Using LLMs To Expand Your Working Vocabulary

Developer Tea

This episode explores the fundamental mindset of building your vocabulary, extending beyond literal words to conceptual understanding and mental models, and how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be a powerful tool for expanding and refining this crucial skill for career growth, clarity, and navigating disruptions.

• Uncover why building your vocabulary is a fundamental skill that can help you navigate career transitions, disruptions (such as those caused by AI), and changes in roles.
• Understand that "vocabulary" goes beyond literal words to include mental models, understanding your own self, specific diagrams (like causal loop diagrams or C4 diagrams), and programming paradigms or design patterns. This conceptual vocabulary provides access to nuanced and powerful ways of thinking.
• Learn how LLMs can be incredibly useful for refining and expanding your conceptual vocabulary, allowing you to explore new subjects, understand systems, and identify leverage points. They can help you understand the connotations, origins, and applications of concepts, as well as how they piece together with adjacent ideas.
• Discover why starting with fundamental primitives like inputs, outputs, flows, and system types can help you develop vocabulary, and how LLMs can suggest widely used tools or visualisations based on these primitives (e.g., a scatter plot for XY data).
• Explore why focusing on understanding the "why" and "when" of using a concept or tool is a much higher leverage skill than merely knowing "how" to use it, enabling you to piece together different vocabulary pieces for deeper insights.

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