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Ramses Oudt

14 Jan, 10 tweets, 2 min read

Strive to become 1% better every day.

Small habits snowball into big changes. If you keep showing up and adjusting based on what you learn, success is a matter of time.

An atomic essay is about how I dropped 45 kg by steadily improving 1%.

🧵 Prefer tweets? See the thread.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” —Will Durant

Small habits cause big changes. If you improve by 1% every day, you’re 37 times better after a year. Simple improvements function like compound interest—it snowballs.

I stumbled upon the principle of small, daily improvements when battling prediabetes. Having to lose 45 kg (99 lbs), I had to make a radical change in my lifestyle.

My radical change came about via two sustainable goals:

1. Show up every day, no exceptions.

2. Stay within my macros—the amount of carbs, protein, and fat I could eat daily.

Showing up meant no cheat days. It’s a lot easier to say no if there’s no room for debating with yourself.

Not overeating was more difficult, so I tried to do a bit better every day.

On a day-to-day basis, I saw no changes. Some weeks, I stagnated. But every month, I dropped something.

It took me three years to lose the weight, but the habit stuck. For the first time in my life, I've had the same weight for more than three years. Farewell yo-yo effect!

How did I measure my invisible progress and stay motivated?

By measuring leading indicators and reflecting daily.

The leading indicators—my macros—showed if I was moving in the right direction. Even the laggiest result could not throw me off; I knew I was okay if my food log said so.

I learned to eat well through study, experimentation, and reflection—helping me to spot patterns to which I had been oblivious.

By journaling every day, I could finally use the delayed feedback that my body was giving me.

Consistent improvements only come through habits. Embrace the journey and find ways to measure your invisible progress.

If you keep showing up, success is only a matter of time.

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More from @rroudt

Ramses Oudt

@rroudt

14 Jan

@david_perell

Writing helps you to learn.

Reading @david_perell's Monday Musings newsletter this week, three quotes on writing stood out to me.

🧵 A short thread on writing to learn.

"Writing is humbling because you realize that you don’t understand things you thought you were an expert on."

Writing is the ultimate bullshit filter.

Until you try to explain something, you don't know if you grok it.

"Writing things down is a portal to the highest levels of thinking, which is why mathematicians have the whiteboard and writers have the page."

Clear writing is a mark of clear thinking.

If your writing is muddy, that means you have more learning and writing to do.

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Ramses Oudt

@rroudt

13 Jan

When you teach, you learn twice as fast.

Stop hoarding knowledge; share it freely if you want to help yourself grow. Teach to learn.

In today's #Ship30For30 essay, I show why teaching is a valuable learning tool.

🧵 Prefer tweets? See the thread.

When learning on your own, it's easy to fool yourself into thinking you understand.

If you can't apply new knowledge immediately, teach others—you'll remember it better, and discover if you truly grok it.

Good teaching stands or falls with preparation.

Know:
1. The gist of the idea.

2. When the idea does and doesn't apply.

3. Stories and examples of the idea in action.

Read 8 tweets

Ramses Oudt

@rroudt

12 Jan

Don't learn languages—acquire them.

You'll never become fluent by studying grammar and memorizing vocabulary. You only become fluent in a language if you stop learning and start immersing yourself.

My five language acquisition principles 👇

🧵 Prefer tweets? See the thread.

Do you learn languages, or do you acquire them?

Most people acquire their native language but learn foreign languages. Brainwashed by school, adults ditch the natural approach for artificial materials that never lead to fluency.

Be different if you want to become fluent.

Throw away your apps, books, and courses.

All you need is a lot of exposure to your target language. Immerse yourself and rewire your brain. Let the language become part of you.

Read 11 tweets

Ramses Oudt

@rroudt

11 Jan

Learners are the future of knowledge work.

In our complex world, knowing is no longer enough. The skillset we need to solve new challenges is that of knowing how to learn.

A thread on the new kind of knowledge worker:
The learning worker.

🧵 Prefer tweets? See the thread.

The knowledge worker is dead. Long live the learning worker!

In our increasingly complex world, we can no longer rely on existing systems and knowledge. We see new problems for the first time, and the only way to cope is by learning and adapting.

We need a new type of knowledge worker—one who always learns and shares information.

We need people who believe
that shared knowledge is power.

We need learning workers.

Read 12 tweets

Ramses Oudt

@rroudt

10 Jan

Real learning is messy.

School feeds us the illusion we can learn isolated topics and string them together later. But, the world is chaotic, so we need to adapt our learning approach to it.

An atomic essay on embracing messiness in learning.

🧵 Prefer tweets? See the thread.

Life is messy.

Our brains evolved in a chaotic world, not in a classroom.

While we're now spoon-fed knowledge, our ancestors couldn't predict what they needed to learn—
they knew when death was staring them in the face.

School gives the illusion you can divide knowledge into sequential units.

But, only when you put things into practice do you know what you need to know.

The solution?
Start before you're ready.

Read 8 tweets

Ramses Oudt

@rroudt

9 Jan

You can teach yourself.

If you're reading this, you have the ultimate teaching and learning tool; writing.

By explaining things to yourself, you uncover holes in understanding—enabling you to learn deliberately.

🧵Atomic essay on learning through writing.

#ship30for30

Richard Feynman—the physicist—famously had a quote in the corner of his blackboard; "What I cannot create, I do not understand," followed by "Know how to solve every problem that has been solved."

Feynman took pen to paper and worked from memory, explaining concepts to himself in simple terms. If he couldn't, that was his cue to dig deeper.

By seeing simple explanations in his own words, he could make ideas his own and wrap his head around complex topics.

Read 8 tweets

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