Learning to learn is the best timeless skill.

Note: This blog article is based on the Udemy course “Learning to learn: Efficient learning” by Andrei Neagoie and Zero to Mastery Academy. The following are my notes mixed with personal knowledge and experience.

In a world full of information and constant change, the best skill to have is being able to learn efficiently and adapt to the current environment.

“The only thing that is constant is change” — Heraclitus.

1. The Principles

First thing to do: ask yourself why do you want to learn. Prioritize learning over winning in the system (Not only getting good grades, but actually learning). Always seek learning more and not only approving, and make sure it keeps you in a positive state of being.

You need to know what success look like for yourself, only your opinion matters here. Be honest about what are your best traits and find balance between big audacious goals and realistic objectives. Then, considering your definition of succes, state your Dream, Goals and Objectives in life and how they look like. This is a cyclical process you will need to revisit many times.

Everyone faces obstacles in their journey, go throgh the ones you will encounter, as many people would just give up and find other goal to persue. Recognize that every obstacle you face is indicating you the right way to go, and often times requires you to overcome it.

Reframe your failures so that they become your best teachers, and experiences. You need the ups and downs to keep moving forward in life and keep learning. Analogy: In electrocardiograms life is represented by ups and downs, and death by a straigth line without movement.

Pareto principle: Usually, 20% of the work done will lead to the 80% of the desired outcome. What is that 20% of work I need to do in order to efficiently achieve my goal? …and initially get rid of that other 80% that is not as efficient.

Be curious, learn many things in different areas and stack skills on top of other skills. By combining these skills in a unique way, you will be able to give unique solutions.

Self learning is always a personal choice.

2. The Lies

a) “Follow your passion”: Many times people don’t know their passions. Achieving mastery in something, will make you enjoy it more. You will want to keep a craftsman mindset:(https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2011/08/11/the-career-craftsman-manifesto/)

b) “You can avoid risks and play it safe”: Nothing good happens by staying in your comfort zone. Expand your capabilities, grow stronger and try new things. Safety and Security are and illusion, you will rather be prepared when hard times come, by being resilient.

c) “Trust only this one person”: As there are no magic pills, there are no magic teachers. Don’t just believe what anyone says, go try it yourself and see if it’s true to you by experiencing it.

d) “Practice 10.000 hours to master anything”: Quality over quantity! Make the hours count, don’t count the hours. Prioritize efficient learning always. In some areas you will have a hard time learning as others will come easier for you.

3. The 4 Pillars of learning

3.1 Game Mindset: You can always improve your skills and gain more experience. Add new skills to your arsenal. You can fail many times to go past an obstacle, but make sure to try different ways as you learn from your mistakes.

3.2 Feynman Technique: Mastery of any subject is reflected on the capacity to make it simple enough so you can succesfully teach it to anyone. Test yourself by recalling what you learned and teaching the concepts as simple as possible. Let your “students” give you feedback and learn from that too.

3.3 Trunk Based Knowledge: First focus on the fundamentals, they will be as the roots and trunk of your “learning tree”, keeping it stable in the ground to make it unshakeable. Next, you can learn the principles and details, as you will have a strong base on where you can grow many leaves and branches as they will come and go with the seasons.

3.4 Efficiency trumps Grit: You don’t have to be the hardest worker to be succesfull. Efficient learning is about smart work and good activity management. Balance between your smart-work and life will reward you even more.

4. The Techniques backed by Science

Techniques to learn efficiently and develop high value skills in the most efficient way:

1. Be healthy: A healthy body is a healthy brain, taking care of both will let you work at your best. This includes drinking plenty of clean water, eating a healthy diet (Just Eat Real Food), having any daily movement practice, good sleep according to your cyrcadian rithms and managing your levels of stress.
2. Killing ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts): Recognize the toughts that come frecuently to your head, practice being detached from them and inmediately reafirm your goals. This will keep you on track, reinforcing your mindset to succeed.
3. Having a positive peer group: Find a community, to recieve feedback, keep you accountable and cheer each other up. “Learning Together, Everyone Achives More.” — Jim Kwik.
4. Clean environment: Make sure you have the best work environment possible, a place you assosiate with learning and working. Also, you enjoy being for long periods of time there because is free of distractions.
5. Interleaving & Einstellung effect: Keep mixing things up, learn more skills and test other ways of learning. Avoid the “Einstellung effect”, instead, keep a growth mindset, you can always learn more and find solutions out of your current knowledge.
6. Pomodoro technique: Make sure you are engaging in both focused and diffused mode of thinking. Schedule your periods of focused work and periods of recreation/breaks, decide what you will get done in that time before starting. 25min on, 5min off is recommended. Work your way up to as many rounds as you want.
7. Chunk the subject: Divide the subject in fundamental chunks, make them digestable and conquer one at a time. This will help in making those difficult tasks more clear and grounded, bite-size tasks won’t intimidate you. Create learning roadmaps, connecting the chunks and deciding the order in which you will learn them.
8. Spaced repetition: Minimize how much you forget by practicing or studying as frecuently as you can, dedicate a defined amount of time everyday on learning what you want to learn. Let the compund learning do the rest!
9. Deliberate practice: Avoid passive and easy tasks, and engage in more challenging/active methods of learning. Ask yourself “How can I challenge myself 1% more than yesterday?”. Progressive overload is key.
10. Create a roadmap: You need a learning plan. Create a curriculum based on your research. Investigate what do industry leaders say, what are the topics you need to learn, where are the high quality resources, and what are the most important topics of the subject. Once created, stick to it but be flexible too.
11. Pareto principle: What is the 20% of work you should focus on in order to achieve the 80% of your desired results? Identify which are the most important things to learn and eliminate what isn’t in that 20%. When accomplished the “80%” of results, you can expand your knowledge or learn other skills to keep adding up and stacking knowledge.
12. Form habits: Habits will remove extra energy from your day to day life by automating your schedule and removing decisions for your brain. This helps learning by practicing using spaced repetition.
13. Make it memorable: There are several techniques all based on this concept: Use all your senses when learning to consolidate and learn more. For example, the method of location, keep a mind-map of a familiar place and use those places as “folders” to keep saved anything you want to remember. Also using whole-body methods and smell promotes optimal learning.
14. Parkinson’s Law: Basically, have deadlines for your tasks, that preasure will push you to finish that task. Use them strategically.
15. Stakes & Rewards: Make a system where you reward yourself for accomplishing tasks and learning. And also add little preassures to keep you motivated and far from leaving what you are doing.

5. The first 20 hours of learning:

When starting to learn something new, try implementing this steps:

1. Create a roadmap of most important concepts you are going to learn, chunk the subject and connect the dots.
2. Practice active learning. Make the most out of your learning time by using the techniques mentioned, just pick a few.
3. Have a feedback system. Peer group and/or mentors.
4. Avoid procrastination! No distractions and make it easy for you to stick and engage to your practice/study.