The amount of high-level knowledge and technique being casually shared on YouTube, TikTok, and blogs is absolutely stunning. The world is collectively experiencing a Golden Age of accelerated learning with no geographic, economic, class, or age-related limitations. Anyone with a mobile phone can learn from the most talented people in their field, for free.

Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of human cultural evolution. Anybody who wants to can raise their game in a small fraction of the time it would have taken ten or twenty years ago.

The first time my mind was blown by this fact was maybe five years ago. The pipes in my house were making a weird loud vibrating sound. After a quick internet search I found a helpful guy on YouTube demonstrating exactly how to adjust the water pressure in your house. I ventured into the crawlspace under my house, found the valve, and make the adjustment. Problem solved.

But now I’m all about raising my art game. Yesterday I was completely humbled not once but twice, in two different fields. I watched Ian Kirkpatrick break down his drums on Dua Lipa – Pretty Please. I’ve been making beats for three decades, with a fair amount of success, but I found at least a dozen tips I could immediately implement from this one video. Multi-platinum-selling producers are willing to tell you exactly how they do it, for free.

Another one of my nerdy hobbies is painting fantasy miniatures. I’ve been painting off-and-on since I was a teenager, but resources for learning how to paint were scarce when I first started. I remember getting some very basic tips from a booklet that came with a paint set, and that was all I had for many years. It wasn’t until I started watching artists on YouTube that I really started to gain some technique. Watching extremely skilled painters like Miniac, Ninjon, Lyla Mev, and Squidmar is truly inspiring. But yesterday I discovered a painter on another level entirely. Watching Marco Frison speed paint a miniature using only three primary colors and black and white, exhibiting his color theory genius while mixing and blending on a wet palette — it blew my mind. It was almost too much. I felt overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of knowledge being dropped. But having slept on it, I’m excited to actually try some of Marco’s methods, even though my own first attempts will be clumsy.

For learning how to write better, YouTube isn’t the perfect medium. But I have read life-changing blog posts that have bettered not only my writing technique, but also my productivity. For example Rachel Aron’s breakdown of how she consistently writes up to 10k words per day. While I generally only write for a couple hours in the morning and average between 600-1000 words per day, I’ve used her advice to easily ramp it up to 2-3k per day when I want or need to.

It’s such a better situation than learning this stuff on your own by trial-and-error. Or paying tuition or course fees and slowly gaining knowledge from a small handful of individuals who may not even be that talented. I’m not knocking other forms of learning — you can’t replace working with a skilled teacher in person, or practicing with others and getting immediate feedback. But if you’re not also partaking of the free knowledge the masters are handing out for free, you’re missing out.

In conclusion, Sean O’Malley breaks down his signature jab. So that’s how he hits people as if his hands were invisible.