How to Lifeschool? - Videos

Story of Usman Riaz

Usman Riaz learned how to play the classical piano when he was six and taught himself to play a variety of instruments using the internet. He was a teenager when he fell in love with the guitar. He lived in Pakistan and wanted to learn how to play the guitar from the best teachers in the world. This is when he started watching guitar lesson videos online.

He started watching videos of some of the people who he admired. One such person was Preston Reed.  He loved watching Preston Reed’s videos. Watching these videos he soon became a guitar maestro himself. He started uploading videos of himself playing the guitar online. He applied for the TED Fellowship and his talk was approved. The TED Conference is a renowned annual Technology, Entertainment and Design event

He got to play with his hero Preston Reed at the TED Conference in California in front of some of the most influential thinkers in the world. It all started with his drive to teach himself his craft watching videos online.

Why use Videos?

The top colleges in the world have their lectures available online. Every major thought influencer in the world has a series of lectures and interviews available online. The TED Talks and Google Talks page are filled with some great talks by leading thinkers of different fields. These are invite only events for certain people, but with the talks available online, the whole world is able to get access to all this information.

We all have twenty-four hours to use in a day. Now it is not about who has the most money or the best network to get to these events. It is about how you use your time.

You can learn from the best minds in different fields by watching lectures and interviews online. All you need is an Internet connection and the drive to learn

How did I use it?

1)  Study the work of an expert – I would first hear about the work of a though leader on the internet, through a colleague or through a book. For example Seth Godin is an authority on marketing.  I would then read the articles and biography of this person. I would go through his blog and understand his work by going through his website. Finally after getting a basic understanding of his thought process, I would list down the person’s top three lectures on You Tube or Vimeo and watch them.

2)  Watch College Lectures Online – Using this method I could learn Positive Psychology from a professor at Harvard University, Computer Science from  a professor at MIT and Chinese History from the Beijing University. To research these posts, I saw 7 hours of lectures by speakers at the Harvard School of Education. Colleges like Harvard, Stanford, IIT, Georgetown and more. They all have a lecture series where thought leaders from different fields are invited to share their stories and work in education. Many of these colleges take videos of these talks and put them up online. Certificate courses are available online. They are also a great way to learn. Check openculture.org for more.

3)  Attend World Conferences and Festivals online –Aspen Ideas Festival, World Economic Forum, TED Conference, Zeitgeits Minds and the Jaipur Literature Festival are some of the top world gatherings in the world. Many of us cannot afford to go to most of them. Some of them are invite only events for CEO’s, billionaires, nobel prize laureates and academics. But the organizers of these events take videos of the talks happening there and then put them online. TED and TEDx as on 26/11/2013 has over 35,000 videos online. Zeitgeist by Google has 530 videos. The World Economic Forum has several one hour talks they put up online. The Jaipur Literature Festival, which is one of the top literary festivals in the world has most of the discussions at these events between authors online.

4)  Watch Interviews and Talks –Two ways you can do this are as follows,

·     people on your superstructure – The top hundred people in the world in the field you are passionate about comprises your superstructure. Watch their interviews and talks online. In my superstructure I would watch videos of top professional communicators like Antony Robbins, Robin Sharma and so on.

·     Top thinkers from different fields – You can learn evolution from Richard Feynman, Poetry from Maya Angelou, Mythology from Joseph Campbell. Many of these thinkers have lots of their talks, lectures and interviews online that you can watch and learn from.

Let us Learn Together

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