The Tim Ferriss Show #240: Accelerated Learning and Mentors - My Personal Story
First Teacher Who Sparked Reading
- Tim Ferriss describes Mrs. Vinsky who motivated him to learn the alphabet and read voraciously.
- She used a classroom race-track to reward reading and triggered a lifelong habit of consuming books.
Coach Who Taught Tough Love
- Tim Ferriss recounts Coach John Buxton's tough-love wrestling coaching that shaped him in high school.
- Buxton's demanding practices taught resilience and high performance under pressure.
DSSD Framework For Rapid Learning
- Ferriss presents the D S S S framework: Deconstruction, Selection, Sequencing, Stakes.
- Break skills into parts, pick high-impact pieces, order them logically, and add consequences to force practice.
This episode is by request. You have asked me many times for an episode on education, accelerated learning, and my mentors. It will all be covered in the following conversation with Charles Best (@charlesbest), the founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit website that enables anyone to help a classroom in need. It is one of my favorite companies -- profit or non-profit -- in the world. (And I'm not just saying that because we used to be wrestling partners in high school.) Charles founded DonorsChoose.org back in 2000 at a public high school in the Bronx where he taught history. Flash forward to 2017, and DonorsChoose.org is one of Oprah Winfrey's "ultimate favorite things" and made the cover of Fast Company as one of the "50 Most Innovative Companies in the World," the first time a charity has received such recognition. To date, teachers at more than seventy percent of all the public schools in America have created classroom project requests on DonorsChoose.org, and more than two million people have given to those projects. Charles joined me for a conversation at SXSWedu in front of an audience of educators and administrators to talk about learning things faster, good teaching versus bad teaching, the value of tough love, and much more. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Alibaba and Gateway17. If you're an entrepreneur or business owner in the US, the stars don't always align -- but this might get close. Alibaba (if you're not familiar with it, imagine Amazon and Google having a baby in China) is hosting Gateway17, a conference designed to help US businesses tap into the five hundred million consumers of China's growing middle class. Gateway17 takes place June 20-21 in Detroit, Michigan, and it puts you in direct contact with experts who want to help you grow your business into the booming Chinese marketplace. Speakers include Alibaba founder Jack Ma (in his only speaking engagement of the year), UPS CEO David Abney, and master interviewer Charlie Rose. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, Alibaba is offering you a ticket for $125 (they're usually $500) if you sign up at gateway17.com by May 25 and use the code "Tim" at checkout. This podcast is also brought to you by Soothe.com, the world's largest on-demand massage service. Because I've been broken so many times, I have body work done at least twice a week -- so I have a high bar for this stuff. I do not accept mediocrity, and I wouldn't expect you to, either. After much personal testing, I can affirm that Soothe delivers a hand-selected, licensed, and experienced massage therapist to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel, or office in as little as an hour. I was amazed at the quality of service and convenience. Think of it as Uber for massages, available in fifty cities worldwide. Download the app at Soothe.com and use code TITAN20 to get $20 off your first massage.
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