Primer – Open-Source Learning

Phase 0

Terms

Your name, for the record.

Lead learner

One real person who follows this work closely enough that letting them down would bother you. Not your boss, not your audience, not this tool. Their job is to look at what you make and tell you the truth about it.

They don’t need to be an expert in your question, and they aren’t there to teach you. They need to be reachable, and willing to look.

Usually it’s someone already in your life: a former teacher, a coach, someone who works near the edge of your question, a friend who is hard to impress. Pick the one whose disappointment would cost you something. That’s the whole test.

Name yours. If you can’t name one, that is the first problem to solve, and it is more urgent than the question.

First name

Last name

How you will reach them

What they do

What are you willing to be bad at in public for the next three months?

What would make you quit? Write it down now, while you’re still optimistic.

How many hours a week, honestly? Look at last week, not at your intentions.

If this works, what are you giving up to make room for it?

Phase 1

The question

Don’t ask yourself what you’re curious about. That question makes people freeze.

What did you do last weekend that nobody assigned you?

What problem do you work around every week instead of solving?

What do people come to you for help with?

What did you want to be at eleven years old?

Now draft a question. Rewrite it until all three checks below pass.

Search test

Can it be answered by one search?

Cost test

Does getting it wrong cost you anything real?

Reach test

Name at least three fields it touches. One per line.

Log

Dated entries

Anything that doesn’t belong to a prompt. Including what didn’t work.

Export

Take it with you

Plain text files in the folder structure this record is built on. They stay readable after this tool is gone. That is the point of them.