Learning Matrix / Approach to Learning

Use these instructions to help me narrow and define my learning interests and objectives. Start by asking me to list my learning interest in as much detail as possible including any objectives, outcomes or concerns. Incorporate my response into the next steps. Follow this sequence of questions and incorporate the answers each time. If any of the proceeding answers address the next question, ask me to confirm that I’m comfortable with that response for the question. At the end, once I’ve answered the final question, help me summarise the answers so far in a single paragraph and then provide me a recommendation using the logic included in the concluding step. This is the sequence of steps and questions each question is listed in “” with a ? This is the question that should be asked in order:


1. “Can this interest be combined with any ongoing interest?” If “yes” then reply that it is best to combined with that interest as another item to consider and no further discussion here is needed. Stop the flow if the answer is “yes”. If “no”, then move on to the next question.

2. Consider the interest and decide whether to ask more questions to further narrow the interest. The interest may be overly broad and difficult to provide advice on. If the interest is too broad, ask questions to narrow the interest to something specific enough that recommendations can be made. Once the interest is narrowly defined, move on to the next question.

3. Categorise this interest based on the following categories: mandatory for work, task or project specific for work, something should learn together with my team for work, something I should require my team learn for work, something I should encourage my team to learn, something that will help me improve my work, something that is related to my career objectives, something that is just a personal interest, something that is important for family. Add tags as well based on the topics and relevant areas to the interest.


4. “What is your career objective, role and family situation? Provide as much detail as possible to improve the responses.” Ask follow-up questions to clarify anything I respond with. Once there is sufficient detail, move on to the next question. This information will be used in the next questions.


5. “What is the objective of exploring this interest?” Process the response and decide whether to recommend one of 3 targets to meet the objective and explain why. The three possible objectives are: Gain a certificate/degree in that area; make something using that knowledge; gain experience and exposure to the topic.


6. Set a timeline and amount of work required for this interest. For each level of objective, consider these factors: (1) a certificate takes 2 years in length of time and 500 hours of work in total effort. it also requires that I stop doing something as a dependency. (2) make something takes 6 months of time and 100 hours of work. (3) gain experience or exposure requires 3 months of time and 20 hours of work. Respond with the expected amount of work and time required for this target and interest.


7. Set an impact-once-learned level for this interest. Considering the answers so far, evaluate and set an impact level for this interest on the category. The possible impact levels are: low to no impact; medium impact where you will see some difference due to the learning but it isn’t worthwhile to stop something else; high impact where you are likely to see a difference and it’s worthwhile stopping something of low or medium impact. Respond with the expected impact of learning this interest on the defined category include the reasoning. Example: “Learning this interest to the Objective level of Build Something will have an expected Medium Impact on the Personal Interest category.”


8. Final score. Evaluate all of the details so far and give me a final score about how important this interest should be. The score is a range from 0 to 10 with 0 being not impactful, not relevant and not worth learning at all to 10 being something you should stop everything else to do more of.

Once the score has been given the sequence is done.

i'm interested to learn more about data science, large language models and analytics around using data for practical reasons. I'm concerned because the topic is so large and I feel like I never start in the right place and instead just sample lots of different things a bit. my desired outcome would be to build something to demonstrate an understanding of the skills learned and impact my life in some way.

no i don't think it can.

i find myself interested in the broad logical underpinnings and inner workings about 10 or 20% and then around 20 to 30% interested in the actual usage of the tools - how to best make them work and 50 to 60% in the practical application of the tools - how to apply them for real personal or business impact. i'm most interested in applications related to data gathered in a human-centric manner for example activity data, interaction data, processing of content produced by people, recommendations, and related.