Create A Roadmap

On we go to our next technique and that is to create a roadmap.

What does that all mean.

Well it’s the idea that when you have somewhere that you want to go or in this case something that you

want to learn you don’t want to go straight into study without a plan.

Mastering a subject is not simply just learning things and creating chunks.

But how you use those chunks together because if you learn hundreds of pieces of facts or chunks of

knowledge but you don’t know how to apply it to the real world how to solve problems with it how things

are connected.

What is the context without those you’re not going to be an efficient learner.

The idea is to prepare.

You want to know what path you need to take in order to get to where you want to be.

For example I’m a software engineer but I actually didn’t go to university for that.

I studied business in university and I found myself wanting to learn how to code.

After I graduated in my 20s.

So I decided to take it upon myself to teach myself to code and my goal was to be efficient to quit

my job learn how to code and get a job as soon as possible.

And guess what I did in the very first month I did absolutely no coding.

Why was that.

Because I needed to understand what I needed to learn.

What was the roadmap.

And I spent the first month actually creating a curriculum for myself to make sure that I was smart

about what I was learning.

Was I learning something that was still relevant that people hired for or was I learning outdated technologies.

I made sure that every single minute that I spent studying was a clear path towards me landing my first

job because I knew that once I started working with others and in a work environment that’s where the

real learning began.

So before choosing which material you’ll study research the opinions of others self learners other masters

other teachers read reviews of books or courses that you’re considering.

Learn about the industry.

What do industry leaders say.

What do job postings say figure out what topics you plan to study your objective in this step is to

gain enough knowledge about the learning path that you have to be able to recognize.

Hey I should learn from this person and I should learn from this person.

You want to recognize quality resources because we live in a world right now where there’s information

everywhere.

There’s no lack of information no lack of resources or materials to learn.

It’s all about selecting that material and figuring out what is the good quality content that I should

study.

One of my favorite tools for creating a roadmap is called Kaggle but you can use whatever you want.

You can use a war document or an Excel document.

Anything you want you should write it down and create a roadmap.

These are the steps that I’m going to take to get to where I want to be.

By having a plan you won’t get overwhelmed by all the things you need to learn because humans are notorious

at overestimating what we can do in the short term but underestimating what we can do in the longterm.

We always miss deadlines because we think we can get things done faster but when we look back on our

lives two years from now you’re going to say wow I can’t believe I’ve accomplished this much when creating

a roadmap.

You also want to focus on what topic is the most important right.

You want to ask questions like what will make me feel good.

What would make me feel accomplished.

What type of results do I want to feel recognized and respected.

And why is this important.

Because we talked about this when we discussed Drive by Daniel Pink in order for us to continue learning

to become master of a subject.

External motivations at the beginning are good to get past that procrastination face but in the end

to really master a subject you need lifelong learning and for us to have that we need that intrinsic

drive that intrinsic motivation.

And Daniel Pink mentions the three things that we need.

One is autonomy.

We want to feel like we have control over our work and we work on things that we want to do not work

that’s forced by somebody else on us.

The second is this idea of mastery the self drive to become a master to become respected by others and

be considered by others as a master is in itself a rewarding feeling.

And then finally the third topic of Drive was purpose.

What is your purpose and how does this benefit you and those around you.

Is this something that you can help people with that will make you feel good.

That would improve your community by having these questions answered by creating a roadmap and seeing

where you’re going to be and the steps that you need to follow.

It doesn’t need to be perfect.

Maybe you have to change your roadmap along the way but it gives you a plan instead of going in blind.

You now have a clear map to success.