Recently I've been running some online groups where my friends and I work together to to answer one question: what do I want?

They were inspired by a realization that we had around the start of Covid: We know more about basically everything than we do ourselves

We could talk for hours about latest tech trends. We could analyze and compare public policy. We could harp on about chemistry, math, and physics.

We had so much knowledge. 30 years of formal and informal schooling had given us a crap ton of knowledge on a huge range of topics

But it had excluded one, little topic: Me. I know that that covid is spreading, but how does that make me feel about traveling? I know that Donald Trump is building a wall but how does that make me feel about the diverse community I grew up in?

If asked I would tell you an answer but that answer would surely be an answer I had read. It would be the opinion of a journalist who wrote an article, who in turn probably got that opinion from someone else.

But this would be wrong. I am a unique person, I have have desires and aspirations born from my unique experience and cultivated through every interaction I have, every mistake and success I experience.

It might feel OK to my conscious brain to just mimic the assumptions and desires of others, but my subconscious, it knows what's up

This cognitive dissonance, whether we're conscious of it or not, will cause anger, frustration, and general unhappiness. Living authentically is one of the strongest predictors of happiness, and it's hard to live authentically if you don't know what you want.

It's not surprising we end up here. We are never taught to learn about ourselves. At first we are taught to learn from books, memorizing content. Then we learn how to do research, searching out ideas others have written. Then, finally we learn how to combine multiple ideas and information to synthesize new conclusions. If you make it through all of that you are a well educated human being!

But not once in school was I taught how to determine what I liked or what makes me happy. Frankly I wasn't taught how to learn anything that could not be found or synthesized from existing information .

Any kind of learning essentially involves two ingredients: Information and synthesis to integrate that information into your current understanding.

Recently I've been trying to learn how to draw.

Information I need: Instructions and activities which build drawing skills

Synthesis I’ll perform: Read instructions, do activities.

Learning how to draw has been relatively straightforward. It's been time consuming, frustrating and difficult, but I know the steps.

Now, knowing why I'm learning this in the first place? That's a much harder question to answer.

Information I need: My thoughts and feelings during and after drawing and other similar activities.

Synthesize: compare and contrast how I feel while drawing to other activities I enjoy.

This stuff is hard. I can't google "how does David Gaynor feel after drawing". I didn't learn how to analyze my feelings in school and even when I've managed to have a personal epiphany in the past, it usually fades fast

This also applies to learning about others, or really learning anything through personal observation and exploration. Essentially, we are good at learning from books, but bad at learning from the world.

In fact the biggest breakthrough for my own pursuit of happiness was starting a company. There is no book or Google search that can tell you what product will succeed. If there was then we'd all be rich!

I had to become more observant, build a regular reflection practice, question my assumptions and run experiments. Eventually those habits made their way into my personal life. As a result even as my work hours went up I actually became happier. In addition to understanding the education market in China, I now understood myself better as well.

Today, I refer to this process as "guerrilla learning". Guerrilla learning is when you get an answer from a person who doesn't even know they have it. It's when you observe and note things about the world before you've even formulated a question. It’s when you get points not for having the right answer, but for proving yourself wrong. This kind of learning is fun, challenging and extremely helpful for personal growth, entrepreneurship and other scary subjects we don't teach in school.

Where can we pick up Guerrilla Learning skills? How do we refine them? Can they be taught at all? All good questions and I'd love to have your thoughts!

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