TemplatedAI.io

← Workflows

Learn a Hard Thing

Untested learning v1
Tools required
Any AI chat; and one real source you trust — a textbook; a proper course; the official documentation
Cost
free, beyond whatever the source costs
Setup time
an hour to set up, then the hours you actually have
Source
original (built for this library; guardrails per the TemplatedAI standard)

Learn a Hard Thing

What it does

Chains six skills into a way of teaching yourself something difficult without the two failure modes that spoil most attempts: a plan built for an imaginary week, and an AI quietly inventing the foundation you're building on. A real source is the authority throughout; the AI is the tutor that explains, probes, and quizzes you against it.

What you need

  • One real source you trust — textbook, recognised course, official documentation, the actual syllabus
  • An AI chat, and honest hours
  • The six skills: Use a Real Source, The Study Plan, Explain It At My Level, Test Yourself, Find the Gap, Exam Prep

Setup (one time)

  1. Get the real source first. A textbook, the official docs, the actual syllabus. Everything downstream is only as sound as this, and starting without it is the most common wasted month.
  2. The Study Plan, built on the hours you genuinely have. If what you want isn't possible in the time available, find that out now and cut deliberately — knowing the highest-value part well beats knowing all of it badly.

The workflow (per session)

  1. Use a Real Source to work through the next section: the text is the authority, the AI explains against it, and anything it adds from elsewhere gets flagged for verification.
  2. When you're properly stuck — Explain It At My Level. It finds the edge of what you know before explaining, and tells you where its analogy breaks.
  3. Test Yourself on what you covered, built only from your own material. One question at a time, answered before you see the answer. The discomfort of failing to retrieve is the mechanism.
  4. Before anything that matters — Find the Gap. Write your explanation unaided, then let it probe the vague parts. The dangerous gaps are the ones hiding under sentences you can say fluently.
  5. If there's an exam — Exam Prep. Real past papers, real mark schemes, a timed paper early, and losses sorted by cause.

Maintenance habits

  • Verify what matters against the source. Keep a running list of claims the AI made that you haven't checked — the small plausible errors are the expensive ones
  • Space it out and come back to shaky items. Returning to something half-forgotten does more than re-reading it while it's fresh
  • Measure progress by what you can do unaided, never by pages covered or hours logged
  • When you fall behind, use the cut list you wrote while calm
Download .md Or connect your AI →