A five-week course with 15 modules taught by Amit Varma and Ajay Shah. We cover learning, thinking, communicating, finance, math, probablistic thinking, mindsets and more!
The most important lessons that we learn in our lives, we learn by living.
For many years, Ajay Shah and I have been talking about how our education system does not equip us with the set of basic life skills every person should possess. Most of what we learnt, we learnt when life happened to us and we paid attention. How great it would have been, I often wonder, if someone had taught us this stuff 30 years ago. We thought, why don’t we put together a course that aims to package and teach all these basic skills.
So we did. We’re calling it LIFE LESSONS.
We have spent years thinking about what should go into such a course. We will begin by talking about Learning How to Learn. This is a module we have put together because we believe that in these rapidly changing times, when AI and technology are upending the order of things, the core skill every human must know is the art of learning. If you master this, you’ll never be out of place.
We also want to talk about Learning How to Think. What mental models and frameworks help us better understand the world? What kind of cognitive fallacies should we avoid? What are the problems logical thinking can solve — and how should we think about the others?
What kind of Mindsets should we adopt? How should we think about Knowledge Management? And even after we sort out our own heads, how do we deal with the world. How do we learn to Communicate with others? How do we learn to Write, which is so important for thinking?
We want this course to be practical, and not just theory. We have modules that will help you figure out Personal Finance and Personal Health, subjects that we often tend to ignore. We will have modules on Math and the World and Probabilistic Thinking — and how you can apply them to the real world.
We will also talk about The History of Thought, where we will offer a gentle introduction to philosophy, ethics, political science and economics. We think of economics as a study of human behaviour — scarcity is all around us, and whether we acknowledge it or not, we respond to incentives. That is why one of our modules will just be The Foundations of Economic Thinking.
Learning any of these subjects is a lifelong journey, and we see this course as a launchpad, where we cover fundamentals, first principles and equip you with the frameworks and resources which can take you the the next level.
In our current design, our course consists of 15 webinars or modules, spread out over five Saturdays. A breakdown of these 15 modules is below.
Our first cohort runs through November 2024. We will have three webinars each on five Saturdays: November 2, 9, 16, 23 and 30. The webinar timings are 9.30 am to 11 am, 11.30 am to 1 pm, and 2 pm to 3.30 pm. You can party in the evening!
The course costs US$ 1500. Registration for Cohort 1 is now closed. Please fill this form to be notified when registration opens for cohort 2, planned for March 2025.
Everyone who signs up for the first cohort gets two privileges. One, we will certainly charge more for it in future, so think of this as an introductory price. Two, you get to take part in a future cohort for free.
Everyone who ever does this course also gets to be part of an LLC — no, not that kind of LLC, but the The Life Lessons Community. We’ll organise annual in-person meetups, during which we will conduct workshops, and we anticipate that being part of this community will eventually be as valuable as what you learn in the course. Being around smart learners can kick off a virtuous cycle, and we can’t wait to be part of that.
You will also have permanent access to me and Ajay, and we’ll have many more conversations outside the webinars than inside them!
And now for our course content:
DAY ONE
Module 1: An Introduction to Learning
Module 2: Learning How to Learn
Module 3: Mindsets
DAY TWO
Module 4: Learning how to Think
Module 5: Personal Finance
Module 6: Personal Health
DAY THREE
Module 7: The First Principles of Communication
Module 8: The Art of Writing
Module 9: Knowledge Management and Productivity
DAY FOUR
Module 10: Quant Intuition
Module 11: Probabilistic Thinking
Module 12: Math and the World
DAY FIVE
Module 13: The Foundations of Economics
Module 14: The History of Thought
Module 15: Navigating the Real World
The above list is a starting point, and will evolve with time and feedback. We will offer copious resources and reading lists for further learning. Also, all these webinars will be recorded, and you will have permanent access to them.
Please note that we are not affiliated to anyone, and we don’t offer any kind of certification. We’re only about knowledge and learning. Join our club!
And in case you haven’t already, check out my podcast, The Seen and the Unseen, and my YouTube show with Ajay, Everything is Everything. The name of that show is also our inspiration for this course: Everything is everything — and we want to help you with the frameworks to connect the dots.
Fill this form to be notified when registration opens for Cohort 2, planned for March 2025. You can also write to me at amit[at]seenunseen[dot]in with any questions you may have.