Layering Deadlines

This year I have a great physics teacher. Not only does he have a solid knowledge of the world and a coherent manner of explaining it, but he also has a different approach to teaching than most teachers here in France. Contrary to the others he notices people and is very supportive. When someone tries to answer a question he listens and tries to find the relevant information instead of screaming "FALSE" at the slightest misstep. He creates an equal learning space in which the teacher is not at a higher level than the student by any other means than knowledge.

After watching a video about learning in layers I realised that my physics teacher also teaches us in layers. To explain – students get thrown a huge bloc of information in every class. We are more often than not left to our own means to figure out the important parts and the less important parts of the material. We need to understand the bigger picture to then classify the basics to master and the details to move on to later. This is a meticulous task and it adds extra layers to the studying process itself.

Anyway back to bragging about my physics teacher. He applies the method of learning in layers by providing the essential material on the blackboard during class. If we want more details there is a rigorous 30-page pdf about each chapter. After every major idea, he spends time getting feedback on comprehension by doing direct applications or explaining through another lens (we were just doing optics so pun intended). I do not exaggerate when I say that every single teacher just throws at us that 30-page pdf and expects us to work through it fully ourselves.

We have thus far proved that learning in layers is pretty sick. I would now like to touch on another school-related subject: deadlines.

I say school-related but in reality, deadlines are present in all stages of life. There are always a few floating above our heads at any given moment – an exam, a birthday or simply a personal goal. For some reason, all the deadlines seem to fall on a single week or even sometimes a single day. It is why in the self-improvement sphere of the internet there's a solution – setting your own deadlines. Breaking up the work into multiple fractions. This is great because if we spread out the workload we can even reduce the risk of burnout.

This idea of self-set deadlines makes total sense and I really like it, yet I am absolutely terrible at actually doing it. When setting my own deadline I have the knowledge somewhere in my unconsciousness of the real deadline. This means that I do not take the virtual deadline seriously because I know that the task at hand is not actually as urgent as the deadline makes it seem. Thomas Frank has talked about various techniques to make the self-set deadlines punchier – it ranges from an automated tweet going out when the deadline is not met to putting actual money on the line.

I am a student with no income, thus I do not feel confident putting money on the line. On the other hand, creating social pressure through an automated tweet saying something stupid is not a mechanism I am interested in. I have to find my own way. At first, I thought of physical challenges, but if they are self-set then they can easily be ignored. After a little while, I came upon the idea of getting an accountability partner, something Ali Abdaal talked about some time ago in his newsletter.

I think this accountability program would look something like scheduling a weekly check-in with your partner. The check-in would present the week's goals, the deadlines (self-set and not) and also the progress on projects. Then as a conclusion, there should be a list of three directly applicable tasks to advance ourselves towards our goals. This is my initial vision of how it will look, this structure might very well change, but it is good to have somewhat of a base when starting off.

To tie up the story – learning by layers is overpowered, it is a great way to understand concepts. When you also manage to make friends with your deadlines then life is good!

This Week's Suggestions:

🎶 "R U Mine" by Arctic Monkeys:

I sometimes forget about this song but every time I feel like I need some rock in my day I come back to it. The song has great flavour in my opinion as if I can taste it. You can feel the flow of the bass mixing nicely with the guitar while the drums give the song a great punch. The vocals also come in to complement the whole production. Arctic Monkeys have given us quite a few great songs but my personal favourites are R U Mine and Brianstorm.

🎬 Banksy, Kurt Cobain, and The Paradox That Claimed Them :

Very interesting reflection on a paradox. The paradox is that in protesting one's industry both Cobain and Bansky empowered the industry they were protesting against. Their protest was not only useless but did the opposite effect of the initial goal. Anyway, very good video, check it out.

"Nothing runs better on MTV than a protest against MTV" Mark Fisher

📖 How long should your naps be? :

I had a very strenuous week and had to go for quite a few naps. This video was thus very educational on my nap-taking. Like all TED-Ed videos, it is very well made and enjoyable to watch.

📷 My Instagram :

Just throwing this link in here because I am quite active on there and it would be a shame to miss any updates!

That's all for this week!