How to learn just anything, more quickly!

You can use some smart techniques, if you want to improve your learning process and learn something new every day.

If you are fond of learning as much as I am, you might enjoy reading through this. I will list in this article a series of tips, tricks and systems to be used if you want to improve your learning process and skills.

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Despite I was not at all the best of the class when I was a kid, I’m actually quite fond of learning and studying in general and during the past 8 years, I’ve been learning something new every day — I’m not kidding!

I soon realised that this little daily exercise of mine helps me a lot the long run when I want to learn more complex skills. Of course, we are not in the Matrix and right now we cannot yet learn as fast as Neo used to do in that movie, but we can learn some tricks to speed up the learning process a bit.

As meta as it might sound, at the beginning I decided I wanted to learn how to learn — just like you, reading this article right now.

I soon learned that there’s not a universal way of learning. We are all different, and we can all use our own tricks and best practices.

Brain Setup

I guess you must have heard already that in order for your brain to be as efficient as possible, it would be better for you to do regular exercise at least a few times a week, eat and sleep between 7–9h per night, right?

I won’t focus on those but make sure to take care of yourself and your body, if you want to improve your brain efficiency and thus speed up your learning process.

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Here I’ll list for you some of the tricks I’ve found to be the most efficient for my brain; chances are they might work for your brain as well:

The D.S.S.S. System by Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss is the best-selling author of the 4hour work week book. He developed a great system to learn any new skill as fast as possible, and it goes by the acronym D.S.S.S.

D — Deconstruct

The very first step is to look at the skill in action. Analyse what you want to learn. Note down what masters do and don’t do. Whatever the skill is, break it down into its various parts and components. Try to visualize it and imagine as if it was a completed puzzle. Your main job here is now to break that puzzle apart into its 1000 pieces. Take your time to identify the KEY elements. What is crucial to the skill? At the end of this first step, imagine your ideal outcome and how you will measure it.

S — Selection

Once you deconstructed the skill into its minute details, identify the 20% elements that will provide 80% of the desired result. The Pareto Principle always wins!

 If for you were to learn a language, you’d only need to learn the 2000 most common words to be able to carry on a conversation relatively quickly.

 So find that 20% and learn just that, the rest is a filler.

S — Sequencing

Once you have detected that 20%, the next task requires you to organize it in the most optimized and efficient order. No worries if the sequence doesn’t actually make a logical sense; It doesn’t always need to go straight from Point A to Point B.

Let’s suppose you want to learn chess: you could start focusing on endings rather than openings. The trick is simply finding the best sequence that applies to you or that feels good to you; and then, you go through brief test periods. You need to experiment. 

 Measure the results. It’s all about iteration here, just repeat using a different sequence until you will eventually find the one that suits you best and provides you with the fastest and more efficient results for you.

S — Stakes

Commit yourself and start being accountable for what you do. As easy as it might sound, learning something new requires dedication and motivation. That’s where the stakes come in. Define a deadline to prove yourself and keep your motivation high. Learning a language? Buy a ticket to an upcoming mixer with native speakers. Learning to play a musical instrument? Sign up for open mic night at a local club. Honing your programming skills? Volunteer to update and refresh the website at work. You need something to get you working, and ideally something that scares you…at least a little bit. This accountability is important to motivating success.

Try the D.S.S.S. System yourself and you will be amazed by how good and efficient it is.

The Feynman Technique

The Feynman Technique is a Mental Model named after Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize Winning Physicist. It is designed as a technique to help you learn pretty much learn anything — so understand concepts you don’t really get, remember stuff you have already learnt, or study more efficiently.

Here is how it works:

1. Pick a topic you want to understand and start studying it. Write down everything you know about the topic on a notebook page, and add to that page every time you learn something new about it.

2. Pretend to teach your topic a classroom. Make sure you’re able to explain the topic in simple terms.

3. Go back to the books when you get stuck. The gaps in your knowledge should be obvious. Revisit problem areas until you can explain the topic fully.

4. Simplify and use analogies. Repeat the process while simplifying your language and connecting facts with analogies to help strengthen your understanding.

With you want to focus on explaining what you have just learned using simple words and actually pretending to be talking to someone listening to you. No worries, you won’t feel like a crazy dude who speaks alone if you are motivated and focused on what you are doing.

The metaphors technique

Another solid technique to be used is picturing in your mind metaphors of what you are learning.

Try to visualize what you are doing and even if the concept is quite complicated, try to abstract it and make it relevant to something you are used to. Of course, you won’t be able to abstract in such a way if you are learning how to play the guitar; this technique will be invaluable when you’ll be learning new concepts or ideas.

The “Ask Why” technique

When learning something new, just do not give everything for granted but try instead to understand why someone else reached such a conclusion. If you are learning a martial art, try understanding why your leg has to be placed in that exact position; if you are learning how to cook, try to understand why you should be following a specific sequence for a recipe; and so on…

If you know the reason why you do something in a specific way, you will drastically improve your learning process!

The mind practice

There’s not an actual scientific support behind this, but many successful people agree that when you are learning a new skill, you can practice that new skill by just thinking about it. Go through the actual process with your mind and pretend you are actually doing the specific movements or actions. If you are able to put your mind into the same state it would be when you are executing the new skill, you will notice it will all come easier the next time you will practice it.

The focus modes

Barbara Oakley, creator of the Learning how to learn course on Coursera, suggests going through focus modes sessions. What you basically want to do here is to completely free your mind and reach a ready to learn state of mind before starting to learn something. In order to achieve such state, you often want to do something that pleases or relax you and that is not related to learning at all.

Conclusion

The most important thing to keep in mind is to not forget that your brain needs time to assimilate anything new. It’s just like giving it some time to store the new information into your brain-drive.

So, take your time, do not overdo it and enjoy learning something new every day of your life!