“The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.”

― William Francis Butler

Gentlemen. Knights. Warrior Poets. The modern Gentleman Spy has at its roots the knights of old who were not just adept at arms, but chivalrous and intellectual.

A broad intellectual base will serve you in every avenue of life. Sadly, this is often neglected, in school and in life.

The Gentleman Spy should be well-versed on a broad variety of topics, from history to geography, geopolitics, literature, science, technology, and almost anything in between.

Whether it’s at work, the bar, a charity ball, or conversing with world leaders, you should be able to understand and keep up in any conversation about any topic.

LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

Before discussing what to learn, focus first on how to learn. “Learning how to learn” will make everything about the process easier.

Jonathan Levi’s Become a SuperLearner masterclass is the best way to jump-start that process.

Next, this article via Cornell College provides a good overview of the Preview-Read-Review (P2R) process. I personally used this process to ace all the certifications I needed for work with minimal studying and effort.

Other good books on learning how to learn (or study) are Cal Newport’s How to Win at College and How to Become a Straight-A Student, Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, and Barbara Oakley’s A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even if You Flunked Algebra).

Going further into mastering your own ability to process information, you should work on increasing IQ, focus, and working memory. This will make everything else in your life easier. Dr. Mark Ashton Smith’s IQ/EQ Mindware programs are the gold standard, with guaranteed IQ increases of 10-20 points. At around $40 for a guaranteed lifetime worth of benefits, I recommend the Premium Plan.

Combining the IQ/EQ training with HRV coherence training tools for health, stress management, and emotional control will serve you well through everything else you plan to do.

The SuperLearner Masterclass and IQ/EQ training, coupled with the additional studying you’ll be embarking on, will help reap the greatest benefits through the rest of your life.

WHAT TO LEARN

Getting into the meat of a quest for a “general knowledge,” there are myriad ways to go about that goal. What we’re looking for above average knowledge in a wide variety of fields.

While educational goals will vary between people, locations, careers, and educational backgrounds, there are some fairly universal ideas:

Read. Books.

If you do nothing but read the books listed below, you’ll be much better off than you were before.

I’m listing these first because these books will give you a leg up on everything else you decide to pursue.

These books will improve your general knowledge as well as making you a better thinker and more aware in general. You’ll get excellent overviews of interesting or advanced topics, learn the parts of history that most schools don’t cover, and will go through the backstory of events or ideas that you thought you knew, but probably don’t really.

If you want to go beyond the list above, check out other resources like The 100 Essential Books You Should Have Read in College. It goes deeper into the ancient and classic texts, biographies, philosophy, religious, and “intellectual” books that most of us “should” have read, but either haven’t, or haven’t since high school or college where we only skimmed enough to pass a test.

MASTER THE BASICS

Next up, start out by reviewing all the necessary material to obtain a GED. Don’t get mad – there’s a lot we forget when we’ve been out of school for a few years. The rise in homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare just how much everybody has forgotten, regardless of educational background.

This may seem like a crackpot recommendation, but it will give you a solid baseline to understand what you’re already strong in, what you could brush up on, what what you really need to work on.

Sign up for the free online program, work through practice exams, and go through any required study material until you’re ready to score “college ready” or “college ready + credit.”

Mastering the basics is part of living like a Gentleman Spy, and trying to make it through advanced curriculum without having an excellent grasp of the basics is a recipe for disaster.

COLLEGE-LEVEL EDUCATION

An excellent way to work through a lot of general knowledge without breaking the bank or going too deep into too much is to study for CLEP exams.

Whether you’ve attended college or never plan to, the CLEP exams are an excellent starting point to a lot of “general use” knowledge.

ModernStates.org is an excellent (free) option for getting your feet wet here. Most of their courses say they’re four week programs and are taught by top instructors at top universities. That’s where you should start. If you’re dedicated, you could probably go through one course per week or two (or a few courses at a time). In less than a year, you’ll have better knowledge than most about a lot of topics.

NOTES ON CLEP: A caveat with the CLEP exams is that they are geared towards standardized, easily quantifiable knowledge, rather than a full and nuanced understanding of these topics. As you study, make note of anything that seems particularly interesting, then delve deeper via textbooks, scientific articles, videos, etc.
A major reason for selecting the CLEPs versus other avenues is that you don’t have to waste time or mental bandwidth figuring out what to do next or wading through hundreds of oddball or advanced topics before finding the course you need. There are only a handful of these and the courses are free. There’s no reason not to start here unless you know for sure you’re ready for more advanced material.

GOING DEEPER

With the basics covered, it’s time to delve deeper into any subject that is of particular interest.

Using geography as an example – for which there is no CLEP exam – a great way to brush up on that would be to head over to Lizard Point or World Geography Games and start playing. Yes, I’m recommending you play games online. First, go through all the regions and countries within them until you can reliably match them up with the map. After you can locate any country (1-4 hours of work), go through the capitals, the flags, and heads of state.

Doing this for 30 minutes to an hour a day (even for just a few minutes at a time if you take breaks at work), you should easily be able to name/locate/visualize all the vital information about any country within a week or two. You can, of course, dig a lot deeper, learning bodies of water, states/provinces/regions, state capitals, major cities, etc. Combine this studying with going through the CIA World Factbook and/or World Leaders publications to retain an immense amount of knowledge about the world very quickly and efficiently.

You can take similar approaches to almost anything you want to learn. If you want to know more about history, physics, ancient Mayan archaeology, or auto repair, start with the middle school or high school level overview, then keep drilling down into more advanced material as long as you’re interested.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

The resources above are just the tip of the iceberg:

Use free apps like Memrise to learn about myriad topics. From anatomy and physiology or astronomy, to car parts, resistor colors, world flags, or quantum mechanics, there’s tons of cool stuff that you can spend your time learning. This is a great “add-on” tool to use when you’ve had enough structured learning and just want to play around for a bit while still learning cool stuff.

Academic Earth, Coursera, edX, Khan Academy, and Udemy are excellent resources with courses and videos that cover many different topics. You can access everything from full college level courses from top universities, to tutorials to help you brush up on algebra or calculus, to courses on business finance or digital marketing and everything in between.

Many universities offer some type of freely available programming online. Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Yale all offer some type of free, online educational resources

TED Talks can be great resources and may open your eyes to ideas you never would have considered otherwise.

iTunesU may be a good option and many universities or research institutions have their own podcasts. Oxford, MIT, UC Davis, UCLA, Berkeley, and more offer podcasts, so search around to find something that interests you.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Assuming you’ve been out of school for a while, here’s how to build a ton of general knowledge very quickly:

  • Buy and go through Become a Superlearner and any other materials on how to rapidly acquire and retain information. This will make everything else in the process faster and more efficient.
  • Go through the full 20-day DNB training cycle. Sticking with this training, even if it’s only 20 minutes every other day, is harder than it seems. But the lifelong gains in IQ, working memory, and emotional regulation are worth the effort.
  • Buy the five books that seem most interesting from the list above. Start reading them as you can fit them in. Read in the bathroom, before bed, during a break from work, in the morning before you go to work. Whenever it is, make time to read books.
  • Spend a couple of days/weeks going through the GED or SAT/ACT prep material making sure that all the basics are in place. This shouldn’t take more than a month, and probably not even a week or two. Use free, online resources to brush up on any areas or subjects that you need help on.
    • You can start going through the geography games, Memrise courses, or learning a new language during this time as well.
  • Now it’s time to get the next level educational base going. Register at ModernStates.org, and sign up for 1-4 courses at a time. A good way to program this would be to aim for one composition and literature course, one history and social sciences course, and one science and mathematics course at a time.
  • AFTER making sure your base is up to par, it’s time to take up any other studies that interest you. Maybe it’s biotech, business, coding, finance, a new foreign language, history, marketing, psychology, or physics. Whatever you feel is missing in your life, watch some videos on the subject, take a course, read a book, or whatever else works for you in a way to actually grasp and internalize new information.

Wherever you are in life, increasing your knowledge is one of the most powerful ways to level up your life. It will help you make new and better connections, improve your decision-making process, and make you more capable and interesting overall.

Whether you’re a high-school dropout or PhD, there is something on this list you can use to better yourself. Pick a topic and get started learning today.