John Mayer’s approach to learning the guitar is a 104-second masterclass on how to learn anything:

John’s advice—get to the root of what you’re learning to accelerate your learning—applies to just about every field. In his book, Succeeding, John Reed wrote: “When you first start to study a field, it seems like you have to memorize a zillion things. You don’t. What you need is to identify the core principles—generally three to twelve of them—that govern the field. The million things you thought you had to memorize are simply various combinations of the core principles.” It’s often said that learning a field is like building a tree in your head. The core principles that govern the field are the trunk. And the finer details are the branches and leaves. Someone once asked Elon Musk about his approach to learning. “It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree,” Musk said. “Make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.” When you learn something, Mayer said, learn the building block of the thing you just learned. Trace the leaves back to the trunk, “and you will be five times better every time you do that.” - - - “It’s like a tree in your head…without a trunk, when you learn something new about the topic—a new branch or leaf of the tree—there’s nothing for it to hang onto, so it just falls away.” — Tim Urban

TL;DW John Mayer’s approach to learning:

The John Mayer clip is from here ( I first came across the John Reed quote in this piece by @morganhousel ( The Elon Musk quote is from here ( And the Tim Urban quote is from here (

This is brilliant. Understanding your why, is such a great reminder for building your skill set. Reminds me of a that wonderful quote: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

That TONE though

Well explained. I actually use this same logic in pediatric therapy as an OT. We don't teach "splinter skills." We work on the developmental core skills that facilitate exploration and improve independence. That exploration thus becomes intrinsically motivating.

that might be because john mayer is a lyrical and melodic motha fucking genius and one of the greatest musicians to ever grace our floating rock. his massive hands are the best evidence that god does indeed exist

@NoCodeAdvantage check out this advice from John Mayer … applies to our no-code principles

@Randy_Gage 👀👀👀

Cc: @mrshadeed under the iceberg is where i live