#33. Why and How to Become a Winning Autodidact

From now on (July ’26), self-learners (autodidacts) will win the lifetime, engaged, employment game. The pace of technology-driven change is accelerating faster than the average worker and company can adapt. Those who can continually - learn, unlearn and relearn- better than average will be in constant, short-supply for big, employment demand. Continually learning and reskilling people and companies will thrive.

What percent of the population are autodidacts? Historically, about 6%. But, lifetime learning isn’t an all or nothing trait. Most claim to “learn something new every day”. Although learning new trivia is fun, what’s needed is deep knowledge and application skills that are valued and in short supply.

Although reskilling education resources are typically on-line and often free, how many people:

• Have the curiosity to seek out digital-educational resources?
   
• Have the discipline to deliberately practice new skills to an effective level?
   
• Can close the gap between knowing – what, why and how – to reskill and mastering the new skills?  Know How is not Can Do.
   
• And, will then be able to coach followers - kids, students, employees, etc. – to become autodidacts too?

Overarching the mastery of specific new skills, there are some meta-skills that must also be mastered including:

1. Self-awareness to reduce any inner self-limiting, can’t-do, don’t-want-to-do brakes.
    
2. Mastering the process of mastery to achieve levels of habitual, valued excellence.
    
3. Continuous improvement of pro-social emotional skills
    
4. Growing the ultimate skill of  “practical wisdom” which emerges from having many sub-skills.

With AI we won’t have a knowledge need, but rather shortages of social-coaching and wisdom.   

Traditional schools are already too slow to change and expensive. They continue to dispense knowledge to be memorized for tests. New in-demand skills will be acquired by: continuously learning/practicing on and off the job using your AI tutors; and attending intense, focused, boot camps and on-line courses that award micro-credential degrees.

To begin the process of becoming a more effective autodidact and then a coach for your followers, google/AI these prompts:

1. Why and how will autodidacts win big now and in the future?
    
2. How does curiosity drop with age and what can young adults do to increase it?
    
3. What is “deliberate practice”?
    
4. Why is the know-how, can-do gap growing?
    
5. How can a person increase their self-awareness?
    
6. How can you master the process of mastery?
    
7. What is a list of pro-social emotional skills?
    
8. What are all of the elements that add up to practical wisdom?
    
9. How can -parents, teachers, and employers - help their followers to become better self-learning and reskilling individuals?

And, check out my blogs at merrifield (.com) which are substantially about mastering the meta-skills mentioned above.