The day the Oddgodfreys first thought we would like to sail around the world, neither Andrew nor I had ever stepped foot on a sailboat in our lives.

We had no idea how to sail.

We also had little idea how to earn money.

Or practice law.

Or be a good chemical engineer.

Or even (really) how to be adults.

In December of 2004, we were 22 and 23 years old, respectively, still in the process of wracking up student loan debt, and had not one single appreciating asset to our names, and only one of us had recently acquired a full time job. If we were two horses in vying for the Kentucky Derby, no one would have bet money in our slot - except maybe my mom. I’m pretty sure a healthy part of her always feared we might actually do it.

What to Do When You Have No Clue

First, you might want to admit you have no clue.

Or not....

You Could Just Go Now

I will be the first to admit, a lot of sailors learn by doing. They get a crazy idea like this, find a free boat from an overcrowded boat yard the next week, and cast off to earn money while performing a circus act from the rigging of their newly acquired vessel. (I’m actually not kidding, this is a true story after all.)

Some of these people even succeed.

If you are one of these hearty souls....nothing I say in my blog or this article is for you. I tip a nosh of rum in your general direction and acknowledge you are more courageous than I. This article is for people more like Andrew and me: the cautious risk takers.

Creating Your Own Learning Plan

When we were kids, our parents and teachers largely told us what we should learn, and then they implemented the steps to teach those things to us. The biggest difference between learning as a kid and learning as an adult is that no one has the time or desire to do this for you. There may be all sorts of people who want to wring your money from you to teach you what you want to know, and some of them will be effective. But very rarely is there one person who can lead you from knowing nothing about a major subject to knowing everything you need to know to achieve your objective.

Part of this reality comes from the fact that as adults, we all have such a variety of goals and objectives. We aren’t just learning calculus to pass a particular test. We are learning how to live as the humans we hope to be and achieve dreams that only we can truly see for ourselves. I’m a big believer that while we can hire or receive help along the way, for the most part, the ball is in our own court when it comes to figuring out how to build out our own lives.

Lucky for us, in the age of information, there is no shortage of resources to help us create our own learning plan.

So, then, what?

How To Learn Anything In 5 “Easy” Steps

I believe that for anyone who does anything well, the following steps occur whether they are undertaken consciously or they happen by chance. I bet you are already doing all of these things, too. For me, I hadn’t put my finger on these steps when I first started my legal practice or even when we first started to learn to sail. It’s only now as I look back with 20/20 hindsight that I realize these are the steps I always seemed to take, and they are also the steps that other successful sailors and professionals also took - even the circus act from the rigging. It happens by accident or on purpose, but I think we can achieve more, and more quickly, when we can execute the process intentionally.

I used these steps when I learned to practice commercial litigation, again when I needed to learn how to represent lenders in commercial foreclosure and bankruptcy litigation, again when I wanted to learn to sail, and again when I wanted to learn how to manage our finances to fund the sailing. The process repeats over and over again.

Making It Happen In Law and At Sea

Law school teaches this concept from day one. Our classes are organized around entire subjects of law: Contracts, Torts, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, etc. The first thing we learn is the “overview.” We read a treatise written by a respected authority in the area and discuss the progression from common law in old England all the way through today. It’s a start. Then, we get an overview of Contract Law for our particular state when we study for our bar exam.

None of that truly soaked in for me until the economy shifted in 2008 and I had to develop a practice that could survive the economic downturn. A banking client asked me to assist with a foreclosure of a commercial property and the first thing I had to do was admit: I had no clue what to do.

Neither did anyone else at my firm. Times had been fat and good for a while and none of us had any experience with commercial foreclosures. When I looked at my supervising partner and said, “Now what? I guess we must refer them out.” He wisely told me, “No, Leslie, you have to learn that area of law.”

What a crazy idea that was.

Not long thereafter fate saved me from what would inevitably been malpractice by pairing me up with a bankruptcy practitioner who knows all about debtors in default and creditors rights. He told me, “Leslie, you need to read all of the statutes surrounding foreclosure in Nevada. And then, you should read all of the cases that have been decided by the Nevada Supreme Court. Then, you will know foreclosure law and you can begin to practice in that area.” This was so simple and so obvious, I’d missed the notion completely.

I did this, and suddenly, I understood the concept of the full overview. I still didn’t know how to practice commercial lending foreclosure and bankruptcy litigation, but I knew the law that governed the practice and that was a start.

I made a list of things I needed to do on a practical level: prepare foreclosure notices, coordinate with process servers, prepare paperwork that meets the auction administrator’s requirements, guide clients in decision making around setting legally supportable base foreclosure bids, prepare complaints and affidavits that complied with the law for obtaining monetary judgments, etc. etc. etc. Of course this list is miles long, but the overview of the law told me what was involved, and I could see what I needed to develop to avoid catastrophe.

This was timely in the development of my sailing skills as I realized I could use the exact same process to learn to sail. First, we sought out a general overview. These are the texts we started with.

If I were looking to gain a “sail around the world overview” now, I’d probably enjoy @SailingYachtFlorence and their YouTube Channel. It’s such a fantastic mix of learning/knowledge and also the story of what it’s like to sail around the world.

From this reading, we were able to make a list of all the things we needed to learn to feel comfortable setting off to sea. This isn’t a comprehensive list, this is just the list we came up with for our own personal process.

Then, we set off on learning all that stuff one way or the other. We either planned strategies to fill the gaps, or we filled the gaps when serendipity brought us a learning opportunity. Here is a list of some of the things we did to fill those gaps, though sure I’ve forgotten numerous little learning points that happened along the way. Also, there are umpteen billion more resources than these out there for you to choose from. Choose the ones that fit your learning style, timeline, and gap-fill goals.

We made a lot of great friends who acted as mentors over the course of our learning process (which, by the way is still ongoing today.) There are so many, I can’t list them all! But, here are a few we found through intentional processes.

Then, like they say, practice makes perfect.

Getting Ready For Castoff

Back at work, my foreclosure practice was growing. Sometimes this all went as planned, sometimes I’d run into nuances in the law that required me to course correct. It was a process of years before I felt like I could say knew what I was doing, but eventually, I did feel that way. I began teaching CLE Courses on the Lender’s Foreclosure Process and Procedures.

Then came the day I ran into an area of foreclosure process that had not been addressed by the Legislature or clarified/interpreted by any Nevada Court. By this point in my career I understood sometimes no one has the answer and it’s my job to advise the client what to do anyway. There wasn’t a script to follow anymore, I had to combine knowledge and experience and apply it to circumstances no one had quite seen. This is where Step 5 came into play.

Looking back on it now, this felt quite similar to casting off on our sailing trip. Eventually, questions arise in your sailing preparation that no one can answer for you. No one else knows whether you are ready, your boat is ready, or your finances are ready. All of that depends on what kind of sailor you want to be, what kind of sailing trip you want to have, and where your risk tolerance lies. This is why it is so important to actively engage with Step #5 of the learning process. You have to observe, test, and then apply the things you learn to your own personal objectives.

Andrew and I got into the habit of holding Friday night or Saturday morning planning meetings where, we would ask ourselves: “What did we learn this week? How can we apply it going forward? And What do we need to do this week to make our goals happen?” It sounds structured, but it wasn’t. This would happen around campfires, during walks around our neighborhood, on our drives to San Diego, while bobbing on Lake Mead under a full sky of stars. It was a fun, dream building process between best pals. Anything and everything was fair game: professional, financial, sailing, our land based vegetable garden, anything....but more often than not, it was all about sailing. It turned into a process of putting our finger on what kind of sailors we wanted to be.

These things we did to learn to sail is by no means all you could do, possibly not even all you should do before casting off. This list is just what we did. By the day our deadline arrived, we took an educated guess regarding whether we had enough knowledge of both sailing and self (within our personal risk tolerance) to quit our jobs and jump out to sea. But, we couldn’t know for sure. It’s the learning process, not any one class or action item that gives us the confidence to go to sea. We continue to apply this same process in repeating cycles while we sail, and at least so far, it has served its purpose.