Fukuzawa Yukichi
Practical learning
Learn what you will use tomorrow first
Fukuzawa Yukichi, An Encouragement of Learning, first part, 1872
What to study, and whether to keep studying. What he put ahead of the Confucian classics, and the reason he gave.
What actually happened?
An Encouragement of Learning opens by asking what learning even is. Not the memorising of difficult old texts, he answers, but practical learning: letter writing, bookkeeping, the abacus, reading a map, some physics and economics, the things you need every single day. He put those ahead of the Confucian classics, and his reason was blunt. A person has to be able to feed himself and finish what is in front of him before anything else is worth discussing. The pamphlets sold over three million copies, mostly to young people who did not know what to study.
Sort by how often you will use it
His ordering rule has one term in it: frequency of use. Daily first, once a year later, someday last. He is not saying the later ones do not matter. He is saying a beginner has limited hours and should get fluent in the daily ones first.
When you cannot decide what to practise, write down the three things you will need at work tomorrow morning and practise those.
Feeding yourself is the first gate
Independence is the word he keeps returning to. Someone who does not live off other people can afford to have his own judgement. So what you learn early should serve that one thing: earn, deliver, ask nobody. Past that gate, nothing you study is frightening.
Learn what lets you stand up first. Learn what lets you go far after you are standing.
Keep reading only if it lands in your hands
He is not against books. He is against reading something you cannot use and calling that study. Whether to continue is not settled by the level of the qualification but by whether the reading arrives as something you can now do.
Before signing up for more study, answer one question. When this ends, what can I do that I could not do before?
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you cannot tell what to practise, or whether to go back for another qualification.
Ask first: what three things will I need tomorrow morning, and am I fluent in them? Of what I am studying now, which part lands in my hands?
Where it goes wrong: reading it as only ever study useful things. He read all his life. This is the ordering for a beginner, not the ordering for a lifetime.
Lines to keep
Learn what you need tomorrow first. Once a year can wait.
Learn what lets you stand, then what lets you travel.
If reading leaves nothing in your hands, it was not study.
Same situation, other people are asking
Learn the three things I'll need tomorrow morning.I just started and I can't do any of it.I don't know when to ask and when to figure it out.Nobody explains the rules here and half of them look unfair.My first job · all 5 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.