How to learn 10x faster than average
Learn how to accelerate your learning process and become 10x faster than average. This blog post provides practical steps to enhance your self-learning abilities and master new skills effectively.
Everyone is a self learner. But people’s rhythm of self learning can be vastly different.
Have a good reason to learn this new skill
What is the main fundamental reason why you want to learn this skill? If you don’t have a one sentence answer, you probably don’t need to learn it.
University teaches you hundreds of topics that you end up not being good at because you have no interest in it.
Avoid spending your precious time on developing a skill that you have no interest or purpose in. Avoid trends too for this reason.
Research and read about the best way to learn the basics
This should take no longer than one afternoon. Avoid promoted content.
Usually, you’re able to find a course/book/video that is acclaimed by the community to be the best to get started with.
So we are looking for the equivalent of “Machine Learning from Andrew Ng” for the skill you want to master.
Consume the basics like your life depends on it
This will be the foundation of all your subsequent learning in this new area. Put your phone away, and take notes.
Revisit those notes, and if necessary go back in time to understand the basics.
It took me above average time to finish Machine Learning from Andrew Ng.
However, since this, whenever I learn or even think about AI problems this is now easier because of that laid out work.
Test your knowledge with a real problem (aka get your hands dirty)
And no, I don’t mean do an exercise that you find online.
Define a problem that you can solve with the skills you acquired and work on it.
Don’t ask for the answer. Don’t Google for the solution, but Google for something that is a current impediment on your solution.
If you are struggling on formulating the Google prompt, revisit your first notes on the skill.
Keep learning about the topic
The getting started foundation will only get you so far. It’s likely that soon you will grow out of that and need to expand your knowledge.
Don’t jump on this step too early. Make sure your basics are covered before you move on.
Go back to the real problem you worked on, and see how the new learned skills could be applied for that same problem.
If those skills aren’t necessarily in that first problem, it’s also a good sign. It’s a sign that you learned not only the skill but when it is and it isn’t used.
Iterate
Keep iterating between using this new skill to solve a real problem and learning from courses/videos/books.
There isn’t a “you made it” badge. But you know you did, once you’re able to look for a specific piece of information on a video/book to fill in the gap for something you needed for your real problem.
TL;DR on how to learn 10x faster than average
- Have a good reason to learn this new skill.
- Research and read about the best way to learn the basics.
- Consume the basics like your life depended on it.
- Test your knowledge with a real problem.
- Keep learning about the topic.
- Iterate.