Teach yourself everything

The swinging screendoor slammed shut behind me. I walked past a stack of Coffee News and into Jigger’s Restaurant, standing defiantly on the edge of wide-open, wind-blown plains. As I took my first step in, a dozen sets of eyes looked me over, saying without words “You’re not from around these parts…”

The Breakup of Mass

Increasingly in our daily lives we are thrust into situations that leave us totally clueless. Situations that prove “we’re not from around these parts.” Instead of learning one discipline, topic or skill and being able to focus solely on that task, our worlds are interdisciplinary battle grounds where one needs to understand Greek politics to make sense of the economy, technology to call their kids or physics to lose weight.

Some say the world is flat, others call it the long tail and Seth Godin simply says We All Are Weird. Whatever you call it, we are undergoing a breakup of mass. We do not all watch the same television program, we do not all listen to the same music and our worlds are influenced by a multitude of actors from within and outside of our communities that now can be understood and better identified. In previous times, we would not find that homemade YouTube video about the 1987 Twins that we love to watch or hear that small indie band on Pandora that plays the exact type of electronica we like. We were forced to watch and listen to what the masses wanted. Before we were unable to track international markets and street protests in real time or collaborate across borders instantly. Now we can.

Not only do we have access to an endless array of information, but we are expected to be generalists. We need the ability to understand scientific principles that could be applied to our business plans. We need to study nature and art to build smarter buildings. We need to understand psychology to build better websites. The more we know about other disciplines, the greater insight we have into our own discipline or business. The companies that are succeeding in this age of the individual are those who can draw on a large pool of knowledge OR teach themselves what they need to know.

Teach yourself everything

Fortunately for those of us whose public education may have failed them in certain areas, we have access to teach ourselves for free. We do not need to pay $100,000 for a graduate degree, instead we need a little discipline and an internet connection. While you miss out on the built-in interaction with other students if you don’t study at a school, teaching yourself and seeking out people to discuss ideas with whether online or offline is a pretty good (and economical) substitute.

To get started, visit 400 Free Online Courses from Top Universities. Here you can learn Roman Architecture from Yale, American Economic History from Berkeley or Astrobiology from Stanford. Never got in to Harvard? Doesn’t matter. Sign up for that String Theory and Black Holes course from Harvard you always wanted to take.

The Rise of the Renaissance Person

With so much knowledge available to us, we will increasingly be asked to find and learn information on seemingly unrelated topics. However, this knowledge will prepare us to survive and thrive as workers or businesses in a mass-less world.

…After a few awkward seconds of judgement by those eating at Jigger’s Restaurant, I quickly struck up a conversation with a local rancher. My knowledge of ranching and farming, as inadequate as it may be, was sufficient enough to break the ice and learn more about Kadoka.

This ability to communicate regardless of topic and make connections across disciplines is an invaluable skill. And one that makes you incredibly interesting at dinner parties.

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Where do you go to learn? What resources can you share to help us become Renaissance people?

Posted on October 4th, 2011 in Community