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In this post from his popular Boundless newsletter, Paul Millerd asks, “Do we design life around learning? Or do we hardly fit it in? Do we really need to learn that much to live a decent life?” He shares thoughts and experiences on learning Chinese, and the U.S. Healthcare crisis.

#1 On Learning Chinese

I’ve been busy the past two weeks going to Chinese class for three hours and then studying another two or three hours every day at home.  I was a bit stressed before the class started but have been surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed the classes. 

This shouldn’t be a surprise. I’ve been transported back to campus and now remember how much I loved being in school.  I still claim to love learning but if I am honest I don’t do much of it.  I imagine I’m like most people.  I learn a lot of new things by solving problems.  This is one reason I like self-employment.  It forces you to learn many different things.  But these are all small things.  Like learning SEO.  Or learning basic CSS and HTML.  You can get to a good understanding of those topics in less than a week.  

I haven’t spent much time in the deep, focused state that brings me back to studying engineering in school.  The state in which you are slightly beyond your current capabilities and that if you trust the system you will eventually arrive at the answer.  I loved that.

I’ve gotten better at writing but I also have a suspicion that I might have improved faster if I gave it more focused attention.  The kind of environments that can enable deep learning are magical and we probably don’t give them enough credit in the non-stop criticism of higher education.  Higher education has lots of problems but in most schools there are those magical programs and professors that can help enable this kind of learning.

Key points include:

• The learning design
• Motivation
• The healthcare system

Read the full post, Lessons from Learning Chinese, on boundless.com.