I’ve just finished the most extraordinary book. It’s called The Game, by Neil Strauss, a shy and slightly introverted writer who goes from being an “AFC” (Average Frustrated Chump), the typical guy who’s terrified of meeting women, to the world’s most celebrated and successful “PUA” (pick up artist).
One of his editors asks him if he knows anything about the underground world of the art of seduction, and he decides that the best way to write about it is to learn it.
He immerses himself in the wisdom and teachings of every guru, guide and organised group he can find, soaks up all their teachings like a sponge and, by a third of the way into the book, he’s walking up to any group of girls anywhere (club, mall, restaruant) and coming out with the sexiest one’s phone number, or company, every time.
What’s more he tells you exactly how to do it. Damn, why didn’t anyone teach me that when I was 18?
But that isn’t what I wish they’d taught me at school. What I wish they’d taught me at school was how to get anywhere with anything. How to achieve stuff. How to be even mildly successful at getting where I wanted.
What I mean is this. We all have moments of great success in our life, where we set our mind to something, and we do achieve it. Normally, we don’t have a clue how this actually happens, we are just really proud to have got where we hoped to.
After thinking about it a lot though, I think what really happens is this:
Having a Goal + Educating Ourselves + Taking Action = Success!
I’ve experienced this phenomenon twice in the last 10 years, but only understood it the second, most recent time round. If only they’d taught me this stuff at school.
Goal + Education + Taking Action = Success
Breaking it down, it looks like this:
Goal: If you want to get anywhere, you have to know where it is you want to go.
You have to have goals, be they financial, personal, work, relationship, or health-related.
Examples might be: I want to be a great dad, I want to pay off my mortgage by such and such a date, I want to become a pick up artist… if you don’t set the goal, you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know why you are doing any of this ’stuff’ we do every day.
And just doing this everyday living/working stuff without knowing why eventually gets disconcerting.
Education: Once you know what your goal is you have to immerse yourself in material that will teach you how to get there. You have to find (out about) successful people who have got where you want to be and see how they did it. (This is also known as ‘modeling’).
Essentially, you have to find your way to the very best information.
I think an awful lot about this part of the equation. It fascinates me. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best skill one can develop, is knowing how to hone in on the right sources to learn the best possible information about a given subject.
It’s not about using google, it’s about knowing HOW to use google best. It’s not about asking on a forum, it’s about knowing which forum to ask on. It’s not about reading books, but knowing which books to read.
It’s about learning who, what, when and where to best ask about what you want to know.
How do you develop this skill? I think it’s all about the immersion. If you immerse yourself in enough sources it’s easy to see how they match up to each other, to set up a comparative scale that evenutally leads you upwards to the very very best sources.
The more you study and analyse, the quicker you develop a sense of which sources are ringing the right bells.
Read only one book and you never know whether it’s the right one or not. Read five (after making sure they are the best five to read through an exhaustive reading of Amazon book reviews) and you’re going to know which 2 or 3 of those five have really got the good stuff in.
So the more you learn about a subject, and the more you investigate, the closer you get to the best information. And once you immerse yourself in the best information, there’s only one thing left to do:
Take action. So you’ve got your goal, you’ve immersed yourself in the best information and opinion you can find that relates to it… what do you do next? One of 3 things.
a) You Do Nothing. Which means no goals reached.
b) You do a bit. Goals might get sort of reached. Probably not.
c) You Do Everything. Which means surprising yourself by reaching the goal, surprisingly successfully, sooner than you imagined. When I say ‘everything’, I mean that everything you learn in the ‘Education’ phase, you put into practice, (ideally massively and repeatedly).
Conclusion: you decide what you want to do, teach yourself everything you possibly can about it, and then relentlessly do something about it, until you succeed at it.
WHY DIDN’T THEY TEACH ME THAT AT SCHOOL?
They taught me geography, history, maths and religion. They turned me into a walking talking pretty-average-score-in-a-pub-quiz, (and I really am grateful for all that knowledge) but they never told me how to get stuff done.
When I decided to come to Spain I basically followed the Goal + Education + Taking Action = Success! equation above, and it paid off. But I had no idea what I was doing.
So after my first wonderful year in Madrid, I found myself in a three year period where I slumped in a shitty teaching job that drove me mad and provided me with absolutley no fulfillment, and I had no idea at all what to do about it.
Even though I’d managed to apply this magic formula already to change a life I was unhappy with in London for a much better one in Spain, when I got lost again, I had no idea what to do. I became depressed, difficult, obsessive compulsive and a total hypercondriac. No goals. No idea what to do.
This was between years three and six in Spain. Not long ago. Then I discovered the internet and became obsessed with that. I set one goal after another: get myself out of teaching… get myself out of translating… get my wife out of her shitty 9-5 office job and her 90 minutes of commuting…. meanwhile obsessivly learning and applying.
Learning about how to write webpages, then writing them (and learning about uploading them and finding hosting for them). Learning how to make podcasts, then podcasting (which meant learning how to plan, record and edit audio). Learning about ecommerce websites, then setting up and customizing one…
But I still didn’t really understand why it was all working. I only worked that out recently when I decided that if we had set up a limited company, we better learn everything possible about running one.
And I found that these business gurus are always banging on about having goals and ‘taking massive action’ and I thought, hey, I did that! And so I came to work out this magic formula.
And now I know it, things are so much clearer.
I’ve spent the last three months enrolled in a fascinating Masters degree in running a business. It’s a Masters degree entirely of my own making.
I don’t think there’s a university or college on earth that could give me a better course right now than the one I’m constantly devising and refining for myself. I work out which sources I trust, and exactly what it is I want to learn, or who I want to learn from, next. It’s certainly a lot more fun that my philosophy degree was.
And as often as I can I put what I learn into practice, and so far the results have been remarkable. I’ve set some pretty lofty goals and I think I’m going to meet them, without killing myself or exploiting anyone in the process. (Hopefully it’s going to involve helping a LOT more people learn Spanish).
So here it is for the umpteenth and final time:
Having a Goal + Educating Ourselves + Taking Action = Reaching Those Goals
Did they teach us that at school? Maybe I just didn’t care then, or wasn’t listening.
Back to Pick Up Artists. Neil Strauss became fascinated by pick up artists. He knew he wanted to be one, to experience the success with women they enjoyed. So he nearly drowned himself in their world, in their beleifs, their knowledge, and their way of doing things.
He tirelessly tested and put into practice everything he learned from them, and he became the best Pick Up Artist in the world. Read the book, the guy is astonishing. Just your average-looking, short, shy guy, who set his mind to something, is good at learning, and took plenty of action. Do read the book. It’s fascinating.
Further Reading: That Tingling Sensation…
acosta
14 Oct 08 at 1:56 am
Good stuff, now I would get the book , but don’t know if the misses would care for me applying it so much.
But it does amaze me what school doesn’t teach someone the most straight forward things to be successful.
Good Post
BrianA
14 Oct 08 at 7:59 am
Welcome back Ben! Schools & even universities have become exam training territory. What is needed is better mentoring post school that covers life skills that you have been fortunate to develop yourself. Parenting also should play a part but who has time these days!
ValenciaSon
14 Oct 08 at 11:24 am
If schools taught what we really needed to know, there would be less of us walking around with graduate degrees and more Warren Buffets or Hugh Hefners in the world.
Embug2000
14 Oct 08 at 11:53 am
Hi Ben,
Being a teacher, one that is not driven by teaching to a test, I strive to do what you outlined above. My thought is though, the fact that MOST teenagers are not receptive to that plan. MOST think that they will just be handed everything in live just has they have been handed everything for most of their lives.
I completely agree that the Goal + Education + Action = Success, but actually getting the average teen who is more obsessed with the latest fashion trends than they are about the future is a lot harder than it seems.
But no fear, all hope is not lost, because I said this applies to MOST teenagers, not ALL. Every year I am greeted with a handful of kids who do realize that this model is what I am trying to model. Those are the kids that come back after graduation and tell me what they are working at to succeed. Those are the kids who will be the future leaders of the world.
So in short, we do try to teach the Goal + Educate + Action = Success, just not all students are receptive to it. If you have any suggestions on how to make them more receptive, by all means I am all ears.
heatheronhertravels
14 Oct 08 at 12:25 pm
I like the idea and hope I can be as single minded as you to put it into practice, and that your enthusiasm and energy doesn’t fade once your baby arrives and sleepless nights and bleary eyed days become the norm.
But as a married mum of 3 I might give the book on becoming the best pick-up artist a miss!
gary
14 Oct 08 at 12:25 pm
I have thre things I tell all my pupils
1. The secret of being happy is to figure out what you need to make you happy then work hard to get it.
3. Being ‘educated’ is knowing what to do about not knowing what to do.
2. Its not about being clever its about being bothered.
Put crudely I suppose this is broadly in line with the sentiments in this post…
gary
14 Oct 08 at 12:28 pm
@ heather – it was scientificly proven that any and every pickup line works for women – the advantage you have is that when you go out you know how the evening will end!!
Tom
14 Oct 08 at 1:35 pm
What, really? Do people actually read these self-help books?
And doesn’t The Game basically tell you which emotional tricks you can use in order to manipulate someone into thinking that they find you attractive. Doesn’t sound very romantic or gentlemanly to me.
I’ll give it a miss.
Tom
14 Oct 08 at 1:38 pm
My new approach will be: identify gap in the self-help book market + write self help book = succe$$!
John Ross
14 Oct 08 at 2:44 pm
You’re being ingenuous, Ben. I was given this book for Christmas (by my mother-in-law, believe it or not, it’s a long story) and read something like a quarter before I was distracted. So, yes, I recognise it is much better than I would have expected. But it’s still a self-help book. It has novelistic elements, lots of them, which is interesting, fiction in the self-help format as a literary technique, but in the same way you would dismiss out of hand claims like “You too can make millions at home working just half an hour a day like I did,” I think you are being credulous if you believe this guy has turned himself into a walking babe magnet. The only thing we know for sure about him is that he has written a best-selling self-help book, quite enough reason for us to doubt his word.
I wouldn’t go far down the “They should have taught us this at school” road, either. They did try and teach us that stuff at mine, a direct-grant, minor public school with three-to-five years of military cadet activities thrown in – we were supposed to be being prepared to be leaders. It wasn’t nice.
Ben
14 Oct 08 at 3:30 pm
@Tom – “identify gap in the self-help book market” – Good luck!
@John, I’ll have to look up what “ingenuous” means before I can get past word 3 of your comment.
Parubin
14 Oct 08 at 3:37 pm
Myself I’m an avid reader but I never heard before of Neil Strauss (don´t know if he’s translated into Spanish) so I couldn´t give an opinion on him.
Nevertheless I’m more than skeptical when it comes to magical recipes or self-help advise. I fact I sistematically reject any advice (or book for that matter) that provide winning formulas, or start with a suspicious “How to….”.
Even more than that, I barely ever read any stuff that supplies instant knowledge : guides, text-books, etc… bore me a great deal.
Maybe I’m not being being practical but the joy of literature just for the beauty of it tops anything else I could ‘learn’ for applicative purpouses.
I would even go as far as to say that in the long term, ‘useless fantasy’ provided by standard novels gives you more ability to learn and to reason than any practical book with winning formulas you could ever find in any best-seller.
It’s good to have the blog and the posts open back again.
Ben
14 Oct 08 at 4:23 pm
I am amazed how these, what people blanketly describe as, ’self-help’ books generate such cynicism.
Perhaps its because people are too proud to admit that they could find improvement within their pages.
But here’s an example of where these books have value. We read the Four Hour Workweek a year or two ago, which could certainly be called “self help”, and the immediate result was that we doubled our business’s income (it wasn’t very big at the time) and were far better able to control our time, without adversely affecting anyone that deals with our business in the process.
So, damn that “self-help” book, and what an imperfect human being I am for daring to believe I could learn anything from it!
Most of these books are nothing more than a distillation of other people’s wisdom. Like ‘The 7 habits of highly effective people’ or whatever it’s called. The guy just studied really effective people and then wrote about what they do to be effective.
If you read the book you would probably get more effective too. Maybe some people think that might be a good idea, and then end up better off as a result. How dare they!
Anyway, I shall not waste any more words on the cynics, but am happy to hear that they have near unimprovable lives
Ben
14 Oct 08 at 4:57 pm
@Gary – Wise words indeed.
@ Embug2000 – Not sure, I understand the receptiveness problem is a big one!
Parubin
14 Oct 08 at 5:56 pm
I’m sure these books have value, otherwise they wouldn´t sell so well. I was only saying that I wasn´t fond of wasting my time reading these books when there is such an ammount of great literature available that I’d be missing, with which I can improve my life too, maybe in another sense.
Myself I’m not an entrepreneur, and I pretty much like my life as it is (knock on wood). I don´t feel the need to improve it right now, I just want to enjoy it. Obviously I don´t have an unimprovable life, I just have ‘my’ life.
When I was a little younger (still am) I was highly impressed by cinema and movies, specially American classics (still am), and I tried to learn “tricks” from movies to get by in real life. I thought I could model myself after characters I admired in the movies like those portrayed by Robert Mitchum or John Wayne, Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart. It didn´t take long untill I realized that cinema could make me happy but could not teach me how to live a life. I resigned myself to live with my strenghts and weaknesses. Everything turned up all right after this.
As for “not wasting words on the cynics” (I’m Spanish, and ‘cínico’ is a word a bit harsh or strong in my mother language so maybe I’m missing some subtlety here) maybe you could turn off the ‘comments’ feature again. After all, this is your site, and we are all guests in here.
John Ross
14 Oct 08 at 6:30 pm
I certainly don’t mean you can’t improve yourself or learn how to improve yourself from books, of course you can. I expect you’re up to your armpits in books on Good Parenting at the moment, and quite right too, so you should be. I’ve worked my way through a speed-reading course, and taught myself to type, and any number of other self-improving things. Self-improvement is laudable, the self-help genre is something else.
The self-help genre characteristically
a) Makes impossible or near impossible claims – Make Millions, Change Your Lifestyle, Lose Weight in No Time, Play in a Day,* Learn a Language in Weeks, Become a Casanova
b) Tells people what they want to hear (like any con artist) – No Effort, Free, Fast, Eat all you Want, Without Studying, Without a Ferrari
*I did, in fact, learn an awful lot from Bert Weedon’s “Play in a Day,” but I didn’t learn it in a day.
As I said, I think “The Game” has a certain literary merit. As a self-help book, though, well… At least a pinch of salt is in order.
Ben
14 Oct 08 at 6:44 pm
@Parubin, I didn’t mean to offend you, apologies, please keep commenting. I agree that there is a lot to be learned from great literature.
@John, I think this is just a semantics problem. I think there is little difference between self-help and self-improvement books, but I agree, there are many that make outrageous claims… that’s when it come back to my original point about knowing which information is good and worth learning from, a skill not lacking in those that buy the ‘become a millionaire in a month’ books.
As for the Game, I never thought of it as a self-help book, just a very entertaining read about someone that helped himself. He has a follow up book called ‘The Rules of the Game’ which is much more ‘how to’.
Parubin
14 Oct 08 at 7:10 pm
@ Ben :
No apologies needed as no offence was taken, you too keep up the good work and the interesting posts, I’m always looking forward to them.
I wasn´t even commenting on ‘The Game’ as, like I said, I hadn´t even heard of Neil Strauss in the first place, but that didn´t prevent me from giving my opinion, as objectiveness is not one of my strenghts. I don´t like that gloomy and dull lady called ‘objectiveness’, so my opinions are always biased and not to be trusted.
What a bore would places like this be if everyone always agreed on everything, right?
gary
14 Oct 08 at 10:01 pm
I read the E-Business Myth book recommended by Ben and it was instantly obvious why 90% of small businesses fail and why the mega businesses like McDonalds are such a success and how they did it. All I need now is the germ of an idea and enough backbone to see it through… sadly I never can get my arse in gear til my backs to the wall, once the moneys in the tin I become a slacker again.
Renée Damstra
14 Oct 08 at 10:32 pm
Embug2000: the thing is that ‘most’ teenagers do not know what exactly it is they want to do or be in the future. They are busy forming and polishing their identity as a grown up individual.
You can’t work on your future very well if the goal is missing. And then it might be better expect things to come to you because there is no alternative.
Oh and as for self help books, they may benefit those who don’t have the insight they outplay but usually you already pretty much know what’s in it.
gary
14 Oct 08 at 10:46 pm
Cant help thinking its a brave man that chooses as bedtime reading a book about how to pick up women when his (Spanish!) wife is within a fortnight of having their son!!
Dean Hunt
15 Oct 08 at 12:12 am
Yes, great book, and very interesting and informative.
Dean
Criss
15 Oct 08 at 1:27 am
We did teach you that stuff in school. You chose not to pay attention. As with most things, students don’t learn something until they feel they need it. There is a limit to the “stuff” we can teach you; instead, we aim to teach you how to think, how to learn, and how to figure it out yourself.
Now, if we presented the information the way Mr. Strauss’s “mentor” (what was his name? Python? Viper? Something equally I-think-I’m-cool-because-I-only-have-one-name…) did, I’m sure the teenage boys in my clas would sit up and listen like Neil and the rest of the chumps did. “Wanna know how to score every night? Wanna know how to accumulate the highest number of used condoms on your bedroom floor? Here’s how!”)
Please forgive me if this comment is a little snippy, but my feathers get seriously ruffled when someone suggests a book about no-self-esteem losers using no-self-esteem tramps to collect bragging rights in a futile attempt to boost their non-existent self-esteem is doing a better job of “educating” than our schools are.
Do you actually believe that book is non-fiction? It’s a lovely dream, certainly (if those are your aspirations), but really? It starts out realistic enough, but then he gets too greedy. There is no way things could possibly happen the way he pretends they did. Unless they were living in an HBO sitcom.
Ben
15 Oct 08 at 10:03 am
@Renee, agreed, teenagers have no idea of long term goals, and quite right. I only worked mine out recently. But they DO have short term goals and desires, and there is no reason why they couldn’t be taught this stuff in relation to those. Just a bit of confidence building – you can do that if you want to… etc…
@Gary – she trusts me, but yes, it did feel a bit odd reading that now!
@Criss – I did not suggest that The Game did a better job of educating kids than teachers do. I said it was interesting how the author had set himself a goal and immersed himself in the necessary learning materials then taken the necessary actions to get there.
Whether the book is 100% true or not is not totally relevant. A quick look around online will reveal that the characters and companies mentioned within are all real, that he did end up with a hot rock star girlfriend, and that he is obviously genuine as he is revered in his (somewhat unconventional) field. I checked. The guy really did succeed.
But again who cares, I could have chosen to read a book about someone who climbed everest, the lesson would have been the same, and it’s not something that I think is given enough attention to in school, no matter how hard it is to get teenagers to care about this stuff.
Certainly at my school, which had wonderful exam results etc and was all very fantastic in every other respect, didn’t teach us anything about dealing with and getting ahead in life. It wasn’t on the curriculum.
luke
15 Oct 08 at 11:00 am
Surely the conclusion of ‘The Game’ is that Neil Strauss plays it well, sleeps with lots of women but, along with the other players, is still empty. He ultimately finds love by being himself and ignoring the rules of the Game. So the formula to success is undermined by the author. Therefore, I wouldn’t catagorise this as a self-help book.
Aren’t the Bible, the Koran etc self-help books?
Ben
15 Oct 08 at 11:02 am
@Luke, quite correct, but I suppose you could say that the whole learning process does lead him to get to that position, which he wouldn’t have done otherwise.
AndrewW
15 Oct 08 at 3:29 pm
I learnt this stuff in school, but it wasn’t in the curriculum. It was in the wise words of a select handful of teachers. The others didn’t want to listen. Their loss.
My personal tutor at secondary school was heavily involved in sociology, volunteering and he taught a couple of humanity subjects. He was a fountain of knowledge and wisdom. He spent 5 years telling us about life but nobody listened.
My English teacher told the class, “Whoever doesn’t want to achieve, whoever doesn’t want to be taught, please leave now. You have my permission. Go.”. To my relief, about 4 of the most troublesome idiots got up and walked out. The lectures were rather serene following their departure..
My lecturers at college had worked in the industry, and taught us about business politics, about there being more to life than work among other things. But nobody listened.
Unfortunately, we don’t have close relationships with our University lecturers but most of them are awesome if you get a chance to talk to them outside of lecturers.
We were taught it.
Some of us chose no to listen.
Maria S.
15 Oct 08 at 9:13 pm
I do believe teachers try to give us the tools for success, but as Andrew W pointed out – we chose not to listen because we were young and thought it was not important.
About self-help books. I have got one on my shelf which I pull down every five years or so. It is called “The Power of Positive Thinking”, but I only pull it down when I think I am in a rut.
The other day I saw a book with the title “Love yourself – then it does not matter who you are married to!” That made me laugh and think that if anyone had had any problems before, there would be no more need to buy the book…
And there is also Jack Higgins, who went from soldier to teacher to university tutor to bestselling author to millionaire.
His lines:” I wish I had known that you are capable of anything at 18.” and he probably cursed his teachers too.
In a way I am glad I did not listen to the conservative teachers back then in an all-girls prep college back as I felt they wanted to put me in a mold (all good girls learn shorthand etc.). I should have been smarter about WHO to listen to.
But self-help books are good for some moments in life – pick what you like and dump the rest.
gary
15 Oct 08 at 9:51 pm
“….a book about no-self-esteem losers using no-self-esteem tramps to collect bragging rights in a futile attempt to boost their non-existent self-esteem….”
for blokes that have self esteem a sister volume entitled “Low self esteem tramps and where to find them” would have sold very well I’m sure…
Luciana Sarra
16 Oct 08 at 2:09 am
I have read several good “self-help” books who have added much to who I am today. I never understood why so many people react negatively even to the idea of reading a book that can teach them so much! Of course you have to choose well and read reviews before reading something.
Anyway, good as these books can be, I refuse to call them “self-help” books, only because this term creates bias. Self-improvement” sounds better… I’ve also heard “self-wisdom…”
Richardksa
16 Oct 08 at 10:18 am
OK Ben, now write your own Self-Help book. To be entitled, “HOW TO live the good life in Spain”. It will make a fortune. On second thought, I’ll keep that to myself!!!!!!!!! (Pulls up MS Word, starts typing.)
gary
16 Oct 08 at 2:46 pm
Maybe one entitled “The longest vacation in the world and how to blag one” would be a best seller Richard!
Pete
16 Oct 08 at 2:56 pm
I´ve read several of this type of book too and i would have to say that yes there are some that have clearly been put together to extract your hard-earned…but others can actually help you and make you look at things from another perspective (as Ben says, its a question of choosing the right sources).
The most important lesson i´ve learned is that if you want to change almost any aspect of your life then you DO have the capability, one should never think that life has been mapped out already and just follow the path, its better to take a lead I think.
A good book I read recently was An Introduction to NLP, it has some really good techniques for changing behaviours and attitudes.
Jonk
16 Oct 08 at 8:23 pm
As someone who has read The Game I have to disagree with Luke´s guess about the conclusion. He ends up justifying what he did – the only way he got the girl in the end was due to the skills learned by banging his way through a million other chicks. But the lesson he learned (or, one of them) was not to settle for some girl who is willing to sleep with you as a result of a couple of lines.
Re: 4 hour work week, my girlfriend at the time read it. Or I should say, read the first 10 pages and then quit. I have read it and it has certainly had a huge impact in my thinking, that´s for sure… And has also lead to a fair amount of money making which has currently paid my whole way through Spain (been here two months now) because I am having trouble accessing my other savings.
Self-help books only really help if they dont just contain junk information (like The Secret), and secondly if you use them to really transform your thinking.
Ben
16 Oct 08 at 9:24 pm
@Pete – “one should never think that life has been mapped out already” – quite right, nor that one is conditioned by one’s past, that ‘we are our biography’. Certainly not. Anything is possible. I might write about that soon too
ValenciaSon
17 Oct 08 at 4:10 am
Where did I read that we should learn as if we will live forever and live as if we won’t?
Richardksa
17 Oct 08 at 10:18 am
@Gary “Maybe one entitled “The longest vacation in the world and how to blag one” would be a best seller Richard!”
And a schoolteacher should write it!!!!! Long, lazy summers chatting up pretty intercambias. (new gender specific Spanish noun I have just, I think, invented.
gary
17 Oct 08 at 2:52 pm
Margot
17 Oct 08 at 8:18 pm
Ben look:
38 comments, so far, in reply to this blog!
31 replys to the prior!
And they weren’t even the “provocative” kind
It’s as tho you’ve suddenly released the flood gates after having battened down the hatches for awhile.
Should make you feel good : – )
Piet
17 Oct 08 at 9:01 pm
Hello,
I totally agree, it’s just a nice book. Don’t take it too serious.
Greetings
http://www.vakantiereizenspanje.nl
Edith
18 Oct 08 at 10:25 am
Wow Ben, that’s pretty inspirational! * thumbs up *
IMO, one of the things they DON’T encourage in most schools is out-of-the-box thinking – I went to primary school back in the 1960s, and children were not expected to think for themselves. Then, I went to a Montessori school where things were a bit different. But even here, they didn’t teach us the skills you mention. It’s very easy to get stuck in a rut and remain there forever, unless you take some initiative of your own.
Dominic
3 Nov 08 at 10:27 pm
Well, this self help/improvement book will change your life.
One sentence from the book, “Except every moment as if you had chosen it”. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
Sean
4 Nov 08 at 12:49 am
After wasting a year doing 2hrs a week of spanish classes (plus 1 hr homework) and not making much process, I used this exact process to learn spanish and it helped so much. I broke it down into three skill areas – reading/writing, listening and speaking and used google to research the best way to learn each. I then set aside an hour each week for each area (3hrs total). I spend 15 mins each week reviewing last weeks progress and setting mini-goals for the next one. In speaking for example, my initial goal was to find intercambios, moved to increasing the percentage of time speaking spanish (vs english), to using certain tenses etc.
At times, especially at the start, it is difficult and the goals really help to motivate you, to see how far you have come and where you want to get to.
I think this is where the goal setting really really helps. The end aim (in my case to be fluent in spanish) can seem almost impossible when you start out, but if you know that just need to hit this weeks small goals it makes it so much easier.
Even though I’m spending the same time per week as before, my progress has easily increased ten fold.
Ben
4 Nov 08 at 12:52 am
Great book indeed Dominic, we read it this summer.
Dominic
7 Nov 08 at 12:03 am
Well, I have just bought “The Game” on Ben’s recommendation.
I too, would love to get out of teaching English one day, so my goal is to learn Spanish as quick as possible.
The funniest book I ever read was by Roald Dahl called “My Uncle Oswald” which could also be seen as a self help book if you want a great laugh.