Stop studying like you're in school

February 21, 2026 We spend at least 15 years of our lives in school. All the experiences and learning during those years make a big impact on our opinions, thoughts, and how we see life. Today I will talk about one of those learnings: how to study. Since you are a kid, you were taught to study. Not to learn, but to achieve a score based on your answers. Your brain learned that regardless of whether you retained the information and transformed it into true knowledge, the most important thing was to memorize answers for the next exam. My goal here is not to criticize the teaching methodology, but to tell you that if you aren't in school, you don't need to follow it anymore. If you are free of exams, group presentations, or any other school work, why do you still study like you aren't? I noticed this contradiction in myself. One of my goals for this year was to study topics beyond coding, like healthy eating, bitcoin, rhetoric, and so on. I was so excited that I started executing this plan even before the year began. I listed all the study topics, grouped them in chapters, and built an organized schedule to study every week. It started very well, I learned a lot. However, after some days, something felt wrong. I was not motivated anymore. The joy of learning was gone. What happened along the way? I discovered the reason, but before I tell you, let me give you more context. Some time before I started this study cronogram, I decided to learn more about bitcoin. I'm very interested in investments, but I didn't have contact with crypto before. I watched some videos, understood the basics, created an account in a crypto exchange, and bought my first satoshis. I was very happy with my progress. But why was I so happy? It's because I studied and practiced motivated by genuine curiosity. It was like playing Minecraft for the first time, exploring the new things that were at my disposal. I went to study with an "adventurer spirit". I call this "on-demand study". I'm genuinely interested to learn, so I study. With that in mind, let's go back to the part where I was demotivated. What did I discover? What was the reason for my demotivation? Simple: I tried to put my joy of on-demand study into the "school teaching methodology" box. Instead of studying like an explorer, I was studying to follow a predefined schedule, to mark that day as "done". I forced myself to live the school routine again. Self-sabotage. When I finally realized it, I stopped following the schedule and deleted it. I was free again. It seems ridiculous, I know. But I was blinded. I had been doing something I learned for 15 years, and I didn't notice. After that small flash of consciousness, I started thinking: "What other habits do I have that I'm not aware of and why I'm doing them?" I invite you to think about it too. We learn and reproduce many things during our lives. Some of them we don't even notice. Our mindset is sharpened by the ideas we are most exposed to. My example was simple, just a study routine, but the reflection it provokes helps me observe and question my thoughts more. So, to conclude, I have two pieces of advice. First, observe your actions and see what you are reproducing and whether it's good for you. Second, forget school methodology. Study like an adventurer exploring new worlds.