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7 habits of the best self-directed learners
The best self-directed learners use these seven habits to improve their knowledge and skills in any subject.

- Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Ellen DeGeneres all dropped out of college, yet they became leaders in their fields. Their secret? Self-directed learning.
- Self-directed learning can help people expand their knowledge, gain new skills, and improve upon their liberal education.
- Following habits like Benjamin Franklin's five-hour rule, the 80/20 rule, and SMART goals can help self-directed learners succeed in their pursuits.
People are captivated by the stories of individuals who eschewed traditional education yet still became titans in their field. Bill Gates, Ellen DeGeneres, Anna Wintour, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller; none of them has a college degree, but they have all achieved fame and a level of success few can match. How did they do this? They are self-directed learners.
Nowadays, self-directed learning is less of a cultural curio and more of an economic necessity. New knowledge accumulates so quickly, and industries change so rapidly, traditional education paths can't keep pace. Unless your specialty is the pottery fashions of Ancient Greece, chances are your diploma is out of date before the ink dries. (Even then, you never know when some newly discovered Pompeii will upend terracotta paradigms.)
Need help getting into the practice? Here are seven habits shared by the best self-directed learners.
Take ownership of your learning
Malcolm Knowles was an educator and a champion for adult learning (a.k.a. andragogy). He described self-directed learning as a process "in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes."
The habits we'll discuss here address all these points, but the first step is always to take the initiative.
As Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, told Big Think, this isn't that much different from high school or college learning. "There is this illusion that is created in our classical education system that someone is teaching it to you," Khan said. "Really, they are creating a context in which you need to pull information and own it yourself."
The difference is that self-directed learners need to create that context for themselves. They do this by engaging in learning through a growth mindset. Traditional education can inadvertently saddle students with fixed mindsets (i.e., students are either naturally gifted at a subject or not, and their grades will reflect this). A growth-mindset student, on the other hand, knows that improvement is possible, even if it isn't easy.
Set SMART goals
Once you have theinitiative, you need to set goals. Otherwise, rewards will always remain nebulous and unobtainable, and rewards are necessary if you are to remain motivated.
The best self-directed learners know to set SMART goals. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Time-defined. Any goals you set should meet these criteria.
Pay close attention to realistic time management. Self-directed learning is generally done in our few, precious off-hours. Teaching yourself programming is great. Trying to program an entire video game within a year is a bit much. Break it down into smaller chunks and give yourself time.
If you're curious, the opposite of a SMART goal is a VAPID one—that is, Vague, Amorphous, Pie-in-the-sky, Irrelevant, and Delayed. Don't be a VAPID learner.Benjamin Franklin's five-hour rule
Benjamin Franklin was an author, statesman, inventor, and entrepreneur. He also left school when he was 10. How did he amass the knowledge necessary to succeed in so many trades with so little schooling? He set aside an hour every weekday for deliberate learning. He would read, write, ruminate, or devise experiments during that time.
Author Michael Simmons calls this Franklin's five-hour rule, and he notes that many of the best self-directed learners use some form of the method. Bill Gates reads roughly a book a week, while Arthur Blank reads two hours per day.
Be sure to spread your five hours throughout the week. Your brain wasn't designed for cram sessions, and trying to squeeze a week's learning into one day will ensure you forget a lot of the material. Additionally, our brains' neural networks need to time process information, so spacing out our learning helps us memorize difficult material more efficiently.A lithograph of Benjamin Franklin and his son William performing their famous kite-and-key experiment.
(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Active learning
Salman Kahn created Kahn Academy to engage learners with exercises they could do themselves. Active learning, he says, helps students better understand the material and know when to apply which skills.
It is easy to engage actively with gardening or math problems, but what about subjects like history, where participation comes mainly through reading books? Bill Gates has a solution for that. He uses marginalia—note-taking in the margins of a book—to turn reading into a vibrant conversation with the author.
"When you're reading, you have to be careful that you really are concentrating," Gates told Quartz. "Particularly if it's a non-fiction book, are you taking the new knowledge and attaching it to knowledge you have. For me, taking notes helps make sure that I'm really thinking hard about what's in there."A photo of Bill Gates taken on April 19, 2018, in Berlin, Germany.
(Photo by Inga Kjer/Getty Images)
Prioritize (the 80/20 rule)
In the early 20th century, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto noticed that 20% of Italy's population owned 80% of its land. His analysis was later expanded into the Pareto principle (a.k.a. the 80/20 rule). This rule broadly states that 80% of your results will stem from 20% of your actions.
The best self-directed learners use this rule to prioritize their study time. They focus on the 20% of actions that net them the most results. If someone wants to learn to crochet, they don't need to understand the history of primitive textiles to do that (as fascinating as that may be). They need to invest their learning time at hands-on applications and only use spare time to brush up on nålebinding (again, super fascinating).Visit the library
This one may not apply to learners with the means of, say, Bill Gates, but for most of us, financial limits can interfere with our ability to accrue new supplies. Enter the library. A good research library has books on most any subject, has access to a host of online resources, and can connect you with like-minded professionals or groups.
Author Ray Bradbury couldn't afford to go to college and instead visited the local library three times a week. He went on to become one of the most celebrated authors of the 21st century.
"A college cannot educate you; a library can educate you," Bradbury said. "You go to the library to find yourself. You pull those books off the shelf, you open them, and you see yourself there. And you say, 'I'll be goddamed, there I am!'"People studying in the New York Public Library's Rose Reading Room.
(Photo by Sascha Kilmer/Getty Images)
Employ your own motivation
The traditional education path gives you a very clear motivation: Get a good grade to get a good job. Self-directed learning provides no clear motivation, so you'll have to create your own.
Entrepreneur Mark Cuban urges people to never stop learning. The near 60-year-old billionaire is currently teaching himself to code in Python. His reason? He believes the world's first trillionaire will make their fortune with artificial intelligence, and he doesn't want to be left behind.
"Whatever you are studying right now, if you are not getting up to speed on deep learning, neural networks, etc., you lose," Cuban told CNBC. "The more I understand it, the more I get excited about it."
Of course, your motivation doesn't have to be finding the next million-dollar venture. It could be as simple as expanding your liberal education for self-improvement, learning a new skill set to advance in your field, or simply reading a book to share in conversation with others. Whatever the case, the motivation needs to come from you.
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- The revolution of self-directed learning | Sean Bengry | TEDxFlourCity ›
There are 5 eras in the universe's lifecycle. Right now, we're in the second era.
Astronomers find these five chapters to be a handy way of conceiving the universe's incredibly long lifespan.
Image based on logarithmic maps of the Universe put together by Princeton University researchers, and images produced by NASA based on observations made by their telescopes and roving spacecraft
- We're in the middle, or thereabouts, of the universe's Stelliferous era.
- If you think there's a lot going on out there now, the first era's drama makes things these days look pretty calm.
- Scientists attempt to understand the past and present by bringing together the last couple of centuries' major schools of thought.
The 5 eras of the universe
<p>There are many ways to consider and discuss the past, present, and future of the universe, but one in particular has caught the fancy of many astronomers. First published in 1999 in their book <a href="https://amzn.to/2wFQLiL" target="_blank"><em>The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity</em></a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Adams" target="_blank">Fred Adams</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_P._Laughlin" target="_blank">Gregory Laughlin</a> divided the universe's life story into five eras:</p><ul><li>Primordial era</li><li>Stellferous era</li><li>Degenerate era</li><li>Black Hole Era</li><li>Dark era</li></ul><p>The book was last updated according to current scientific understandings in 2013.</p><p>It's worth noting that not everyone is a subscriber to the book's structure. Popular astrophysics writer <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ethansiegel/#30921c93683e" target="_blank">Ethan C. Siegel</a>, for example, published an article on <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/26/we-have-already-entered-the-sixth-and-final-era-of-our-universe/#7072d52d4e5d" target="_blank"><em>Medium</em></a> last June called "We Have Already Entered The Sixth And Final Era Of Our Universe." Nonetheless, many astronomers find the quintet a useful way of discuss such an extraordinarily vast amount of time.</p>The Primordial era
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwMTEyMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNjEzMjY1OX0.PRpvAoa99qwsDNprDme9tBWDim6mS7Mjx6IwF60fSN8/img.jpg?width=980" id="db4eb" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0e568b0cc12ed624bb8d7e5ff45882bd" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="1049" />Image source: Sagittarius Production/Shutterstock
<p> This is where the universe begins, though what came before it and where it came from are certainly still up for discussion. It begins at the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago. </p><p> For the first little, and we mean <em>very</em> little, bit of time, spacetime and the laws of physics are thought not yet to have existed. That weird, unknowable interval is the <a href="https://www.universeadventure.org/eras/era1-plankepoch.htm" target="_blank">Planck Epoch</a> that lasted for 10<sup>-44</sup> seconds, or 10 million of a trillion of a trillion of a trillionth of a second. Much of what we currently believe about the Planck Epoch eras is theoretical, based largely on a hybrid of general-relativity and quantum theories called quantum gravity. And it's all subject to revision. </p><p> That having been said, within a second after the Big Bang finished Big Banging, inflation began, a sudden ballooning of the universe into 100 trillion trillion times its original size. </p><p> Within minutes, the plasma began cooling, and subatomic particles began to form and stick together. In the 20 minutes after the Big Bang, atoms started forming in the super-hot, fusion-fired universe. Cooling proceeded apace, leaving us with a universe containing mostly 75% hydrogen and 25% helium, similar to that we see in the Sun today. Electrons gobbled up photons, leaving the universe opaque. </p><p> About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe had cooled enough that the first stable atoms capable of surviving began forming. With electrons thus occupied in atoms, photons were released as the background glow that astronomers detect today as cosmic background radiation. </p><p> Inflation is believed to have happened due to the remarkable overall consistency astronomers measure in cosmic background radiation. Astronomer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGCVTSQw7WU" target="_blank">Phil Plait</a> suggests that inflation was like pulling on a bedsheet, suddenly pulling the universe's energy smooth. The smaller irregularities that survived eventually enlarged, pooling in denser areas of energy that served as seeds for star formation—their gravity pulled in dark matter and matter that eventually coalesced into the first stars. </p>The Stelliferous era
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwMTEzNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMjA0OTcwMn0.GVCCFbBSsPdA1kciHivFfWlegOfKfXUfEtFKEF3otQg/img.jpg?width=980" id="bc650" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c8f86bf160ecdea6b330f818447393cd" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="481" data-height="720" />Image source: Casey Horner/unsplash
<p>The era we know, the age of stars, in which most matter existing in the universe takes the form of stars and galaxies during this active period. </p><p>A star is formed when a gas pocket becomes denser and denser until it, and matter nearby, collapse in on itself, producing enough heat to trigger nuclear fusion in its core, the source of most of the universe's energy now. The first stars were immense, eventually exploding as supernovas, forming many more, smaller stars. These coalesced, thanks to gravity, into galaxies.</p><p>One axiom of the Stelliferous era is that the bigger the star, the more quickly it burns through its energy, and then dies, typically in just a couple of million years. Smaller stars that consume energy more slowly stay active longer. In any event, stars — and galaxies — are coming and going all the time in this era, burning out and colliding.</p><p>Scientists predict that our Milky Way galaxy, for example, will crash into and combine with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy in about 4 billion years to form a new one astronomers are calling the Milkomeda galaxy.</p><p>Our solar system may actually survive that merger, amazingly, but don't get too complacent. About a billion years later, the Sun will start running out of hydrogen and begin enlarging into its red giant phase, eventually subsuming Earth and its companions, before shrining down to a white dwarf star.</p>The Degenerate era
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwMTE1MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTk3NDQyN30.gy4__ALBQrdbdm-byW5gQoaGNvFTuxP5KLYxEMBImNc/img.jpg?width=980" id="77f72" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="08bb56ea9fde2cee02d63ed472d79ca3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="810" />Image source: Diego Barucco/Shutterstock/Big Think
<p>Next up is the Degenerate era, which will begin about 1 quintillion years after the Big Bang, and last until 1 duodecillion after it. This is the period during which the remains of stars we see today will dominate the universe. Were we to look up — we'll assuredly be outta here long before then — we'd see a much darker sky with just a handful of dim pinpoints of light remaining: <a href="https://earthsky.org/space/evaporating-giant-exoplanet-white-dwarf-star" target="_blank">white dwarfs</a>, <a href="https://earthsky.org/space/new-observations-where-stars-end-and-brown-dwarfs-begin" target="_blank">brown dwarfs</a>, and <a href="https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/definition-what-is-a-neutron-star" target="_blank">neutron stars</a>. These"degenerate stars" are much cooler and less light-emitting than what we see up there now. Occasionally, star corpses will pair off into orbital death spirals that result in a brief flash of energy as they collide, and their combined mass may become low-wattage stars that will last for a little while in cosmic-timescale terms. But mostly the skies will be be bereft of light in the visible spectrum.</p><p>During this era, small brown dwarfs will wind up holding most of the available hydrogen, and black holes will grow and grow and grow, fed on stellar remains. With so little hydrogen around for the formation of new stars, the universe will grow duller and duller, colder and colder.</p><p>And then the protons, having been around since the beginning of the universe will start dying off, dissolving matter, leaving behind a universe of subatomic particles, unclaimed radiation…and black holes.</p>The Black Hole era
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwMTE2MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMjE0OTQ2MX0.ifwOQJgU0uItiSRg9z8IxFD9jmfXlfrw6Jc1y-22FuQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="103ea" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f0e6a71dacf95ee780dd7a1eadde288d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1400" data-height="787" />Image source: Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock/Big Think
<p> For a considerable length of time, black holes will dominate the universe, pulling in what mass and energy still remain. </p><p> Eventually, though, black holes evaporate, albeit super-slowly, leaking small bits of their contents as they do. Plait estimates that a small black hole 50 times the mass of the sun would take about 10<sup>68</sup> years to dissipate. A massive one? A 1 followed by 92 zeros. </p><p> When a black hole finally drips to its last drop, a small pop of light occurs letting out some of the only remaining energy in the universe. At that point, at 10<sup>92</sup>, the universe will be pretty much history, containing only low-energy, very weak subatomic particles and photons. </p>The Dark Era
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwMTE5NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0Mzg5OTEyMH0.AwiPRGJlGIcQjjSoRLi6V3g5klRYtxQJIpHFgZdZkuo/img.jpg?width=980" id="60c77" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7a857fb7f0d85cf4a248dbb3350a6e1c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="810" />Image source: Big Think
<p>We can sum this up pretty easily. Lights out. Forever.</p>Dark energy: The apocalyptic wild card of the universe
Dr. Katie Mack explains what dark energy is and two ways it could one day destroy the universe.
- The universe is expanding faster and faster. Whether this acceleration will end in a Big Rip or will reverse and contract into a Big Crunch is not yet understood, and neither is the invisible force causing that expansion: dark energy.
- Physicist Dr. Katie Mack explains the difference between dark matter, dark energy, and phantom dark energy, and shares what scientists think the mysterious force is, its effect on space, and how, billions of years from now, it could cause peak cosmic destruction.
- The Big Rip seems more probable than a Big Crunch at this point in time, but scientists still have much to learn before they can determine the ultimate fate of the universe. "If we figure out what [dark energy is] doing, if we figure out what it's made of, how it's going to change in the future, then we will have a much better idea for how the universe will end," says Mack.
Astrophysicists find unique "hot Jupiter" planet without clouds
A unique exoplanet without clouds or haze was found by astrophysicists from Harvard and Smithsonian.
Illustration of WASP-62b, the Jupiter-like planet without clouds or haze in its atmosphere.
- Astronomers from Harvard and Smithsonian find a very rare "hot Jupiter" exoplanet without clouds or haze.
- Such planets were formed differently from others and offer unique research opportunities.
- Only one other such exoplanet was found previously.
Munazza Alam – a graduate student at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Credit: Jackie Faherty
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