I believe edtech founders should be setting aside a few hours per week to learn new stuff that's totally unrelated to their startup.

Think of this as an R&D investment – exposing yourself to new learning experiments is what will get you the inspiration to build better ones

I went through this change myself this year.

At the end of 2020, I realized I was constantly learning new stuff, but it was all related to @transcendnet and focused on "doing" rather than on the learning itself.

It felt like "survival learning".

I set a learning goal for myself in 2021: I was going to be intentional about learning new stuff outside of work every week.

Here's some stuff I'm learning and how I'm applying it to my work.

French lessons (online 1:1 tutor)

I block 1h every week to learn French with a tutor on @verbling. This has been so much more effective than past classes I've taken and super personalized.

I actually like how Verbling enables the instructor to teach better!

Flamenco guitar (1:1)

Recently started lessons with a Madrid musician (socially distant classes are interesting lol).

I already play guitar and basic flamenco, but we are going back to the basics of strumming in flamenco and naming things I've done for years w/o knowing.

Bookclub (self-paced + online calls)

Joined one recently with Transcend Fellows and was in one last year with some wonderful humans.

The group makes the experience, and a great excuse to dissect arguments and their applications to your work.

Running a half-marathon (self-paced week runs + weekly group runs)

This is the most unstructured learning experience of all: using some guidance from @marini's Garmin profile, listening to your body watching others run, and using the group for accountability.

Some general lessons from this:

Time

Yes, it's hard to find the time to do this initially. I didn't think I had the hours.

Enter the behavioral magic of blocking time on your calendar: once it's in it, you are way less likely to cancel. You find a way to work around it.

Curricula are always different

I'm building a new "personal curriculum" for each new thing I'm learning. All based in Notion!

I'm slowly getting better at analyzing how my "personal curriculum" should differ based on the topic. The main insight here is these almost differ.

For example, my French curriculum Notion pages uses linked databases all the time, because I want to create a repository of all words I'm learning but also connect them to each lesson so I have context.

Verbling also echoes this in the platform.

This is less important in my guitar lessons, where photos and videos are a lot more important.

It's also a lot more "scaffolded" you rarely advance until you've gotten the previous concept, so you want to make sure you can check concepts off as you learn.

Having instructors is all about context + motivation

My flamenco instructor has a bunch of his materials available online. But I get very little value from doing those sheets on my own.

What I get is the wider context to the lessons (random rants, sharing other guitarists).

Having clear goals for every week is super motivating.

The last thing I want is to show up unprepared for the next session, and I'm much more likely to put in the time to train than if I were by myself.

Learning styles

There's actually not a ton of research proving "learning styles" are a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles

Having diverse learning experiences pushes you to forget your self-imposed preferences and be more open-minded about what + how you can learn!

Personal example:

My French tutor always pushes me to get the pronunciation right.

My approach is usually different – to get to a "Minimum Viable Conversation" level, even if I'm not pronouncing words perfectly.

This led to some frustrations, and I realized this was the first time in a while someone was imposing a new learning method on me.

But after a few months, I'm seeing how it's paying off already! I'm glad I didn't quit and tried out his approach.

Pricing

My biggest opposition to 1:1 tutoring was high costs.

But my 1:1 tutoring experiences are actually really cheap (~$10/h) since they are mostly online, and my instructors have a lot of flexibility with scheduling.

I think there are so many opportunities to scale the time of 1:1 instructors with technology.

Standardizing class structures (content -> practice -> homework), minimizing non-learning items (following up, payments, booking times), or moving all student prep asynchronous

Survival learning vs Luxury learning

Paradoxically, I have found that most people live in "survival learning" mode – they don't have the luxury of learning just for the love of learning.

As edtech founders, it's our role to step back and create great learning experiences that are inclusive of everyone's capacity.

Knowing the *actual* goal of the learners is so important here.

2 other learning experiences I want to try out in the coming months:

a) Asynchronous courses like MOOCs (either self-paced or with a cohort) to find how to build great self-paced experiences that scale (I've seen some cool stuff built on @eduflowapp open to recs!)

Relevant to this last tweet – not everything needs to be cohort-based experiences! https://twitter.com/mariepoulin/status/1339796171473088513

b) "Tacit knowledge" learning experiences (s/o to @shanedabor who's the real MVP here): learning from experts doing their craft live.

E.g. learning from @kennybeats on his discord, watching @jordanrakei make songs from nothing, or follow @ChefYannis as he cooks delicious food.

Would love to hear if this resonates and how you personally think about your learning journey as a founder!