The fact is that, today, you have to keep learning even long after you’ve earned your diploma or certificate. You have an obligation to yourself to continue your education outside of traditional institutions. That is, if you want to maximize the amount of influence you have on the quality of your life.
That's why more and more people are turning to self-education.
I've been thinking about this for a while now. Both for the selfish reason of propelling myself forward in life and also for helping my audience do the same.
How can you keep educating yourself? It's one thing to read books on the topics that you're interested in. But how can you continue your self-education so that you learn not only what you enjoy learning but also what is necessary for you to develop into a more competent individual?
This inquiry led me to the realm of meta-skills.
What are meta-skills?
Meta-skills are most often described as higher-order skills, or broad capabilities, that help you develop other skills and can be applied across different areas of your life.
One of my favorite examples is writing. Writing is not a skill; it's a meta-skill. Because once you've developed the meta-skill of writing, that helps you develop more narrow skills such as writing essays, fiction writing, copywriting, constructing compelling arguments, etc. Even though public speaking requires some additional skills and meta-skills, it is impossible to become a good public speaker if you are not at least a decent writer. That is, if you want to express your own thoughts in public. Event thinking, which seems like one of the highest-order meta-skills, is improved by learning to write well. Countless great thinkers (and writers) have said that, to learn how to think better, you must learn to express your thoughts and ideas in written word.
I don't consider myself a good writer. But I know I've invested a significant amount of time and energy into developing this meta-skill, and I think I'm becoming decent at it. So I started thinking about what other meta-skills I could start developing.
One of the meta-skills I came across was learning. Most people never learn how to learn. They only learn how to memorize things long enough to pass exams. I am one of those people. Again, I can't give myself too much credit for the thousands of hours I spent reading and learning about the things I was genuinely interested in. I would immerse myself in those topics and put in the time and effort needed to understand them. But it was a result of curiosity and passion, not structure. If you asked me to repeat the same process with a topic I wasn't really interested in, I'm not sure I could do it.
However, while analyzing the meta-skill of learning, I recognized what looked like the ultimate, original meta-skill: focus.
What does it mean to focus? It means to direct your attention (and often effort) to a certain object or task.
Doesn't this come even before skills such as learning and writing?
Now, I don't want to claim that focus is actually the most important meta-skill you could learn. Trying to determine the number one meta-skill would be an endless and pointless game. Maybe it's not focus; maybe it's discipline. Or maybe it's consistency? Wait, isn't resilience the single most important (meta)skill you could have in life? You get the point; there is a strong argument to be made for each one of these.
So, rather than claiming that focus is the number one meta-skill, I simply want to point out that it's one of the most impactful skills you can develop if you want to change your life for the better.
The effect smartphones and social media have had on our attention span and our ability to focus is certainly an important part of this conversation. It's embarrassing and terrifying to see where we stand as a society in terms of this meta-skill. But I think enough has been said about this, and I don't want to keep beating a dead horse. Rather, I want to make the point that every change in life requires you to be able to focus. Or at least the biggest changes do.
I remember when my brother ended up in prison for the first time. He claimed he was determined to turn his life around. He wanted to break free from the self-destructive behavior patterns, and he knew that every change starts in the mind, so he asked me to choose a couple of books and bring them on my first visit. This gave me hope because I knew that every minute spent reading would be a minute not spent engaging with other inmates who had no intention of changing for the better.
When I gave him those books, he seemed enthusiastic about beginning to read them. He believed my reading recommendations would prove valuable.
On my next visit, I asked him if he had started reading one of the books. He answered:
"Not really. I tried reading each one, but I just can't focus on it for more than a couple of minutes. The last time I was focused on a book was in high school. My mind is all over the place, and I can't get to the point where I'm actually receiving the information that I'm reading."
Unfortunately, I didn't have any concrete advice for improving focus.
"Well, keep trying, and it will get better with time," was the best I had at that point. It didn't help.
This might seem like an extreme example. But in reality, it's not that much different from the numerous interactions I had with people reaching out to me for help online.
When I talk with people who need help making a positive change in their lives, it's almost never another insight from Nietzsche or the Stoics that they need. In fact, they are not even able to receive those insights in their entirety because of their lack of focus. What they need is to learn how to start spending their days like productive human beings. Not productive in the sense of having an endless "to do" list. Productive, in the sense of performing tasks and consuming information that helps them develop their body, mind, and soul and make a positive impact on their surroundings. And this requires focus.
I could give you a list of all the books I think would make your life better. Then I could give you a list of all the chapters in those books that I think you should pay close attention to. I could even give you the notes I made while reading those books. Then, I could give you a daily and weekly routine that I am confident would propel you forward in life and make you feel fulfilled.
But none of this would be worth anything if you weren't able to focus deeply on a single task for an extended period of time. And the unfortunate truth is that most people aren't. In fact, most people who started reading this essay were not able to focus for long enough to get to this point.
So, as much as I’m enthusiastic about life’s big questions and ideas, I suggest we take some time to descend from the clouds down to the earth and deal with these less glamorous but crucial questions, such as "How can I learn to focus deeply and engage in a task for an extended period of time, no matter what the task is?" I believe developing this meta-skill would significantly improve the quality of our lives. And it would even help us to think with greater freedom and creativity once we ascend back into the clouds.
If you were able to focus for long enough to read until the end, I guess you’re already on the right track and ahead of most people. You are certainly giving me hope in our ability to focus even in this distraction-filled digital world.
Thank you for that.
P.S.
One part of my free (Re)Build course is dedicated to attention and focus, since a meaningful and fulfilling life cannot be built (or rebuilt) without understanding and mastering them.
(Re)Build is a blueprint for a fulfilling and meaningful life molded by insight from psychology's and philosophy's finest minds, as well as from my real-world experience of using those insights to rebuild my own life. From Nietzsche to Maslow, from the Stoics, to the Zen Buddhists, to your favorite overthinker.
My mission with this free course is to give you the insights, actionable advice, and tools needed to turn a new page in your story and start building your life for the first time ever, or rebuilding it regardless of the circumstances.
Click here to join. Once again, it’s free.
Free Resources:
My free ebook: The Lost Art of Reading
Paid Resources:
The Art of Showing Up: A Clear and Practical Method for Mastering Consistency
The Gold Pill: Timeless Ideas for a Life Worth Living
If you like my Existential Espresso writing, there is zero-cost support in the form of subscribing, liking this post, commenting if you have any thoughts on it, and of course sharing this with anyone who would find it interesting.
Or you can consider becoming a paid supporter of Existential Espresso for 5$ per month. By doing this you would be helping me to keep investing time into researching and writing all the content on the daily basis.
What you get by becoming a paid supporter is access to the members-only essays (such as “Why Having a Price on My Head Didn’t Upset Me”or “Why Living With a Bulletproof Vest is The Best Thing to Ever Happen to Me”), as well as an opportunity to recommend topics for future essays.
However, even taking the time out of your day to read what I have to share with you means more to me than you can imagine. Thank you.
Deep work and focused learning are your most high leverage activities! 🎙️💭
Deep work is a book that talks about this, you can find a Tedtalk about it too.
The impact that mobile phones had in our attention span is scary