My Learning Trajectory, Chapter One: Books, Courses, Total Worth, and Total Hours
By: John Von Neumann Ii
Tags: Course, Reading, Autobiography, Books, Learning

My Learning Trajectory, Chapter One: Books, Courses, Total Worth, and Total Hours

How I acquired all my knowledge with “only” 1074 hours and saved myself more than €1000

Key words and ideas

Amount of books read, total hours spent on reading books, courses and spaced repetition, and total worth in money; Distinguishing between deliberate and non-deliberate practice.

Foreword

I have tried to quantify the amount of hours and money spent on books and courses since the year 2015. I will write them down here together with my thoughts about the numbers. All the things I have written in this autobiography is thanks to everything I have quantified in this chapter, or at least, 90% of everything I have written about. My behavior of quantifying things is meant to give me a perspective how efficient and how much time I spent acquiring all my knowledge.

Books read and total hours

Since the year 2015, I have read a total of 47 books, the majority of which are read in the year 2018–2019, because of the lack of public school (school ≠ education). My current goal is to read approximately 20 books a year, although more is always welcome. They mostly consist of nonfiction, scientific or research books. You can see all the books I have read by either googling “Goodreads, Lorenz Duremdes” or going to this link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/83183601-lorenz-duremdes?shelf=read

Because they are mostly scientific or research books, I estimate it takes me around 10 hours to read one book, coupled with the fact that I tend to memorize them as much as possible, something I achieve with help from the website called ‘Quizlet’, that brings me to 14 hours. It takes around 30 minutes to complete one Quizlet ‘set’, which I spread over a 2 to 3 year time with spaced repetition for a frequency of 7 times, and 30 minutes multiplied by 7 divided 60 minutes (an hour), will get you 3.5 hours or approximately 4. You can see my Quizlet profile with this link: https://quizlet.com/WilliamJamesSidis

47 books multiplied by 14 hours gives us 658 hours of deliberate practice.

P.S. my Quizlet spaced repetition schedule in days is: 7 > 14 > 28 > 60 > 120 > 240 > 365

Books read and total worth

Now onto their total worth in terms of money. I do keep track of it in my google sheets document, and currently all my 47 books are worth approximately €763.98. Now, I used the word ‘approximately’, because here is the plot twist: I actually paid 0 euros for all my 47 books. I do tend to look on websites like Amazon all the time how much a book is worth, while reading. Another way is to say an average book costs approximately €15, multiply that number with 47 and you get €720, a number close to my own approximation.

Courses: total hours and worth

As of the year 2019, I have followed four courses:

Finance Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects Science of Exercise Existential Well-being Counseling: A Person-centered Experiential Approach

Together, they are worth approximately €337 and require 272 hours.

If we add the hours spent on spaced repetition on Quizlet, we get 288 hours. Again, I have spent 0 euros to gain all this knowledge, because I am counting how much the certificates would cost (which is optional after completion).

Total hours writing

Another way to gain knowledge and to learn is to write, namely this autobiography in my case. It takes around 2 hours for me to write one chapter and have written 64 chapters including this one so far, which brings me to 128 hours.

Bonus: spent time in the ‘gym’

So this subchapter is more of a bonus since I want to use this chapter to explain how I gathered all the knowledge of this autobiography, the time it took and potential money it would cost.

I have been going to the ‘gym’, or rather, my own home gym since the year 2016. I try to train 6 times a week, but let’s count deload weeks and times of sickness into the equation too and it becomes more like 4 days a week on average. I spend around 30 minutes to 2 hours in the gym depending on how I feel, so that’s an average of one hour. The calculation over 3 years time becomes: 1 hour multiplied by 4 days multiplied by 52 weeks in a year multiplied by 3 years = 624 hours.

Deliberate practice: total time and worth

So putting the time spent on reading books, courses, and writing time together, we get 658 hours plus 288 hours plus 128 hours = 1074 hours of deliberate practice.

The total worth would be: €763.98 plus €337 = €1100,98. Again, I have spent 0 euros on this all.

Non-deliberate practice: total time

What I would see as non-deliberate practice that still adds to my knowledge base are things like gaming, reading random articles without trying to memorize everything, watching documentaries, daydreaming, etc. Let’s say the time spent on non-deliberate practice, that also happens to be effective, is ¼ of the time spent on deliberate practice. This gives us the number 268.5 hours. Together with total time spent on deliberate practice, we get 1342.5 hours.

Bonus: total total time and average time spent every day

Now, if we want to count gym time too, we get 1966.5 hours over 3 years time (2016–2019). Divide this number by 3 years and 365 days, and we get approximately 1.8 hours of personal development every day. That’s not a lot, but the majority (like 80% in the area of courses and books) of it is spent when I finished high school. It reminds me of this quote:

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” ―Mark Twain

Subscribe for more content: https://mailchi.mp/261ae9e13883/autibiography