How to Learn Anything
when i was eight years old
i looked something like that and i had a
friend
and that friend drew beautifully i could
not understand how someone so young
could draw so well and i interviewed her
a lot
because i couldn’t and so as many people
do
i forgot about drawing and i marked it
of the list of the things
that i could do in life but a few years
passed
and i became interested in animation i
thought it would be cool to become an
animator
like the guys at pixar or dreamworks
so i went on google i typed in how to
learn animation
and i spent a few months moving shapes
around my screen
and that was cool but then i read
somewhere that if you want to become a
better animator
then you should learn to draw i actually
was like learn to draw
i always wanted to do that so i went on
i typed in how to learn drawing and i
found a drawing guide that i completed
after a month
i kept on practicing and practicing i
even signed up for drawing classes
after four months i was able to draw
like that then i met a magician
and he was like do you want to see a
card trick and i was like
sure i love card tricks and you know he
did the trick
30 seconds passed and he was like is
this your card
and it was it actually was my card
and i was amazed my voice was taken away
and we just stood there like
and i exclaimed how did you do that that
was amazing
and he wouldn’t tell me so that went on
i typed him how to do card tricks and
i spent a year learning that after that
time
i learned enough to actually approach
random people on the street
and show them tricks i finally gained
the skills
to evoke the same sense of wonder
amazement and mystery
that a stranger once provoked in me
[Laughter]
so that didn’t work out and i decided to
learn to code
when i was little i gamed a lot and so i
always wanted to create a game
uh so you know i went on google i typed
in
how to make a game and i spent a year
watching online tutorials
and developing my project after that
time
the project was finished my game was
finished
i learned a lot throughout the process
and i could show off the result to my
friends
besides well i have to say the game was
a spectacular success
so i finished the game last summer
and i was sitting on my couch watching
youtube videos
and wasting time as i usually do and i
stumbled upon a video
made by google it was called abu story
and abu was a high school student who
discovered artificial intelligence
and decided to use it in a in an
extracurricular project in order to
classify breast tumors
as malignant or benign malignant tumors
are those that are dangerous
benign are those that are less dangerous
so what abu exactly wanted to do
was find examples of malignant and
benign breast tumors
and then showed them to his computer the
computer would learn to recognize them
and then if habu had a new tumor and he
did not know
whether it was malignant or benign he
could show it to the computer
and the computer would tell him that
i thought to myself if some kid my age
can get one of the biggest companies in
the world to make a video about him
just because he learned how to use his
computer in an efficient manner
so i went on google i typed in how to
learn machine learning
and i spent three months learning that
after that time i found a data set on
the internet
with examples of malignant and benign
breast tumors
and i showed them to my machine learning
algorithm
it learned to recognize malignant and
benign breast tumors
with 93 accuracy
what i’m trying to say through all of
that is that you can learn things
on the internet you may not realize this
but this is a unique opportunity there
had never been a time in history
when learning was so simple for example
if you were born a shoemaker in the
medieval times
and you had a weird nose and
you decided you would like to check out
what goat breeding was like
then firstly you wouldn’t because you
were shoemaker
in the medieval times secondly assuming
you were really really set on learning
how to breed goats then you would need
to find information
on where you can find a goat breeder
then leave your village
find companions embark on a journey save
the widow fight the pagans get killed be
resurrected slay dragon and that old
loud with goats still wouldn’t teach you
because you had a weird nose
these days you literally go on google
type in how to read goats and there’s a
reddit post that tells you exactly what
to learn and where
you are in a unique position to access
the miracle of free education
and you may say okay hugo i get what
you’re saying
but i once tried to learn something on
the internet and i learned a thing but
then i didn’t know what the next thing
to learn was
and i didn’t learn the thing i wanted to
learn and i get that
i actually had the same problem myself
once
for example when i was trying to learn
to code
there were many tutorials on programming
languages online
and i completed a lot of them but still
was not able to code something up myself
such as the game i wanted to create so
the question arises
how do you actually learn things on the
internet
and the answer is actually pretty simple
and comes down to two steps one
find a road map two follow it
a road up is a list of the things you
need to learn in order to gain a complex
skill
it’s also a list of places where you can
find learning resources
such as articles books or courses
and if it sounds obvious to you it is
when you go to school there is an entire
curriculum ready for you
so that you know what to learn in order
to master subject
but on the internet there’s no
curriculum you have to find one yourself
and people forget about that so
a good first step to finding yourself a
roadmap is to google the thing you want
to learn
followed by reddit i have yet to find a
subject for which i could not find a
basic outline with this method
try it yourself i even began studying
machine learning that exact way
if the topic you’re interested in is
academic or technical in its nature
then you should also look for online
courses you can use sites
such as coursera udemy or udacity
many courses are free and some of these
sites even offer financial aid if you
cannot afford their fees
a third great learning resource are
simply books and pdfs
that you can find online simply googling
the thing you want to learn
followed by book often use great results
and if you’re looking for shorter
tutorials on more
let’s say miscellaneous skills then you
should go on youtube
you’re bound to learn something along
the way
and i know what you’re thinking that
sounds
like a lot of work hugo but surprisingly
it’s not i learned to code by spending
only 30 minutes a day programming over
the course of two years
and on many of these days i did
absolutely nothing
the same goes for any other skill i have
talked about
and if you actually use these methods
and learn something new
think of all the ways you could benefit
not only yourself
but also and more importantly other
people
what you might do could have a real
influence
on not just your life but on other
people
who benefit from your enhanced impact
on the world so i am proposing a
challenge
think of one thing you’ve always wanted
to learn
then google how to learn it then
learn it 30 minutes a day is enough
now the only thing you need to do is
find the time
thank you