personal scaffolding

This is apparently a trend from tiktok, but I first came across it on YouTube, where I like to watch planner videos when I can't sleep. The idea is straightforward: intentionally deciding that you want to learn something new, and then treating it with the same focus you would give to a college course. Once I poked at it a little, I saw people planning out multiple subjects, planning out an entire year of learning, giving themselves due dates and timelines and all sorts of things.

Fascinating, and I am honestly the kind of person who sees the appeal. A decade ago I would have totally gone all in on planning myself a curriculum and assigning homework and then almost immediately used it as fuel to beat myself up when I didn't follow through 100%.

So anyway, we're not going to be doing that. The idea of it is stil a good structure I think I might be able to hang something useful on, though. I came away with a sort of instruction guide for how I'd set it up if I do decide to do it:

1. what do I want to learn? brainstorm or mindmap everything I might be interested in learning in more depth
2. what things on your list feel the most exciting? picking 2-3 per quarter so there's some variety but it's not overwhelming. write down what excites you/what you want to focus on
3. consider aiming for a variety of depths - maybe one area is a starter-level and another is like a 400-level or graduate class.
4. figure out what you'd like to have to "show" for your work/how to know you finished- essays/articles? produce something if it's learning a skill? figure out how to quantify the satisfaction of a job well done?

Videos about doing the thing:

• Planning my 2026 Personal Curriculum (12 minutes) a quick and approachable overview
• The Type-A Guide to Designing a Personal Curriculum (20 minutes) goes into actually making a syllabus and selecting study materials and stuff
• How to Create a Personal Curriculum (40 minutes) okay I haven't actually watched this whole video but Plant Based Bride makes good videos in general so if you want a longer one she's probably good

In general people talk about using this to "escape the algorithm" and "battle brainrot" to the point where it's starting to sound like Just Another Content Generation Idea, and the vibe of it very much matches the planner videos I tend to see - about 50% stuff that looks genuinely interesting and helpful whether or not it would work for me, and 50% stuff you look at and go, no, nobody does that in real life. (Okay, I do actually believe Plant Based Bride is the kind of person who would, in fact, be that on top of it in real life, but I don't know that other people are.)

Which is kind of a funny takeaway to have about something that's so… analog to begin with, but I used to come away from those slow living cottagecore vidoes with the same feeling.

Maybe this is just me having ADHD and neurotypicals really can Do The Thing that seems fake to me, I don't know.

But I'm genuinely trying to be more intentional and not just keep fluttering from one hyperfocus to another every two weeks, so maybe something like this would help? I might do a sort of mini curriculum to start and then if it actually seems like a helpful structure, go in on it when I get to Quarter 2 planning.

If 2026 has a word of the year, it's shaping up to be Structure for me. I think maybe I've finally internalized that I need scaffolding to keep my brain on task and that's okay. It doesn't actually mean I'm faking it. So now I get to find and try new and different scaffolds and see what… actually… holds me up while I paint the ceiling? I'm not sure what that metaphor was supposed to do.

Maybe I'll post a sample "syllabus" or whatever I end up with.