<aside> 🧱 Shaping is part of the Lean Learning Method and is supposed to help you "plan" intentionally what you want to learn. The intentional plan — shaped learning — will help you be more flexible, deliberate, and joyful during your learning sessions.
Flexible because your plan — shaped learning — is abstract enough and not rigorous like typical online courses.
Deliberate because you define a learning project in which you can apply newly learned skills.
Joyful because you made a plan that is meaningful to you.
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I easily get curious about new topics. I come across a YouTube video with design principles and want to become a designer. A friend mentions a new programming framework and the next thing I do is to look for courses to learn the framework. I hear about a new book and put it onto my already way too long reading list; only to make the decision harder on which book to read next.
My curiosity is sparked easily and I would like to learn everything from Psychology to UX Design, from Data Science to Design Engineering, from playing chess to playing the violin.
Getting curious and excited about a new topic, picking a course, making a rigid plan, and starting to learn is often not going to work. But we do it anyway, only to realize that it is kind of boring. We lose our motivation and the momentum. It just is not a real interest.
It was a fake curiosity. Our ego was curious, not we. We got fooled by our ego and now it feels like we wasted a lot of time.
Instead of getting fooled by our ego’s curiosity, test your curiosity first before you commit to learning something new. First, it is important to see if you are really interested.
Test your curiosity by taking 1–2 days to dive into the topic.
Write down why you are curious and why you want to learn.
Research materials like videos, articles, podcasts and skim through them. Don’t consume them in detail. Just get an idea and a feeling about what you want to learn.
If you can, even apply some of the skills. If you are diving into web design, design simple concepts. If you are diving into a new programming framework, write a few lines of code. If you are diving into chess, play a few rounds.
The goal of these 1–2 days is to test your curiosity.
If you recognize that you are truly curious, great. Create a simple learning plan. Define how much time you want to invest in learning. Start learning.
If you recognize that you are not really curious, also great. Just leave it alone. Instead of investing weeks, you only invested a couple of days.
Testing your curiosity helps you be intentional about what to learn. This is why testing is an essential part of the Lean Learning Method. Shaping your learning — part of the Lean Learning Method — helps you test your curiosity as described above. For this it uses the CRISP approach: