How to Learn the Essence of Something New Quickly
I’ve been into a lot of learning lately. To be frank, to the point I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed.
The journey started with my online course with Benjamin Hardy’s 52 Weeks of Momentum (now called AMP) throughout 2018.
As the results were so amazing and I’ve fundamentally changed many aspects of my life successfully (reaching 4/5 of my annual goals, getting to a regular morning routine that starts at 4:30am), I signed up for more related courses.
Part of my “power-up” was to build my skills in marketing and sales, and I’ve even gone to the extremity of starting my 3rd “marketing” company (though I’ve absolutely no background or experience in the domain), to build a strong “forcing function” that pushes myself for success.
As a result, I’ve since signed up for Darren Hardy’s courses on productivity and entrepreneurship, Russel Brunson’s ClickFunnel courses, and also Jim Kwik’s memory course. And recently I signed up for Tony Robbin, Dean Graziosi and Russel Brunson’s Knowledge Business Blueprint (KBB).
That’s a lot of courses to cover and probably the most intensive intentional learning I’ve done since leaving school 10 years ago!
But I also immediately face a great challenge: with so many new things to learn and limited time, how can I actually “learn” them well?
That may be a challenge faced by many, especially if you’re on a “growth curve” and aren’t satisfied with just the status quo, but seek to continue to develop and grow yourself.
How can we truly learn and master the essentials quickly, while not overwhelming ourselves?
I’ve found that the secret lies in “practice”.
Yes, how to learn something truly quickly and effectively, isn’t about how or what you “learn”, but about how you “apply” what you learn.
I’ll give a self-example: Russel’s ClickFunnel is great! He’s made a big fortune and built a continuous stream of customers that come to him at no cost and no additional efforts whatsoever, all through just three main funnels he’s built over the years.
But when we built our funnels to sell my online course, it was a totally different story! Very few visitors, and pretty much zero sales since our launch and the situation continues. Friends also criticize and laugh at the poor video quality, the lack of engaging content, etc.
Does this mean that ClickFunnel or funnel marketing doesn’t work? Not at all! Because obviously many people have used it and made it work and earned a profit or even fortune.
So that alone shows that the issues aren’t with the techniques or process, but rather, how I’ve actually “applied” the process, or perhaps how I capture the essence of my learning.
Joseph Waizkin in “The Art of Learning” explained his process: he would always find the “better opponent” to practice when he first learned Taichi, which was different from his peers: where they’d find equal or lessor people to practice, so that their egos and faces wouldn’t hurt too badly.
Joseph on the other hand, not only tried to match with better opponents, but he also sustained through the real, physical pains and emotional humiliations of failing again and again at the matches. He was beaten up badly.
He did try to learn and find out what went wrong each time, and made small improvements to his techniques. Surely enough, a few months later he not only was winning over the fearsome opponents, he went on quickly to become the U.S. Champion, then later World Champion in Taichi.
His stories are inspiring and certainly an example of someone who learns quickly to the top. But whether that applies to ourselves, is still a question of a choice on our own: will we be willing to practice what we learn, immediately and continuously?
Bearing the embarrassments, laughs and humiliations until we’re finally able to figure out? Or will we simply learn, learn and learn, and never put the learning to test and practice, and still go on our old ways, till it’s too late, and we start to blame the knowledge or even the teacher, for not working?
That choice is ours, but the consequences are also ours.
