Thread by @IqbalROfficial

Taking the time to reflect on my journey as a "perpetual learner" as I wait for my wife to cut her hair. Here we go...

The journey started in my last semester as an undergrad. Like any other students, at that time I'm still figuring out what I want to be. I got lucky to have a lot of free time to reflect on it thanks to the flexibility of the American education system.

I didn't know where to start, so I did "spray and pray" methods and see what stick. Books, meet-ups, Youtube, Reddit, podcast, etcs. Despite all of those efforts, I still didn't know what I want to be at that point in time.

Reflecting on it, I found out that if you collect a huge sample size of advice, it will lead to net-zero benefits to you. Some will advise you to do one thing and others will advise you to avoid the same thing.

You don't see me smiling a lot relative to the other students during the graduation ceremony. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm done with it (it's a freaking long journey!), but the truth is I'm scared about the future. I don't know what I want to be.

Reflecting on this, our society gives us the perception that we need to know what we want to be early in our life. The truth is, we don't. Life is a journey. enjoy the ride!

A couple of weeks after my graduation day, @JayShettyIW published the "Why We Should Never Stop Learning" video. It's a lightbulb moment!

I found out that what I want to be doesn't have necessarily be about my career. It can be about what I want to become as a person.

I decided that I want to be a person that constantly learns, a "perpetual learner", that my learning wouldn't stop after I graduated. This is because I found out that majority of the people that I respect are insanely curious and enjoy learning.

Reflecting on this, our career shouldn't define us as a person. I think we can have a more fulfilling life if we define our career based on who we are as a person. That being said, it's a privilege to do so.

I started my perpetual learning journey by buying more books and reading them. Given the amount of budget and time that I have, I came out with a system whereby I only buy and read books that are recommended by the people that I respect.

Sometimes they published the book recommendation on their blogs (Bill Gates is an example) and others mentioned it in podcasts. There are times where I screenshot their library and book collection when they posted it on Twitter.

Reflecting on it, I really wish I stumbled upon @farnamstreet's "A Helpful Guide to Reading Better" early in the process.

I still have some bad habits related to reading that got stuck till now.

fs.blog/reading/

"If you want to be the best, you need to know who's the best in the world in that area"- Chris Gardner (Pursuit of Happiness guy).

It's critical to know who's the best in an area. Once I know who they are, I try to understand the way they learn (including the books they read).

I didn't know this at the time, but I sourced the best people in an area through "Human routers". People like @tferriss, @HarryStebbings, @polina_marinova, @ritholtz and @joerogan have the ability to connect with the best and spread the information that they receive to the world.

I use their podcast guest list (or profile write-up list) as a filter to find the best in the world, then go to the rabbit hole to understand how they get to where they are right now.

Reflecting on this, the limitation of the method is that most of the people on the list come from western POV. Now, I realized that my own POV is biased towards that western culture

The rabbit hole allows me to discover extremely brilliant people like Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Morgan Housel, Nasim Taleb, and many more. They become the "professors" for my life long "Personal MBA".

Below are some of the best writeups from them.

"How to Be Successful" from Sam Altman. @sama has the advantage of seeing thousands of founders and the ability to pattern matching their success factors. The article summarized ways to achieve "outlier success"

blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-succ…

@paulg is one of the best writers out there. It's really hard to pick only 1 great article from him, so here are the top 3 articles:

How to Think For Yourself- paulgraham.com/think.html

Life is Short- paulgraham.com/vb.html

Do Things That Don't Scale- paulgraham.com/ds.html

To be continued later when I get the chance. Wifey is done with her hair😄

Reflecting on it, you will notice that there are million ways to be successful and what to do about it. But, it’s equally important to know what NOT to do.

It’s easier to learn and avoid common mistakes that others do (as Charlie Munger tends to remind us).

Speaking about mistakes, I used to find the best people through their TV appearances. Little did I know back then that being famous does not necessarily means they have in depth expertise in the area that you’re studying. Sometimes, it’s just a “social signaling” from them.

Unfortunately, this also applies to podcast guests toward a certain extent during post-covid era as number of podcast increase.

So, watch out for their incentive for the media appearance.

I believe we need to look at the number of iterations that one has to make in that area to determine if they’re the best. The more iterations that they’re making, the better they should become in the area.

This may or may not correlate to the years of experience that they have.

As an example, if you want to learn about decision making, you might want to consider learning from a poker player since they’ve to make decisions in every cards that they’re dealt with.

They’ve to improve and iterate their decision making process to win.

Another example, if you want to learn about marriage, don’t learn it from a couple with 30+ years of marriage. I believe it’s better to learn it from divorce lawyers or marriage counselors. They’ve seen more marriage than the former.

As this journey goes, I’m still working on a system to retain the knowledge and apply it on a daily basis.

Currently, I’m using @NotionHQ and @readwiseio to incorporate all the things that I learn from various platforms (Twitter, web app, Youtube, podcast, etc).

Let me know what do you use to build your “Personal Knowledge Management Center”.

It would be great if I can leverage it to be able to learn from one area and apply it to the other.