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Founder Reality with George Pu. Real talk from a technical founder building AI-powered businesses in the trenches. No highlight reel, no startup theater – just honest insights from someone who codes, ships, and scales.
Every week, George breaks down the messy, unfiltered decisions behind building a bootstrap software company. From saying yes to projects you don't know how to build, to navigating AI hype vs. reality, to the mental models that actually matter for technical founders.
Whether you're a developer thinking about starting a company, a founder scaling your first product, or a technical leader building AI features, this show gives you the frameworks and hard-won lessons you won't find in the startup content circus.
George Pu is a software engineer turned founder building multiple AI-powered businesses. He's bootstrapped companies, shipped products that matter, and learned the hard way what works and what's just noise.
Follow along as he builds in public and shares what's really happening behind the scenes.
New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
George Pu (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the founder reality podcast. So my name is George pu And I want to talk to you guys a little bit more about learning because that's something I've been taught to you guys for a while. So in last week's episode, I talked specifically about why I think learning how to learn is going to be one of the most important skills that we can all have in an AI first world. Right. And I wasn't, you know, exaggerating, but however, I think, you know, a lot of you guys have been asking me about how exactly can I learn, right? What is the best way of learning like in all forms?
And I know a lot of us have went to colleges and went to high schools and many of us have actually pretty much hated it. Right? So today I want to talk to you guys about a new learning habit I have basically picked up and it's not through a straight line. Right? I've been failing to learn for the past couple of months about two specific skills. And one of them is learning programming languages like a frontal languages like react JS and JavaScript. I was right. React JS and next JS. The other is learning a new language, right? Which is like, you know, for a lot of times as being a passion of mine.
and I wanted to learn it on a very passive basis. So I've been trying to learn those two things the past couple months, and I have been struggling. I've been trying to learn React and Next.js for months. I have bought books to learn it. I have read documentation. But every time I open a book and I read a code block and I read about syntaxes about the specific coding methods, I just have such a strong tendency of falling asleep. And I'm sorry I just couldn't help it. Every time I open it,
I feel like I would just like forcing myself to try to read something. I'm forcing myself to try to learn something. And I start asking myself, okay, is this something I really want? Right. And I, and I know you might feel that as well. It's like that feeling of dread, that feeling of like, don't want to do it anymore. Right. So I've talked about Sunday, Sunday night test quite a lot. So I personally thinking like learning, forcing myself to learn those things, opening programming books and reading it was completely disaster. They failing my own Sunday night test. Right.
And it brought me back memories of, you know, during my college, my first year, I was struggling a lot with the CS courses, not because I'm not a good learner, but because I just reason, I really don't have any motivations of trying to learn these things, right? Every time I go to, I go to classes, I listen to the teacher talking about different syntaxes. I'm like, why is this the most important things right now? Right? Everyone's, every single one of us in the classroom, we're just trying to get an internship. We're trying to get a job. We're trying to get a co-op job, right?
why are we learning programming languages nobody have ever used? I want to learn something practical, I to something real world, right? And that was why I was struggling so much in CS courses because I guess I was like the, you know, contrarian student. I was like the bad student that just refuses to learn the status quo, right? And I've been struggling a lot to be honest during school, right? I was always that guy. I do very poorly in midterms and finals for CS courses. And for the longest time I thought I was bad at CS, right? Until I got an internship.
And then I started thinking, okay, I'm actually doing okay with my CS, with my computer science. You know, so that was my journey in college and I was forcing it, right? And then this time around when I was opening those books, when I was going through lectures, I felt like I was still forcing it. So I hate it. I knew it. And eventually I knew it wouldn't work. So I tried something different, like very, very recently, like as early as last night and today. And I tried something. So basically I sat down, I was on the subway actually.
⁓ And I was basically talking to ChatGPT on one side. And I also have my laptop open, which I have VS code on the other side. And I started debugging real actual React code, right? And I specifically asked ChatGPT, can you give me a few examples of React code that has bugs, right? And then let me know how I can do it. So I'm gonna try to practice it. I'm gonna try probably fail at it. And if I fail, please tell me how I can get it right and what I got wrong, right? And here's the thing.
I failed this morning while I was on the subway. I failed six times. Right. I the first exercise. I failed the second one. I failed the third, the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth one. And then finally, you know, I finally got it right. And here's what it hit me, right? There's no one there to actually judge me. And yes, I did feel very embarrassed to be failing so many times. And even though I was facing AI, I still feel like, my God, it's so embarrassing. I couldn't get it right. And, ⁓ but however,
You know, I told myself after a few times I said, okay, it's just AI. Come on, like AI is not be able to judge because AI doesn't have necessarily emotions, right? So just kept going and then just try to keep practicing. So it was just me or just the two of us on a subway. And there was a freedom, you know, to basically fail as many times as I need, right? So it's not really just about learning programming.
It's, taught me something, right? It taught me about how I realized that the entire education system is broken for entrepreneurs, for builders, and for people who tend to build instead of learn, right? So those are two very different things. And of course, like I have struggled for programming for a long time and necessarily because I'm not good at it. I've been, you know, as you guys know, I run some, Puerto Rican is a tech company. We run a SaaS startup and we do have technical engineers on the team.
And for the longest time, like I have just reading their code. was, you know, I was basically digesting their code and I was just like reading the reviews and, up until recently, I started using clock code and cursor, which has helped me to be able to understand more code and also like helping me write a few code as well. So that's been pretty good, but deep down I realized that when there's something wrong with the code, I wasn't actually be able to debug it. Right. So that's, that's what really bugs me because I can't tell exactly what separates good code from bad code.
especially for the frameworks and programming frameworks that I didn't really understand necessarily, right? That includes React and Next.js, which is a front-end code. I learned the modern HTML stack when I was in school, which is so many years ago, seven years ago. And I learned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which is, as you guys know, is probably the most standard programming language that you can. It still works today, but many of us have moved on to React and Next.js. So long story short, I have tried a lot of learning it. I knew I have a gap.
I'm also a busy founder, I run two companies of course, so I try whatever everyone online has been saying to do. So I bought programming books, I run the React documentation on Facebook's website, and I try to learn and read properly, quote unquote properly. And the simple repos are actually built on those frameworks, but I need to understand them as I said to make architectural decisions. And like I said, every time I open a book, I just couldn't convince myself to learn it.
I will hit a cold block with syntax and my eyes just like blazing and I just started realizing that I really want to fall asleep. I'm really, really bored. I just cannot help myself. Even during the day, even it's like the morning, if that's the first thing I do in the morning, I will feel like I want to fall asleep. That's how draining it was. Right. And, and we talk about energy audit. So that definitely fails the audit because after learning that blog, like I just feel so sleepy and don't want to do anything else for the rest of the day. So that was a signal I've been ignored for too long.
And for a long time, I realized I was just thinking like, okay, it's my fault. It's like, it's, I, I'm not serious about learning coding or maybe I'm just not a coder necessarily. And I shouldn't be forcing myself to learn something I'm not really good at. And there so many things I've been asking myself and just happened to like two, three days ago, I realized like, why am I having my been learning for the past couple of weeks? Right. I was just like terrifying myself into thinking that this is difficult. Right. And I thought to myself, I thought, okay, this might be, there must be a better way of doing this.
Right. And I was basically figuring out like, can I actually do it? Right. and, many of you guys have like recommended, ⁓ a very good methods, like, course, like open your own repository, you know, like use cursor and clock code to open a repository and keep asking questions. And my fear at a time of doing this approach is that I thought you actually need to understand a lot in order to do it. And I still feel that today you need to understand the syntaxes and understand how it works.
⁓ I do understand some basics, but I don't think that's enough for me to code an entire repository. And sure, I can ask Cloud Code and Cursor to do that, but that's just going to be cheating. And I wouldn't be able to understand exactly why it's doing what it's doing. And I'm skipping the fundamentals. So that's the reason why I'm not doing it. And I kept thinking to myself, there has to be a better way. And I think just like last night and today, this morning, I found it. And I realized that, yes, learning is all about practicing. Learning is all about learning fundamentals.
And the last dish attempt I tried two days ago was to enroll myself on a course, which is like, you know, actually one of the best courses out there for front end developers. It's called front end masters, right? It's like a website that's been around for like 10 years. And they have taught so many great developers who can do this. But I'm unfortunate, not one of them. I was watching their videos on the subway and the thing hit me again. I want to fall asleep. There's nothing else I can do about it. I just feel so bored. I was listening, but my
had has mentally checked out after a few episodes. And that is when I realized that, okay, nothing is actually working, right? It's a time to actually give up. And I ended up deciding that, no, it's not time to give up because, George, you are a learner. And every day you deal with code repositories and there must be something that works for you in terms of learning, right? So, and then I was thinking like, okay, you I have ChatGPT, I have Cloud, I have Gemini. I have all these different tools that I can ask infinite amount of questions.
Why wouldn't I do something every day? Right. And the thinking is about that. It's actually going back to what I talked about in the last episode about learning how to learn, which is basically like, if you can take 10 minutes a day, just 10 minutes a day into actually learning anything. Right. And if you do it consistently forming in a habit, you can actually learn a lot faster and you can learn a lot. You can basically master the entire thing in a couple of months or in like, even in a year, right. Depending on how much time you put in it.
And for me, like I said in the last example, I've been starting as a Duolingo for French for 10 minutes a day. I think it's been almost five months of spending 10 minutes a day. And I just did a test and I was actually on the A2 level, which is secondary level. And that has saved me about $6,000 to $8,000 if I had enrolled myself into French courses. So that's the difference, right? So I saved myself $6,000 of skipping two full semesters of courses and I just directly got into the A2 level.
which is not bad, right? Just for like day, 10 minutes every day. Or you can do it on the commute, you can do it when you're free, can do it right before you sleep. Or the first thing when you wake up or on the subway. So it's pretty convenient. So I believe that was the only method that actually worked for me, right? And I really want to do the same thing with coding. But the thing about coding is that every one of us think, okay, George, like you actually need to actually, you know, put up a dashboard, you had to open cursor, VS code, clock code or whatever, and you have to practice it. That's the only way to learn, right?
I agree with that on one side, but on the other side is like, how do you actually learn how to code to begin with? Right? There has to be a beginning. And I think for the most of you guys, for the, of you guys who are listening to the podcast, who are watching this video and who are basically thinking that, okay, I don't know where to start. Like you're exactly in my shoe. Right. I, and I have, you know, I have learned CS for so many years in school. So what I did instead is that I basically put Chach BG out and I just ask it, okay, I'm saying, okay, this is my role.
And this is my situation. what I said is like, I'm a technical founder. basically help my team, you know, I have helped my team review code. I help my team design these stories. I'm basically a product manager type of founder, but I haven't been writing code for the past two and a half years. And I have, you know, I know HTML, JavaScript and CSS well, but I do not know anything about Node.js and React.js other than that I have read some, you know, I've read a few tutorials about it. I have practiced something about it, but I don't know anything about it.
Right? So what can I do instead? I really want to be good at it. Here's how many minutes I have. Right? So I basically explicitly said I have 20 minutes a day and here's how many minutes I have and, and I want to practice every day. So can you give me a study plan about how I can do it? So, and it was like magical. it basically gave me multiple different solutions out there in the bat batch. And the first is that, George, if you're a fundamental, it's not good. We can do fundamental lessons.
to get you up to date about React syntaxes. And there are so many different fundamentals, syntaxes that can learn, and it has broken to me into 10 mini modules, and every day I can learn one module, or every two days I can learn one module. That's the first thing. The second thing is that it says like, oh George, we can actually do debugs together, right? I'll give you a code example. I will intentionally screw up one or two things in those examples, and you have to tell me in plain text, on ChaiJPT of course,
about why you're screwing up, why this thing screwed up and you to tell me exactly why it screwed up and we're going to go through some exercises together about it. And third is that writing some simple sample code using natural languages and also like just code boxes. So I'll give you the first construction about what we want to build in plain English and then I'm going to write, you know, first few lines of code and there's going to be two or three lines of code that's missing. So can you repeat that? Can you help complete that?
Right? So those exercises, when I saw it, was like, damn, I actually haven't done anything like that because, okay, first of all, in college, I have never had a chance of practicing like this, right? It's like assignments and assignments are different as you guys know. Assignments, they are designed to make you intellectually challenged, to be forcing yourself into learning syntaxes. So I absolutely hate that. And you know, when I was going through front end masters or any other video programs, it was just consuming, right?
Of course the teachers will have to talk something about it and then I have to just physically remember or see through what a teacher has written, but I actually don't know what it's for me. I don't know if I'm actually mastered the skill or not. I was like, okay, okay, I think I got it. But at end of the day, we all know how it goes, right? Eventually we don't get it and that's the problem. And for books, same thing. I think books takes the longest time to digest and they usually is the worst form to learn because even for a react book, it's like usually 300 to 500 pages long.
including exercises, right? And just like, if you don't have a lot of time, it's impossible to get through. And let's say you have a job and let's say you're a founder, let's say you're a full-time student in school, right? You're trying to learn this. You're gonna have to pick up some spare time in order to learn. And it's not easy to learn that, right? So all these different things, long story short, is the reason why I wasn't able to advance, right? And guys, like, you know, if you're listening to this, I bet you that there must be something that you really wanna learn in your life.
no matter what it is, right? It could be business fundamentals about how to run a startup. It could be about how to run an e-commerce company. It could be how to code, right? It could be about learning a new language. It could be about learning a new sport. could be anything, right? But I think the problem with most of us is that we equate learning with something that's like super scary. And I think that's the reason why most of us don't even take the first initiative. Because like I said, when I thought about React coding, I thought you had to open a new repository. You have to code everything together and using AI, it's it's basically like cheating.
And not only in syntax wall, it's basically like, how am I even know am I doing the right thing? How am I know if I'm just like not putting up imposer syndromes, right? There's so many reasons to be afraid of this. And the good thing about asking AI different things is that it doesn't really judge you, right? If you think about it, like when I, taught you guys before about how I was so afraid in college, like everyone seems to be so good at computer science. Everyone seems to be so good at math, right? And.
just by showing that you don't understand something. I think that's like intellectual humility that I did not have, unfortunately, at that time. I was like 18 and 19 years old in my life and I was just thinking like, okay, I really wanna be known as like that George that people go to because he knows everything. So that's how I felt. And I just couldn't, quote unquote, lower myself to be asking questions or admitting I didn't know. And I think most importantly, maybe I was just afraid of basically being humiliated by...
by peers, by professors, even though I know most of them probably wouldn't feel that way. But that was a fear that's deep inside me. And the thing now, it's like, if you go on different forums and asking about Stack Overflow, for example, asking about a certain question, you're not gonna get an answer right away. And if you go look for an answer, takes a lot of time to actually, and you'll realize that every single scenario on Stack Overflow might be different than yours, right?
You can copy someone else's solution and put it on your perspective in your solution submissions, but it could be wrong because your use cases are completely different. long story short is that, you know, Sack of Roof doesn't really work because A, you have to wait and B, it might not be what you're looking for and C, there might be people judging you or just not giving you a response. There's so many examples of what I could be wrong. And the good thing I think about AI is like I said, at the beginning of the episode is that they actually don't judge.
It doesn't judge you. You are the one that's paying for the services. And if you're on a free plan, you are the user, you're the customer. And there's no reason for it to judge you. And I think if you're showing community about you really want to learn this, I think actually it's a good thing. think, like I said, I failed six times in the very beginning. basically I'll tell you what I was doing. I was basically doing a React state and render debugging session. React, it's like, long story short, it's very different from...
HTML which is what I knew before and in React there's something called state which is like the state changes right into multiple different scenarios. So I didn't get it because I didn't come from the React world. came from the old HTML world and that was my problem. So first attempt I was wrong. I was immediately wrong and it was very patient of saying George you're close, but you're wrong right and second, third, fourth, fifth attempt I was all wrong. I was wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
And at that time, I started to feel embarrassed about it a little bit. I was like, oh my God, I still got it wrong. then even in sometimes like Chajabdhi was like, oh, should we move to section two where you learn the next fundamental things? I'm like, no, I want to go back. I want to learn this. I want to try another one. And it was able to give me six different code boxes that have six different scenarios, Which is scenarios entirely different. And it will use it to test if I got everything right.
And I have to explain in natural language about, you know, what's happening, right? And what's the constant. So I was wrong six times. If it were to be a professor, the professor would have been so pissed off at me, right? It would be so angry at me. It's like, oh, okay. You still haven't got it. Okay. Next, next student. If it's a peer, the peer would have been so dismissive and mean about it. And I do have those experiences from school where I just like, after the third, fourth time, I just feel really stupid, really, really stupid.
And I really felt like I shouldn't be asking anymore. And quite frankly, that's how, you know, we stopped learning, right? Because we feel ashamed of not knowing. And the good thing about my session this morning, which I had to be teased that on the sixth attempt, I finally, finally got it right. And I, and knew I got it right because I knew exactly what's going on. And it took six times. But if you think about time, it took me at most, took 15 minutes for me to try those six attempts, right?
And in those six attempts, I'm not just passively learning something, right? I'm actively looking at a code, I'm actually looking through the code and to see what went wrong. So I'm actually being active for the first time of learning this language. I'm actually being active about it. I'm actually being upfront about it. And I'm looking for what is going wrong in the code blocks. And it's just so different than college. It's so different from reading a book or writing a course, right?
In just 15 minutes, I've realized I've learned so much about this topic that, you know, a lecture about this course is gonna take at least 20, 30 minutes about talking about React state, you know? So just one example, but I just thought it's super important to know for you guys as well.
And this goes me to another topic about like curriculums, right? In colleges and different things, we all have different sorts of curriculums. And I realized even Duolingo has curriculums for learning languages. And I realized like, why do we have curriculums to begin with? It's because for whoever that's making the curriculum is able to scale a lot faster than doing one-on-one, right? So for example, like for ANC, for my consulting business, we don't do curriculums. We do one-on-one because every founder who comes to us who has quite
are in a different state, right? Like they're in a different scenario. Like one founder might come to us, they might be still pre-idea stage. One founder might come to us, already have an idea, 100K MRR, and it's constantly growing. So every single person is different. They need different things. We can't just have a one-size-fits-all solution for ANC, right? Which is my consulting business, again. But the problem about modern learning systems, about colleges and universities, and even Duolingo, even those online courses, is that they all use a thing called curriculum.
because they assume that everyone's the same, right? But in reality, everyone's not the same. I'm not the same as you, and you're not same as me. We are in different stages of our lives, you know, one of us may be retired programming, like programmers, who might be very easy to catch up with new languages and frameworks, And, you know, I might be having been coding for 22 years, right? And it might be completely different scenario for me. So all these different things, you know, highlights the importance of taking this matter into your
own hands. And why is it important to to basically like take your own initiative to shift learning from a passive thing to an actually very active thing.
I will give you guys an example about my language learning because like I said, think I have made a lot of progress for language learning. But the thing is for the longest time, it's also passive, right? Going to Duolingo, going through the courses. Sometimes I feel like, okay, I really got it. I got it. I got the sector, but I still have to do a lot of listening exercise. I still have to do the speaking exercise. I still have to do a lot of reading exercise for things I already know, right? And in reality, there are so many things I don't know about that I just
like basically let it go, right? So I know it's trying to catch up with different things. think Duolingo is now using AI, which is awesome, right? But still it's not like a perfect plan. So I did the same thing with learning French, a new language with ChachiPT and it was able to give me different options as well, right? A is that every day I'll give you 10 vocabularies and you just need to remember those 10 and then tomorrow we try again, gonna give you, I'm gonna prompt you, I'm only gonna give you those 10 words and you have to tell me exactly what it is. That's good.
And then I'm going to give you a short paragraph, given exactly where you are now. And if you don't know where you are now, I'm happy to give you a test. And once you complete that, send it to me. I know exactly where you are. I'm going to give you a reading exercise ⁓ that's going to be strictly your level and then you can read it and you can answer the five questions and send it back to me. And then I'm going to see exactly where you're at. I did try that and then I was typing different things and it was immediately able to say, okay, George, you got all five correct. However,
the punctuations are wrong and here's exactly how you got it wrong and here's exactly how you can reframe this sentence to make it better for yourself right to improve in the future and in the future if you want to say those things again here's how to say it right so the good thing is that it's not just addressing the things that I'm being tested it's actually going above and beyond say in this situation in the future if you want to say this it's predicting what I don't know
And I have to say it's pretty accurate. know, so that's a really interesting thing. So I personally think, you know, for, for my French, for, you know, my programming learnings, this is huge for me. And I'm going to start doing this from today forward every single day. I'm going to do the same thing until, you know, I learn and master something. Right. And then as, as soon as I learned something enough, I'm going to move to the next step. I'm going to open cursor and clock code and I'm going to actually be programming, you know, this whole project by myself. So that's what I'm going to do, but I can't do that without math.
mastering the fundamentals and knowing how to debug the codes. I guess my lesson really guys is that I realized that I'm a founder, I'm not a developer, and I need to review code and make architectural decisions. And I don't have to necessarily write production code, at least not yet, not right now, right? I just need to understand enough of what my developers have written and then be able to guide the team and be able to give the team my input so they can take it further. And also let them know that, okay, maybe this is not doing as well, going as well, so please go back and fix it.
would be super important for my team. So that's my context, right? That's what's unique for me. But what's unique for you is that your context might be that you're a designer who needs to understand how developers work, right? Or you're a product manager who needs to estimate complexity so you can report better to your VP or product or your CEO. Or you're a founder who just want to prototype quickly. You have no interest of coding, right?
or you're a student and you're side projects for your next job, right? So all those different things require different objectives. And the unfortunate truth is that, like I said, like all the books, all the courses, all the colleges, all the book camps even, they're assuming that all of us are in the same boat, where we're not. We shouldn't, right? And we shouldn't follow the same curriculum. That's kind of the point. So I think really the system I'm following now is to give myself 15 days, sorry, 15 minutes every day for these two subjects.
So in total I'm taking 30 minutes every day. Just that's it, 30 minutes for learning those two things. And I think I encourage you guys to start taking maybe five to 10 minutes and then start adding it up.
Because to be very honest, when I first started learning French on Duolingo, it was like, break my streaks all the time. You I will learn something and I'll be gone for like five days and I'll come back again. And then slowly and slowly I started forming this habit. Right. And when I'm, for example, on the subway, I started realizing, it's my, it's time to practice my French. It's probably the time to pull out Duolingo. Right. Same thing I'm trying to do with the new workflow about chat.gpt. Maybe next time I'm on, I'm on the subwebs. ⁓ it's time to open chat.gpt and it's time to, you know, practice, you know, ⁓ with my item.
French or our programming languages. And I'm hoping you guys can do the same, starting with 10 minutes.
And I do want to share with you guys as well. For those of you guys who don't have chat, GBT, or people who like, you know, don't want to buy it or couldn't afford it or whatever reason it could be. Right. Um, some of you guys might be thinking, especially if you're from developing country, um, 20 us dollars is a huge amount. Right. I get it. You know, I, I used to come from China as well. So I understand, um, you know, what, what that might be, especially if you're still learning, if you're still a student, right. Having multiple AI tools could be free expensive, even though I'm subscribed right now to check.
chat GPT plus, have claw max, I didn't start out that way. So for you guys, I have a few options about what I can do if you don't have the pro subscription. So the first thing is that if you have a free tier, which I think most of those tools do have, at least as of this recording, think chat GPT has a very generous free plan, claw has a very generous free plan, or if you have not, think Google has a very generous free plan called check Google Gemini.
definitely check out Google Gemini if you haven't. If you have a Gmail account, can actually use Gemini for free, which is pretty cool. So and then that's the first option.
Second option is that, for example, like if you guys want to have open source models, a lot of those are freely hosted. For example, the first thing I will use is Hockingface Chat. Again, it's called Hockingface Chat, right? So they host multiple different open source models and they are accompanied back by, I believe by Wacominator. So it is an established company and they're currently offering it for free. So definitely check it out and use one of the models that you want and you can practice it with any model. I'm sure it's not just ChatPD, of course.
then
the second one is Meta AI. I haven't personally used it, but I think Meta AI is something that's already empowering WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook, and Instagram. So you actually don't have to go to Meta AI to chat it. You can just open whatever apps you have, like Instagram, and then can go to Meta AI and practice it every day. So that's a pretty good option as well. But if you feel like you're going to get distracted, definitely don't use this option if you have to go to Instagram and WhatsApp to test it. And the last thing is that I personally do find deep
be a pretty good model. haven't been using it every day, but I do think it's a very smart model. And DeepSeek, of course, is Chinese model. If you don't mind it, it's free as well. think it's...
It's at chat.deepseed.com, which is free as well. Some of you guys might be like, I have to be very careful about my personal information. I agree. But in those learning, you're actually not giving any of your private information away. You're just submitting the way you don't know about it, and you're asking AI to help you with that. So I think that's completely fine in this use case. And if you can't afford those plus plans, pro plan, whatever, don't let it stop you. And those models are great. They're as good as the models that I'm paying right
So don't worry about it. It's about access to patient accessible and personalized teaching and from my understanding all those models all those platforms They can help you in an unlimited way, right? You're not gonna reach your limit just anytime soon. So that is good So just to conclude guys, I think ⁓ for this learning methods, I think you know, there are a few steps I think you should take to make sure you can learn as much as you can in a new way that I just introduced yourself to and the first is that pick your AI
And freeze flying. like I said, GPT, clause, Gemini, Hackingface, Meta, DBSig, whatever. And second is that basically define your context, right? This is the important part. This is to tell the AI exactly what you need, right? So for example, like I am, you know, I'm a founder, for example, that's my, right? I'm trying to learn this skill because of this reason. And make sure you say the reason because that's very important. Is it for casual? Is it professional? Is it tied up to, you know, your job, your status, anything? And I also followed by
Here's where I am now, right? And share the current level if you can. But if you don't know your current level.
Definitely say, I don't know where I'm at. Can you recommend some tests I can do with you so you can know exactly where I'm at? Right. That's also very helpful as well. And here's what I want to be and then show your goal. Right. Here's my time commitments and you share how many minutes per day or how many hours per day, if you really have that much time, that's great. And please design a daily practice routine for me. Right. So this is pretty easy. And I, but I was just going to go with you guys again about sharing the examples of programming. I'm a founder trying to understand react and next JS because my repos are built on them.
am a founder, so I can read some code, but I fall asleep if I'm reading documentation or going through tutorials. I need to review code and make architectural decisions and feedback for my team. I'm not going to try to write production code. So I have 15 minutes a day. Please design a daily debugging exercise for me. Right? So that's the example for me. So feel free to chop it up and use it for yourself, but please add your context. And for language, right? And for example, like I'm learning French for work in Canada. I'm currently at the A2 level, which is like CLB four or five.
I have basic understanding, but I'm struggling a lot with speaking, with writing, and with French accents. I have 30 minutes per day. Please give me a daily reading and writing practice with corrections. So that's it. And the third step, which is the most important, but I'll just stress it again, is just to commit to do it every day. It doesn't matter if it's one minute, five minutes, 10 minutes. You just have to do it almost every day at around the same time if you can. But if not, try to do it every single day.
It's just like bilingual, except it's personalized for you. It's just for your pace, your goals. And it has indefinite patience with you, which is like the best thing you can have. Right. And, start with one minute, three minutes, five minutes is fine, but eventually try to get it to around 15, 30 minutes, which is where I am devoting my time on. And if you commute, it's like the best because you can do it when you're commuted. Right. So, um, the step four is like basically guys like embrace failure. Um, you will get many things wrong. And I think that's totally fine. AI will explain differently each time.
until you understand.
There's no shame feeling six times. And I have to tell you that there are many times where you might just say like, okay, let's just move on. Let's just go to the next thing. And I'm going to tell you, don't do that, right? Don't pretend, you know, because if you don't know, it's fine. It's AI. It's not a human. Right? So just like actually understanding it, make sure your time is not wasted. Right? Make sure you don't get stuck on the same problem again. So definitely don't be ashamed. Don't be ashamed. Be shameless in learning. Right? That's super important. And, ⁓ last but not least, I think like every couple of days, like track your product.
Basically, say, okay, based on my progress this week or based on the things I've learned so far, what do you think I should focus on next week? So coming back to this is a structural problem. So for myself, used to think the reason why I'm taking courses is because, okay, I want structure in my life. I want structure in learning. So if I follow the structure, I must have aced it, right?
That's almost never the case, right? You can find a structure, but a structure has to work for you and there will be your structure. And the example I gave, it's basically like asking your AI about where you're at and based on your learning patterns to introduce what you should learn, suggest what you should learn next week. So it's a very different example. And I think complete changes the game about how we learn.
So that's kind of what I think, guys. So in terms of learning, think structure is a scam, right? And everyone tells you that you need structure to learn effectively. But it's basically an influencer in college, university scam. It's basically saying, OK, you need structure so we can sell you our courses. The truth is that structure is valuable, sure, but your structure is not theirs, right? So structures are pretty important, but I think make the structure that work for you.
Yeah, you're good guys. think, uh, I hope you have learned something from this. hope, you know, what I have learned, what I have told you guys is enough. So I'm going to be practicing that myself for the foreseeable future. And that will be my primary method of learning anything now moving forward. And I'm going to ditch the courses. I'm going to ditch the books. I'm going to ditch everything else. I'm just going to.
Be really humble learning with AI because now it's, it's the first time ever that it's readily available for all of us. So why not take advantage of it? Right. So that's what I would do. And I hope I hope you do as well. Thank you. So, yeah, we're at the end of the podcast. So, ⁓ make sure you subscribe if you want to hear more. And then, you know, I also post my thoughts on foundryreality.com for the blocks and also the transcript and digestible version of this video and podcast. I also have my newsletter and newsletter.
So if you want to hear the behind the scenes, behind the things I don't share publicly, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter for frameworks. Thanks again. And this is the Founder of Raleigh podcast. I'm your host, George pu. And I'll see you next time.