(If you haven’t already—read part one of this series: Hack your mind to learn insanely fast as it covers the important basic concepts of meta-learning that I build on top of here.)
There are 3 types of people in the world:
1. Those who are good at math.
2. Those who aren't.
Go back and read that again.
You get it now?
This is a common belief many people hold: "You're either good at [insert subject] or you’re not."
People who sprout this nonsense, love chalk it up to natural talent, luck, or some mystical gift that all intelligent people are born with.
But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
"Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not."
You learn early on in life which subjects you’re good at based on how well you performed in school on them.
The experience and emotions you captured while you were studying those subjects played a key role in how to learn to associate with the subject.
And these early associations attach onto you as you grow older.
For example:
From what I've noticed, most people who grow up with a strong distaste for math in school also end up struggling at physics in college.
Why? It's because physics is just applied math on to the real world.
It's also because both are conceptually heavy subjects—
While it's easy to imagine adding 2 apples that Timmy gave you to the 3 that you already have, it becomes much harder to imagine when—wait for it— the 3 apples turn into a 3i, an imaginary number—you see what I did there?
If you didn't build a strong understanding of the basics early on or your teacher only cared about how well you can punch in numbers in a formula using a $150 calculator— you probably didn’t learn anything and can’t build on top of the basics to form more complex ideas.
"Nothing taught by force stays in the soul." — Plato
— #Ryan Holiday (#@RyanHoliday)
2:00 PM • Jan 18, 2025
All that is to say that,
You created barriers that limit your intelligence because you failed to grasp ideas and connect them in useful ways.
So, let me teach you how to learn the right way.
The way in which you'll not only be able to learn skills in one domain, but also be able to transfer and adapt those skills to any new domain and come up with unique ideas and solutions.
In fact, this is how people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and many other entrepreneurs and geniuses are able to get good at anything they set their minds to.
This is meta-learning, a skill essential for a polymath or anyone looking to think more intelligent ideas.
Chunking
Chunking is what allows you to connect the dots and start to think creatively—being able to draw knowledge and seamlessly transfer between different concepts and skills.
Imagine solving a fun little jigsaw puzzle.
Now imagine if the pieces were all smooth without the interlocking edges.
Not so fun now, is it?
Not only are you missing important context that gives you information on the overall picture, but you’re also missing the connection that combines those individual pieces of information together.
Chunking is taking mental leaps that combine seemingly random pieces of information together.
Inside the brain, you’re building a network of neurons that learn to "fire" or associate closely to one another.
So,
Let's talk about how to actually build these chunks.
Bottom-Up Approach
This is one of the two approaches that are crucial for gaining mastery over any mental concepts.
There are 3 simple steps to this:
Focus Your Attention: Give your undivided attention to the material to avoid distractions and form strong neural connections. Remember, your working memory is limited, so you need to be in focus mode throughout this process.
Understand the Basics: Grasp the main idea or concept to create meaningful connections and avoid forming useless chunks, i.e., use diffuse mode.
If you don’t understand how a hammer works, you might try to screw in a nail or swing it the wrong way.
Just because you see it or even that you understand it, it doesn't mean that you can actually do it.
Only doing it yourself will create the neural patterns that underlie true mastery.
This is why step 3 is the most crucial. And where most people fail.
Gain Context: Practice and see where and when the chunk does and doesn't apply, to connect it to the bigger picture for mastery.
A hammer is great for nails, but you wouldn’t use it to fix a leaky pipe. Even if you know how the hammer works, you still need to know when not to use it.
Now, the second and equally important is the top-down approach, or as I like to call it:
Reverse Engineering
I'll use the puzzle analogy again here:
Priming (See the Whole Puzzle): Imagine you have a picture of the completed puzzle on the box. This represents the "big picture" of what you're trying to learn. By studying the image first, you get an overall idea of how the pieces fit together.
Identify Key Areas (Break Down the Picture): Don't worry about the details here. Focus on the main sections of the puzzle, like grouping all the edge pieces or separating parts by color. These sections represent the major concepts or core ideas in the material you're learning.
Fill in the Details (Put the Pieces Together): Once the main sections are clear, you start filling in the smaller details, connecting individual pieces to complete the picture. This mirrors learning specific skills or concepts that fit into the larger framework.
Think Week: Building Your Mental Library
At this point, you might be wondering—how do the skills of chunking connect to real life? How do you use them to fuel creativity and generate groundbreaking ideas?
Let me introduce you to a practice that ties everything together: Think Week.
Think Week was popularized by Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg as a way to disconnect from the distractions of daily life and focus entirely on thinking, brainstorming, and planning.
Gates famously retreated to a cabin twice a year, armed with books, papers, and his thoughts. These weeks were when many of his most important ideas and insights came to life.
But Think Week isn’t just about sitting in isolation. It’s about creating the mental space to build and connect chunks of knowledge in ways you hadn’t seen before.
It's used to hold many and varied ideas during one time.
It’s the perfect environment for a polymath to expand their mental library, allowing them to develop creative solutions and new perspectives by drawing on seemingly unrelated disciplines/chunks.
The Bigger Your Chunked Library, the Better You Solve Problems
If chunking is building a toolbox of skills?
Then Think Week is the time when you organize that toolbox and figure out how to combine tools in new and creative ways.
The more chunks you’ve built through bottom-up learning and reverse engineering, the bigger your "mental library" becomes.
For example:
Bill Gates didn’t just focus on programming— he spent time learning about business, design, and public health. His broad mental library allowed him to make connections across these fields, shaping Microsoft and his later philanthropic work. If you've seen him on social media, you'll know how much he's still actively pursuing knowledge in vast domains.
Steve Jobs famously drew on his knowledge of calligraphy, industrial design, and psychology to create Apple’s groundbreaking user interfaces that are still at the core of Apple's design philosophy.
These innovators weren’t born with mystical talents; they built mental libraries full of diverse chunks and practiced transferring knowledge between domains.
Transferring Chunks: The Polymath’s Superpower
Here’s the key insight:
Mastery doesn’t just come from building chunks in one area—it comes from learning how to transfer those chunks into new contexts.
When you solve puzzles in different areas, you start noticing patterns—like realizing that speed of an object in physics is just applied math, connecting numbers and calculus to motion in the real world.
For a polymath, this ability to transfer knowledge across fields is the ultimate superpower. It’s what allows you to connect dots others can’t even see.
How to Use Your Own Think Week
You don’t need to be a billionaire with a budget to retreat to the Bahamas to take advantage of a Think Week. Here’s how you can start from your room:
Disconnect from Daily Distractions: Leave behind your phone, social media, and routine tasks. Create an environment where your mind can focus entirely on thinking. I like to do this every morning when there are no distractions or social obligations and my mind is a clean slate.
Focus on a Few Big Questions: What do you want to learn? What problems do you want to solve? What skills or ideas do you want to explore?
Read and Reflect: Use this time to consume knowledge—books, research, articles—but don’t stop there. Reflect on how these ideas connect to what you already know.
Write and Plan: Jot down your thoughts, ideas, and connections. Plan out how you can apply these insights to your personal or professional life. For me, it's writing this newsletter ;)
The best part about this is that it doesn't have to be a week.
In fact, ONE "Think Hour" daily is enough to start making serious progress in building your mental library of chunks.
The bigger your chunked library, the better you can figure out solutions, learn anything you desire, and think like a genius seamlessly.
This is how you take ideas and scale them to intelligence.
That's it for now,
This concludes part two.
New topic next week. (hint: create)
Thanks for reading, if you liked it share it with a friend :)
—Mudit
🧠 Weekly Mind Byte:
A person who doesn’t know what the universe is, doesn’t know where they are. A person who doesn’t know their purpose in life doesn’t know who they are or what the universe is. A person who doesn’t know any one of these things doesn’t know why they are here. So what to make of people who seek or avoid the praise of those who have no knowledge of where or who they are?
-
Who are you? Why are you here? What do you do?
We hear these questions every day and rarely stop to think of them more than just superficial questions and proceed to reply with answers of low substance. This made me realize how distracted we can become in life by chasing lesser things that we don't even know what we stand for when asked at gunpoint.
We should all take time in our lives to ponder and find clarity in these questions.
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