Editor’s note: We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of the release of ChatGPT, a knowledge and information machine unlike any we have ever before created. As we reflected on the role of knowledge, we also wondered what the future of learning would be. How can we learn in the age of AI? What role (if any) do books have? This interview, which we published before the rise of generative AI, might give us a window.
Imagine this: you’re an 18-year-old with just a high school degree. You immigrate to a new country that speaks a different language, and start work with some of the brightest engineers in the world.
Soon after, you’re thrust into management. Now, you’re leading teams of people who are 10 or 20 years older than you, working on one of the fastest-growing internet companies of the last decade.
You have two options: sink or swim.
That’s the position Simon Eskildsen found himself in early in his career. He left his home in Denmark after high school, and moved to Canada alone to take a pre-college gap year working at Shopify.
Want the full text of all articles in RSS? Become a subscriber, or learn more.
### Summary
- For those who missed it, we ran an interview with Shopify's SimonDavis back in 2018.
- At the start of the piece, he walks through how hegoes about reading more - and retaining - the knowledge he absorbs from books, and his lightbulb moment that a broad approach to reading is the best way to understand a topic deeply.
- We also get into his meticulously constructed Zettelkasten, how he uses flashcards to retain facts, and the project that's seeing him cook a dish from every country in the world.
- But that's not all.
- He also talks about how he automated his language learning, uses a reMarkable tablet to read longer documents, and how he balances his multitude of personal projects.
#### By Dan Shipper / Superorganizers
