How To Learn New Skills In Record Time

Learning fast is not about the 10,000 hours, but rather how you learn in each hour.

👊 The Punch List:

• Children learn faster than adults.

• 59% of employees invest in their own upskilling.

• Every year you wait to learn a skill, it gets exponentially harder to learn.

• Research shows you can learn faster by simply changing how you currently practice learning.

3 Principles to Learn New Skills Fast

Personal Projects First

This simply means taking the time to work on projects that you are personally interested that are related to the skill. If you find a project to work on you’ll have a begin and an end time to learn a skill. And you can learn while feeling like you’re making real progress. That’s important to staying in the learning process.

This works because most things are boring and tedious to learn. When we work on personal projects we can be assured that we’re learning and that we’re doing something we consider interesting. It’s also much more motivating to have an end product to show, share, or sell.

Real world examples include making a short film with friends to learn cinematography, or creating your own personal blog to learn web development.

Learn 2 Earn

This simply means learning things on the job. Most people are scared to get paid to do something they don’t know how to do. But consultants and crisis specialists do it everyday. When you get a job for something you want to learn, you’ll be given everything you need to learn that skill.

This works because of two reasons. The main reason is because of the incentive to actually learn. There’s no more thrilling learning experience than knowing someone is expecting you to deliver in a few weeks time. The second reason is all the tools, resources, and people you’ll have access to in the subject you’re learning.

Real world examples include being paid to draw a portrait for someone or even getting a sales job where you’re paid strictly on commissions.

Shadow Learn Skills

This simply means finding someone that is good at the skill you want to learn, and then shadowing them doing the craft. This is a mandatory part of many high skilled jobs and positions. The more time you can spend watching and even helping others do a skill, the better you’ll get at it by pure osmosis.

This works because people are highly observant analytical machines. We’ve all watched someone do something difficult or skilled, just to turn around and do the same thing almost instantly. Our brains are great at breaking down skills and tasks when we have real world experiences to draw from.

Real world examples include apprenticing a master tattoo artist or even doing a residency shadowing other doctors working in a hospital.

All in all, learning new things will always be a drawn out process. But the more you find ways to make learning easier and engaging, the more success you’ll find. For many top learners, that means choosing personal projects first, learning to earn, and shadow learning. For you it should be the same.

As WIPs, we are naturally forever learners. And with an ever-changing world, we will have to be great at learning and adapting quickly. If we use these principles to learn faster than normal, we will create more progress in all areas of our lives.

So no matter how fast or slow…never stop learning and you’ll always be progressing…

In progress,

Tim