How Many Flashcards Are You Away From Mastery?
Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m a flashcard freak. I buy them by the thousands.
Over the last 25 years, I’ve memorized exactly 52,327. That number is as of Feb 17, 2020. I can see a stack of 30 or so that I still have to enter for today.
Obsessive or a life long habit that has made me money?
When I’m faced with mastering any new subject, I think in terms of flashcards. Which translates into:
How many facts do I need to understand to be able to accomplish something?
HTML: less than 200
CSS: around 400
Most programming languages: 600 to 1000
Then I decide on a pace. 10 a day, 20 a day, or whatever I think I can choke down.
I will buy 2 or 3 books or find online documentation.
Then begins the sweat and tears. I go through the source material looking for information that I need to be able to retain to master the subject.
Each fact gets a shiny new flashcard.
Low tech way utilizes just the flashcard. High tech way is entering them into software that does interval training if I need to retain over the long haul.
How many broke entrepreneurs have I met that can’t build a product? Many of them will tell me that learning to code isn’t a good use of their time. I guess my time isn’t worth as much as theirs?
I had to teach myself how to build our first product (grew into Match.com.) I wasn’t born a great programmer. But when I analyzed the effort to learn how to code versus waiting for someone to throw money at me, it was obvious that I could learn how to do it faster.
At 20 facts a day, you could master any programming language in less than 2 months!
Of course, there is more to it than just memorizing the facts. It takes practice and time. But that is the price it takes to turn your dreams into reality.
I’m currently learning art history as a side project. Here is how I broke down the process:
- There are probably close to 300 artists that make up the Western canon.
- If I learned 4 paintings per artist, enough to get a feel for their work.
- That would be 1,200 paintings to learn in all. Seems overwhelming if you tackled it all at once
- But at 8 per day, I’m 150 days away from being able to walk into most museums and understand who I’m looking at.
How many flashcards stand in between you and building your dream?
