Speaker A
If you've ever Googled how to become more interesting, let me introduce you to the 3x3 method that will, without fail, make you a more interesting person if you are willing to put in the work.
Learn the 3x3 method to become more interesting by daily learning, weekly personal changes, and monthly deep dives into topics.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
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Key Takeaways
- Daily learning of small, diverse facts builds a broad knowledge base.
- Weekly personal changes improve habits and productivity incrementally.
- Monthly deep dives into topics solidify understanding and interest.
- Producing content based on what you learn helps retain knowledge.
- Structured, manageable steps overcome decision fatigue and build curiosity.
What the video covers
- The 3x3 method helps you become more interesting by systematically engaging with new knowledge and personal development.
- Daily: Learn three new things each morning, such as a word, a scientific paper abstract, and bite-sized news.
- Weekly: Implement three personal changes to improve productivity, habits, or social interactions.
- Monthly: Choose three topics to study deeply for a month each using a lecture video, an article/book, and miscellaneous resources.
- At the end of each month, produce an output like a video or audio recording to reinforce and retain knowledge.
- The method combats decision paralysis by breaking learning into manageable, structured steps.
- Curiosity drives the desire to learn, but unlimited information can cause fatigue; the 3x3 method provides focus.
- Output creation helps signal the brain to retain learned knowledge rather than prune it.
- The approach is flexible, allowing you to change topics and resources without pressure to be perfect.
- Consistent application of the 3x3 method builds momentum and makes you more interesting over time.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to the 3x3 Method
- 00:40Understanding What Makes Someone Interesting
- 00:59The Problem of Decision Paralysis
- 01:23Daily Learning: Three New Things Each Morning
- 02:31Weekly Changes: Improving Personal Habits
- 03:13Monthly Deep Dives: Choosing and Studying Topics
- 04:14Producing Output to Retain Knowledge
- 04:51Conclusion and Encouragement
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
First, you need to step back and think to yourself, what actually constitutes somebody being a more interesting person? Nine times out of ten, it is that they know a lot of things about a lot of different things and a lot about things
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that are potentially unexpected given their line of work or what you know them for. The way to achieve this sort of definition of interesting is that you actually do have to engage with a lot of different ideas. You're not simply going
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to absorb it by osmosis by lying on a textbook when you go to bed. That doesn't work, unfortunately. But there's a vast amount of knowledge out there and there are a vast number of ways of acquiring that knowledge. And sitting
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down and figuring out what do I want to learn and how do I want to learn it is where the decision paralysis fits in because I think the vast majority of people inherently want to be interesting and inherently want to learn because we
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are fundamentally curious. Think about toddlers running around. They're asking questions about everything. That is a sign humans are curious. And that is why we've been able to survive for so long.
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Because we're so curious about the world around us. However, because we have unlimited access to the entire capacity of human knowledge right now, we get decision fatigue and we are completely unable. We are paralyzed. We find it really hard to actually take that first
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step and learn these new things, which is where the 3x3 method comes in. So, how does the method work? But we start on the day-to-day, move to the weekly, and then finally up to the monthly.
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Every single day, I want you to learn three new little things. And the way I do this is I systematize it. So every morning I will have a look at a word of the day. I will generally get this from
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the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The second thing I will do is I will have a look at a paper of the day and I can do this by looking at Nature. That's my sort of preferred resource for papers. It is
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also arXiv or whatever this is. You can set up like it will send you an email automatically with a paper every single morning. Obviously, I don't read through the whole thing unless I'm particularly interested, but I'll skim through the
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abstract. And the third thing that I will do is I will read the news of the day. And my preferred way of doing this is some sort of like bite-sized piece.
Speaker A
So, personally, I will use The Economist for this because they produce like a little bite-sized thing, but there are so many other websites that do this. Or you could go on any news website and just look at the top 10 articles that
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morning. Even if that is the only thing you do, that takes you maybe 10, 15 minutes every morning. You can do it whilst you are lying in bed if you want.
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And that is guaranteeing that every single day you're going to be learning a little new thing. How fantastic. How amazing is that? You can in 15 minutes guarantee that you're going to be learning. And because you're doing that
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at the start of your day, you're setting up the momentum to be learning throughout the entire rest of the day.
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The second thing that we're doing, the second three, we're looking every single week, you're going to aim to change three things. This is more about personal development. So, if that week you realize you were scrolling on your phone a lot, one thing you might change
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is setting screen time reminders for certain apps. You're going to try and find three. These can be to do with productivity. These can be to do with how you're interacting with your friends. These can be to do with how
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you're focusing or what books you're reading. Anything. And I do this on a Sunday night and then implement the changes throughout the entirety of the next week. But the most important part of the 3x3 method is you're going to
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pick three topics, three subjects that you want to learn about. And it doesn't matter because you have your entire life to learn new things. These don't need to be the only things you're ever learning.
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There's no, you know, a need for these to be the perfect things to learn whatsoever. So that should take off the pressure of you choosing the knowledge that you can constantly change what it is that you are learning. And it
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really doesn't matter what you're learning in a given moment in time. So you're going to pick three things. And each of those things you're going to learn them for a full month. So this is a three-month block where for a whole month
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you're going to be dedicating some time to learning this new thing. And in order to do that, you're going to pick three things to learn from. You're going to pick one, a lecture video. You can find them for free on YouTube or you can find
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them on university websites. Two, you're going to pick an article or a book or like a piece of long-form journalism.
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And three, something miscellaneous. This might be a course. This might be a series of TikTok videos. This might be somebody's YouTube series. Whatever it might be, three things to learn about this one topic area for a full month.
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And you're going to do that three times. So three months each with a different topic area. And at the end of every single month, the most important thing for you to be doing is producing a piece of output because this is something
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you're going to be able to go back on in future. Because if you learn something for a month and then move on and never return to it, you're just not going to remember the thing. That's not how your
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brain works. If you have redundant knowledge, your brain will prune that knowledge to make room for things that you do need. So in order to signal to your brain that this is knowledge that should be kept in your brain and not
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removed, what you're going to want to do is produce something. Produce a video. Produce an audio recording. Personally, I've been getting really into doing audio recordings because it's just personal little podcasts that I can then listen to at the gym or I can listen to
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on a walk and it's just a reminder of things that I was previously interested in. And because it's me talking about it, it's presented in a way that I know I'm going to be able to remember and I'm
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going to enjoy and it's really going to convey my passion for the subject. And that's all there is to it. It's not complicated. The 3x3 method, I think, is the best way of breaking down how to become more interesting. I hope this has
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been super useful. If you enjoyed, please do send any comments, any questions, and I will do my best to respond to them all. And as always, I will see you in the next video.
Topics:3x3 methodbecome more interestingpersonal developmentdaily learninghabit changeknowledge retentioncuriositydecision paralysisstudy methodlearning strategy
