你学你的，用不着别人批准

Learn What You Want; You Don't Need Anyone's Permission

> By Li Xiaolai · 2016-06-14 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20170718013650/http://lixiaolai.com/2016/06/14/teach-yourself-without-permission/index.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

There's a saying that goes like this:

When man thinks, God laughs.

I've never figured out what this saying means, what its purpose is, what its significance is... and I don't think it matters either.

What I do clearly know is another thing:

As soon as you say you're going to learn something, people laugh...

To be honest, it took me many years to figure out why they laugh: their line of thinking, their conclusions, their future and their ending. Only after figuring it out did I feel that a reasonable explanation of this doesn't mean much to me, because I'm not them, and they have nothing to do with me either —— it's just that our respective roads crossed once, and now each of us has long been in a different world.

There's one thing the vast majority of people get wrong, which leads to different lines of thinking, different conclusions, different futures and endings:

Learning is not something you have to learn to the level of a master before you can take it out and start using it.

"Returning after completing one's studies" is people's stereotype of most learners, as if, if you don't complete your studies, you shouldn't come back at all.

The real learning process is: learn a little minimum necessary knowledge (that is, the minimum knowledge that, once known, lets you start acting right away), and then immediately start real practice... In the end, a great many details are learned further in the course of actual practice —— and there are even a great many details that, without real practice, you simply have no chance to learn.

In China, everyone who can drive should long ago have realized how magical this way of learning is. In China, driving-school training is really too crude, too simple, too rough... You pay, you enter driving school, and in fact the time you actually spend operating a car on the practice ground from start to finish is pitifully little —— and then you rush out onto the road. Although each person's progress differs somewhat, on the whole, nearly 100% of real driving skill comes from actually operating a car in the real world, not from driving-school training, doesn't it?

People who clearly once learned at least one skill relying on their own courage end up, for some reason, turning into another kind of person... I really don't understand why so many people who as children learned everything, were good at nothing and yet were never afraid at all, all end up as wimps when they grow up. And wimpy to what degree? Wimpy to the point of being afraid of other people not being wimps...

And so, in the eyes of the vast majority of people, learning has become a "long road of no return" —— how frightening that sounds: if you don't complete your studies, don't come out and show off; if you don't complete your studies, don't come back and face people! Good heavens.

And that's not all: since they've analogized learning in their heads to a "long road of no return," then "it must be walked step by step...," and so whatever they do, they feel they must proceed step by step in order, and they even get very angry if they see others not proceeding step by step.

But, well...

Step-by-step progression has trapped one generation after another...

In fact, the most effective way of learning really isn't starting from zero and walking all the way to the realm of a master —— on that road there are bones everywhere and beasts bursting out with a roar.

Look carefully at our real lives, and we have always been like this:

Bursting onto the scene out of nowhere, delving backward, charging forward...

This is the real world.

Our education system seems especially obsessed with putting us on the road of step-by-step progression, and parents also feel that only this way can they be at ease (in fact they themselves are products whose brains were dirtied and who won't wash their own brains)... 99% of people learn step by step starting from ABCD, study English for 16 years, can't speak when they open their mouths, can't write when they pick up a pen... I really don't know what it's all for.

The simplest programming has been elevated to the realm of "engineer" —— but another fact is plainly there:

Many people who call themselves engineers, when they see what fourteen- or fifteen-year-old little hackers do, have no choice but to be convinced in heart and word —— if things could only be done by proceeding step by step, those little hackers couldn't possibly exist, could they?

The little hackers didn't acquire their skills by proceeding step by step. They all "burst onto the scene out of nowhere." The first thing they did wasn't laying foundations but "suddenly having a problem to solve," so regardless of anything they had no choice but to "break through forward," using every method (usually very crude methods) to solve the problem first... In this process, whatever can be filled in gets filled in (delving backward), and whatever can't be filled in is left there for later... and then they advance by repeated detours.

A few days ago I posted a Tweet like this:

I worked it out: an ordinary person, as long as they're not stupid, can grow into a full-stack engineer in a year. No need for ten thousand hours.

In fact I didn't need to guess to know that a great many people would spit at me openly or covertly —— in fact, I'm 45 this year, and this is exactly how I've come all along: as soon as I want to learn something, people laugh... Their spit has never managed to drown me.

What would someone who majored in accounting have to be afraid of? After graduating from university what I went into was sales, not accounting; didn't I have to learn on the spot and sell what I'd just learned? After doing wholesale business for so long, I later went off to New Oriental to teach English; didn't I also stumble along and take the TOEFL first? After leaving New Oriental I opened a study-abroad consulting company, and also had to learn on the spot how to coach application essays; later, with nothing better to do, I even went off to learn Ruby on Rails, and later produced KnewOne; along the way, with nothing better to do, I also studied bitcoin, and later still had to learn how to do venture investing; now I have nothing much to do again, so I'm preparing to seriously study the computing field, starting from a basic place, to get full-stack skills down (times are different; ten years ago it would have been hopeless)... I learn what I learn; why can't they stand it? So strange... Actually I don't find it strange; I know how they think.

All these years, when it comes to learning, apart from my parents, nobody else has ever really encouraged me. What I'm most grateful to my parents for is exactly this one thing:

As long as I said buy books, as long as I said sign up for a class, however much money I asked for, they gave me that much —— although they always added, "Anyway there's only this little bit of money; if you spend it there, you can't spend it anywhere else..."

That's how, when I was little, they supported me with action... Later, when I could earn money myself, it became me supporting myself with action.

Encouragement from relatives and friends? To be honest, there really wasn't any, none at all —— of course, my case is special; I don't need other people's encouragement —— my ability to encourage myself is extremely strong. Sarcastic remarks? Far too many: people I knew and didn't know all wanted to come up and pour a ladle of cold water on me —— looking back on these years now, the happiest thing is that, I don't know why, I somehow wasn't sickened by them, wasn't frightened off by them either, as if nothing at all had happened...

So all my life I've had one good habit:

Encourage everyone around me... Only because I know all too well how scarce "encouragement" is.

When Lao Luo was dating the woman who later became his wife, according to him almost everyone was against it; I was the only one who said, "How great! You're so happy..." When Xiqiao was preparing to take the IELTS, the only thing I said every day was: "It's not that hard; just do it..." —— I really didn't teach her anything; anyway, starting from zero, a year later she got four sevens on the IELTS, then went to study abroad with Huo Ju accompanying her, and in the end the whole family successfully emigrated. Back then Gao Ya said, "Our teachers all say I'm no good at math..." I just replied with one line, "Tell them all to go to shit" —— when she got to the US she chose math as her undergraduate major, and design for graduate school... There's also another young friend called Wei Tiantian: her first TOEFL was only 82. At the time I was on a business trip in Shanghai; she called me, and when the call connected she wailed and sobbed, and all I said was, "Cry my ass, everyone's like this —— take it again!" Later she scored 108.

If you yourself are someone who strives to improve, then be like me and encourage your fellow travelers every day —— I believe this is definitely a good deed.

There's another fact that many people distort:

Who says that if, after learning something, you don't use it skillfully enough, you can't use it?!

I said a year is about enough for a full-stack engineer, and many people got angry... Sorry, I didn't do it on purpose. I learned it in a month or two, but didn't use it well enough; not long after deploying it online it was attacked, and its database was even "dumped"... This can indeed count as poor craftsmanship, but whose way did it get in? —— Haha, you may not know, this really did happen: back when I learned ROR, I used it to write a blog program, and then it was attacked by a "hacker," who deleted the first post and left a few lines... He must have thought, "Now I've really humiliated Li Xiaolai"... I miss him now and then; I wonder how he's doing now, five years on?

Oh, right, there's another thing:

Who says people without talent shouldn't learn things, who says it's shameful for people without talent not to learn well enough?

In almost everything I've learned, there's been no element of "I have talent"... On the one hand this is a rather [Translator's note: the original writes 破, literally "broken"; 颇 ("rather") is meant; translated by the intended sense] depressing fact; on the other hand it's a source of courage. The thing I'm least talented at is probably singing. They say I sang very nicely as a child; later I once went skating, fell hard, got a concussion, and then became brain-damaged (and this is real brain damage). It must have been the part responsible for distinguishing sounds that was injured; the direct result was that I became tone-deaf, unable to accurately distinguish other people's pitch, unable to control my own voice freely... When I was in junior high, my dad bought me a guitar and said, "You can't even sing in tune; how will you learn English in the future?" —— with a look of "this is as far as your old dad can help you." Many years later, I play guitar for my own amusement, and occasionally sing "Hills" (山丘) to cheer up colleagues... They're very envious, but don't know that that guitar, for me, all these years, has actually been a "brain-damage therapy device"... I did sales not because I was good at it, but because I hadn't learned accounting well back then, so I couldn't find an accounting job (there were other reasons too); I went to New Oriental to teach; do you really think my English was so good? It's just that my test scores were not bad; my pronunciation was so bad... But should bad pronunciation deprive you of the right to speak English? I don't believe it. Later I went into investing; do you really think I can turn stone into gold? I invested in many bad projects and dead projects, and only after spending a lot of money buying a lot of lessons did I slowly begin to get a little feel for it...

Moreover, I'm thick-skinned; I lack the basic quality of getting angry and annoyed. Even weirder, I know many people who've been cursed worse than me... like Wang Yin, like Luo Yonghao, like Hecaitou, like Huo Ju, and they may even curse each other... Occasionally when I seem to be getting angry, I unkindly happen to think of them, and then I'm amused again... Sigh, what can you do?

One day I posted a line like this in my WeChat Moments:

I've found the shortcut; unfortunately I'm long past the starting point.

There really are many shortcuts... For example, many of the things said in this article are "shortcuts," because once you've thought them through, these "shortcuts" will save you a great, great deal of time, save you a great, great deal of energy, settle a great, great many worries, and even let you cut a great, great many corners... Isn't a shortcut exactly for saving time and raising efficiency?

Having said all this, what I really want to say is this one thing:

I just want to take a group of people (of course, overall it's certainly actually a minority) and drastically reduce their fear of learning, drastically compress the time between learning and not using, and cross boundaries drastically —— cross those boundaries that seem uncrossable —— because we can live many lifetimes; seven years is a lifetime; work it out for yourself?.

This will surely make some people feel uncomfortable, but believe me, we really don't do it on purpose... We didn't expect it to turn out this way... We originally just wanted to live a bit more happily ourselves. Let's all try to be understanding of each other.

Also, this needs adding:

What I mean by full stack, what I understand by it, there's no need to argue over semantics, but in a real engineer's life, coding should basically take up only 20% —— because in the end code is for expressing ideas, for solving problems; so a full-stack engineer is that kind of tasteful designer and creator who has real problems to solve and really valuable ideas to realize. It's like how we can all read and all write characters, and there are very, very many people who can write beautiful pen calligraphy, but in the end only those who write good articles, good tutorials, good novels and good poems are "word engineers"; the rest are all just "literate, that's all."

Oh, right, I've specially invited a coach from Taiwan to run a full-stack engineer boot camp, and I'm going to learn along too. Class starts July 12, 2016, two months, 50,000 yuan tuition. The specific way to sign up will be announced in a couple of days.

Copyright: © LookMinds. Our own edited text and translation, not a substitute for the original; rights in the original belong to the author and the platform. Please see the original link.