Self-Education Plan: Join the top 1% of learners, profound thinkers, polymaths, and autodidacts
Because most of your learning is you masturbating your ego, and you've simply had enough.
Let’s play a game for a second.
I want you to spot the pattern between these profound thinkers.
Leonardo da Vinci was born illegitimate and barred from formal education. He never learned Latin or Greek. The “essential” languages of the educated elite. He taught himself anatomy by dissecting corpses in secret.
Nikola Tesla envisioned the first AC motor - fully formed inside his mind - while walking through a Budapest park. No laboratory. No institution. No permission. Just a brain that refused to think within limits.
Socrates hated writing. Imagine that? He believed books would destroy human memory. He wandered Athens asking questions that made powerful people uncomfortable. The tyrannical government executed him for “corrupting the youth,” when all he did was teach them to think for themselves.
Diogenes lived in a barrel. Alexander the Great - you know, the guy who conquered most of the known world before 30 - once found Diogenes sunbathing, and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Diogenes had one request. He asked him to stop blocking his sunlight. He had no credentials. No system. And he refused to be domesticated by anyone.
Did you spot the pattern? The profound idea?
Formal education called every one of these thinkers a failure.
But why?
The education system rewards you for hoarding facts. It rewards you for memorizing names, dates, and statistics. It rewards you for complying with a curriculum you did not choose. And worst of all, it tests you on these metrics inside an exam hall - then releases you into a world that tests you on none of them.
Life is lived in the arena. Not classrooms.
I’m speaking from personal experience here because I played this game and won it. I set the grades record at my school in 2022 (yeah, there’s no way of saying that without sounding arrogant).
I forced myself to rote memorize EVERYTHING.
Chapters ticked off.
Pages of linear notes per week memorized word for word.
Hours logged like a factory worker.
And you know what I learned?
Absolutely fuck-all practical real-world knowledge :)
Because the techniques don’t work, the volume doesn’t matter, and the system rewards compliance more than comprehension.
In everyone else’s eyes - my friends, teachers, and family - I was the a perfect student. But I was learning at an incredibly sub-optimal rate. I’m telling you this because I’m not here to lecture you from a pedestal, but from a place of regret. I believed that the sacred answers to genius-level learning lied in treating my mind like a storage vault.
I was an archiver of information. Not an architect of ideas.
I hoarded information. I confused inputs with outcomes. I thought the quantity of work defined the quality of learning. It doesn’t.
The system rewards motion, not mastery.
Think back to the profound thinkers named above. They didn’t let their curiosities get shut down, their interests get restrained, or their agency get controlled. You shouldn’t let the outcomes of your schooling determine the outcomes of your life.
EVER.
Important:
The 50% off discount ends on Feb 21st for The Profound Self-Education Guide.
This is the last newsletter in which I will be promoting this discount.
Stop copying everything
Physics is fucking harsh.
Something either happens or it doesn’t. A bridge holds or it collapses. Your newsletter is growing or it’s dying. You either lift the weight, or win gold at the jiu-jitsu competition or you don’t.
Reality is undeniable and unforgiving about what you care, feel, or think.
Your learning should prepare you for this profound fact.
But most people learn like they’re preparing for an exam that will never come. They hoard information. They build elaborate systems to store said information. They confuse the feeling of learning with the fact of learning.
Upon lots of thinking and walking this past week, I think there are two types of learner.
(1) The Archivist - They treat the mind as a storage vault.
Success is measured by inputs: books read, hours logged, notes taken. The Archivist builds a library that’s sprawling, disconnected, and impressive in appearance - but fragile. Each piece of information sits alone. Isolated, not connected within an integrated system. And the system that does exist (even if you don’t consciously think you have a learning system, you still have a system for learning, it’s just unconscious to you right now) requires constant maintenance.
(2) The Architect - They treat the mind as a spider’s web.
Success is measured by outputs: problems solved, projects shipped, reality influenced. The Architect builds a web of knowledge. And here’s the thing: a well-built web doesn’t get bigger and more complex over time. It gets smaller, denser, and more general.
Most people are Archivists. I was one in school.
My Geography and Irish classes were spent copying notes off the projector into our hardback copies, that we could return to later on for “revision.” But nobody asked the question as to why can’t we be given direct access to the slides to revise instead...
Because the system conflates motion with mastery.
Chapters “read,” thousands of words of linear notes written, 4-6 hours of studying completed after school and not a second less. None of this focuses on the knowledge that is ultimately being built. It focuses on the work you do to feel like knowledge is being built. You can spend an hour “reading” a textbook, but that hour in isolation does not mean you have anything made to show for it.
This is why I hate second brains for knowledge acquisition. They externalize what must be happening internally inside your own brain and not on a screen.
You cannot outsource tacit knowledge to a note-taking app. The knowledge must live inside you. Not in your tools or software.
Michael Polanyi defined tacit knowledge as the things you know but cannot fully articulate. Think riding a bike or driving a car. Reading a room full of people, or thinking through a problem you’ve never seen before.
You can’t store tacit knowledge inside Notion, Obsidian, or Eden (no matter how much I love Eden...)
Here’s the profound idea as to why:
Compression is understanding.
The more you truly grasp a domain of knowledge or expertise, the fewer bits of information you need to represent it. A novice needs a thousand facts. A master needs a handful of principles that generate those facts from first principles.
Physicist David Deutsch thinks that a person who truly understands physics doesn’t know more facts. They know fewer, more powerful principles that generate the facts. And who are we to argue with him?
Mastery is about needing less before knowing more.
And here’s another profound idea that will sound backwards until you think about it:
The harder you have to work to remember something the less likely you need to be learning it.
Forgetting is not a failure of memory, but a biological judge of relevance.
Your brain is not broken. It’s correctly filtering information that does not serve your survival or your vision for the life you want to have.
This matters for 3 reasons:
(1) Forced relevance is fake relevance
If you have to force yourself to remember something, you’re fighting your own biology. The information isn’t connected to anything you care about. It has no roots. Isolated information gets weeded away, whereas connected knowledge develops roots and becomes immovable.
You can’t trick your brain into caring about anything. You can only choose to learn what you already care about. Interest cannot be faked. It can only be found inside the arena.
(2) This proves you’re not living life in the arena
In the arena, relevance is automatic.
You remember what keeps you alive. You remember what solves your problems. You remember what moves you toward your vision.
In the classroom, relevance is artificial.
You remember what’s on the test. You remember what the teacher said would be important. You remember what you need to pass - then you forget it the moment the exam is over. If you’re forcing yourself to remember, you’re still in the classroom, lecture hall, or examination centre. These are not real life.
The best way to learn is through doing in real life, inside the arena.
(3) The system conditions you to confuse effort with learning
If you’re working hard to remember, you will always feel like you’re learning. The hours of struggle feel productive and meaningful.
But you’re not learning. You are building a library that will collapse in that moment the external pressure of teachers, lecturers, and formal education telling you what to do, disappears. This is why most people, older generations especially, think of education as something that can be finished. There isn’t a more dangerous idea than that one, if you want to stay stuck living with the same mind you had at 22 while you’re 65. An immature mind is a closed mind.
This is the illusion of mastery.
Motion with no progress. Effort with zero output. The feeling of knowledge without proof to show for it.
This reframes fucking EVERYTHING... which is good news!
You don’t need a better note-taking system.
You don’t need a Second Brain.
You don’t need to read 52 books a year.
Just stop hoarding information and start building a mind that can survive the unforgiving nature of reality.
Because physics won’t test you with an exam inside a classroom.
The profound self-education plan
The goal isn’t to lock yourself away from life studying 12 hours a day.
You want agency: the capacity to walk into any domain of life, identify what matters, learn it without permission, and build something that didn’t exist before.
This isn’t so much a curriculum but a calibration tool. Principles that compound with across time.
I want you to carefully consider this analogy that makes this entire plan work:
Imagine someone who wants to learn guitar.
The Archivist, struggling to play a C chord, buys an 8-hour course on music theory in response to their bottleneck. They study scales, chord progressions, and the history of the instrument. After a month, they know everything about guitar… but still struggle to play the C chord.
The Architect does something different. They hit the same wall immediately - they can’t play the C chord. So they look up the C chord. They learn it. They try to play it in a song. Now they hit a wall again, this time with the G chord. They look that up. They learn it… and so on.
True story btw, the G chord was the bane of my existence when I first started playing!
After a month, the Architect can play 4 songs and knows 12 chords. They learned less than the Archivist, but they can do more.
This is the entire philosophy inside one analogy.
You don’t learn, then build. You build, then learn only what you need, only when you need it.
Here’s how:
1) Let interest guide you
Most self-education advice starts with goals.
I think that’s backwards.
Goals are logical. They come from your conscious mind. They’re often borrowed - things you think you SHOULD want because someone else wanted them.
Fascination is biological. It has more depth than logic. It’s your subconscious telling you where your leverage lies.
If it entertains you now but will bore you someday, it’s a distraction. Keep looking.
- Naval
I love the idea that you don’t have your interests, your interests have you.
Interest is the ultimate form of leverage in life. Stop asking what book should I read or what course should I buy. Hear the signal that already exists coming from your own heart and soul - what can I not stop thinking about 24/7?
Your fascinations are not random. They are signal. Follow them.
Interest is the best leverage you have in achieving anything you want in life. They are a compass toward potential. Becoming who you could and should be.
2) Define what you’re building
Fascination without direction is just curiosity. Curiosity is truly beautiful, yes, but it doesn’t build anything alone.
You need a vision. Not a 10-year plan. Not a mission statement. Just an answer to one question:
What do I want to exist in the world that doesn’t yet exist yet?
A newsletter. A business. A body of work. A skill that solves a problem plaguing your everyday life. A way to help people 1-3 steps behind you.
The vision is your compression function. It tells you what matters, what connects, and what can be discarded. It filters signal from noise, busy work from productive work that moves needles and pulls levers.
Without it, every piece of information feels equally important. And in trying to learn (or do) everything, you will always achieve nothing.
Full digesting this profound idea will make you realize something harrowing. 98% of what you consume and do is just noise and maintenance work.
Stop learning everything and start learning what’s needed.
3) Choose one project
A project is not a goal. A goal is abstract.
A project is concrete, a real physical thing or outcome.
“Get healthier” is a goal. Getting your first win at a Grappling Industries jiu-jitsu competition is a project.
“Learn marketing” is a goal. Writing and publishing 4 newsletters this month is a project.
See the difference?
A project does 3 things that a goal cannot:
It creates stakes - Failure becomes visible when you’re building something real.
It creates feedback - Reality tells you what works and what doesn’t. You can’t get this from a textbook, and only an immature mind can deny objective feedback.
It creates context - Your brain now has a filter for relevance, like we’ve said. When you read, watch, or listen, your subconscious flags what’s relevant to the project and discards the rest. This is why you remember things that connect to your interests and hobbies and forget things that don’t.
Deliberate practice - living in the arena - requires a project. Non-negotiable.
You cannot deliberately practice “learning.” You can only deliberately practice doing something specific.
Choose one project. Not three. One.
4) Hunt, don’t hoard
This is where most people get it wrong.
They think learning comes before building. So they consume. Courses. Books. Podcasts. Tutorials. They fill their minds with information they don’t need yet, for problems they haven’t encountered.
Flip it!
Start building. Hit a wall. Then go find the answer.
This is hunting.
You have a specific problem. You search for a specific solution. You find it. You apply it. You move onto the next problem.
Think consuming 8 hours of guitar theory before touching your white Fender Strat, versus learning the C chord only when your favorite song demands it.
Hunting is how you make forgetting work for you instead of against you. When you hunt for information in response to a real problem, the information sticks because it’s immediately fucking relevant. Your brain doesn’t prune it since it has roots!
Isolated information gets weeded away. Connected knowledge develops roots and becomes immovable.
5) Do 30-90 minutes of deep work daily
Not 4-8 hours like I was told in school.
Not when bloody inspiration strikes.
Not only on weekends.
30-90 minutes every day on ONE project.
What’s important is that you do the work daily. Physics says when you do it, doesn’t mean shit.
I write my newsletter first thing in the morning, before work if I’m in work that day. 1-2 sections per day. 60-90 minutes. That’s all I need to move the needle… but done daily.
Physics doesn’t care about your schedule. It cares about your output. You don’t just deadlift 155kg one day because you’ve manifested your way to doing it. Your nervous system can handle that load because you’re used to training with heavy loads across months and years. You can because you do.
The same applies to your project. You either moved it forward today or you didn’t. There is no almost, or I don’t feel like it. Needle moves. Needle doesn’t move.
6) Compress what you learn
Don’t take notes on what you’ve now learnt.
Compress what you already DO know.
Here’s the difference.
Notes are a record of what someone else has said, while compression is a record of what you understood.
Take the Feynman technique: take a concept, explain it in simple language as if teaching a child, identify the gaps where your explanation breaks down, return to the source, and simplify further.
This is compression. You’re not adding information but removing information until only the principle remains. To create something that has weight, it lies not in adding new parts but in having no more parts to remove. That’s how you create something dense.
After every deep work session spend 5 minutes compressing what you learned into one sentence.
If you can’t, you didn’t understand it. Go back and try again.
If you’re an avid reader of my newsletters, first of all, thank you, and second - the knowledge must live inside your brain. Not in your notes. Not in your second brain. Not in a Notion database. Inside of you.
You are the second brain.
7) Iterate against reality
The final step is the one most people skip.
They learn. They build. They compress. And then they put it in the attic for storage.
Don’t do this.
I say… show your work.
Publish the newsletter. Show someone the project. Put the work into the world.
Reality is the only valid feedback loop. You don’t “pass” a self-education course. You iterate until your output works in the real world and gets you some value in exchange for it.
Don’t perfect in private. Iterate in public.
Every iteration teaches you more than a month of study. Because reality doesn’t grade on a curve. It tells you the bloody truth.
This is why I love markets. Your product sells or it doesn’t. Your newsletter is growing or it ain’t. You can’t bullshit up an excuse for why your “high-value content” isn’t being seen… or cared about. If it’s not attracting attention, and if that attention is not being turned into interest, you are the problem. Take responsibility for everything and stop blaming the algorithm. It will give you more control than those who keep wanting control, but outsource it at every excuse they are able to make.
The vision gives you direction. The project gives you stakes. Hunting gives you relevance. Deep work gives you output. Compression gives you understanding. Iteration gives you truth.
That’s the plan… and do it daily.
Important reminder!
The Profound Self-Education Guide is 50% off until February 21st, so get it cheaper while you can.
Here’s what you’ll get:
The 4 principles of an autodidact (how to become profoundly self-educated)
Vision-creation exercises (Ideal Day, Anti-Vision, So-That Test) to define what life you’re building
The complete system structure: Daily Tasks → Weekly Targets → 3-Month Horizon
How to define and approach your first project
The iteration engine framework (Evaluate, Destroy, Rebuild) for permanent 1% improvements
AI Self-Education Coach prompt that builds your personalized plan conversationally
Deep work principles and scheduling techniques for 30-90 minutes of focused learning per day
This is the exact system I used to (learn how to) grow to 24,000+ newsletter subscribers in 10 months while working full-time.
You can read the first two sections here on my Substack for free.
The positive feedback on the product has been overwhelming in the greatest way possible. I am glad it has helped so many of you, truly.
And if you subscribe to my Substack you’ll get:
Reading Bookmark 1 - Pre-reading checklist (improves comprehension)
Reading Bookmark 2 - Encoding checklist (improves retention)
Secret discount link to my paid tier
It’s all in the welcome email :)
If you’re not interested, no hard feelings.
Thank you for reading. I know your time and attention is very valuable.
You’re an absolute legend.
- Craig :)
🔥🙌
Truth of the education system laid bare - it was created with the intention of producing not dangerous, profound thinkers who question everything, but tools and factory workers who do everything they are told to do like mechanical robots for the profits of those in power.
Half way through this article, I sent it to my friends, my parents, my sister, and felt like sharing it with everyone; because now I realise why I haven’t truly learned everything I think I am learning, why I feel like school hasn’t taught me everything I’m supposed to know, and how deeply the world’s education system is lacking.
As a student, the ideas expressed in this article, and most articles part of this newsletter, have changed the way I think and perceive. I’m super grateful to have come across this, and hope more people get the opportunity to read and apply this!