If you want to improve at philosophy, it's important to work on it on a regular basis. It generally takes a long time to get big results.
How do you work on it? Read, write about what you read, write about your thoughts, write for sharing with others (e.g. forum posts, essays), do intentional practice sessions, work on underlying skills (e.g. grammar, math, logic, trees). These steps aren't especially complicated or hard to figure out. They're well known.
Many people would improve significantly if they did this for an hour a day for a year. Even 15 minutes per day for a year would lead to progress.
It's important to do all of the major learning actions frequently, not skip some. If you read but never write, it's common to make less progress. If you read and write but never do practice sessions and you consider all prerequisites boring even though you're not great at them, that can be significantly less effective.
Many people have issues with working on something consistently over time. Their life is chaotic. They get distracted by a series of crises. Their goals and motivations change frequently. They get interested in something else and switch. If you want to be an expert at something, you need to have a stable interest over time and keep working on it.
You don't need to be a dedicated expert at anything. You can be a generalist not a specialist. You can learn about a variety of things. Maybe you can learn more than most people about a topic in a month but not try to compete with people who spend many years on that topic.
Some people like to participate in philosophical discussions and online arguments but don't like to study philosophy. They are different activities, which can be related and connected, but don't have to be.
What can I do as an async tutor?
My main goal is to help people with learning philosophy. I can give guidance on productive philosophical activities and review work for errors. I can answer questions. I can converse with people, guide discussions between others, design practice activities, recommend readings, ask questions, and identify weaknesses people can work on. I can help with building up underlying skills that are relevant to philosophy.
People could (for example) read Eli Goldratt books without me, if they wanted to, and make some progress. With my help, they could avoid some mistakes, get some corrections, get some pointers in the right direction, get some questions answered, and get better results faster. I can explain Goldratt's ideas or point out connections between them and other ideas. My goal and role is to make things better and more effective, not to take someone who doesn't want to read Goldratt, or couldn't handle it at all on their own, and change their personality or lifestyle.
I don't make people do philosophy activities. I can't reliably fix motivation or procrastination. I can't choose other people's goals for them. I can give some reasons that philosophical goals are appealing and some candidate goals, which people may find persuasive or not. I can talk about what I like about philosophy. I can give some tips on scheduling and other related issues, e.g. I can recommend getting plenty of sleep. I can suggest trying a variety of self-help books until one works well for you. I can give some thoughts on solving some specific problems in one's life that are getting in the way. But it's really up to each person what they want to do with their lives, what goals they have, what interests them, what they spend time on.
I made my async tutoring self-paced, with procrastination and motivation excluded as topics that I deal with much. I don't have great, super-effective solutions there (and I don't think anyone else does either). I know more about philosophy than psychology. And your preferences aren't necessarily problems to be solved. If you prefer knitting or baseball, maybe you should do that.
Not spending time on philosophy (or another goal) can mean a lot of things. Maybe you're really busy. Maybe you don't enjoy it. Maybe it's not the right goal for you. Maybe you're a perfectionist who's paralyzed by fear of making any mistakes so you don't do anything (even though inaction and perfectionism are themselves mistakes). Maybe you're chronically ill, exhausted, or have lots of bad habits. Maybe things will be different later or maybe they won't.
If you think you should like philosophy, but don't, I don't recommend trying to do it due to feeling external pressure from me or other sources. Please don't think I am pressuring you every time I speak positively about philosophy or criticize something. People also speak positively about all sorts of other topics, like playing the piano or cooking healthy food, and they criticize alternatives, and that's OK and shouldn't pressure you. When I write essays, I'm sharing my opinion and hoping my ideas are helpful on a fully voluntary basis; I'm not trying to and don't want to control your life.
I often share ideas which you can figure out how to use in your life, or not use, as you please. You can also have impersonal thoughts and discussions about my ideas, or not, as you choose. Ideas you read in essays are never perfect, never 100% complete, and are somewhat generic or impersonal. Even when essays include action plans, customization for your personal circumstances is important for getting good results.
Even if I'm your async tutor, detailed help with your psychology or motivations is out of scope, and my tutoring is more focused on more impersonal topics like philosophy, English, math, economics, science, etc. I'm willing to make some comments on psychology or self-help as abstract topics but that isn't detailed personal advice and async tutoring isn't therapy or life coaching.
Note: It's OK for students to bring up personal issues including about motivation. If there are relevant problems, I do want to have some idea of what's going on, even if I don't provide a full solution. I'm trying to set expectations, not give students something to worry about; as the paid tutor, staying on topic is my job not students' job.
I can help people in a more personalized way if we do regular calls instead of just async tutoring, but ultimately, as Karl Popper explained, people do their own learning. People have to create their own knowledge in their own heads with their own conjectures and refutations. People have to think for themselves to understand what others say or what knowledge is in a book. Teachers and authors are helpers who can be quite helpful but play a secondary role, not the primary role.
Messages