Monday memo #62
Write to learn.
The Monday memo is food for thought to fuel your week.
Hi everyone,
You don’t have to be an expert in something in order to write about it. Sometimes it’s actually better if you’re an absolute beginner.
One of the best ways to learn about something that’s “brand new to you” is to write about it, because no one is in a better position to know what a beginner needs to know than you are.
Zen master Shunryū Suzuki said that in the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, while in the expert’s mind, there are only a few.
By the time you’ve become an expert at something, you’ve forgotten how it feels to be a beginner. My dad was an engineer, so I guess you could say he was a math expert. When he tried to teach me math, he got so frustrated, he just blew up. He’d say, how could you not get that? It’s so simple! And then I would get frustrated too, and I would feel stupid, and angry, and I’d just give up because, well, he was right, I just wasn’t getting it. And that’s exactly why being a beginner puts you in a very special position.
To be a good teacher, you’ve got to teach yourself first, right? So as you teach yourself, you figure out what the building blocks are to learn the thing. And as you figure those things out, you write them down.
Whenever you learn something new, you are automatically creating the path that you need in order to learn it. You’re creating a path for yourself… but with only a teeny tiny little bit of extra effort, you can make that path accessible to others, too.
This is really the secret of the visual explanations that I did as a newspaper artist and how I learned to turn that into a company. A visual explanation is simply a drawing of the path that you took to learn the thing that can be followed by other people. And that’s also true of books, blog posts, and anything else that people can read, watch, or listen to. Every book I’ve written, on subjects that people now see me as an expert in, all started with cultivating a beginner’s mind and setting out to answer my own questions.
So if you want to learn something complex, something difficult, something challenging, one of the best ways to learn it is to write about it as you are learning it.
Exercise.
So that’s your exercise for the week. Write about something that you don’t know how to do. List your questions about it and then go about answering them as best you can. Read about it. Find some people who know about it and ask them your questions. Find a video where you can watch someone do it. Try doing it yourself. Keep after it until you have truly absorbed it and it becomes a part of you. And as you go (or when you’re done), share your learning path with others. Publish it, show it, share it, release it to the world. See what happens.
Membership.
If you’re not a member yet, what are you waiting for? Join us in the project studio, where encourage each other, share ideas and inspiration, and push each other to do our best creative work.
Just look at all the crazy-cool projects people are working on:
And look at this amazing gang of possibilitarians. Don’t you want to join us?
It’s easy to join. Just upgrade to paid by clicking the button below, and you can join us this week!
If you’re already a member, thank you. You’re making this possible, and your membership is what gives me the confidence and encouragement to keep going.
More information for members is below the fold.👇