laughing, playing, screaming to mute, silent, gone. I called her name. I said, "Mama, nothing. Try it again." I said, "Mama, nothing. I tapped her on the shoulder. She barely turned her head. She looked at me and then she looked back at her phone. And this is what it does to the brain. Kids brains are fresh. We don't notice it in ourselves because we've been doing it for so long. We think this is normal. We've been desensitized. And for me, that's the scariest part. This isn't slowing down and it's getting worse. And most people don't even realize how deep this has gotten. Let's even go in a little tangent here. Because I've been thinking about this lately with AI now and tools like Sora. I don't know if you've seen Sora is a video production AI software where you can produce all of these random videos. And we're reaching a point where, and I promise you, in the next year or two, you won't know what is real and what's fake. You won't be able to tell. Soon, you won't even know if what your watching has been made by a human or a machine. They'll be able to customize it for you exactly how you like it so you stay hooked forever. And that's what most people don't realize. BrainRot is manufactured, is built in Gen.D. designed to hook you. And if you dig into the neuroscience and the psychology behind it, it gets dark. The way you swipe the colors, the audio cues, is all tailored to release dopamine. The swipe on TikTok works exactly like a slot machine. And back in the day, at least the content ran out as I mentioned earlier. I remember Instagram and TikTok or Instagram and Twitter, I should say, will tell you you've caught up. You scrolled. That's it. You're done. Now you could lie in bed for the whole day just scrolling on TikTok. And you've made peace with the noise. You're not even bored anymore because your brain doesn't even know how to be bored. And that's why I wanted to make this such a lengthy first part because that's what brain rot is. It's just not that you're scrolling too much. It's the slow erosion of your attention, your curiosity and your ability to think deeply. But it just leaves me with this some hope so you guys don't tap out. You're not stupid. You're not lazy. Your brain is just full of nothing. It's full of crap. You've been consuming nothing for a while. So I want you to give yourself a break, put your phone down, stop consuming and start producing. Which goes on to my second part, which is you're probably wondering how do I actually overcome this. Let's say you've made a decision. You're tired of being a consumer. You're tired of the brain fog. You're ready to start producing something you want to learn. I guess build things grow and change. Now what? The thing that most people get wrong is they wait for motivation. And I'm someone who really dislikes motivation. Motivation is a scam. If you think yeah, I'll start learning once I feel more ready or I'll pick up that book when I'm in the mood. I'll research that topic when life slows down. Let me ask you this. How long have you been waiting to feel ready? A month, six months, two years. Some of you guys have been waiting since lockdown. Right. Let me even give you a short story. I'll talk to my friend recently. And for the longest time, I'm trying to get him into the gym. He signed up for the gym and two weeks he was on it. He was messaging me, showing me gym pictures saying, yes, I'm locked in. And you know, don't put me high. Then out of nowhere, he just stopped going. I remember when I met up with him and I asked him, how's your gym routine going? He's like, I haven't been in two weeks, bro. I was like, why? He says, I've just been busy. And I said, busy doing what? He said, work has been stressful. I said, cool. But here's the thing. If you attach emotions and feelings to every action you take, you're never going to do the things you actually need to do. The moment I realized that I don't have to feel good to do the action, that's when everything changed. I don't have to feel good to record a podcast episode. I don't have to feel good to go to the gym. I don't have to feel good to show up or I don't have to feel good to do anything productive. That's the problem with motivation. We start with good energy but when it fades we tap out. Negative emotion creeps in and the whole routine just dies. But most of you have been overstimulated and distracted for years if you really think about it. You think you're going to wake up one day and magically feel like doing it, know you won't. Motivation is just vibes and I wish people accepted this as early as possible. It comes on goals and your feelings if you think about it are being manipulated daily. Your mood is shifting based on the content you're trying to escape in the first place. That's why you can be in bed. Watch one heavy video, feel emotional, overthink before you go to sleep and then wake up the next morning and go, I don't feel like going to the gym. That's poor and the day I realized emotions don't matter in most of my decisions was the day I started making actual progress. So now what is the solution? Structure. I call it structure. Structure is better than motivation and I'm not talking about some nonsensical 4am hustle routine. You know what these Ashton Hall guys doing the morning and dip their face into water. That's all for social media which is another problem with productivity. I'm not saying you need to read three hours a day or become a productivity robot. I'm talking simple, consistent structures or containers for learning. Pick one topic one time, show up daily even if it's 20 minutes. That's the real cheat code. That's why I tell people self educate yourself outside of your convention work life. So if you've got a job on your trying to level up, pick something one thing and block out the noise. I know your ADHD brain is probably kicking right now. You're like, Oh, I don't know what to pick. I'm going to explain that in a bit. But I just want you to block out the noise to start with. The reason I'm so direct with people who say, I don't know what to learn. I don't know what to do is because you probably have an incling. You've just filled your brain with too much noise to hear it. When you're constantly consuming your brain is full, you need silence before you can hear yourself think and the issue is before I continue with the rise of chat GPT and with the rise of constantly searching things on the internet. You don't even trust yourself to make a good decision, which is why is another reason as to why people say, I don't know what to do. And as I said, once your brain settles and you accept the silence, it starts telling you, OK, we're doing this now. And that's where the real identity shift happens. That's when you start to feel capable again. And that's where learning sticks. You don't need more motivation. You need to design your way out of distraction. Set a time 15, 20, 30 minutes every day, even if it's small, just do something. The reason why most people don't actually do it is because they're so addicted to instant gratification. This has ruined most of your lives. How many courses have you put? How many things have you put randomly on the internet? How many times have you given up on a good career because you didn't get instant results? Social media doesn't help either. Someone's going to tell you get your dream body in 45 days where in actuality it takes six to 12 months to get a good body. But you don't want to hear that. You'll rather buy into what is quick and what is fast. That's why people can't handle the fact that learning takes a year, two years or maybe three. But guess what? This is the harsh reality. Whether you do it or not, time's going to pass anyways, so you might as well start. This is what I tell myself every day. Even when I was recording this podcast episode, I remember I was feeling lazy this morning and I said to myself, I'm probably going to do it later. But then I thought to myself, whether I do it now or later, time's going to pass anyway, so I might as well just get out of the way. So let me close this off with one shift in perspective that really helped me. You know that feeling when you look back and go, damn, I wish I had started this last year. Imagine how far I'd be right now. This used to affect me so much moving forward. Every time I used to think about doing something from now onwards, the thing that would come to my mind is, damn, if only I started this before. And then it makes me feel negative. It makes me feel like it's not worth doing anything. But I'll give you the best perspective shift that I tell myself. I've been telling myself for the last two to three years actually that has changed everything. Instead of saying, if only I had started this last year, I would have been so far ahead. All I tell myself is a year from now, I'm going to look back today and I'm going to say the exact same thing. If you think about it today, if you look back next year, you're going to say the exact same thing so you might as well start now. And that helps me every single day. Whatever happened in the past happened. I can't change it. But I can definitely change what happens in the next year if I start from today, whether it's content, a language, a skill. If you keep dwelling on what should have started last year, realize this today is that last year moment in the making. The choice is yours. So now that you've made the decision to stop relying on motivation, I want to talk a little bit about structure, how to actually create rhythm because some of you may be thinking, okay, I'm ready to learn, I have a topic in mind, I have something that I want to learn about how do I even start. And I'm going to make this very, very simple because if you overcomplicate it, you're probably going to burn out in a week and say something like, oh, this doesn't even work. But the reality is you try to run before you learn how to walk. Here's one thing I want to say just to keep in your mind. Pick one thing, learn it slowly, stick to rhythm. Let's say, for example, you want to learn about psychology, something I have an interest in or maybe neuroscience or human behaviors or let's say some sort of sports or let's say programming anything you want to learn. The thing you need to acknowledge is if that's your topic and that's the thing you want to stick to, you don't need a massive plan, you just need containers, you need blocks in your week that are dedicated to that topic. So let me give you an easy breakdown. Pick one topic, choices, you'll choose two to three core resources. This is one of the most important parts. The thing that I hate about people when it comes to learning something is they reference many different resources which creates problems. I'll give you an easy example that I think all of you guys can understand. If I want to learn how to get jacked, I want to go to the gym and build muscle. If now you're on the internet watching five different YouTube channels, you've bought three different programs and you're watching seven different TikTok pages, what is that going to do to your brain? It overloads your brain because one thing you need to understand and this is something I learned through iteration and just going through life is most people's methods work. Like for example, if someone says go to the gym and do a push pull legs or if someone says go to the gym and do a full body three days a week or if someone says do this bro split, classes are they all work and the reason why they all work is the person that came up with it stuck to it for a prolonged period of time and generated results. The results that you generate will vary but you generate results nonetheless. So my rule when it comes to learning something is choosing two to three core resources. Either one book one podcast, maybe one channel, maybe one course and one book, maybe one course and I don't know one podcast. The more you limit variance with the information you take in, the easier it is to focus because I've had so many people come to me and I would say, oh hey, I saw a video you made that you were talking about this and I also saw a video of someone else saying this that creates a lot of overthinking. You lose the ability to trust yourself and it doesn't work. That's why this is something that has been ancient advice by the way, this isn't new advice that I'm giving you. Back in the days, all the thinkers and the educators used to take information from one source. If they take all the information from that source and let's say there's a cat, let's say that person doesn't know everything, they will top it up with another source. So keep that in your mind. Another thing to move past that is setting a consistent time. In my opinion, the easiest way to set a routine or a habit is to do the same thing at the same time whenever you can. So for example, if I want to learn something, you can pick certain days or you can do it every day. Choice is yours. So let's say you want to do 20 to 30 minutes every Monday to Friday. Let's say between 8 p.m. and 8 30. That's your timing. Try to stick to it every single time. And if you feel like there's a lot of variance in your life to make your life a bit easier, let's say you know that you work, you come home, you're a bit tired. Ask yourself, what is the minimum amount of days that I can do to basically not lose that consistency? So for example, if I know I'll work Monday to Friday and I come home and I'm extremely tired every single time. And I feel like there's going to be days where I cannot be bothered and days where I can be bothered. I'm going to stick to the two weekends. You might think, oh, that's not enough days. I'll tell you why this works psychologically. If your baseline is, I'm only going to do these side quests on Saturday and Sunday, the self-education that I want to do. I'm going to do on Saturday and Sunday between 8 to 9 p.m. or 8 to 8 30 every single weekend. You can stick to that because you know you're not working. You know you're not going to be drained. But here's the thing that a lot of people don't also acknowledge. If now you feel like you've got energy between Monday to Friday and you want to supplement, you can do this. A lot of people don't acknowledge this when I teach them this concept. They think, oh, but doing work two days a week is a sufficient. I said your baseline is two days a week. You know, if push comes to shove and the whole week you're completely shattered, you've got those two days at least. It's like if you're going to the gym for the first time and you know that you've got a full schedule and you're always working, I always tell people go to the gym two days a week. In the beginning, it's going to crush your ego. You're going to think to yourself, oh, that's not enough days. But I promise you, if you stay consistent to those set amount of days, that is better than someone that goes for two weeks and doesn't go again. And also to factor in the point I made earlier, if you do have energy on those certain days, see it as more supplementary rather than mandatory. And to move past that now, the next thing to really break this down is to engage with the topic and not just passively absorb. The reason why I don't like teaching people to learn or I don't like advocating for people to learn is because people have gotten so caught up in just watching, You know, consuming, consuming, consuming, I know. doing anything with it. For me, the thing that works all the time is, if I'm watching something, what I tend to do is, and you can follow this protocol by the way, I'll watch something, and let's say he says something that really makes me think. I'm going to post, and I'm going to write down what my thoughts are regarding what he said, not what he said. Sometimes, depending on what he said, I may write that down as context, but I always write down what I processed it as. That gives you a good recall muscle. You're building your recall muscle because now if I watch the video and I ask myself, what did I take away from that video? You're going to develop a good recall method or mechanism in your brain. This is what I'm so good at. I can watch a video. I'm not taking any notes, and by the time I get to the end of that video, I can ask myself, what is the overall takeaway of this video? Do not get me wrong. If someone's talking about things that are factual, there's some frameworks, there's some important statistics, you need to note down. By all means, note it down. But in order to remember something for a long time, it's better for you to write down what did you interpret from what was said, rather than what was said, because this is what we were taught in school. Think about it in school, which is such a stupid concept when I think about it. You were just taught the things that are on the board. Teacher said, x plus y equals z. Okay, x plus y equals z. Teacher said, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I'm just going to write, I want to 3, 4, 5. So now you developed something in your brain, which doesn't allow you to think about what's your writing, and now you've developed this in real life. You could be watching a real factual video. Instead of processing what's being said, you just write down what's on the screen, which is why people don't learn. And if you want to really make this solid, track what you're learning. In my opinion, I would say try to use notion, try to use a note sap. It doesn't actually matter, but just reflect on what it is you're learning. That's literally it. You don't need the university syllabus. You just need to stay consistent, and that's where 99% of people fail. People want to learn, but they're waiting for some grand spark to hit them. They want fireworks, some magical aha moment. Most self education is quiet, is slow, is repetitive. And that's what makes it powerful. The more you repeat the action, whether it's reading three pages of a book, whether it's watching 15 minutes of a lecture, you build mental momentum. Your brain starts going, okay, this is a part of who we are now. Remember, I said before you don't need motivation, you need structure. And structure doesn't mean rigidity. It doesn't mean be so hard on yourself. It means having enough of a plan to keep showing up, even on the days where your brain is cooked. Remember the baseline. The baseline is the most important thing to me. So if you're trying to educate yourself, keep it simple, keep it consistent, and most importantly, stay very patient. Before I talk to you guys about how to deal with the distractions in this world, I want to talk about something that I know someone listening to this has probably thought about, which is I get what you're saying, but I just genuinely don't know what to learn. I'm not interested in anything. Where do I even start? So this is for you. And I want to break that down because that's a real one. A lot of people feel like that. They just don't say out loud. And I want you to understand something important. It's not your fault. It's a symptom of overstimulation back to back dopamine here. It's not that you're not interested in anything is that your brain hasn't had the silence to figure it out. I came across this video recently of a guy saying that he had no passions. He was scrolling through YouTube and social media, literally searching how to find your passions, and nothing came up. And I get it. I really do. But the thing people don't realize is most of us don't find our interest through thinking. We find them through experiencing. You didn't know you like cause until you saw them. You didn't know you like football until someone gave you a bowl or you watched it for the first time. You didn't know you liked psychology until something happened to you and made you question things. And I guess you end up researching into it like I did. And I realized this is pretty cool. So many things you enjoy now. Didn't come from sitting in your room thinking about them. They came from trying from exposure from real life. And that's why I always say if you feel lost or numb or disconnected, go out and touch real grass. Go experience something. Go to an event. Go to speech someone. Hop on event bright and look for a random talk or workshop. Psychology AI creative writing fitness. Whatever it may be, you don't have to be into it. Just go just see because all it takes is one conversation, one piece of information, one new environment. And suddenly something clicks. You're interested in something new. Another thing people fail to recognize is curiosity only shows up in silence. And most of us don't have enough of that. That's the problem. If you want to look at the two main reasons as to why people don't know what direction to take or what to learn. Number one, you're overstimulated. You don't spend enough time being quiet, being bored. And number two is that you haven't experienced enough. Most people have too many options. And you've got so many things to choose from that your brain just shuts down paralysis decision fatigue. That's why most people don't know what job to pick. They don't know what career to get into. They don't know what path to follow. It's not a lack of intelligence is a surplus of options. And the second issue is that you haven't done enough things in real life. You haven't gathered enough data. And that's not a job. It's just the way I see life. When you try things and you really experiment and you get your hands dirty. That's when you gain clarity. That's when you can actually confidently say, I like this. Or you can confidently say, I don't think this is for me. So if you're young, listen it to this and you don't know what to do. Do some volunteer work. Jump into a few internships. Try different things because the more you experience the more information you give your brain to work with real information, personalized information. And if you're still sitting there thinking, brought, I still don't know where to start. Let me simplify this for you. Here's how I think about it. If you were to pick my brain, ask yourself, what would help me survive right now? Right? Let's actually break down the hierarchy of importance. What do you need right now? Do you need job? Do you need stability? Do you need better health? Start there. Don't over think about it. If you have no job right now, your number one priority of what should I learn or what direction should I take is the most accessible thing that is going to move you forward. Whether that be a retail job, whether that be a graduate scheme. The next thing for you to then think about is what do you find yourself googling for the most part? Once you've kind of identified the need to know and the necessities, the next thing is what do you find yourself thinking about quite often? That's your curiosity trying to peek through the noise. And the thing I've always tried to tell myself is God places things in your heart for a reason. And the way I see things also is if something constantly comes up and you're always finding yourself researching into it, that's probably your calling. And that's the most important thing to me. And it doesn't matter which one you start with. It doesn't matter what you pick. You don't have to have a perfect plan. If you find yourself constantly circling things and if you find yourself constantly searching things, ask yourself, what is the reason why I haven't pursued that? Is that because you care about what people think? Is it because you don't feel like you're good enough to pursue it? What is it? If you're sad there thinking that you've got no spark, no interest, no passion, that's not a flaw. No is it a failure? It's a signal. Your brain has been overstimulated for so long it hasn't had the moment to breathe. What you don't need is more content. When people say what YouTube channel should I watch? What podcast should I listen to? Let this be the last podcast you listen to for the next week. Until next Monday. All you guys to just learn to be more still, I do this quite a lot. I spend so much time being still that I don't feel like I'm ever behind or further ahead. I am where I am because I am a collection of my habits and the choices I've made. I don't have extreme anxiety nor do I dwell on the past and I regret things because I think about the decisions I've made. I think about the choices I've taken moving forward and that only comes from being quiet sitting in boredom journaling and art going for a walk without listening to anything and art driving to a long somewhere. Let's say you got to drive a few hours. Don't listen to anything. Let your thoughts take over and you'll be surprised how you decode and decipher a lot of problems you have in your life. So moving on now that you've picked your topic, you've set your containers, your systems, you've cut out all the noise and you're even starting to show up. I guess the hardest thing for me myself and for you guys listening, if you feel like you've done all the things that I've mentioned already is how do you navigate in a world that's designed to make you stupid? In a world of brainwreys, it's so easy to get distracted. I get distracted by the way. Sometimes I find myself doing something. I'm locked in and then I'll just pick up my phone five minutes goes by. I'll get back to work, do something for 20 minutes, ping, I'll get a notification and back on my phone again. Distractions are everywhere. The modern internet is not built for depth, is built for distraction. So if you're trying to educate yourself, just know that you are going to have an uphill struggle. The cheat code for me, I guess, is I've created conditions that allow for me to have deep work sessions because without it, I'm going to passively consume and the thing I always tell people is don't ever let anyone lie to you and say they don't have an inclination to brain rot. They've just got systems to fight against it. They've got structures certain times in their day where it's a non-negotiable because if you think about it and this is something I was writing in my journal recently, where I said, focus is a superpower now. Your ability to focus is your greatest advantage. If you really deep it, the only thing standing between where you are right now and where you want to be is focus, pause and ask yourself if you have actually, if you had actually focused for the past year on one thing, where would you be right now? And I know when you guys just start regretting things or start becoming anxious. I just want you to acknowledge how important focuses because most people don't realize that their attention span has been cooked. My attention span has been cooked. I'm going to be honest, my attention span used to be better 10 years ago. I used to open my laptop in the morning and I could sit there clock out eight hours of work and the only thing that I would do is eat, go to the toilet and maybe pray. That's the only thing that I would do and I'll be good with it. Now the thing I realized is I've developed these methods where I have to always end the night. clearing my tabs because the problem I have and I'm going to be open about this is I find myself getting distracted very easily because I would say maybe I'm someone who's naturally curious, I love reading a research and random things so what would happen is I would wake up and I would see a few tabs that I forgot to close and I would say oh let me actually finish this article boom 30 minutes is gone then I remember something that I was meant to do and then I'm like okay let me do this I've wasted an hour and then a few of these goals by and you've essentially forgot what the main focus of today was I want you guys to write this down distraction is the default focus has to be engineered focus isn't the default anymore being distracted is the default and it's very important to acknowledge that learning isn't just what you study is how you protect the space around your brain if you want to know what my routine looks like and maybe it may help you this is some things that I do regularly I keep notifications off when I'm doing work I close all tabs before bed I promise you 99.9% of the tabs that you have open currently you haven't used in a while stop lying to yourself they are not important you don't need to bookmark them the moment I realized this my brain became a lot clearer let me even go on a tangent to your point right how many of you guys bookmarked things on social media but you haven't watched it for the last six months I see this a lot with my post by the way for the first 10 minutes of me posting I get a lot more bookmarks than likes I know people haven't even watched it they're just convincing themselves oh I'm gonna watch it later on you won't that's why I've developed this mindset of if the tab open doesn't benefit me right now I am going to close it if it is very important and I don't know if I am going to find that information again and again let's be honest what do you classes very important if something is highly specialized what you're doing but it isn't a priority right now you can always book market but close all of those tabs and before I go to sleep I'll write the one most important task for the next day that I know if I don't really wake up and I'm feeling like it what is the most important thing I need to get done I don't try to do a million things I just try to do the thing that millions me forward so again let's say I need to record a podcast I wake up I see on my checklist that's the first thing I do and because I've got the hard thing done first now I feel like I can fit in other things maybe the gym maybe reading whatever it may be and the momentum builds whilst I'm doing work I use 30 minutes sprints some call it Pomodoro technique I just call it locking in I set a stopwatch for about 30 minutes phones on dnd if I get distracted I just look at the time and I remember okay at least I've got 18 minutes left and reason why Pomodoro and all of these techniques workers if you tell yourself mentally all I have to do is bear this for another 10 minutes that is much better than not setting any time limits and using I have to do work for the next six hours your brain is probably going to think that's a long time I cannot be bothered so once the 30 minutes done I let myself go on my phone I check my notifications and if you can do this three to four to five to six times a day that's two three four hours of work for that day done where you've actually been focused and present if you compound that over few weeks over the 52 weeks of the year are you telling me you're not going to produce any good results the next thing is learning isn't just about collecting facts that's where school failed us real learning is about processing information so when I learned something I always asked myself what does this actually mean how does this connect to anything else I know or does this connect to anything else I know and lastly which is a bit of a controversial one is do I even agree with this and if I don't agree with it why don't I agree with it one of the best ways that I develop perspective thinking which is the ability to level with other people's opinions rather than rejecting them fully is I always take the devil's advocate position not in real life but whenever I read something I'm like okay what could be the opposing opinion if I agree with a video and I'm like you know what that's interesting sometimes I fact check myself and I'm like why do I agree with this what is the devil's advocate what is the opposing position is there a potentiality that the opposing position may be correct the more you do this it actually creates what I call intellectual autonomy most people I've noticed across social media aren't the brightest people I can make a video talking about anything and I promise you guys are going to be in my comments saying oh how can you say this but personally but personally no one cares about what you personally believe the ability to think for yourself is the most priceless currency everyone outsources their thinking and their thoughts to Google chat GBT and TikTok so if you can think for yourself you immediately stand up and to solidify this further if you really want to know if you understand something try to teach it an easy way to teach something or to regurgitate what it is you've learned use chat GBT use the chat GBT voice tool and actually do this sometimes where I would learn something that I found very interesting instead of consolidating my notes I was going to chat GBT voice tool and I would basically speak to it so basically I learned this thing recently and I thought it was very interesting and from what I took from it was xyz record yourself you can break it down share it to a friend do what you need to do but the point I'm making is if you don't find ways to teach that information do you really know it which is why content creation interestingly enough has been so powerful for me because anything I've learned I've tested it against the the audience and the world of social media by sharing it I would learn something that I found very interesting I would share my opinion online if someone gives me an opposing opinion I want rejected straight away I'm like okay why did they view it like that over time once you develop what I call intellectual autonomy it really helps you navigate life and to end this section I want you to also acknowledge that your aim is to reduce friction simplify everything try to study in the same spot I usually rotate between my home office and the cafe have your tools ready your laptop whatever apps you use keep your learning sources or resources minimal as I mentioned earlier stop trying to reference multiple different sources you're really wasting your time and lastly just to summarize one topic two to three resources that is it if you want to become a real student of life you need to fight for your ability to think not to scroll not to skim read things not to just store data in your head but to actually think deeply for yourself so now before we wrap up this episode I want to talk to you guys about playing the long game because if you want to make self education loss you need to acknowledge that compounding takes time self education is not sexy is not fast is not glamorous and the issue with most people is as I've mentioned before you are addicted to instant gratification I promise you focus is a superpower in this day and age self education is one of the few things that actually gives you compounding returns if you stick to it think of the gym if you go consistently you will see results over time is the same with learning if you stick to something useful for 30 minutes even if it's a few times a week over the course of 52 weeks you'll be unrecognizable next year but the problem is most people want transformation without time even look how social media set up everything's marketed as learn these three skills in three weeks get your dream body in 45 days the messaging works not because it's true but because we're addicted to speed if I told you the truth that it takes six months you would actually become discouraged if I told you it takes 12 months to get into a really lean body shape and you have to go through the grueling act of eating clean and working out and doing the stare masters mostly you guys wouldn't want to do it but if I told you there's a pill you can swallow that's gonna help you lose weight don't care about the side effects by the way I just want the results most people go for it but think about it like this 2025 started yesterday and now we're already in October 10 months gone just like that time is going to pass anyways you just have to get used to the fact that progress takes time because if you had started something in January where January for me if I blink it felt like yesterday you would have been 10 months into your journey every expert every content creator every smart person you follow they've just been in the game longer than you that is it and the most unfair comparison we make is we compare ourselves to someone who is flourishing now people always tell me you're such a great communicator it's like you are born with it no I used to start up I used to use a lot of filler words I used to use a lot of colloquial language but people don't see the reps they don't see the hours they don't see the time they don't see the amount of videos that I had to record in order to be able to speak in one take manner or to be able to have a commanding voice so if you're constantly comparing your beginning to someone else's year five that's what's dissuading you that's why I want you to understand we overestimate what we can do in a week and massively underestimate what we can do in a year I've said it early and I'll say it again because I've lived it if you started last year imagine where you'd be today now flip it if you start today imagine where you would be next year five years ago was locked down you blinked five years goes by today is the five year mark if you have just picked up one topic one hobby even if it was 20 minutes a day your entire life would be different right now that is the long game soft education isn't about information is about compounding efforts let's break it down let's talk some numbers if I were to read three pages a day how many pages is that a year that's about quick maths this over a thousand pages a year you don't think any of that will change your perspective if you watched 15 minutes of a video with focus learning and focused application every day how many hours would that be a year trying to do some quick maths again I'm assuming it'll be 50 to 60 hours plus for the year you may think it's small but it's definitely movement it's definitely motion if you We have done that during lockdown, just started those incremental 15-20 minutes. You would have been so much further ahead now. If you share one idea that you've basically learned on the internet every week, you would have 52 pieces of content that reinforce your knowledge and track your progress. It doesn't feel much in the moment, but 15 minutes of focused effort is a thousand times more powerful than 3 hours of distracted scrolling. Small reps are better than big spurs. Most people sabotage themselves because they try to sprint to change. So the point I'm making is if you're struggling to stay consistent in the beginning, one thing I would say is incentivize your learning. Do 20-30 minutes of focused work then give yourself a reward. Build a system where the action is the hard part and the reward reassociates your brain with discipline. Bad advice, but what I tell people is depending on how much of a brain rot you are depending on how addicted you are to dopamine. If you do something hard, do something you like. So for example, when I wanted to become very productive, what I would do is I would do work for like 30 to 40 minutes and then I would let myself binge social media for like 5 to 10 minutes. As soon as my alarm goes off at the end of the 5 to 10 minute mark, I would go back to doing work. That way I got to dopamine here and I'm going straight back to work. Over time you can definitely optimize and iterate because you don't want to be someone that rewards your hard work by doing things that I guess don't make you feel good. So the point of making is this is what the self work is because whether or not you feel like it, time is going to pass anyways. The only thing left is for you to decide are you going to put the reps in and that's what brings me to the final part of this episode. Before we wrap up, I just want to leave you with a few thoughts. If you've made it this far, you're probably someone who wants more out of life. You know you're capable of more, but maybe the structure, I guess the clarity, the mindset, that's what's been missing. So here's a question. What would your life look a year from now if you had just picked one thing or if you just pick one thing and stuck with it for 20 minutes a day? Not perfectly, not obsessively, just consistently. That's the game. Self education is about showing up for yourself even when no one's watching, even when there's no rewards, even when there's no certifications. No uploads, there's no one they're clapping for you every time you do something. Just you, your brain and your future. I want to leave you with three reflection points. Number one, what is one topic or skill that keeps circling your mind? What's the first thing that you keep coming back to? No matter how many times you brush it off, it keeps coming back to you. I believe God puts these things in our heart for a reason. Maybe you've been telling yourself, "It's not worth it." Or "It's not for me." But if he keeps coming back, maybe it's just not for it. Have you ever wondered maybe it's a calling? Number two, can you commit to creating a small system for it just this week? I'm talking maybe 15 minutes a day, maybe 15 minutes every three days, maybe 15 minutes, three to four times a week. Nothing fancy, nothing overwhelming, just simple, reputable reps that build momentum. And the third one is, what are you willing to give up to protect that space? Because if you don't design your environment for learning, the world will keep designing it for distraction. And if you don't want to, just do it for yourself. And that's the self work we're all about. If you've enjoyed this episode, as usual, feel free to drop me a DM, post it on your story, send it to someone who needs it. And as always, spread the love. And I'll see you in the next one.