Learning & Cognition
- When you’re learning something new, what needs to happen first for it to click? (Theory then practice? Example then principle? Just diving in?)
- What does it feel like when you’re learning well vs. when you’re bouncing off something?
- What topics or skills have you learned fastest? What made those different?
Motivation & Resistance 4. What conditions reliably produce flow for you? 5. What does avoidance look like when it shows up? What’s usually underneath it? 6. What kind of goals energise you vs. drain you?
Structure & Spontaneity 7. When does a system feel supportive? When does it feel like a cage? 8. What makes you abandon a habit or system you set up?
Risk & Decision-Making 9. When you take risks, what’s driving it - impulse, calculation, or something else? 10. How do you handle uncertainty when the stakes matter?
Energy & Rhythm 11. When and how do you do your best thinking? 12. What depletes you fastest? What restores you?
Learning and Cognition
- When you’re learning something new, what needs to happen first for it to click? (Theory then practice? Example then principle? Just diving in?)
Generally for me personally, I like to grasp and understand concepts first before stepping into them. These days I mainly consume new information in the form of long-form content from a person of authority in the area which I’m looking into and keep digesting content such as podcasts, videos, books etc. until I get enough of a grasp on the core concepts and ideas at play. From here I can shape, mould and properly formulate my own understanding of things and start to make connections to things which I already have a hold of.
I think it also depends on the nature of the thing I’m learning, my motivations for learning it, how closely tied is it to my sense of identity and also the intended application I have for that thing which I’m learning. I think I have a pretty solid grasp at the moment of which ways I wish to go directionally and what areas I want to focus on in the short-term. I’m pretty sure in my sense of identity also, from journaling frequently, so things that I apply myself too kind of have to move through me or from me if that makes sense. I generally try to understand who I am and where I currently am as well as who it is I want to mould into and what are the respective actions I need to take, things I need to learn and areas where I must apply myself. I then look at ways in which I’m able to attain that knowledge through means and systems which make sense for my time of brain. I acknowledge I’m very ADHD in nature and hence I know I will flutter between areas and drop projects altogether if they don’t thoroughly interest me.
During the learning process, in practice, it’s usually a very non-linear path and method in order to attain the skills I want and build the expertise I wish to attain. I generally keep very up to date with areas, reseearch and ideas in a space (i.e. ai agents and ML / LLM research and practices) through other practitioner and experts’ works and publishings and I’ll conduct experiments and small projects to deepen my practical knowledge. The framework I use to determine what to work on and how to do so is pretty subconsious although I do visit them when journalling. I often reach clarity and close to base truths for myself in these areas.
- What does it feel like when you’re learning well vs. when you’re bouncing off something?
When I’m learning well, I generally feel a very strong conviction in that area or thing. My mind becomes quite obsessed and excited with it. I’ll generally ruminate concepts and ideas related to that thing quite often and make parallels and connections to and between areas of my life and other areas of expertise I possess. The things I learn and actively am learning generally make up and shape my world view, even if not neccessarily directly connected.
When I’m bouncing off of things, my subconscious mind and the voice in my head are both louder and have more negative connotations. I feel a pressure to actively do the things and tasks related to it and procrastinate rather than sit down and delve into deeply understanding different concepts. I must note that I frequently procrastinate through avoidance and moving between projects, especially when there are important gaps in my knowledge which can frustrate and fluster me.
I try to solve for broad progress over time as it is much more reliable to track with respect to myself in contrast to high-granularity monitoring. I’ll flip between projects, concepts and learnings, cycling between them and over time make progress on the whole, and end up with cross-disciplinary ideas and notions as a result of this pattern.
I feel deeply. Especially in relation to work. I’m an individual who tries to be ‘aligned’ and optimise and study myself and my inputs with the intention of getting myself into ‘states’ of productivity, or more likely to be productive. When I don’t have that deep conviction and intrest for my current task or focus, i feel more anxious and have a lesser self-image as a result of the procrastnation and lower-quality and quantity of output.
When I’m learning well, I have a much better inputs and outputs in relation to work, and hence my thoughts and habits and it cyclically enforces the self-system - and I feel power in myself.
- What topics or skills have you learned fastest? What made those different?
I learn and understand topics much better and faster than skills as a whole. I can injest and understand, deeply-understand nuanced areas of research and abstact concepts very quickly. When it comes to skills, I find it difficult to stay disciplined with the inputs sometimes and such make progress slower. There is sometimes a frustration associated with the lack of pace towards the desired level of profficiency. The gap between now and the future me appears ‘too-long’.
The skills which I’ve picked up quickly are the ones which I have an interest in. I am a very good videographer (if I dare say so myself) with a specific style and intention. I have been taking photos and videos with intention from a young age. I can edit (video) well. Although again I think I procrastinate deepening this skill as I am frustrated at my innability to execute to the level I want to, becuase I care about the output. I picked up coding (python) very quickly and agentic applications, use-cases etc. I’m currently messing around with and learning low-level systems, linux and hardware implementations. I would also say that I write well. Mainly because I’ve had and have furthered my love of reading and writing. I’ve journalled extensively and can write very fluidly and convey my internal thoughts and ideas quite seamlessly.
Other skills I’ve learned well. I would say cooking and general life skills. I enjoy cooking and health and so I consume content from chefs and translate that into my own cooking pretty well. Writing this, I can see that I am able to dissect concepts and recognise patterns and areas of importance pretty well and hence, ‘once it clicks’, the arc of my own learning is much faster and I reach a higher level - if I can apply myself to the things consistently and long enough (if I enjoy it deeply).
Motivation and Resistance
- What conditions reliably produce flow for you?
I generally try to optimise for ‘states’ of being. If something is important to me or I have a period where high-quality, consistent, deep-work is required of me, I’ll remove social media from my phone, try to eat and exercise better and avoid dopaminergic activities (in theory although recently I’ve been sticking to it).
My philosophy is largely based on my reading of and digesting of Deep Work (Cal Newport) and Atomic Habits when I was 17 and first trying to develop myself. I am very practical in my approach and small things have a larger impact on my output. Not doing something easier than the task I have to to before or during / around the block of work. The desk and my laptop / keyboard must be at the right height so that it is comfortable to do what I must. I use ball-point pens when I jounral becuase they’re fast and nice to write with - I write more that I have them. I like to work early in the morning or late at night when it is quiet and I haven’t been exposed to a lot of stimuli. I like caffeine and sometimes dexamphetamine. I will stay on an empty stomach (at least for my first block of work of the day).
I also need to maintain a positive and productive lifestyle and self image. If I give into bad habits, eat junk or wake up late to many days in a row, I start to develop negative thoughts and self image which leads to somewhat of a negative spiral.
- What does avoidance look like when it shows up? What’s usually underneath it?
Some fear of failure I think, some shame of previous procrastination, a lack of ability to activate the part of my brain - usually becuase there is an easier, less resistive task or activity which I’ve recently familiarised myself with. At the moment, I recently have been avoiding working on a project for a client. I don’t really have conviction in the project and have kind of realised that I don’t love what I was doing or how I was becoming as a result of that project. I did do some of the work and was making progress within it earlier today. The avoidance version of me was tying work I could be doing, such as the ANIMUS project or others, to a deeper sense of purpose and so there was in turn a naturally slightly negative inclination towards doing that MSL project.
I also generated a lot of thoughts of shame regarding what how I had already procrastinated it a lot previously and some thoughts of fear of confronting the ‘failures’ in the project I had already made and I felt I could make - despite them being irrational and fictional.
- What kind of goals energise you vs. drain you?
Goals related to deepening my sense of self, my understading of life and the areas I care about. Projects which allow creativity and nuanced approaches. I like new ideas, the idea of experimentation and becoming a better version of myself.
Long-term I have high aspirations and a clear vision of the type of person I wish to become and traits I wish to learn for myself. Anything which I can directly tie to that energise me deeply. I have struggled to wake up early for a while, but I’ve recently manage to get myself to do so as I’ve seen tangible results from myself, my work and self-image (which I know all supercharge my output and progress towards my vision). And I understnd that it is possible to shift my rythm in three days - after listening to an Andrew Huberman podcast where he breaks down how to become a morning person from a biologically mechanistic perspective.
Structure & Spontaneity
- When does a system feel supportive? When does it feel like a cage?
I need flexibility and input mediums which serve me and play to my strengths. I could write in a conversational, journaling tone for hours, so naturally, diving into concepts in LLM chats with strong models and researching that way works for me. I also make cross-domain connections and am a deep thinker so I do not enjoy rigid, compartmentalised systems which are pre-defined. When I work and learn, it never really follows logical structure or paths, hence why online courses or rigid schooling / testing structures never suited me. I value my agency and practical, real-world application of skills. Systems should suport and allow me to apply myself to projects and try things, even if I lack the ‘qualifications’ or levels. However, I also am prone to being overly-ambititious sometimes. Trying something too-hard, too-early and being dissheartened at my innability to deliver on what I had in mind.
I’ve learned best through open reflection, like this. Scribbling notes and diagrams to express my inner thoughts and ideas on a subject and conversing with LLMs to view things from different angles as well as to deepen my undersanding of specific parts and gain fundemental, root context and understanding. I like to be immersed.
The system I’m looking to build for myself has a conversational agent as the predominant interface, context about me and my work / projects through my writing and alows me to operate relatively freely and guide my knowledge and help me to reduce friction to doing. I want to be steered gently, not led.
- What makes you abandon a habit or system you set up?
Too much rigidity. Too much upfront set-up. Overly-engineered. High levels of operational friction. I don’t track habits, set rigid contracts or tangible goals for myself as I often over engineer my process to it and the surrounding work associted with it, I’m overly ambitious and miss the mark (almost every time) and end up wasting more time than just focussing on my inputs over time. I try to stay connected to my self, goals and visions and follow my curiosity and intuition, whilst keeping my lifestlye and practices very clean.
I prefer understanding and forming an identity around something (naturally over time) rather than forcing myself into rigid setups and losing motivation. Understanding the mechanisms and reasons WHY I should do something and letting that deeply sit within me often has a far higher efficacy for myself (forming and maintaining self-serving habits) than rigid systems or forcing habits / routines through willpower and discipline.
Risk & Decision-Making
- When you take risks, what’s driving it - impulse, calculation, or something else?
In all honesty, I think my risk tolerance is high in relation to the average person but is not fully stupid. My whole philosophy is centred around self-growth and actualisation of the vision I have in mind. Some of the things I want and the ways In which I wish to lead my life are not very traditional, hence, some of the paths to achieving those things are also unconventional. I also don’t really respect authority - something I’ve moulded from childhood.
For example: after school, I took a year out and then got a place at Warwick university for Civil engineering. I generally disliked the environment, I wanted to be surrounded by people with richer life experience and more-openmindedness and I didn’t like my course and course structure. As a result, I could not find conviction in attending regularly, staying in Warwick for long periods of time and studying hard for my coursework and tests. I must interject and say that I was young and in love at the time and naturally my decision making was not great - though I have no regrets and did consider all of my actions deeply at the time.
I felt like I was gaining a much richer, deeper understanding of my self and the world through prioritising my reading, talking to people and experiences in general. I was not partying or drinking or doing much inhibiting in general, I still feel as though I was learning. In that time, I landed on some interests in LLMs, AI and agents and was reading up a lot, deepening my understanding of the technology and experimenting with new things in the space. It fascinated me and I saw the potential. I ended up taking the year out and ended up dropping out altogether with limited consultation and input from others. I had conviction in my path. Others saw it as a great risk and perceived my decision making as skewed.
I then stumbled upon agentic automation where I managed to get a couple small and progressively larger contracts and opportunities, and found my current course in Creative Computing at UAL. Other’s perceive that as a risk and ‘downgrade’ of uni, but I acknowledge the boost in mood, output and conviction in my path which I value much higher.
I would say I’m deeply understanding of myself and operate (pretty) strictly from that frame. Decisions which may appear as ‘risky’, feel natural to me. I also would say I’m well read in philosophy and acknowledge how short and relatively meaningless life is, so I’d rather follow my inclinations, curiosity and convictions rather than seek a traditionally successful, subjectively meaningless life.
- How do you handle uncertainty when the stakes matter?
I am grateful to have a deep, rich set of life experiences as a result of my non-traditional upbringing environment and the manifestation that has had in my risk-tolerance and the experiences that has led me to have. I have been in situations which were on paper not ideal and elicited much stress at the time. Having gotten through those times unscathed, as well as being literate in general and personal philosophy, I feel equipped to navigate uncertainty pretty well.
Journaling frequently also helps a great deal, understanding the source of my sources of anxiety and my interpretation of uncertainty is helpful to understanding and navigating uncertainty in high-stakes situations. Additionally, being a believer in a higher power and order helps me to offload responsibility and a need for control.
Energy & Rhythm
- When and how do you do your best thinking?
I would say I do my best thinking on paper (or digital paper) in natural language in times and environments which mitigate distraction. I enjoy reading and listening to music, I enjoy exercising and dieting effectively. In the early morning or late night, in semi-dark environments with distractions mitigated is when I find I’m able to think best. It’s also dependant on the lifestyle I’ve been living recently and my self-perception and ‘alignment’ at the time.
I see my thinking as an extension of self, and self as a product of inputs (physical and non-physical) and habits / environment.
- What depletes you fastest? What restores you?
Dopaminergic tasks and lifestyles, indulgence, generally not being intentional and mindful tends to over-time deplete me and throw me off-course. Consuming low-quality and too much content leads to comparison, low-self image, indulgence, and bad ruts.
Having discipline in areas such as exercise, reading, journaling tends to restore me.