How To Find Resources for Self-Study

Easily one of the most common issues that people have when self-educating is that they can’t find resources for what they are learning.

But, by the time you finish reading this, you’ll no longer have that problem. I’ll show you three ways you can find resources online so that you no longer have to endure the uncertainty and time that comes from not knowing what to even learn and you'll be able to focus on actually learning.

1. Ask chatGPT for related resources or a list of concepts.

Since late 2022, when chatGPT came out, crazy amounts of opportunities were unveiled for doing all sorts of things, including finding resources.

Given that it’s trained on the entire internet, it would be stupid not to use it.

Here’s a prompt that you can use: I’m interested in learning XYZ subject area, can you give me a list of resources and or keywords related to that subject so that I can study them?

On the other hand, AI might give you answers that are too narrow. In such scenarios, it’s productive to try other approaches. Look at different textbooks, videos, websites, etc… so that you get some variety in your search results- i.e. prompting the internet instead of the AI.

Now…

There are other ways you can leverage chatGPT and the internet.

Just ask them to spill out the information for you.

Usually, when taking this approach I like to ask questions because they allow for specific information that’s relevant to what you want- In the Self-Learner’s community I call this Question Reframing.

Instead of asking about the concepts, ask questions related to the concept- that’s the insight.

2. The Question Pyramid

Sometimes when we are learning, we want to learn not because there is a particular set of things that we need to learn but because there is a problem that we want to solve.

In those scenarios it becomes less obvious what information we need to consume, but below is a method to do just that.

When we have a general problem that we need to find the information to solve for, we can chunk down from this general problem to something more specific so that we know what to learn.

The following 3 step process will help you do just that.

1. Start asking general questions about the problem using what you know- even if it’s small.

2. Make the questions more specific every time.

3. Deconstruct until you reach something that you can concretely learn individually.

The Question Pyramid

But besides consuming, it’s also important to solve problems…

We can do this again using the internet, but I would argue that in this case, it’s even better with a chatbot, because we have more control over the kind of problems we want.

Here’s a prompt you can use: I’m learning the following concepts [Provide a list] can you give me problems that test me on each of the concepts?

If you don’t like the questions, you could make your prompt more specific by providing further requirements for your questions.

That’s it for today, if you found this valuable be sure to share it with someone you think could it could help.

Until next time.