Mini Essays - The Perfect Tool for Lifelong Learners

Mini essays are one of the best tools for learning out there. And they're underrated, too. Because despite being arguably better than flashcards, than boring old traditional notes, or all the AI no one really talks about them.

Mini essays are a fun and thoughtful way for you to take notes, so you can truly understand and retain the ideas you talk about. And that's without bogging yourself down in these crazy note-taking systems or long bits of writing that you just don't have the time for. They're a perfect middle ground.

And in the past 2-ish years or so, I've written 800 of them. So all this hype you see is genuine. It does come from somewhere.

I really like these. So what are mini essays? Why are they so effective?

And how can you put all of this into practice? Mini essays are short pieces of writing on things you find interesting. It's that simple.

Ultimately, mini essays are a tool for learning. If you find something cool or interesting in a book, in an article, a movie, or just your own mind, then you can take 20 minutes of your day and write a mini essay on it. Every mini essay more or less covers one distinct idea based on what you're learning about.

And that's good because there's never any writer's block or worrying what to write about because it's chosen for you. It's just what you're learning about. For example, a while ago, I read a book called Tribe by Sebastian Junger.

And there was a cool idea in there about how we often find a purpose when there's some sort of threat or challenge facing us. So I wrote a mini essay on it. And that leads us to the benefits of writing these mini essays.

And believe me, there are many. It does pay off. When I'm writing, I like to explain the ideas as if I'm teaching them to someone else.

Because as Richard Feman's famous technique showed, when you teach something, you come to understand it better yourself. And it also helps you spot any gaps in your understanding. If you struggle to say something or to put it into words, it's a good sign you're not quite there yet and you have to go back to the source material and fix those issues.

Many essays also let you reflect on new ideas and come to understand them more intimately. And I'm happy to admit that this is slow. It takes effort, but that's worth it because what you gain in return is depth.

And we need depth in an era of, you know, book summaries and AI crap and all these shortcuts we keep coping with. Sometimes it's good to slow down and actually put some effort in. And I say it's slow, but at the same time it's not too slow cuz you know, you have your job, you have college, you have school, you're busy, you have to do, and not everyone has time for loads of writing.

But with mini essays, anyone can make learning a habit. All it takes is, you know, a spare 5, 10 or 20 minutes a day. And that's adds up to something amazing.

I personally go for just one a day. And even though it's such a small effort in the present, it adds up to this huge library of knowledge which you can use for you know writing bigger projects for studying in college or for just becoming well read in the things you love. I do all my writing in my Obsidian system because you know I like to keep my notes online to keep them portable and to be able to link everything together and create these huge databases.

It's good fun. Don't worry, by the way, if it's not your favorite medium, because we'll cover other ones soon. However, if you don't know what Obsidian is and this looks exciting to you, then I'll link a couple of videos about it down below, so you know, you can discover why I like it and maybe how to set it up yourself.

And the final major benefit, which is my personal favorite, is novelty. Why are video games or Instagram reels so damn addictive? Well, part of the reason is novelty.

They offer you something new very often. In the case of video games, you know, it's new skills, new maps, new weapons, new things to explore. And in reals, well, every 5 seconds you get something fresh and exciting.

And if you don't like it, you just move on to the next one. That means there's no chance of you getting bored ever because there's always something new to turn your attention to. Mini essays exploit that same trick to make learning almost as addictive.

Not fully, let's be real. It's not equal, but it really does make it more fun because each one is relatively short and independent from the next one. You can fill your learning with many different exciting topics in a short space of time without the risk of getting bored.

And that's especially great if you have lots of different interests, which if you're watching this video, you probably do. And you know, I'm the same. With mini essays, you can go from writing about Bronze Age history to poetry to nutrition to copyrightiting all within the span of an hour.

It's just fun, dynamic. They're not these long projects that sap energy from you, but rather small little reps of learning that help you build knowledge over time while keeping things, you know, fun and playful and exciting. On a past video, a commenter called Lapland said how mini essays were like a reader's equivalent to an artist sketch.

And that is so true. It's such a good way to see it. Now, mini essays are a great way to reflect over what you read.

But how successful you are there also depends on your skill as a reader. your immersion, your analysis, your critical thinking. Yesterday, I rewatched a class on reading critically on Skillshare, who I'm grateful to say is sponsoring this video.

I always found critical reading tough, and this class is a great and approachable entry point with some solid note-taking advice and some good mindsets on how you can stay sharp as you read. But you and I are probably interested in more than just reading and writing. And Skillshare's got you covered there.

It's the largest learning community on the internet with thousands of classes in every creative field you can imagine. All taught by experts with years, even decades of experience. There's classes on design and illustration.

There's productivity for all the hustle a lot out there. And my personal favorite, classes on film and video, which really came in handy when I was figuring out this whole YouTube thing. And you know, I still am.

to get stuck in and explore Skillshare for yourself. You can click the link in the description and the first 500 people to do so will get a free 1 month trial. So, do have a look and I hope you enjoy.

Now, to the question of how and where to write your mini essays. I follow three big rules to help keep my mini essays short, focused, and actually useful to my future self if I come back to revisit them or to use as part of some larger project. Now, these are personal choices, so don't feel like you have to obey them all, but there is a good reason for each of them.

And do hear me out first. The first rule I already mentioned, and it's that many essay should cover one distinct idea, not multiple at the same time. This keeps your writing narrow and focused, and it stops you from getting overwhelmed in all the ideas.

Without this rule, you might be tempted to make a bunch of connections, to cross reference things, to, you know, use different fields and different schools of thought. And that's good, but mini essays are not the time and place to do it. That's best saved for larger projects when you have the room and the time to, you know, go more in depth and to make connections and link things.

For example, in this note, I talked about one precise idea, which the title clearly explains. Now, I could have elaborated on the idea of courage and belonging more, which I talk about in the essay, but I didn't. I saved that for two other mini essays and I instead kept it more focused here.

And trust me, it saves you a lot of headache when you can read the title and you know exactly what to expect in the essay. There's no crazy like background context you have to know. And if there is, you just put it somewhere else.

The second rule is to keep them short cuz you know they're called mini essays for a reason. I aim for 2 to 500 words roughly and that's you know a couple of paragraphs. A good rule of thumb I follow is to make sure that my entire mini essay from start to finish can fit on the monitor without having to scroll down.

So, it's all just there. And you know, you can adapt that idea to notebooks to A4 pages. It doesn't matter.

The point is to have some sort of limit. And that's good for two reasons. First, it keeps things brief and concise.

We all like that. And second, it's just time efficient. You know, in the past, I wrote thousands of words, way too much, thousands of words on every book I read, and it was I mean, I learned a lot.

Sure, fine. But it was boring. I was stuck on the same thing for ages, and I just felt like it was a marathon.

I couldn't see the end. Mini essays are the perfect balance between depth and slowness, but also speed, cuz you want to move on. You want to talk about different things and to actually finish stuff for once in your life.

And finally, I would recommend keeping your mini essays organized somehow. Like you saw, I use Obsidian, and that has its own system of indexes, tags, links, and atomic notes. And all of that stuff is great for me, but I'm not going to be dogmatic and say that you have to use it.

Of course not. Your mind works differently from mine and from the next person's. And of course, your goals might be different as well.

So, whatever you do, you have to make sure that your organization makes sense to you and to how you see the world. Maybe you like to use a real life physical system like ring binders or folders or notebooks. Or maybe you also like Obsidian or you make a database in notion or something.

The point is to have your mini essays exactly where you want them and to make sure they're easy to find so you're not scrambling around looking for things. In my case, I always use my mini essays for writing, you know, the scripts, newsletters, and larger projects like a book. And it helps me to have a bank of those mini essays in Obsidian so that I can always refer to them and use them for different chapters or different sections.

It's great because most of the writing and thinking is already done. All I have to do is find those mini essays, arrange them, and give them some sort of linear structure and of course add to it. I always say this, but it's like having a personal assistant to your writing or your thinking.

Also, whatever you do, do make sure to write your references in the bottom of the essay. Write where it came from. And that's important because if you ever need to revisit the source, you can.

And you know, you're definitely going to forget in the future. So, write it down. Now, I'm going to purposefully gloss over the nitty-gritty of the writing because I don't want to push a certain way of thinking onto you.

My writing style is a bit flowery. It's a bit dramatic. I like to tell stories sometimes and that's because I write with you in mind and that sounds very romantic.

Not in that way. It's just like I write these knowing that I'm going to share them one day. So I try and keep them interesting.

But you don't have to do the same. You can write the most diabolical, weird, and unique things and no one's going to know because they're yours. And finally, for the format, it's the same.

It can be whatever you want. I like online notes because they're portable and you can carry them everywhere and, you know, it's infinitely dense. But you can use notebooks, you can use A4 sheets, you can do more abstract things like uh video logs or audio logs or like pretend podcasts, anything.

If you're really stuck on how to start your mini essays, then you can check out a past video I made on that topic, which will give you some rough pointers, some rough structures to follow. But really, it doesn't matter because these are personal to you and there is no wrong style. There is no right style and that is the beauty of it.

Thank you so much for watching and if you like these videos then you'll also like the newsletter. You can sign up down below. It's totally free.

I don't spam your inbox. I hate that so I don't do it. And of course we talk about similar ideas to on the channel.

but also there's more room for you different things, experimentation and you know things like book reviews, mini essays, stuff that the algorithm may not like. So I save it for there. So don't miss out on that and I'll see you there.

Thank you for watching. It's just what you're learning about. Hey, he burns himself and then licks his paw as if something happened.

What could have caused that?