There are so many topics out there today that you can learn so easily. You just go to any of the online learning sites like Coursera, Udemy, Lynda, you finish a course and you are done right?
Or you might just watch couple of YouTube videos or read some Medium articles and you have a shiny new skill. Easy right?
Well, not quite …
The knowledge these courses give you are just a tiny fraction of the whole topic. Learning is one thing, putting that into action is another. After you finish with the courses / videos / posts you will slowly start applying the things you learnt. These are going to be the first steps on your long lasting journey.
The journey that consists of lots of hidden boundaries.
When you start applying the techniques you learnt you will feel like you never learnt anything in the first place and these are the times when it is the easiest to give up. But don’t loose faith, and keep going. There will be so many circumstances when you will face difficulties. They are there to challenge your knowledge on the topic.
At this point is you will have to default back to the fundamentals, that Elon Musk is talking about. It is certainly the toughest thing to go back to where you started. You think you already know everything and it is the most boring bit to go back to the fundamentals. But soon you will have to realise that that is the most beneficial thing you can do.
He certainly knows how to apply this concept, he has proven it in business, in the space industry, the car industry and now the tunnelling industry.
Since I am self taught basically in all the fields I am working with today, I went through the hurdles and can see the benefit of this concept.
I was initially learning all these concepts about topics and started applying them, although being human, I tried to cut corners, look up solutions on the internet and ended up realising that something is not right. I never went down to the roots of the fundamentals and reasoned up from that. I was digesting bits of information that never led me to perfection.
When I started applying this concept, results came much much faster, I finally felt I actually know what’s going on. Now, when I have a problem I start from the basics, then I start building up the problem from the ground up.
Mastery truly takes time, energy and effort. The more time you put in working on problems and reason up from the basics the better results you will achieve.
What are your thoughts? Really curious to hear!
