Meaningful skill acquisition

[tzxn3]

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/never ... -sake.html

From a practical perspective, how can a young person with few social connections use this idea to their advantage?

How to find problems that meet the criteria of being external to myself, solvable in a reasonable timeframe starting from my current set of skills, and with a solving process which induces skill development?

How to find people who are interested in passing on their skills to others through practical teaching?

[Ego]

I wanted to learn how to fix people in case TSHTF or in case I was far from help and something bad happened. Right now I am three weeks into the EMT program at the local community college which is part traditional education and part hands-on. A guy who went through the program last semester was telling me about his rounds in the Emergency Department at the hospital. They allowed him to perform CPR on two patients (a good reason to have a DNR! - both died), wrap a wounded hand and attend a surgery on a stabbing victim... among other grizzly adventures. He did so well the hospital offered him a volunteer position once he completed his EMT cert. Apparently these positions are highly coveted by wannabe med students. I live just a few blocks from the hospital so I am hoping to get the same offer.

It is amazing how much of medicine is hands-on mentor learning.

[jacob]

For the writing/software/causes, etc. the key is self-teaching. However, don't stop at just reading books and occasionally commenting on a website. Put work into making a project. This can be a website, a blog, a software project, maybe even an actual invention ...

Make sure the project is actually useful to other people. It does not to be something brilliant, just useful. For example, maintaining a list of websites, writing documentation for software that hasn't any, translating webpages, summarizing news, ... Just get your name out there.

You won't really have people directly teaching you in an apprentice style as people you can work together with on the same material.

The key is ... you gotta make something.

Specifically, after having spent time, you got to be able to say: I made _this_.