Cover Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash (adapted)
Learn from my three years of experimentation and research
“I want to learn to play the drums,” my mentor said.
“I want to learn programming,” a member of my private mastermind said.
“I want to be a writer like you,” said another member.
What do you think all three have in common?
They all procrastinated.
I’ve known my mentor for over a year and every time I ask him about his progress… crickets! The one who said they’d learn programming read and watched (not taking action) tutorials online. The one who said they’d become a writer has one or two unpublished drafts.
Are they the exception? Certainly not!
The biggest enemy of learning is procrastination. I can give you every trick in the book, but if you can’t fight off procrastination, all will be for naught. Everyone procrastinates without the right motivation to do something.
The following eight steps will help you push through and give you a better idea of how learning happens.
If you follow even just the first step, you’re already ahead of most people. The deeper you go into the steps, the more unstoppable you’ll become in learning new skills.
This process has been the work of three years of experimentation and research. They are not intuitive. You will likely debate the order of some steps. But from my experience and observation of other learners, this order has proven to be the most successful at two things:
Making sure the learner follows through and doesn’t procrastinate; and
Learn effectively
Let’s go through the steps!
#1 — Just do it
“Just do it” — Nike
Here’s a simple two-step process to get you to do something “bold”:
Ask yourself: “What’s the worst that can happen?”; then
Do it.
The simple truth is, if you are not doing, you are not learning. I know this isn’t quite the ground-breaking revelation you were hoping for, but it’s a truth we have to remind ourselves constantly. In step 3, we’ll learn how this physically happens in the brain.
I know it’s easier said than done. In step 2, we’ll go into more detail on how you can act more easily.
But for now, if you can simply take consistent action, no matter how effective the action is, you’re already equipped to learn most skills. It won’t be optimal, but the habit of doing something consistently and repeatedly is the foundation of learning any skill.
When I started drawing, back in October 2017, I did it daily, no matter if my drawings showed promise or not, and no matter if I saw improvement or not. I just did. It worked and has been working since.
Never give your brain more reasons to procrastinate, it already has plenty.
If you succeed in the first step, you’re already a better learner than most people.
#2 — Shatter your limiting beliefs
“Whether you think you can or you can’t. You’re right.” — Henry Ford
This step is at least as important as step 1. If you are good with the previous step, this may happen automatically, as it did for me.
Here’s a fact: unless you’ve got perfect confidence, you’re always better than you think you are or can be. If you give up saying that you didn’t succeed, you are wrong. You didn’t “succeed” because you thought you never had a chance to begin with and didn’t push through.
Do I doubt that I can be a world-renown trumpeter? You know what, I don’t.
I’ve never played a brass instrument before and I’m definitely not musically gifted. If I follow the steps in this article, I will get there. I have no doubt in my mind.
In January 2018, I decided it was time for me to improve my written English. As a native French speaker, I thought it would be really valuable to become better at writing in English. Over time, I became a top writer in over twenty categories on Medium. For the most part, I owe my current writing success to using the steps in this guide.
You have to reframe your self-talk. Instead of saying: “I can’t do it”, ask yourself: “How can I do it?” That should help you shatter your limiting beliefs.
Genes may help you learn things a little faster than others, but there’s no limit. Limits are a product of your own or collective thoughts. Can I run faster than Usain Bolt? Heck yeah. I just haven’t figured out how to yet. His achievements are not the limits of human capabilities. We’ll see that in the near future, as we have previously.
Put simply: change your self-talk, change your life.
If you succeed at this step, you are seriously on your way to learn any skill. Most people never get to step 1, and much less so step 2. Take this very seriously.
#3 — Learn how to learn
“The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.” — Brian Herbert
When I started my approach, I was disorganized, but at least I took action and recognized that my limitations were of my own doing. Essentially, I didn’t know how to learn.
We all know that the skills we’ve acquired are controlled by our brain — through neural connections. Since you don’t have immediate access to your brain, you have to let it create them on its own. As such, it’s not a process you can easily “force”.
But here’s what you need to know: the brain is an organ that behaves like a muscle. How do you grow muscles? You push them to their limit and rest so it regrows stronger. This is the same for your neural connections. Practice hard, rest, do it again.
Resting doesn’t necessarily mean sleeping. It means doing any activity that removes the focus on the skill you were practicing. Jogging, meditation, showers, taking a bath, etc., are good examples of ways to rest your brain.
Think of neural connections as access points. You want to stand up? Your brain accesses the right connection to make that happen for you. Your brain acts as a librarian with superpowers. It finds what you’re looking for at the speed of light.
There’s a lot going on when you’re just standing up for example. Thousands, if not millions of connections fire up to make it happen. For the most part, it’s always the same connections that make you stand up. Some people call that a chunk. A skill is basically just a collection of chunks in your brain.
The more you learn, the faster you learn. It’s not so surprising now that we know chunks in your brain are accessible to a wide variety of skills.
If you succeed at this step, you’ll learn quite a bit faster than most people. By knowing how your brain works, you can now make it work for you, instead of against you.
#4 — Choose the right skills to learn
“Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you.” — John C. Maxwell
One of the reasons why people are drained from learning skills is because they use just one part of their brain.
For example, as a software engineer, I use my logical side of the brain for work. If I aim to learn more logical stuff after work, it’s really hard. I don’t have the mental capacity to take in more information. On the flip-side, if I practice rock climbing, I’m still fully receptive to learning in that part of the brain.
The more you learn, the faster you learn. The more diverse your learning, the more adaptable you become. The more adaptable you become, the easier it is to get out of your comfort zone — leading to higher confidence.
When learning new skills, try to divide your time between these kinds of skills:
Introvert vs extrovert skills
Assertive vs listening skills
Right-brained vs left-brained skills
Doing vs being skills
Visionary vs detail-oriented skills
Rational vs emotional skills
Design vs engineering skills
Product development vs sales skills
Art vs business skills
Personal vs professional skills
Goal-making vs negative-outcome-avoiding skills
Have you ever read a tutorial or watched a video that claims it’s the best way to learn something? Probably right? Did it work for you?
Maybe. Maybe not. It really depends. But what does it depend on?
Smarts? Intelligence?
Wrong!
It depends on previous knowledge and abilities. If I show you how to ride a bicycle and you don’t yet know how to walk, what do you think your chances of success are going to be?
Right, close to zero!
Always build on top of previously acquired knowledge to make your learning more efficient.
If you succeed at this step, you will learn most skills a lot more efficiently than the vast majority of people.
#5 — Plan your learning process
“There’s nothing less efficient than doing something that shouldn’t be done at all.” — Peter Drucker
If you want to be a top basketball player, you have to have a plan. You need a plan that shows you what you need to learn, how to practice it, and when you need to practice it. Without a plan, you remain a chump.
Without a plan, you waste time. And time, my friend, is your most valuable asset. It is the one asset you can never get back. A plan gives you the directions you should take and how to measure your progress towards your next milestone. And keeps you accountable.
By not having a plan, you run into the risk of doing things that shouldn’t be done at all, wasting considerable and valuable time.
Crafting your plan starts with being aware of your currently available sub-skills.
If you want to learn to run, you first have to learn how to stand, and then to walk. But that’s not enough. To learn to walk, you need certain competencies in your ability to stand. If you fall every two seconds while standing, you’ll be a lousy walker. If you’re a lousy walker, you’re no runner.
See what I mean?
Here are some steps to craft yourself a solid plan:
1. List the sub-skills required to get to the skill you want to learn;
2. Note the level of competency you need in each sub-skill to reach the next sub-skill;
3. Overlay your current set of sub-skills on top of that;
4. Note where you lack. Reflect on the effort required to overcome that;
5. Create a Skill Tree;
6. Find resources that will help you learn each sub-skill; and
7. Put each resource you plan to use in your calendar. Note how you can personally measure your mastery after using the resource.
Constantly review your plan. No plan is ever perfect on the first try.
I personally re-evaluate my plans at least every week. If I fall behind or I’m ahead, it’s proof of bad planning. Most of the time, you really don’t know what’s going to be important for your learning until you first start.
When reviewing your plan, chances are you were wrong in the first step. The good news is, after two weeks of practice, you should have a better idea if you’re heading in the right direction. If not, chances are you chose a skill that was a little out of your league.
If you succeed at this step, you will inevitably learn more efficiently than the majority of people who just jump to it without a plan.
#6 — Be smart in your practice
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” — Albert Einstein
There are many ways to be smarter in your skill learning practice. In this guide, we’ll touch on the three most important ones.
1. Choose the right time for you
Experiment until you find what it is for you and stick to it for a bit. Make it consistent. And even after you found your right time, still try to vary and see if there might not be an even better time. You know it’s the right time for you when you are motivated to do it and are more energized after your practice, not less.
2. Use spaced repetition
If you do not recall what you have learned, you follow the forgetting curve. If you retain 70 percent of what you learned right after you learned it, within twenty-four hours you’re already at about 20 percent, and within a week, you’re at less than 10 percent.
When you practice something you’ve learned after twenty-four hours, then after one week, and then after one month, you’ll basically retain your learning for years to come. It takes such a minimal amount of time for you, yet the results are phenomenal.
3. Use the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule)
“20 percent of the effort yields 80 percent of the results.”
Let’s take playing the guitar as an example. If my goal after twenty hours of practice is to be able to play three beginner songs, how do I go about it?
My first course of action would be to find three songs that use the same chords, using the same strumming pattern. By limiting my learning to four chords and one strumming pattern, I’m greatly reducing the effort required to reach my goal.
This is one example, but it applies to pretty much any skill. That’s how people learn languages so fast.
If you succeed at this step, you are starting to become a superstar of a skill learner. You’ll be more motivated and energized than almost everyone, and you’ll retain more things faster and for longer.
#7 — Measure your progress
“Self-awareness is a key to self-mastery.” — Gretchen Rubin
Define what progress means for you for each skill. Each skill has a different way of tracking its progress. And the way you measure it doesn’t have to be the same way someone else does it.
Take the (overly broad) skill of learning to speak Spanish. One’s goal may be to master a hundred words within fifteen hours of practice. Another person’s goal might be to sustain a ten-minute long conversation in Spanish. Both are going to practice by speaking with another person, yet they’ll measure things very differently.
The first one may measure the number of words they managed to use successfully. The other may measure the time they managed to sustain a conversation.
Don’t skip a day and review at least once a week. It’s surprisingly easy to forget to take note of your advancements towards your learning goals. Make it a habit to note your performance every day. Not only that but also note what went right and what went wrong.
At its most basic, write it down on a piece of paper or in your favourite Notes app on your phone. And at the end of the week, take a moment to reflect on your daily notes. This allows you to re-adjust your learning plan based on your actual performance.
I personally spend about thirty to sixty minutes per skill every week to understand where I stand currently. I use this time to find new and better resources to keep going for the next week.
If you succeed at this step, you’re part of the skill learning elite. You are 100 percent deliberate in your learning and you know exactly how to approach learning any skill.
#8 — Collect honest and constructive feedback
“I never lose. I either win or learn.” — Nelson Mandela
Constructive feedback never hurt anyone. Not doing something right doesn’t mean you are losing.
One of the reasons why my learning was greatly accelerated when I decided to improve my written English was because I was writing publicly on Medium. People were reading what I wrote, so it had to be at least decent, otherwise, I’d make a fool of myself. And no one wants that.
Sharing publicly is great, but getting feedback is even better. The more honest the feedback, the better, of course. Sadly it’s not that simple for two reasons:
1. People are too afraid to tell you the truth; and
2. You’re too afraid to receive it anyway.
To know if someone’s good at giving you feedback, just do a weak performance for them and ask them for feedback. If they sugarcoat it and don’t point out what you did wrong, never ask that person for feedback again.
I know this sounds extreme, but if you’ve reached this step, it’s because you care about your skill development journey. Fake feedback is more destructive than no feedback at all. We’ve all seen kids on talent shows who thought they were good at something but were seriously horrible. Guess why they thought they were great?
People who master the art of receiving feedback rule the world.
If you reached this step, you are a master amongst skill learners. There is nothing else I can teach you. The only thing I can ask from you now is this: will you be my mentor?
Summary
To learn anything, follow these 8 steps:
Just do it
Shatter your limiting beliefs
Learn how to learn
Choose the right skills to learn
Plan your learning process
Be smart in your practice
Measure your progress
Collect honest and constructive feedback
This will take months, if not years to master every step, but it’s incredibly worth it. When you get to the end, there’s nothing you can’t learn, and your motivation will always be high. You’ll have more energy, you’ll be smart, and you’ll thrive like never before.
You can do this!
— Danny