Learn to Learn →
I started developing a passion for movies around seven years ago. One of the most memorable movies that I saw back then (in 2003) is “The butterfly effect”. This movie made me very curious - I actually went to my physics professor at that time and tried to learn more about the phenomenon.
I liked idea of learning while watching movies. That’s why, in the past seven years, I’ve developed a basic set of heuristics that enable me to discover and filter interesting movies:
- Before deciding whether I want to watch a movie or not, I check its imdb.com rating.
- If a good friend recommends me a movie, I watch it no matter what kind of rating it has - it’s a good opportunity to learn more about the interests of my friend.
- After watching a great movie, I seek to understand why I liked it and learn about the people (director, actors, etc) that worked on it.
- Whenever I notice that I like a specific characteristic (mood, structure, plot elements, etc) of a movie, I seek to discover other movies that have the same characteristic using jinni.com
- I rate the movies that I watch using criticker.com in order to receive better recommendations.
- I try to watch movies as often as possible. No matter how good I get at discovering and filtering, I still get to watch movies that I don’t like. Watching movies frequently increases the probability that I am going to watch a great movie.
Last week I traveled to Timisoara and Cluj together with a bunch of friends. Each of us had the opportunity to give talks related to entrepreneurship in the context of the upcoming “How to Web” event. I gave a talk titled: “Learn to Learn”. There are many fundamental aspects to creating and running a great business. I believe that learning is one of them. In my presentation I made a parallel between how I learned to watch better movies and learning in entrepreneurship. You can check the slides below.
