Learning How To Learn – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

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The real failure of our education system

The biggest thing our education system fails to teach is how to learn. Not what to learn. How.

From day one, the expectation is set: get a degree, get a job, earn money. Nobody teaches you how to develop curiosity. Nobody teaches you how to pick up a new skill on your own. Nobody teaches you discipline as a learning tool.

After speaking with hundreds of people across freelancing groups, Discord communities, and my own social circle, the pattern is clear. Most graduates from our local education system don’t know how to learn effectively. They either lack direction, lack passion, or are stuck in jobs that leave them no room to grow. And the cultural default doesn’t help. People expect to be spoon-fed. They join a group or buy a course and believe that alone makes them competent.

It doesn’t.

Diversify before you specialize

Before we get into the how, let’s talk about the what.

If you’re technical, learn soft skills. Communication. Sales. Marketing. If you’re non-technical, learn something technical. Basic web development. Design tools. Automation. The point is to build a complementary skill set that makes you more versatile and more valuable.

You don’t need to become an expert in everything. You need to understand enough to connect the dots across disciplines. That’s what separates people who grow from people who plateau.

Method 1: Courses, but with conditions

Courses are the obvious starting point, and also the most abused one. The market is flooded with them. Most are mediocre. Some are outright scams. But a few are genuinely worth your time.

LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning remains one of the highest ROI platforms for structured learning. It offers curated learning paths across a wide range of skills, combining hours of video with exercises and assessments. The cost has gone up due to currency fluctuations, but compared to platforms like Coursera or Udemy, the return is still strong.

As an early professional, investing in your own skills will outperform any savings account or financial instrument. Eighty hours a month spent learning compounds faster than anything sitting in a bank.

Creator-led courses

A creator is someone who produces content for a specific audience or around a specific problem. Chris Do for design and marketing. Alex Hormozi for sales. Vinh Giang for communications. Aatir Abdul Rauf and Aakash Gupta for product management. These people share knowledge freely because they’ve lived it.

Before you buy a creator’s course, follow them for a while. Consume their free content. See if it resonates. A good creator-led course is a comprehensive package of their knowledge and experience, focused on teaching you a skill, not promising you money. If the pitch is “make 50,000 rupees a month with this course,” walk away.

And if you’re in Pakistan and the price is out of reach, reach out directly. Message them on LinkedIn or Twitter. Explain your situation and ask if they offer purchasing power parity pricing. Many do. You’d be surprised how many creators are willing to make their work accessible if you just ask.

Method 2: Knowledge curation

This is the most underrated form of learning. Passive, consistent exposure to high-quality information over time.

Curate your feeds

Your social media is either teaching you or distracting you. There’s no middle ground.

On Twitter, use the Lists feature. Create lists around specific topics, like Pakistan’s economy, or product management, or frontend development. When you open that list, you only see content about that topic. Over time, you build real understanding without trying.

On LinkedIn, unfollow everyone. Then selectively re-follow thought leaders and creators in your field. LinkedIn’s top voice badges can help you identify people worth following. The goal is a feed that works for you, not against you.

Embrace long-form content

Short-form content gives you dopamine. Long-form content gives you knowledge. TikToks and YouTube Shorts are entertainment disguised as education. They shrink your attention span and teach you almost nothing.

Podcasts are the antidote. They offer depth, context, and nuance that a 60-second clip never will. Shows like WAN Show, Waveform, ATP.fm, and Decoder have been some of my biggest sources of passive tech knowledge. Despite not being a developer, the hours I spent listening to these allowed me to hold informed conversations with software engineers, sometimes even challenging them on technical points.

Make podcasts part of your routine. Commutes, workouts, chores. That dead time becomes learning time.

Books and long-form articles deserve the same treatment. One substantial read per week changes how you think over the course of a year.

Method 3: Learning by execution

This is the most effective method and the one most people avoid.

Courses teach you concepts. Execution teaches you reality. The gap between “I understand how this works” and “I’ve actually done this” is where real skill lives.

Start with a question

What do you want to learn? Be specific. Then define a clear output. Not “I want to learn web development.” Instead: “I want to build a functional portfolio site using WordPress within two weeks.”

Practical examples

Want to learn web development? Start with Wix. Build something simple. Then move to WordPress. The SK NEXUS website was built this way, with no advanced coding knowledge. Hands-on work taught what no course could.

Want to learn podcasting? Record an episode. Edit it in Audacity. It will be rough. Do it again. By the tenth episode, you’ll be competent. This podcast was recorded and edited by me, learning as I went.

Want to learn project management? Pick a tool like Notion or Basecamp. Use it to manage a real project, even a personal one. The tool teaches you the discipline.

Use roadmaps

If you don’t know where to start, search for roadmaps related to your skill. A writing roadmap. A frontend development roadmap. These break a large skill into smaller, sequential steps. Follow the steps. Execute each one. If you can’t find a roadmap, build your own by breaking the skill into manageable chunks.

Define your output clearly

“I want to get better at writing” is vague. “I will write ten articles of 1,500 words each over the next two months” is actionable. Specificity creates accountability. Set a number, set a deadline, and work toward it.

Consistency beats intensity

Ten minutes a day beats three hours once a week. Every time. If you can’t write today, brainstorm ideas. If you can’t code today, read documentation. Stay in contact with your project daily, even in small ways. Consistency builds the habit. The habit builds the skill.

If you struggle with consistency, read Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s one of the most practical books on building systems that stick.

The problem with ad-boosted courses

A quick note on something that needs to be said. The course market in Pakistan is increasingly driven by paid ads. Someone runs a Facebook or Instagram campaign promising career transformation, and people buy based on the promise, not the substance.

Most of these courses are not good. They’re built to sell, not to teach. The creators behind them often lack real-world experience, and the content is repackaged from free resources available online.

Before you spend money on any course, ask yourself three questions. Has this person built something real? Is the free content they share already valuable? Is the course focused on skill-building or money-making promises?

If the answers don’t line up, save your money.

Put it all together

Courses give you structure. Knowledge curation gives you context. Execution gives you skill. All three work together, but if you had to pick one, pick execution. Build something. Ship something. Learn from the mess of doing it wrong the first time.

A focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius. Pick your project. Stay consistent. Let the learning happen through the work.

With or without my help – I wish you the best.

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