The Personal Curriculum: the ultimate tool of self-education

The personal curriculum is how you'll take back control of your learning and actually feel smart again. Self-education is the only way to counter this collective lobotomy forced onto us by algorithms and digital noise. And it's the only way we'll become well-read, well-rounded people.

I've already been doing mine for months now, and it's great fun. And I want to share the whole five-step process with you. Everything from choosing topics to finding material, and even how you test yourself on the go. And believe me, it's not unrealistic. Like, I'm not asking you to shell out 3 hours every day here. That's just crazy. Even if you have a spare half an hour here and there, you'll find it will adapt to your needs perfectly.

But first, what is a personal curriculum and why should you make one? In classical Latin, ker meaning to run is where curriculum is derived from, which in turn means a running or a course, something you move forward through. In the modern sense, like in school or college, they are exactly that. They are a road map of learning that you move through and hopefully complete.

The problem is traditional curriculums often chain you down. And I don't want to be edgy and bash them too much, but it's kind of true. You have to do classes that you don't care about. Half the lectures feel like PowerPoint hell. And you always get these professors that just depressed to be honest. They have no energy. They're weary. They're completely devoid of passion. And in turn, you don't care about the class.

The personal curriculum, at least for me, removes these frustrating and rigid parts of traditional education. and it puts the control and the direction back into your hands. They are made by you for you. And this leads me to the final very important preamble of the video. And I'm serious, don't skip this, but do not copy this video because it's a personal curriculum for a reason. And while yes, I will show you my own and I will show you how you can make your own, it's just a guide at the end of the day because, you know, I may be the best YouTuber, fine, fair enough. But I'm not a prophet. I'm not God. I'm not this master of education. I'm kind of a [ __ ] to be honest. So, I'm not going to prescribe this as the system to end all systems and you know this will make you a master. This will make you a polymath. No, it won't.

And I actually want you to borrow elements you like. I want you to reject others you don't like and I want you to design it in a way that it serves you. Not me, not the next person, but you. This is also why I keep the setup as general as possible. I don't want to prescribe anything too specific onto you because how do I know it works? How do I know you'll like it? I don't. And I want you to have the liberty and the initiative to go out and make something that's yours and to fill in the blanks that I leave you. So, as you watch through each step, just remember that that it's a template and I want you to make something out of it rather than just copy it because who knows if that's going to work.

Step one is to choose the focus of a curriculum. Which topics and skills and problems do you actually want to cover? And believe me, there are no rules here. They can be as broad or as specific as you want and they don't have to be related to each other in any way. Now, you can choose more traditional topics like marine zoology or Victorian poetry, something you'd find in college, right? But if you have a more precise interest, your curiosity is a bit more unorthodox, maybe you can go for anything. You can go for art developments in Constantinople. You can go for chemical disasters or history. If that's your thing, whatever. Doesn't matter. Do it.

Now, I admit these can be tricky to choose. Like, it took me a good while to come up with my own list. And for that reason, I've made a few questions that can hopefully prompt you in the right direction. So, have a think about them. What subjects do you find yourself encountering that you wish you knew more about? What do you wish you were well-read in? What knowledge would impact your life more than any other? Which practical skills do you want to learn? Ones which make you more competent, happy, and fulfilled? What do you want to be seen as an authority on? What are you passionate about? What do you find yourself thinking about a lot? What obvious knowledge gaps do you have? What deficiencies embarrass you? And finally, what grand goals do you have? And which topics could serve as stepping stones for you to get there?

Based on some of these questions, after my pondering, this is the list I landed on. And don't worry, because this isn't definitive. You don't have to stick with it for good. You can change things. You can get rid of it completely, make a new one. Doesn't matter. If anything, it can and will change over time. Like mine has already changed within the past few months. That's normal. It's fine. Just have something to work with initially.

Now, fair enough if you want to skip this next part. But if you are still struggling to put together a list first, I understand it's difficult. But for that reason, I want to walk you through my own choices and the thought process behind them so that hopefully inspires you to, you know, go in the right direction and find your own subject. The backbone of my entire self-education is the Western canon. And if you're not familiar with it, it's a loose umbrella term for all of the high culture classics that have defined the course of European civilization, stretching back from thousands of years ago, by the way.

Now, I'm cheating here a bit if you can call it that, because this isn't just one topic. It covers everything. You have science from Darwin and Newton. You have poetry from Homer, lots of philosophy from the Frenchies, you have politics from Machiavelli and Hobbes, and maybe most importantly of all, you have lots of fantastic fiction. the literature we call literature. Now, this is the trunk of my curriculum because it covers the core of many different subjects, the the essentials, you could say. It's a wide but deep exposure. And I think even if you just did this, you'd end up pretty well-read. It's like the best humanity has to offer. And you know, someone's going to say, well, um, it's exclusionary. It doesn't cover the East. Yeah, I know. It's it's the Western canon. Give me a break. Okay.

Unlike the other topics coming up, this one is special because it's going to stay with me forever. I will always for the rest of my life be reading something from the Western canon and it's something that I don't really plan to finish ever. It's that vast of a mission of a quest and I chose this because I can't miss out on these books. I have to read these. I have to read Dostoevsky. I have to read uh Marcus Aurelius. I have to read these people and I can't wait for the right time in my curriculum to eventually get to them because they are they are the books and I want to get to them.

Next comes my history and I love history. End of that's enough for me. But to understand pretty much any modern issue or conflict or problem, you have to know the past. You have to. And that's why I stress history so much. It's where we came from. Now, I could pick from a million different topics, right? There's so much out there to learn. But to keep it simpler, I split my history into two. Something ancient and something more modern. And by the way, don't worry if you struggle with this problem of choosing because we will cover that later on. You'll see.

For the ancient side of things, I went with early Mesopotamia because it's where civilization began. And I think it makes it an important anchor point in the past to learn about. And for the modern side, I chose the rise and fall of fascism as an ideology. It's just interesting.

Next up are three topics which just interest me a lot. I've always had my eye on them. I've always thought about them. They've always intrigued me. And that is the nature of masculinity, human evolutionary history, and chemistry, which I also happen to be very deficient in. So, it's a good chance there to do both. Now, the first two are somewhat linked, and this is natural. It's going to happen because your interests will overlap. Fair enough. I find that studying our biological past has many answers for present issues. And I also really want to explore what masculinity actually is. What is it? What is its essence? What is its nature? And these two, they're connected, so why not put them together?

Next up, I identified an area that I was painfully lacking in. Computer science. And despite using them every day and having all this software and hardware part of my everyday life, I don't know how it works. And that frustrates me. It pisses me off. And so I want to sit down and actually get to grips with what I'm doing and what I'm using every single day.

Now, your personal curriculum can also include practical skills, the kind that go beyond theory and actually demand some real-world application. And you know, I have three, for example. I I'm learning Dutch, so I might as well include that. I've also always admired people who can speak very fluidly and passionately even without a script. And so for that reason, I want to learn some, I guess, speechcraft and oration. And finally, I want to nail down injury recovery and prevention in the context of the gym because I'm done with that [ __ ] I've had enough of it. I need to get out of my life. I need to I need to be I need to be normal again.

Coming up later, we'll dive into the timing of your self-education. When and how often will it be? And for this, you need a place to flexibly manage your tasks and topics as they come, a command center, so to speak. Which is why AIFlow is today's sponsor. AIFlow is a productivity system that puts everything in one place. Instead of needing to log in and flick between all of these different apps, the universal inbox captures everything from everywhere, ready for you to get started. Getting started is also easy because it integrates with all of the apps you already use like Gmail, Slack, and Notion. Every task from every place is centralized. Then with your AIFlow calendar, you can drag and drop tasks and be intentional with how you use your time. Now listen, calendars and time blocking in general is idealistic. Things rarely go as planned because life is unpredictable and I always get stressed when I don't know what to do and when, especially when things start to pile up. But what's cool is that AIFlow has an AI co-pilot that tracks your work patterns plus the urgency of your tasks and then automatically arranges them for you. It's a big relief because it saves you from decision paralysis. To try out AIFlow for yourself and smoothen your schedule, click the link down below and sign up for their free trial. And if you still don't know where to begin, they actually offer one-to-one onboarding calls to get you familiar as soon as possible. So, I hope you enjoy that and thank you to AIFlow.

Step two is about narrowing down the scope because even after choosing your broad topics, which is hard enough on its own, you might still feel overwhelmed. I mean, these are massive areas and where do you even begin? You can't just say, "Yeah, I'll study biology or English history." Because, well, what does that mean? You're going to do everything parts of it, the basics, the the advanced stuff. What are you focusing on? Plus, let's be realistic. You don't have all the time in the world. You have, you know, school, college, a job, kids. There's no real way to focus on the entire topic realistically. You know, unless that is your sole and only focus. You know, even for me, it's been months and I still haven't touched many topics. So, let's not be crazy and let's narrow it down a bit because we have to.

But first, let's address a problem I raised earlier. What if you have too many topics or interests and you just struggle to pick between them? Well, in that case, first I get it. But in that case, I like to group them by school of thought or category or type, you know, maybe some history topics, maybe some STEM topics, maybe, you know, if you're into finance, some topics in that field. And then within each of those types or categories, I trim them off. I trim a few off until it becomes manageable. And that way, you are still getting a variety and a breadth across many different, you know, fields or areas, but you also make it manageable for yourself. and it's actually realistic. I know it feels horrible to get rid of subjects you love, but remember this is your first curriculum. It's going to change. It's going to evolve. You can add things later. And of course, you will eventually move on. And so, the topics you get rid of today are the ones you will do tomorrow or well, in a few months, more alike.

Once you have those core topics, there are two more things you can do to make it even more realistic and manageable. You can narrow down the scope or you can subdivide or maybe even both. By narrowing down the scope, I mean you refine your choice to make it more precise. And you might think this is redundant, but trust me, it's important because it gives you direction. Whereas before you might have said, well, I'll study biology. Now you might say, I'm going to study cell biology or I'm going to study the physiology of mammals. And that way you have much more direction. It feels much more approachable and you know where to go. In my case, I chose early Mesopotamia as my core topic. But I realized maybe it makes more sense if I narrow this down to the empires of Sargon and Akkad. And that way it was much clearer. I knew what to do. I knew what to focus on. And I think it covered my interests more readily. And remember these subtopics, these things that you have narrowed down upon, they don't have to sound like real college courses. If you have more niche, peculiar interests, then you can call it that. You can say, "Well, I'm going to do home fermentation science. I'm going to do personal family genomics or urban mammal adaptations. You know, you can call it whatever you want because it's your curriculum.

The second option to narrow down the scope is to subdivide your topic. And this is almost the first is the same. You are narrowing things down except you're not excluding anything. You're just taking one larger topic that maybe you have a complete interest in and then you're breaking it down into more manageable chunks that are less intimidating. This is what they do in college all the time. They take a topic and they split it into, you know, semesters and modules and that way it's more digestible and you can approach each one and you can test yourself more accurately and it just works. Now the way you divide it doesn't really matter so long as it works for you. You can go with the more traditional route of using modules and you know subcategories. That makes sense. I like that. Or you can go a more unorthodox route. You know, for example, in history, I sometimes like to divide a topic through questions that I want to then later answer. So here for the history of fascism, for example, I wrote down a bunch of questions that I felt covered the topic and then maybe in the future once I finished I can then answer them and that is a way to mentally chop it up and make it more manageable.

Step three is a quick one and it's to decide the time frame. How long is this curriculum of yours going to last? because it can be anything from a month to several months to years and beyond. And it matters because you need to know the pace. You need to know how much you need to do every week. You need to know if there is a limit in the first place. If you want to move on, if you want to push yourself to learn faster, it matters. Now, this depends on the topics you choose and the amount of depth you want. Are you studying complicated topics that require lots of focus and effort and time? or do you want just a basic overview of something just to get the the feeling of it? And the most important question of all is how much spare time do you have? Because you might even struggle to find an hour a spare hour here or there. And in that case where you're exceptionally busy, then yes, you will have to stretch your curriculum over many months at least. I'm not going to be [ __ ] about it and say, "Wow, you have to time block. You have to put it in numbers." You don't, right? I I don't do that. I like to be fluid with it and you know hold myself accountable on the day-to-day basis. But if you do struggle with that, if you do struggle to really keep consistent, I do recommend making a sort of plan. Week one, week two, week three, month one, month two, something to let you know what you're going to do and something to keep you on track.

Now, my approach is a bit varied. I like to do the Western canon as this again slow burn in the background that will last forever. So, there's no due date for that. And for then the maybe middle topics which I have lots of interest in, I'm happy with a slower pace, a medium-length pace that will last many months, I'm happy with that. And then for the topics that I'm maybe less interested in or I just want a basic overview on, I'm happy to blast through them in a few weeks at most. So it's almost a, you know, long-term, medium-term, short-term. And depending on your interest, you can sort them into those buckets. I know this is a system. It's all systematized, right? But really, it's based on vibes. Just do what feels right. Do it for how long feels right. You probably can't go wrong.

Step four is to gather resources. You need to find books, articles, podcasts, papers, journals, anything that you feel will help offer valuable insight to your topic. Now, I have a hot take for this one, and it's not really a hot take cuz no one gives a [ __ ] right? No one no one's talking about this. But let's say it is controversial. I don't think it's important to plan a list of resources because I find that too much planning and preparing, what does that do? It kills your momentum. It slows you down. It makes you focus on the books and the articles over the actual learning itself, which is what we're supposed to be doing. I would rather just begin with one good book, one good article, one, you know, well-made documentary, and from there I'll find the next thing as I need it. And if anything, that piece of content, that first entry into the topic will likely lead you into another area, another natural next step. But look, you know, that's just me. If you want a list, if you want a structure, something to check off as you work through the topic, go ahead and do it. I actually have a video on how to design a reading plan. So, I'll link that somewhere hopefully.

Now, the next question is, where do you find this stuff? Because a lot, oh my goodness, especially like AI writing now and AI, you know, script writing on YouTube, there is a lot of [ __ ] out there. There is so much crap and it hurts honestly because what seems like a good video or a good blog or whatever is just junk. It's garbage and you can't trust it. So where where is the quality? Where do you find quality first and especially if your subject is more traditional, check university websites because they will often have reading lists already made for you. They are vetted. They've worked through them. They use them in their own lectures, I imagine. And so these are are safe choices. Now don't copy them. Don't do all of the entries on the list, but start there and find something that stands out and you know is more most relevant to you.

Now, books can get pricey. And if you're researching some obscure like niche topic, sometimes the only thing you can find is a textbook on eBay for like $500. And it's just stupid. I'm not doing that. So, don't sleep on libraries and charity shops as well, which you would call thrifting in America. You know, most of my books are from the charity shop and they're no more than $5 each. It's insane what you can get. Popular books and classics are easy to find secondhand, but if you're looking for something more precise, maybe less common, less popular, yeah, you're going to have to turn to online shops. It might cost you $20, $30, but that's the price of knowledge. It's pretty good if you think about it. It's a good investment.

Secondly, try to inspect books before you read them. Now, this really applies to books only, but you don't want to end up, you know, spending $20, $30 on a book only to realize it's [ __ ] or it's not really relevant to your goals. And so before you make that investment, if you can uh skim through the pages, read the blurb, see if the argument is relevant, not necessarily if you agree with it, but if it's relevant. And from there, you're in a much better position to, you know, spend that money and ensure that this is going to serve you. This is going to actually educate you on what you care about. Trust me, you can get clickbaited by a book. It's happened to me. So just read a bit, skim through the pages. It's important.

Third, and you may disagree with this, but don't neglect videos and podcasts. I know it's seen as a bit low culture. It's not the most academic. Fine. Okay. But at the same time, there is so much free and insightful content here on YouTube and Spotify and Substack. And yeah, you know, if you need credentials from someone, you can find that whatever. But at the same time, these people are often well-researched. They're often well-read. And at the end of the day, it's up to you to criticize what you're reading and to approach it with an open mind and to be wary. That's your job, not theirs. I also like to learn with a range of media because you don't always want to sift through this dense thick, you know, tome of a book. Sometimes if you're not feeling the energy, if you're kind of, you know, lethargic, you want something lighter. You want a documentary, maybe you want an article. and you are still learning but without having to, you know, always rely on being in perfect condition every time.

Fourth, and I need to learn from this, but don't be afraid to quit books because sometimes they're just not worth your time. And you know, there are there's hundreds of books to read. We're going to read only a few in our lifetime. And you can't be wasting time with something that isn't relevant or just isn't valuable to you. And I know that sometimes it feels good to read an easy book just because we feel like we we're confident in our skills, but that that's no good because if a book is easy, it's not teaching us anything. We want to find things that challenge us, that push us to think and to digest new ideas. And sometimes that means giving up on a book when it's too easy and seeking something harder and more pioneering to something new, some new territory.

And finally, don't sleep on research papers. And I know they're not the most accessible and the way they're written is often pretentious and they're [ __ ] boring. They really are, but they have depth and most people won't be willing to go there. But if you are, then you have you have wisdom that no one else bothers to read and they're often also on the cutting edge. You know, it's research. They're doing something new. That's where innovation comes from. And so if your topic demands it, you know, give them a chance. Put the effort in. Read the abstract first and if it sounds relevant, dive in. And I actually have a great tool for this called Consensus. I'll link that down below. It's one of my favorite research apps.

Step five is to establish a system. And to be honest, I can't really help you here. This is your job. Okay? But still, I want to give you some things to consider and, you know, think about. And by system, I mean a place where your learning will happen. a place where you'll put your notes, where you'll schedule your time, where you will test yourself, your command center, your cockpit. And there's so much you can do here, but to be brief, it all boils down to three things. What the [ __ ] Three things. A place, a schedule, and a way to practice.

The place is where you actually do your curriculum, where you keep all your work. You could use notebooks, like having one notebook per topic, for example. You could use a binder, which keeps things more flexible. You could use an academic planner which gives you a rough structure if you don't want to necessarily make one from scratch. You can go digital. You can use Google Docs. You can use your writing tablet. You can use any of these programs you know Notion, Roam. Uh and of course my favorite Obsidian the GOAT for my learning. And I've talked about it a lot but I like to use notebooks and Obsidian to learn. And as for the curriculum itself it's so dead simple. It's a single note in Obsidian. That's it. Just a page just some text. nothing crazy. And I could do some more complicated things. I could do flowcharts and plugins and [ __ ] and [ __ ] and [ __ ] But I I did this just to show you how simple it can be. It really doesn't have to be fancy and technical. And what matters is not the software or the hardware or anything. What matters is your brain and the actual learning itself. So don't go crazy.

Next up is the schedule. And you cannot ignore this step because when will the learning actually happen? Like with any especially new habit, you need a way to keep it consistent and to make it a part of your lifestyle because if you just say, "Yeah, I'll do this one day," it's never going to happen. And this whole effort of making a curriculum will be blown into dust, made irrelevant. I like to keep it simple and I say, "Well, for 1 hour every single morning before any of the work starts, I'm just going to focus on learning. I I'll read, I'll take notes, I will focus on whatever I feel like doing that day, whichever topic I fancy. I also try to do the same thing in the evening if I have time. But again, this isn't a crazy investment. It's one at most 2 hours per day. It's not unrealistic, I think. I like to go slow, take my time, and I like to alternate between topics. So, for one or two days, I'll focus on Mesopotamia. the next maybe two days I'll switch to the history of fascism and then you know I'll just go on and cycle between them and once I feel like I've covered something enough and I'm satisfied I will I guess temporarily retire it and focus on the next topic like I said earlier it might take weeks it might take months it might take up to a year and I'm okay with that because I'd rather be thorough than not thorough enough.

Also don't underestimate those random pockets of time throughout your day you know every now and then you know uh after the gym or while I'm having lunch, you can use those maybe spare 30 minutes you have to, you know, watch a video or to take notes on an article or to listen to someone talking about your topic. These moments of learning are spontaneous and, you know, it's better than scrolling. So, you may as well use those wisely. If your midweek is very busy, which it probably is, you know, you just can't find a spare hour to sit down and read, then what I like to do sometimes is concentrate that that learning in one single day that I'm the most free. You know, Sunday, for example, for me is a very chill day and I like to use that to ignore work, to ignore what I can and just focus on getting through some articles and videos and watching a documentary and learning.

Third, and finally, and perhaps most importantly, your system needs a way for you to practice what you've learned. How will you test yourself? How will you make sure you've made progress and actually grasp the ideas? Learning is active, and you can't just sit there with your arms crossed watching a video or, you know, skimming through text half asleep because you're going to piss away all your effort and a day later you're going to forget everything you just consumed. So you need a way to grab the learning and engage with it and actually make it stick and make it a part of your knowledge. You need to write mini essays. You need to take notes. You need to think about things. You need to take time to process and digest and ruminate. You need to set out on mini projects. You need to answer questions. You need to do quizzes. You need to find any way to test yourself and to make sure that you've engaged with it properly and given it some attention. These are all forms of feedback because by engaging actively we we check ourselves and we check that we've grasp things. We find out any holes that we have, any deficiencies and based on that feedback, we can then address it. We can learn more. We can think, well, I'm stuck somewhere and I need a way to to amend this and to patch it up. Think of it like learning a language. If you never get any feedback on grammar or pronunciation, then you're going to end up speaking it like an idiot and you'll sound crazy. So, you need a way to test yourself on the go. And this is what this section is about. It's also pretty much the Feynman technique in action. And I have a video on that, too. So, I will link it below if I remember. If I don't, it's on the page somewhere.

Now, I listed a few ways to approach this just now earlier. But really, it's up to you. And it has to be anything that involves first something that engages you and second something that provides feedback, something that lets you know what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. And sometimes it will involve other people. Sometimes it will just be a test that you can do at home, like taking notes, like answering questions. I also recommend, and this is maybe more my style, but I like to keep things in the same place. I like to have them physically close together, my notes and my my research, my readings, so that I can have that spatial overview. I can see connections. I can see how things link up. I can make those observations. And I find that's difficult when everything is all over the place. Of course, what matters is upstairs here, but still it helps. I have videos covering this in more detail, but I want to briefly go over how I do it.

First, I annotate my books as I read with quick thoughts and highlights. Next, the bulk of my note-taking happens in Obsidian, which I've been using way before I started this curriculum, and I still love it to this day. So, if you want a in-depth video on how to do that, I'll also link that below. For each source, I'll make a source note with the title, author, and reference. And within that source note, I will write down anything interesting or relevant that I encountered. Now, based on these source notes and my own input, I make atomic notes, which are these self-containing individual notes that cover one idea each. These can connect to other atomic nodes. They can contain knowledge from multiple sources and you can arrange them through tags and indexes. They're like cells in your body. They are individual self-contained pieces of knowledge essentially. But when you link them together and you know build them up into this network, they become a wider body of knowledge. They become wisdom. The indexes are like contents pages just to help you navigate and get an overview of the topic. I like to think of this as a personal wiki. That's essentially what you're building here. It's a Wikipedia page of your interests built for you by you. And that process of building it is learning. It may be arduous. It may take time. It may seem like overkill to some people, but trust me, the process is what matters. I could delete every note in my Obsidian tomorrow, and honestly, it wouldn't really matter. I'd be pissed off, fair enough. But the learning is the process.

I like to write most of my atomic notes as mini essays. And you know, I could just jot down some, you know, quick notes in a raw format. And sometimes I do, but I like to give them more structure and more, I guess, elegance because, you know, it's good. It tests your writing, makes you practice a bit more, and it makes you think about the ideas in more depth because you're giving them a more serious approach. What you can also do and I I mentioned this earlier but you can start the topic with questions and then as you go or maybe at the end of your research you see if you can answer these questions like a quiz a personal quiz and then if you can give a a satisfying answer to each question it shows that you've done your research. Now they won't be perfect but it's a good way to keep yourself accountable but again, there's so many options. You know, you can just use mind maps. You can test yourself with flashcards. You can really talk to people who know more than you and uh you know see if you can hold a conversation. There's so many ways to do it and I want you to be creative and find what works for you. And if you want to go the extra mile, you can start publishing what you learn about. You can actually put it online, put it out there as a way to again stay accountable, but also as a way to make your research more rigorous and give it a stake, a a weight, a gravity. You know, I've got a lot of emails of people saying how they started writing on Substack or X purely as an outlet for their learning, and that is wonderful to see.

I want to end the video with two pieces of advice that I think will take you far and and make your personal curriculum successful. First is go and watch other videos on this. You know, don't take my word for it. This is just how I see the structure. This is how my brain works. I could be crazy. I could be [ __ ] probably am in some ways. But go out, watch other creators. They have fantastic plans. They have fantastic ideas. I've seen some of them myself. Go and check them out. And again, find what you like from their videos and use it in your own system and use it to create something that works for you. Not me, not them, but you.

And the last massive piece of advice is keep this fun and meaningful. You're not in college. You're not under anyone's supervision. you are on your own. And for this to be even remotely successful, it has to be fun and it has to be something you actually care about rather than this, you know, self-imposed torture or this uh thing that this chore that you have to do. You have to pick topics that genuinely inspire you and captivate you and things that you would study for free with no promise of any return or reward. That's the sort of thing. Good luck and watch this video on screen and also talk to me in the comments because I like to hear what you have to say.