Want to Master Hard Skills Quickly?

Try this 9-Step Process from the Book “Ultralearning”

Ultralearning may look quite different from person to person, and from skill to skill.

Some people master languages through studying textbooks, while others start speaking from day one. While it may look different from the outside how different people are able to master skills in such short amounts of time, there are a few overlapping principles.

Learning about learning, or about the subject you’ll be learning

Before you can really dive into a learning a new skill, it’s important to know what you’re learning in as much detail as possible, and how you’ll be learning it. For example, you could learn how to hold a B2 level conversation in French by studying textbooks, or you could do the same thing by only speaking French for 3 months. Finally, you need your “why”, your driving force to be clear.

A strong “why” will push you through the difficulties you face, and to success.

You’re not going to be able to learn much of anything if you can’t focus on it.

Stop multitasking, you already know that it doesn’t work, so many studies have shown that to be true. Set aside time specifically for learning the skill you want, have a warmup time built in, so you can make the most of your learning time. Do whatever it takes to limit procrastination and distractions.

The ultimate in focus is to be able to drop in and out of single focus on your goal, so distractions don’t matter nearly as much.

Theory is fine and all, but application is a much better teacher.

I personally like to have a project associated with any skill I work on, whenever possible. A project gives me a reason to learn, and it narrows the skills I need to develop and the things I need to learn. I can skip over all the theory I don’t need, and just go after what I’ll need for the project at hand.

Directness saves a lot of time and effort that might be wasted from trying to learn absolutely everything.

Find what’s slowing you down, and relentlessly attack it.

This is you fixing the bottleneck limiting progress in other areas of the skill you’re learning. For example, if you’re trying to hold conversations in French, but your fluency is limited due to a lack of vocab, you probably need to drill vocabulary. By improving one area, you improve all other areas a well.

If you could only drill one aspect of a skill you’re learning, what aspect would give you the most return, and improve every other aspect with it?

Some skills need information once, then you can forget it, while others you want to hold onto for longer.

This is particularly true for more knowledge based skills, such as programming, language learning, history, etc. To practice retrieval, try to recall as much information as you can without looking at notes. This trains your brain to learn better than if you were to just review your notes for a test.

A test itself is one of the best study methods you could use to really learn a subject well.

If you suck, you need to know it, and you need to learn fast.

That said, getting the right kind of feedback can be difficult, especially since it depends on the type of skill you’re learning. Another problem you may get is conflicting feedback, leaving you unsure what to do. Be mindful of where this feedback comes from, and do your best to derive key insights from it.

Even in the case of conflicting feedback, you know that something’s wrong.

We forget things, it’s a fact of life.

Retention is about hanging onto as much of the important stuff as we can. There are a few different retention strategies you could use to remember as much info as you can long term, but again, these strategies will vary by topic and skill. One of the most common is spaced repetition, where you study specific words, phrases, or concepts over progressively more spaced periods of time.

That said, there are many other retention strategies you could use depending on the topic at hand.

Develop a deep understanding of a skill, so you can start solving new problems through intuition.

This is more difficult to train, because it mostly comes with time and practice in a skill, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to train. The Feynman Technique of understanding problems is one such method of training intuition through asking questions. When given the tools, your brain can do great things without you even realizing it.

Over time, conscious efforts of studying a topic and solving problems can be replaced by a gut feeling you only get with knowledge and experience.

Not every skill can be learned by following those who came before.

You may start to encounter problems unique to your situation that you can’t find an easy answer for. It’s time to take what you’ve learned and experiment until you find an answer for yourself. Combine skills you’ve learned before, and use everything at your disposal to overcome whatever challenges you may face.

This is a learning process; see what works for you, and use that.

(Amazon affiliate link, I get a little kickback from this)

If you like what you’ve read, consider following me on Medium!

Related posts:

These chocolate cupcakes, heated up with some spicy red chile, are extraordinarily special. They are perfect for everything from birthday parties to afternoon tea — a great snack when you’re craving…

She stood on her toes, tilted her head to face the world, and let the sun shine on. She could feel her frozen heart-melting as the rays kissed her cheeks and white light leaped at her eyelids. The…

Intuit has given several features into QuickBooks that includes remote access capabilities, electronic payment functions, payroll assistance, and customer and inventory management. QuickBooks has…