ZTM's Philosophy on Learning: The 10 Learning Commandments

These are the 10 Learning Commandments that we follow here at ZTM. It’s our philosophy on learning, and we believe it is the main reason our students consistently outperform others in the workplace and have higher success rates when applying to jobs.

1. Efficient Learning

We live in a world where access to information is not the issue. If anything, there is too much information out there, from too many so-called “experts”. It is now more important than ever to build the skills of FILTERING information.

Using your valuable time to be an efficient learner, means spending your time wisely and not wasting it on outdated, incorrect, or low quality education.

ZTM is all about removing unnecessary choices and options: we teach the most in-demand skills and only one course per topic that is the best it can be. This way, you can trust that what you are learning is what you need to learn.

The total number of hours spent studying is not the key to learning. The key is to be efficient and to learn the right things and spend the time on the right things.

Don’t strive to be the hardest worker. Strive to be the smartest worker. There will always be someone willing to work harder than you, so where you gain the edge is using efficient learning.

We follow the Pareto Principle or the law of vital few: 80% of the outputs/effects comes from 20% of inputs/efforts.

2. Skill Stacking

Gathering skills and combining them in a unique way is one of the best ways to stand out.

You want to get good at multiple things, and combine the skills to create a little niche for yourself that make you unique and the best in class.

Be the top 10% in several skills, combine them, and you will become top 1% in the world because this unique combination of skillsets will make you stand out from the rest.

3. Show Failures

We aren’t afraid of mistakes. We teach by showing our mistakes and showing the steps to solve them. By showing you some of our mistakes in our lessons means:

You aren't going to feel like a failure when you make your own mistakes
You can learn how to actually work through those mistakes when they come up on the job

Perfection is the enemy of progress.

4. Deliberate Practice

Learning should be hard. Youtube videos that are quick and short make you feel good because you just hit play while sitting on the couch. But it's a terrible way to learn.

This is not how we do things here at ZTM.

You can never truly become valuable to the world and learn a valuable skill without deliberate practice and stretching your mind and boundaries.

You need to get your hands dirty and build things.

We don’t believe in passive learning where you click play and just watch. We believe learning is hard and projects, exercises, and lessons should push the boundaries of students to be in the top 10%. Teaching easy topics is easy. Teaching complex topics is hard and it’s why most other schools avoid teaching them to not turn off students.

We believe students that want to succeed want to work hard and are willing to do what the average don’t want to do.

There are a lot of videos on YouTube/TikTok etc. that give the appearance of education, but if you look closely they are really just entertainment. This is very convenient for everyone involved : the people watching enjoy thinking they are learning (but actually they are just having fun). The people creating this content also enjoy it because fun has a much larger audience, fame and revenue. But as far as learning goes, this is a trap. This content is an epsilon away from watching the Bachelorette. It's like snacking on those "Garden Veggie Straws", which feel like you're eating healthy vegetables until you look at the ingredients.

Learning is not supposed to be fun. It doesn't have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that "10 minute full body" workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating. It's not that the quickie doesn't do anything, it's just that it is wildly suboptimal if you actually care to learn.

-- Andrej Karpathy

5. 1% Better Everyday

We believe that compound learning is one of the strongest forces for success. Most people think they need to spend 12 hours a day for 6 months to achieve their goals. This leads to burnout. Instead, we strive to learn something small each day.

The person that focuses on consistently learning a little bit each day will compound their learning and beat the person that tries to cram every bit of learning into a small time frame (this person will likely give up long before reaching their goals).

Improve by 1% everyday, and in 70 days, you’re twice as good. Learning is not a sprint. Over time, those that can improve 1% each day, will outpace all.

This principle led to the creation of the ZTM Passport where we keep track of your learning streaks to help encourage you to maintain that consistency.

6. Drive and Persistence

You can be the smartest person in the world, but if you don’t have the drive and persistence to learn hard topics that are valuable, you will never succeed.

ZTM gives you the tools and the roadmap to succeed, but you need to be willing to pick up those tools and take a step each day no matter how frustrating it can be sometimes.

The times when you're struggling the most are the times when you're also learning the most. Those who continue to work through the tough times will be the most successful learners.

There is never an easy path to success.

To succeed, you need to make mistakes and take risks. We only look for students who have the drive to succeed, and don’t make excuses.

We do the hard things in our courses because the hard things are what makes you be the best version of yourself.

7. Fun in Learning

Not everything in life needs to be so serious all the time.

We try to make learning fun and add a little personality to our courses. There's no reason you can't learn a valuable skill but also have fun along the way.

An instructor should be a role model and a friend. If the instructor is serious all the time with no personality, and takes themselves too seriously, you will get bored and won’t continue with their course.

Remember your favourite teacher at school: I bet they were a lot of fun and that made you enjoy their lessons.

8. Feynman Technique

To actually know a topic, you need to be able to explain it to a child. If you cannot explain what you learned in a simple manner, then you haven’t learned it properly.

We don’t teach using a bunch of buzzwords just to make you sound smart. We create people that can go on and actually teach the topics they learn about.

It's why our private Discord server is such a big part of the learning experience at ZTM.

9. Trunk Based Knowledge Method

Our courses and lessons are structured using the Trunk Based Knowledge method:

Roots: We start our lessons from the principles and foundations
Trunk: Then we build the fundamentals so you can answer the WHY and HOW as you are learning things throughout the course
Leaves: Only then do we cover and teach you the latest trendy tools and techniques

By starting with the principles and learning why we do certain things before we dive deeper into topics, you will be able to grasp new concepts at a much deeper level and make better decisions at work because you understand the HOW and WHY (“why do we do things this way?”).

We live in a world where new tools and techniques are constantly coming out, changing with the season like the leaves on a tree.

With a strong base and foundation you have built, these new and trendy topics that change often are easy to pick up and learn.

10. Learning is a Lifelong Journey

The world is constantly changing around us. Learning never stops. If you are constantly learning new skills, you will never be replaced by any sort of future changes. You will be part of the change.

You will be future-proof.