How to Learn New Stuff Quickly

Are you feeling stressed at school, college, or university because of different subjects you can’t learn? Well, right now we’re going to tell you some secret tricks on how to learn stuff very fast.

Top 19 Tips to Learn New Stuff Quickly

Let’s get started.

1. Skill Bearer

It is necessary to look for a master/trainer who will give a clear example, quickly set priorities, give a map of knowledge of the new area. An example to aspire to and copy directly in personal communication. No one has ever come up with anything cooler than the ancient master-apprentice system.

How to Learn New Stuff Quickly

2. Support group/environment

Remove barriers, fears, and complexes. A big part of learning is not acquiring new things, but getting rid of old ones. How do you do that? Find a supportive environment. You think you lack money, time, youth, looks, charisma, etc. Often this is a misconception-usually you just need a clear example and a support group.

Thankfully, the Internet gives you that choice. For example, you can enter the University. Check Princeton university acceptance rate.  Sign up for such groups, then get acquainted in person, try to get into this environment. If you need to, change your neighborhood, your city, your company.

3. Crushing, discrete any skill to the level of an idiot

Any complex skill can be broken down into small, simple skills that can be practiced individually. For example, the skill “singing” is broken down into small skills “breathing”, “resonance”, etc. Any complex skill can be broken down into such simple elements that even an idiot can do them. When they say “difficult,” it means not enough is broken down.

4. Every skill has a base and chips

According to the Pareto rule, 20% of the base gives 80% of the result, the rest in the first month of training you can forget. In singing and swimming, the base is breathing and it’s not obvious to a beginner. In boxing – the legs. In sales – the ability to listen, which seems incredible. An experienced trainer can for 30 minutes to tell the map of knowledge skill and highlight the main thing.

5. The sequence of learning

Among the small and basic steps (atoms) it is possible to identify the optimal sequence of learning. For example, business training is better to start with sales training. And where do you start with sales training? See above.

6. Main Metric

Every simple skill can have one main metric at one point of learning. For vocals – the ability to exhale continuously for more than 60 seconds, for writing – to write at least 2,000 characters a day, etc.

7. Principle of Visibility

Better to show than to tell. It is better to do than to show. Direct, sensual experience is the strongest. It is desirable to connect all the senses. Give a signal at the same time for hearing, vision, motor skills, etc. It is better to write by hand rather than by typing. It is better to communicate while walking (as Plato did) rather than sitting.

8. Reflection

Keep a diary, write there every day all impressions. Experience and skill are formed only after reflection. If you did something, but did not reflect on it, did not write it down, did not think about it, almost certainly it will not become an experience and will soon be forgotten. This is how “veterans of the Brownian movement” emerge. People and projects go around in circles because experience does not teach them anything.

9. Daily news and critical mass

It’s better to do 1 hour every day than to take classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. According to various studies, it takes at least 21 days and at least 20 hours to learn something.

If you decide to learn something, prepare to invest at least 20 hours, for at least 1 month, daily. If you slipped in week 2, a critical mass of skill was not gained, consider just familiarizing yourself, but you never gained the skill.

10. The medium and small group principle

It is better to disassemble the same example in a group of 3 participants. Army training principle (from the Army Reconnaissance NCO textbook). 3 people – 3 elements of training:

a) a short story,

b) an exemplary demonstration by example,

c) training in groups where two practice a technique and the third correct and gives feedback.

11. Principle of Three

Grouping information in portions of 3. The same concept at least 3 times in at least 3 ways.

12. The principle of the fastest possible feedback

You’re immediately told what’s good, what’s bad – what’s different from model behavior. Critical to learning is reaction time. In a startup, it is critical to test hypotheses as quickly as possible and get feedback from users as directly as possible, without intermediaries or distortions.

13. The principle of flow and optimal complexity

The task is neither too simple nor too complex. So that you get immersed in the process and stop looking at the clock.

14. The principle of neural network training is to have as many polar examples as possible

This is good, this is bad. It is right and it is wrong. Modern neural networks normally learn on the number of marked examples from 10 thousand. We can learn on 5-10 examples due to the previous experience, where we have already absorbed thousands of other life situations.

From the unknown, complex, and frightening to the known, simple, and boring. New concepts are explained through old ones. It’s like the construction of new subway stations, it doesn’t go anywhere, but is docked to existing branches. That’s roughly how it was with learning about blockchain. At first, you throw in new information and you don’t understand what, to what, and how it relates.

It’s scary, you feel like an idiot, especially when at meetings different experts (who learned these words 2 days before you did) flaunt different terms. This is the scariest phase of any training – the moment when you feel like an idiot. How do you overcome it? To remember that everything you learned went exactly according to the same scheme, relax and continue to gather new information, somehow grouping it.

Further, you start to correlate new concepts, for example, “ICO is like IPO only without the protection of investors and from the first day” or “blockchain is the same database, only slow and expensive, but nobody will rewrite anything there” and to allocate criteria of grouping. Then it becomes old, understandable, causing boredom and drowsiness.

15. The principle of the game and the main mechanics

Games and stories will never die, if they can be introduced, they must be done. There should be levels, uncertainty, rewards, leaderboards, that is, all the usual game mechanics.

16. Story Principle

A story is the best way to convey the experience. There should preferably be a hero you can associate yourself with, who fights some major evil, overcomes various obstacles, reaches a climax, and then everyone reveals in the wedding.

17. The principle of artifice, external client, and value at every step

The ideal every day is to do some document, a piece of work on a project that you show externally to get quick feedback. It can be a post, a picture, an outline. Something you can show to someone today that will be useful to them.

18. The principle of sprints/short races

We are sprinters rather than marathon runners, so it is easier for us to learn when there is a beginning and an end, a short run with a rest. A sprint can be 7 days, for example. There has to be a climax and a warm-up.

How to Learn Anything Very Fast

A super intense workload by a certain date and rest periods. One of the powerful methods during intensive sprints, called ‘exams’ is to sleep 3-5 times a day, so you get to absorb many times more information.

19. Fast Media Principle

When studying, choose the fastest way to get information. Books and pictures are faster than videos in most cases. And though video lectures are gaining popularity, the smartest people still learn from books and notes, because it is many times faster. If you cannot do it by yourself, use different examples. You can use some services that will show you how to do subjects right. For that, you can do my homework for me.