I’m learning one new skill each month in 2024, using the principles of Ultralearning, coined by Scott Young.
Project Design and Prep
Intro (this post, scroll down)
Mapping Ultralearning Projects (using Cooking as the example)
Skillathon 2024
Polymathic skills are the cheat codes for living well while spending very little money. I've been writing about this for years now. It's a core idea of post-consumer praxis. The Skill Ratchet is how you bootstrap yourself to a high quality of life while reducing expenses and consumption, and I've theorized about something I call The Hypercompetence Loop.
Enough talk. It's time to put in the effort to make a big jump forward in my skills - and not just in my specific set of skills, but in how skilled I am at skill acquisition in general.
Each month of 2024 I will focus on one new area of competence. I'm going to learn cooking, drawing, permaculture, bookbinding, sewing, zen, prepping, and more. Each month I'm going to immerse myself in the skill and attempt to become at least baseline competent at it.
You remember my friend Cody from AR episode 21? In 2020 he took six months to teach himself drawing. He treated it like a job. For eight hours a day he dedicated himself to drawing - and now he is earning money as an artist and in the process of opening a physical studio space and other cool projects. And it all goes back to that six months he took to focus and learn. (Check out his art website and his science focused site for a sense of the modern day polymath. )
He thought how cool would it be if you took that idea of focusing on learning a new skill like it's your job and instead of doing it for six months, do it for 2-6 weeks per skill and just do that for a year? How would your life change if you leveled up in several skills over a short period of time?
Well, I'm going to find out.
And not just me - a bunch of us over on the forum are participating in Skillathon 2024. You can join too.
Here's my plan so far:
Aim / Purpose / Mission / Vision
To overcome activation energy for multiple skills/practices so I can fold them in to ongoing normal life/practice at a higher level of functioning than they were previously.
To clear out my closet/backlog of desired skills, and find out what things I actually enjoy and which I should forget about.
To improve my skill and speed at learning quickly, aka meta-learning.
To do something hard again without burning out.
Why
I want to be a solarpunk polymath, a permaculture adventurer, an outlaw maker. This project is intended to accelerate me in that direction.
I get off on doing projects that seem more difficult than I’m currently capable of.
It sounds fun.
Practice / How / Methods
I’ll be drawing heavily on methods from Scott Young’s Ultralearning, Cal Newport’s Deep Work, Robert Twigger’s Micromasteries, and James Clear’s Atomic Habits. My GTD system will help me keep it all organized, as usual.
Since each skill is so different the approach will vary from month to month. Some skills will be heavy on study (permaculture design) while others will be almost entirely practice-based (fixing motorcycles) while most are a mix of study and practice (cooking).
Each month will be broken down into some mix of
Projects, e.g. fixing my motorcycle or making a mini documentary,
Processes, e.g. developing a habit of drawing every day and meditating every day,
Micromasteries, e.g. learning the secret of the perfect omelet or how to make a friction fire, and
Knowledge acquisition, e.g. learning the design language and patterns of permaculture design or learning about wargaming and strategic contingency planning for prepping.
Regardless of the specific approach I use each month, the idea is to immerse myself as much as possible on the theme. So in January if I’m not actually cooking or reading a cookbook at the moment, I’m watching cooking youtube channels or reading memoirs of chefs or the history of different cuisines etc.
The hardest part of this project so far has been deciding what skills to focus on. The list of skills I’m interested in is very long! What I’ve got so far is this:
Jan: Cooking.
Feb: Permaculture Design.
March: Motorcycle Repair.
April: Drawing concept design/art.
May: Bikepacking.
June: Writing fiction.
July: Mountain Fitness.
August: Joinery.
September: Bushcraft.
October: Zen.
November: Sewing gear.
December: Prepping / getting Ready for Trouble.
I’m sure I’ll change my mind about what skills to focus on as I go. I also suspect my methods will change as I learn by doing — that’s sort of the whole point of this project. By the end of the year the format could totally change.
I’ll be documenting the details and lessons learned here, as well as on my new youtube channel and (probably) Instagram and Mastodon.
