How to Master Skills 10x Faster Than Everyone Else - (Hint) You Must Learn How to Learn

What if I told you that you can learn anything 10x faster than the average person?

Want to learn how to do a handstand?  You can learn it 10x faster than most people.

Want to learn a new language? You can learn it 10x faster than most people.

Want to learn how to write programming code? You can learn it 10x faster than most people.

What it all comes down to is understanding that learning is a skill in and of itself, and if you learn how to learn, then you can train your mind, your body, your intuition to rapidly acquire new knowledge, skills, and talents.

I recently read a book titled “Ultralearning” which made me think about my own learning process in a more structured and organized way.  While most of our learning happens haphazardly as we go about our daily lives, when I took some time to think about it, I’ve realized that there is a general framework that the learning process occurs within.

I can’t say that this framework applies to everyone, as different people have different learning styles, but I can say that understanding this framework that I use for learning can maybe help you understand your own learning process.  The key here is that, if you take the time to understand the core elements of learning, then you can begin to think about learning in a more structured way which allows you to be more intentional with how you go about developing new skills, knowledge, competencies, etc.

By understanding your learning style, and building a system to support your learning style, you can train yourself to become a more efficient learner which can then translate into a host of lifestyle improvements.  Learning new skills can improve your career prospects. Learning a new language can open you up to entirely new cultures and access to segments of the population that you previously didn’t have access to.

So, in this article I want to share with you a few core concepts that I have come to understand about learning.

First is the notion that learning is a skill in and of itself. 

We’re all born with an innate ability to learn. Some of us are better at learning than others. We all have our different learning styles or preferred methods as well.

If we go through life without intentionally training and improving our ability to learn, then we will be rather inefficient learners.  Much of the information we take in will not be retained.  We will miss opportunities to construct more complex understandings of subjects due to an inability to piece disparate bits of information together in a holistic manner. 

However, we have the capacity to build on top of our innate learning abilities to become even more efficient learners.

This is analogous to all humans possessing the muscles, tendons, and ligaments necessary for everyday movement, however it’s the athletes and health-conscious people who train their muscles and bodies who significantly enhance their ability to perform movements faster, with more confidence, and more efficiently.

This brings into mind the concept of the fixed mindset vs growth mindset.  The fixed mindset approaches life with the belief that whatever sort of skills, abilities, and personality traits we were born with, we cannot change them.  On the other hand, the growth mindset understands that with a bit of intentionality and focused effort, one can improve upon their innate abilities to develop a level of mastery that many will mistake as a God-given talent.

So, if you subscribe to the growth mindset, then it shouldn’t be too bold of a statement to say that your innate ability to learn very complicated things quickly can be strengthened and improved.  It’s possible to go from being an average learner to being an advanced learner who’s able to take in, and process, information into a usable format super efficiently.

Secondly, I think the process of learning should be broken down into what I’ll call the four R’s. 

In its simplest form, learning is the journey of information moving from your external environment to your internal environment and being securely stored in a way that it is readily accessible on-demand for future use.

What I use the term “information,” I’m not only referring to information in the traditional sense. Information can come in many different forms, ranging from actual knowledge of facts and figures to muscle memory, to anything that stimulates the senses.

And that’s actually a good segue into the first R of learning.

Receiving –

This R comes before the other three because this is the first point of contact with new information.  This is the point at which information that was once foreign to you has been introduced to you. The vast majority of receiving that we do is unintentionally and not done exclusively for the purpose of learning.  Rather, as we interact with the world in our daily lives, we receive new information endlessly.

And remember, by information, I mean anything that is new to you. Information can be knowledge, physical abilities, understanding of complex topics, etc.

Most of this information will be filtered out or only held in our short-term memory for the moment that we deem it to be useful to us.  Think of calling an uber a remembering the license plate number just long enough to spot your driver. You will almost immediately forget the plate number when you enter the vehicle.

In other cases, you may store information for a tad bit longer, such as remembering about upcoming appointments over the next week or so... But this still is relegated to short-term memory and will be lost at some point.

The point here is that you will receive an overload of information in your day-to-day life, and most of that information will be quickly lost.  But the information that you really want to learn, you’ll need to receive it with the intention of also retaining it.

Thus, it is important to mindfully receive information that is intended to be truly learned rather than receiving it as an unintended consequence of daily life.  And you can do this by putting yourself in settings in which information is presented to you in a more structured and systematic format.

So, think of things like classroom lectures, books, podcasts, online learning platforms, interacting with others, mentorships, etc.  In all of these scenarios, information is being received in a more structured and deliberate manner that positions you for success in your learning process.

More specifically, when being more intentional about how information is received, you will be better able to engage in the next step of the learning process.

Recalling –

This is the act of retrieving previously received information that is now stored in the short-term memory.

This is done primarily through the act of doing, or through experiential learning.  So during the receiving step, you’ve taken in new information, but that information has a limited shelf life.  It’s not going to stay with you forever unless you give yourself a reason to hold onto it for the long term.

So, in “recalling” information you engage in activities that require you to tap into your shorter-term memory and bring the relevant information stored there to the top of your mind.

For example, consider someone who’s learning to speak a new language, and they’ve just learned a new word. For them to really cement that word into their active vocabulary for their new language, they’ll want to either hear that word used again, or they will want to start using the word themselves to trigger the recall process.

But once again, this applies to information of all sorts, including information related to physical or motor skills, or anything else for that matter.

Take learning handstands for example.  First, one must learn what a handstand is and then see a demonstration of the handstand. This is the “receiving” aspect of the four R’s. But then, one must actually try to do the handstand themselves, and this is where the “recall” step comes into play. 

To do this they will actively recall the movements that they just observed in the demonstration.  They must actively tell themselves to kick up, then extend the shoulders, keep the core tight, balance on their hands, etc.

This can happen in many different contexts, such as in interactions with others, doing mental exercises, completing written exercises, or hearing it being used in a movie.

The key to “recalling” is that you must go through the discomfort of sifting through your brain to pull that information and to apply it correctly. And at this stage in the learning process, you will likely be highly inefficient at recalling information that was recently learned.  It will likely be a clunky process.

It will take a long time as you struggle to find the right word to use when trying to speak in a foreign language.  When attempting handstands, you will inevitably fall.  But in both cases, you’re conditioning the mind or the body to store that information in the mental memory or in the muscle memory for future use.

It will be uncomfortable for sure, but that discomfort is actually a good thing.  It is a sign that your mind, your body, your muscles, or any other relevant aspect of your being is being stimulated to a point of growing, forming, and molding itself for a reality that has a permanent place for the new information.

Recalling information sends a signal to your system that the information is important and will likely be needed again in the future. Therefore, the information must be stored in the long-term memory bank.

However, information being stored in long term memory doesn’t mean that you are quite ready to practically apply the information with fluency.

This is where the next R comes into play.

Repetition –

A key benefit to learning is ultimately being able to use the new information effectively, and in a practical manner.

It’s one thing to understand a new word in a different language, but it’s another to be able to use it, or hear it, and effortlessly comprehend the word without putting any thought behind it.  This is the difference between simply knowing and being fluent, between familiarity and intuition.

This requires going a step beyond just storing information in the long-term memory. It also requires curating pathways and easy access points so the information can be retrieved fast… and I mean FAST!

This is done through repetition, otherwise known as drills, training, practice, etc.  Once you know and understand new information (key facts and figures, how to do a handstand, how to use a word in a different language), you now need to do it over and over again so that you build fluency.  

For foreign language, repetition could look like using flashcards to build intuitive understanding and pronunciation of words.  For doing handstands, it could be repeating the motion of the initial kick up into the handstand, over and over again.  For memorizing key facts and figures it could be writing down the information repeatedly for a block of time.  But no matter the type of information, you’ll have to have incorporate an element of repetition into the equation.

Repetition is necessary because once information is stored in the long-term mental memory, muscle memory, etc. the next step is to strengthen and streamline the neural pathways that are associated with that information.  As the neural pathways become more efficient, previous knowledge that took concentration and focus to retrieve during the “recall” step begins to be accessed almost instantaneously without effort.

One other thing to note about repetition is that when learning something new, there may be many elements that you learn rather quickly, while there may be just one or two things that are really holding back your overall progress.  These are the bottle necks that you’ll want to address, so repetition is best used in addressing the specific bottlenecks rather than employing it on an aspect that you’re able to pick up rather quickly.

I like to think of the long-term memory as a warehouse that stores inventory.  Yet, a warehouse without a system of organization and a streamlined process for finding items and fulfilling orders can take a very long time to find the right order, and maybe even retrieve the wrong order sometimes. So, the repetition step is effectively the work of building an organization and fulfillment process for the information stored in the long-term memory so it can be accessed as efficiently as possible.

After enough repetitions are completed, the understanding of words and phrases in a foreign language become second nature. You don’t have to go through this process of actively recalling the information.  You don’t have to do a mental translation from your native language into the foreign language.  You hear it. You understand it.

Or for handstands, at this point you do them naturally without thinking about the mechanics of how to properly kick up into the position.

Or when someone asks you about a particular piece of information, you reflexively provide an answer as if someone just asked you for your date of birth.

Once you have this level of command over the new information, skills, or abilities that you’ve acquired, then the last and final R comes into play.

Reciting –

This fourth element is essentially the reverse of the receiving component.  Reciting involves projecting information you’ve mastered outwardly back into the world specifically through teaching.

Teaching others information, concepts, skills, and other knowledge that you have learned helps to really solidify those very elements into your own learning bank.  This is because teaching not only requires you to deeply comprehend it yourself, but it also requires you to comprehend ideas so well that you can explain it to someone else in a simplified way. 

This forces you to spend additional time understanding the nuances of the information which translates to developing a higher level of proficiency.

If you’re not in a position to actually teach another person, then you can teach yourself by taking what you’ve learned and writing it down in an easily comprehendible instruction manual of sorts.  Communicate the key concepts and ideas in a format that can be understood by a beginner or someone who has very little understanding of the topic.

So, if teaching someone how to say words and phrases in a foreign language, write down a ten-step guide for how to conjugate verbs, then write down another guide for how to structure sentences, etc.

Teaching is a sort of test  of your own knowledge, because the teaching process inherently comes with questions that will be asked, and will force you to dive even deeper in to those particular points of contention, and either shore up your own understanding of key concepts or maybe even expose elements that need to be re-evaluated on your part.

So, for anything that you are learning... if you are now at a point where you have a fairly intuitive knowledge of that topic, then now might be the time for you to begin teaching others.  Whether it is facts and figures, skills, foreign language, or the many other things that you may have learned, this will not only help others learn it but will elevate your own understanding of the matter.

Lastly, I’ve realized that the more uncomfortable a learning process is, the faster learning happens.

This is a somewhat obvious, yet extremely powerful concept to understand.  Once it really set in for me, that the magnitude of discomfort is directly correlated with the speed of learning, I began to pick up the pace of my own learning by making myself far more uncomfortable than before.

I have generally viewed learning as something that should be done slowly and consistently.  And I do still believe this to be true in most cases.

However, in the cases where I am intent on really learning something and learning it fast, then I now use the level of discomfort that I am experiencing to gage my learning effort, and if I’m not utterly uncomfortable, then I know I need to increase the intensity. 

Increasing the intensity raises the bar for yourself.  The discomfort that is experienced in mind and body is the sign that your body is trying very hard to “recall” the information.

I recently applied this concept to my calisthenics practice.  For the 5 years that I’ve been training, I’ve struggled to do a move called a “Full Planche” and honestly felt like I’d never be able to do it.  To work my way towards the move I would do what are known as “regressions” which are basically easier versions of the move.  The regressions that I practiced were maybe 2 or 3 steps away from the Full Planche, but after understanding the notion that more discomfort translates to faster learning, I skipped training the regressions and began directly training the Full Planche.

Doing this was far more uncomfortable than the regressions because I’m straining my body with maximum effort, only to fall far short of being able to complete the move. So, there’s a huge frustration factor that I needed to contend with.

However, the skill acquisition was crazy fast when I turned up the difficulty… after a while I found myself actually doing the Full Planche, and I’m quite certain had I not turned up the intensity I would still today be practicing regressions rather than actually unlocking the full skill.

Next up for me is my language learning. Up until now I’ve taken various Portuguese lessons and viewed this as a process that takes time. I believed that I shouldn’t try to get too far ahead of myself or try to put myself in settings where the conversations being had are way over my head.

But now I’m thinking that maybe I’m a bit too comfortable with my current language learning process. Maybe I need to crank up the intensity and make it far more uncomfortable, far more painful, especially since this is such a high priority in my life.  It’s an accomplishment that will mean a lot to me.

So now I’m finding ways to make my language learning process more challenging and more uncomfortable to stimulate faster learning.  I’ve been asking friends to only communicate with me in Portuguese, I immerse myself in places where no English is spoken at all, so I’m forced to struggle to understand people or get my own ideas across.

And what this is doing is forcing me to be far more engaged in the “recall” process which moves my understanding of the language out of my short-term memory, and hard codes it into my long-term memory.

It is also forcing me to engage in repetition or drills, as the environment calls for me to hear and say certain phrases over and over again.  Ordering food, buying items from the store, etc.  It’s uncomfortable for sure, but after hearing or saying the same thing so many times, I have no choice but to begin to understand it intuitively.

And this leads to much faster learning, much faster growth, and much faster skill acquisition, etc.

With that said, if you truly want to learn things fast, particularly things that are very difficult to learn, then you must train yourself to become a better learner.  And I believe one of the best ways to do this is by understanding the components of learning and understanding your learning style and then creating a structured learning process that takes both of these into consideration.

If this is something that you want to explore further or if you have something that you are trying to learn faster and you believe that my process can help you, then feel free to schedule a 90-minute consultation with me so that we can come up with a plan to help you be more intentional and systematic with your approach so that you ultimately can level up your skills, your knowledge, your abilities much faster than everyone else.