My 5 step-system to balance your multiple interests

Self-education is an intrinsically valuable part of life.

But it can also be a strategic means to a new one—a life more aligned with your interests and values.

Education, after all, is transformative.

It changes you into a wiser, more knowledgeable, more skilled person. And this development can give you more control over the details of your life: what you do for work, how much you earn, what you don’t have to do, etc.

Self-education is what turned Jack London from a broke oyster pirate into a successful author. It’s what turned Abraham Lincoln into the president of the United States.

Long ago, autodidact stories like these inspired me to try it out, and what did I discover?

A commitment to self-education has helped me achieve more meaningful results in my life than my formal education ever did.

Over the last five years, I’ve used self-education to teach myself to write, start a succesful B2B writing business, become an expert in autodidactism (w/14,000+ subs), and gain foundational knowledge in subjects like literature and political philosophy.

I think it’s the best change-maker there is.

Now, if you want to use self-education to transform your life, you need to answer 2 big questions:

• What life do I want to live?

• What skills and subjects, if learned, will help me attain it?

But, if you are anything like me, you will run into a slight problem…

And if you pursue them all with the same level of intensity, you’ll spread yourself thin, never gaining genuine expertise in the disciplines that matter most for lifestyle design.

At first, you might think, “I’ll become hyper-fixated on one interest.”

But for many multipassionates this will be hard to stick to. A variety of interests is what makes life so thrilling—to sacrifice them to the altar of specialization is to sacrifice parts of yourself.

So, you need not throw them all away; you need a way to prioritize them.

Below, I’ll share the bones of my system (aka The Lifelong Learning Compass) for designing a self-education plan that helps you attain the life you want, while also balancing your multiple interests across 3 different tiers of learning—the highest receiving the most attention and the lowest the least.

The result: an education that is simultaneously broad and deep, practical and impractical, skill-based and knowledge-based.

First, a quick announcement (ignore it if you don’t want a promotion)

A month ago, I took everything I’ve learned about self-education—all the mistakes I made, lessons I learned, and tactics I discovered—and put it into an ebook called The Lifelong Learning Compass: Design and Navigate a Well-Rounded Self-Education.

In the ebook, I go in-depth (132 pages in depth) into the 5-part self-education system I’m previewing today, as well as the philosophy behind it.

You’ll also get:

• The 4 tiers of learning (and why the best self-education plans include all of them)

• Full system for designing a transformative self-education plan

• Self-study tactics to master a discipline

• How & why to become well-read

• Methods for prioritizing your hundreds of interests

• A template for creating your own Lifelong Learning Compass

So, if you want to turn your wide-ranging curiosity into a personalized self-education plan that helps you reach big life goals, whether that’s changing careers, starting a business, or excelling in your field—while managing multiple interests—grab it here:

Get The Lifelong Learning Compass

And if you like workbooks, I also have an ebook bundle option, which comes with a 71-page printable or fillable workbook that’ll walk you through the process of making your self-education plan.

Alright, let’s get into the guide.

Education is a vehicle.

It’s meant to take you somewhere.

It’s meant to help you gain skills, knowledge, and wisdom that helps you attain meaningful outcomes and potentially make a positive impact on the world.

While there should be time devoted to the contemplative life for it’s own sake, if you are to design a self-education plan, you are likely trying to go somewhere—shape yourself and thus your life in some way.

This could even mean using self-education to learn a skill that allows you to spend more of your time engaging in the contemplative life you so enjoy (part of why I learned writing/online business).

Anyways, what I’m driving at is this:

Before you can create a long-term curriculum for yourself, start by defining what you want your life to look like in 5 years.

This is known as lifestyle centric planning, an idea I got from Cal Newport’s blog post.

Ask yourself:

• What do I want to spend my workdays doing?

• How do I want to spend my leisure time?

• What is my dream career?

• Where do I live?

• What does my family look like?

• How am I involved in the community?

Then, write up a few paragraphs describing your ideal lifestyle.

Here’s mine as an example:

I am a writer and polymathic thinker with a well-rounded education, especially in classic literature and any subject related to my core creative project, Knowledge Lust, and any other novels or books I write.

I earn six figures from my writing across my books, digital products, substack subscriptions, and YouTube channel. I spend the majority of my work day writing essays and fiction, reading books, taking notes, thinking, and studying/mastering my craft.

I make enough money to raise a family and travel a few times per year. We live in a house with a nice yard and close access to nature. The major priority is not to get ridiculously rich (though that’d be a nice perk). It’s for me, my wife, and one day my children, to be able to relentlessly and freely pursue our curiosity, in and out of work.

As for community involvement, I help autodidacts, lifelong learners, and aspiring intellectual creatives learn more effectively, read books more deeply, and lead a more fulfilling life of the mind. I also teach writing and classic literature locally, or online.

For recreation, I spend time with my family, often in nature, pursuing hobbies like running, backpacking, and hiking. I spend time each week socializing with friends, goofing off and talking about anything from hilarious stories to ideas, literature, history, marketing, and politics.

Depending on how practically-minded you are, and how quickly you wish to attain this reality, this lifestyle destination will guide the creation of your self-education plan.

Not all the subjects and skills you pick must serve it (about half mine do), but, if you want to reach the destination, some should, especially this first and most critical dimension of learning: mastery.

We should all aim to become absurdly good at something.

The quest of mastery injects meaning into our lives, forces us to grow, and opens opportunities—if you’re good at something, people will give you stuff.

I can attest to this from experience.

Committing to mastering the craft of writing is the single most important thing I did when trying to change my life as a burnt-out, aimless sales rep.

By constantly forcing me out of my comfort zone, this ongoing mastery quest has helped me build transferable skills like discipline and confidence, while providing me with a skill—writing—that helped me earn a living in a way that felt right.

So, what skill, artform, subject, or craft do you want to become exceptionally good at?

Painting, finance, logistics, literary criticism, philosophy, teaching, car mechanics, woodworking, running, cooking?

This “mastery discipline” will get the bulk of your attention in your self-education. You will use the most demanding self-study tactics to achieve it. It will take a lot of time (which is good, since the process itself is enjoyable).

So pick just one.

If lifestyle change is the goal, that’ll be the discipline that helps you reach your lifestyle destination, provided you are also naturally curious about it.

If someone wanted to have a lake-house ASAP, they might master tech sales. If they wanted to spend their days painting, they might master painting—or, perhaps first, a skill they can freelance and thus gain more free time to paint.

If you cannot decide just yet, run experiments. Explore then exploit. Sample a skill for a few months, then, if you find yourself obsessed, double down. If not, try another.

The person who says, “I want to get really freaking good at writing humorous personal essays over the next year” is going to have a much easier time than the person who says “I want to get really good at writing.”

They can focus on learning the techniques and concepts related to humor essays, ignoring things like copywriting, blog writing, and novel writing.

While I first wanted to master blog writing, now I’m trying to master fiction writing.

Here is where you will develop your mind and reshape your worldview through deep reading of a subject.

Whether it’s sociology, philosophy, astronomy, or something you wouldn’t find on an academic menu, like Nature vs Man or Autodidactism, pick 3 self-chosen majors to consistently read and study.

Your goal is to become highly knowledgable in these subjects—to gain a familiarity that stuns the average person and wins the respect of a scholar. Let’s say 50 books per subject (read well and pondered deeply).

You could pick subjects that relate to your lifestyle destination or support your quest for mastery.

For example, my erudition subjects:

• Classic literature: Helps me become a better writer. (related to mastery discipline)

• Autodidactism: Helps me write a newsletter that helps me earn a living via writing (related to lifestyle destination)

• US History: Totally unrelated but I love it and want to be a history buff.

You could just choose 1 or 2, but I like to choose 3 subjects because it allows me to read multiple books at once and I’m sort of unable to commit to studying just one subject for the long-term.

When it comes to balancing interests, there’s this concept I love called strategically underperforming.

In the context of self-education, I take it to mean picking some skills and subjects to learn but not try too hard to learn.

For example, I want to become good at cooking, but I’m not out here grinding and putting myself through challenging self-improvement programs like I am with my mastery discipline: writing. I just don’t have the time.

I’ll cook a new difficult meal that adds skills to my repertoire, now and then, and watch YouTube videos on it, but that’s about all. Maybe on summer I’ll take take a class, but, while feeding me and my wife is a priority, become a master chef is not. The focus is the biggest life-impacter (and the skill I love most): the writing.

These five skills and subjects, which I call Range Disciplines, will not so much help you reach some career goal (some of them can, of course). But moreso, they’re about adding fun side quests to your life and learning skills and subjects for the thrill of it.

It’s the learning for learning’s sake tier, sort of like the liberal arts component of your full self-education plan.

So pick some things that’ll bring joy to your life. Aim to get better at them over time, but don’t fret so much if you read a political philosophy book and forget most of it, or go play tennis and whiff 5 shots out of 10.

We can’t become great at everything all at once. Some things need to go on the back-burner.

This tier will allow you to keep learning your other interests without them distracting you too much from your mastery discipline—the real key to lifestyle change.

Now that you have a long term vision for the discipline you want to master, 1-3 subjects you want to become well-read in, and five skills and subjects you just want to learn for the fun of it, create your first self-education sprint.

I prefer 12 weeks since it’s long enough to achieve something amazing and short enough that you don’t procrastinate.

In the plan, include:

1. One big mastery discipline self-education project—one thing you’re going to do to dramatically improve in that mastery discipline. If you wanted to become great at cooking Mexican food, that might mean working through a cookbook. if you want to learn fiction writing, it might mean analyzing 12 great short stories, and writing 12 of your own.

2. One smaller project for erudition or range disciplines—for example, this summer I’m reading 4 novels about The American Dream to progress on my classic literature erudition goal.

3. Identify the daily habits necessary to complete the projects: Figure out which recurring tasks you need to do to complete the project.

4. Put these habits into an autopilot schedule: If you were learning to do edit videos, that might could setting aside time every morning before work to do one hour of editing.

By the end of the 12 weeks, you should have improved at a skill and expanded your mind, making you one step closer to leading the life you want.

If curiosity pulls you in another direction, feel free to take a short detour from your plan; however, vet it for what it is.

Often, curiosity can just be resistance disguised as interest—a distraction from your other more important learning goals.

By the way, this type of learning is a 4th tier of learning, “Just-In-Time Proficiency”, which I cover in the ebook.

I remember, at age 24, coming out of a period of self-education where I wrote dozens of crappy blog posts and ponderous essays, and studied hundreds of good ones.

Afterwards, when I began finally pitching freelance writing clients, I had samples to share, and was able to win a contract pretty quickly—well, they paid me 2 cents per word, but it was a start!

The first step in changing my life proved to be getting good at something new.

Self-education, and specifically a mastery quest, opened up new opportunities and, perhaps more importantly, filled my life with meaning. I knew where I wanted to go—to become a writer.

I finally felt like I had something worthwhile to chase. And it was a huge boon to my sense of satisfaction, purpose, and motivation.

I hope this system helps other multi-passionate autodidacts acquire the same sense of direction and finally manage all their interests.

If I could impart one thing, it’d be to prioritize that mastery quest.

Study other subjects. Go broad.

But remember, depth is where the best stuff starts to happen, whether that’s in a long-term relationship with a spouse or a with your workbench, canvas, word processor, or running shoes.

Happy studying :)

- Sam

(in case you missed the announcement—even though I shoved that thing in your face pretty early)

My ebook, The Lifelong Learning Compass, is out.

If you want to build a self-education plan that helps you transform your life and build an original, polymathic skillset and mind, grab the ebook here or the bundle here (workbook included).