Going Full-Autodidact

By Leo Gura - April 12, 2017

What the hell is an autodidact?

Simply, a person who engages in serious self-education, studying subjects deeply on his/her own time, in his/her own way.

Famous autodidacts include: Leonardo da Vinci, Goethe, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Quentin Tarantino, Alan Watts, etc.

Read more about Autodidacticism on Wikipedia.

There’s something really beautiful and powerful about this approach to education. In fact, I find it MUCH more effective than formal education. It just requires a deep sense of life purpose and passion to pull off, because no one is there to prod you along.

This might be rosy retrospection on my part, but if I could live my life over again, I would quit school, never go to college, and invest all that time into self-education. The more I learn, the more I learn how poorly learning is done by our social schooling system. It’s really just terrible. It emphasizes all the wrong subjects and mechanizes what should otherwise be a highly conscious activity. The current emphasis on standardized testing is especially flagrant and outrageous. Real education has nothing to do with passing tests or memorization.

If you’re a serious, ambitious, self-motivated youngster between the ages of 10-25, I highly encourage you to take your education fully into your own hands. Never has there been a greater time to go full-autodidact than now, in the 21st century. The world is your intellectual oyster. Don’t let an antiquated and bureaucratic education system rob you of your most productive growth years. Start studying self-actualization hardcore, now! Start studying all the technical fields you need to execute your life purpose, now! The character this will develop in you will be extraordinary. The levels of mastery and creativity you’ll reach will have no comparison.

If you are in college now and considering a master’s or doctorate program, consider doing independent study instead. But only if you’re the self-starter type, the entrepreneurial type. This path is not for the lazy. This here is like going off-roading.

Learning is one of the most beautiful and rewarding aspects of human existence. Teach yourself how to tap into this beauty, and never let it go.

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