How to Learn Skills 3x Faster
It would be much more productive and interesting if we can progress in the desired skills quicker. Learning a lot more of something we like in the same amount of time sounds great and it’s actually not hard. You can easily apply these simple things to improve your learning speed.
1. Divide the Skill
Our task is learning a new skill so there will be a lot on our plate if we try to learn every aspect of the thing together. Instead, you can divide your skill into sub-skills. For example, a content writer has to learn these sub-skills:
.SEO
.TYPING QUICKLY
.STORYTELLING
If you do this you can easily handle the task and won’t get overwhelmed. Only focus on one sub-skill at a time otherwise it will probably affect your results.
Apply Pareto's principle about results and learn the more important sub-skills first, so you get 80% result from 20% effort.
2. Learn from the Best
Everyone needs a teacher and you will progress much faster if you have someone for feedback and who can correct you. A master of your skill will also know the little tips and tricks that are impactful. Studies affirm that mentoring matters a lot.
If you are planning to go out and find your sensei then remember not to pitch yourself as “I need your help” instead form a friendly relationship and get to know them as a person.
They are more likely to say yes if you approach in this manner and the communication gap will already be gone as you’ll know each other.
3. Mimic the Professionals
Look at children and you realize that they learn quickly the reason is that they imitate adults. Copying the professionals is an important part of learning a skill. You often learn the things that you were lacking. That's how one of the greatest writers, Benjamin Franklin taught himself to write expressively.
This tip can be applied to any field from writing to photography. You analyze professionals, mimick them and compare your work with them to find what you are currently lacking.
4. Deliberate Practice and Productive Failure
Learning for the sake of learning is never effective and you often lose motivation. Find the purpose behind learning the skill as it will enable you to invest more in it ultimately improving your progress.
We fail our way to succes
After you have discovered the purpose always practice while keeping improvement in mind. This is called deliberate practice and in this, you intentionally do things you are not good at.
If you fail it's fine cause we fail our way to success. You must see failure as something productive cause brought the goal closer to us.
Edison achieved making the light bulb after failing for a thousand attempts but he referred them to as “steps towards the goal” because he realized you have to fail to achieve.
5. Avoid Perfection
It is better to practice than to perfect
When you are just starting out to learn a skill or if you have not mastered the basics then it is better to practice than to perfect it. Yeah, you will make mistakes, learn from them.
Most people who are starting out end up losing interest or motivation due to this bug of perfection. They don’t realize that perfection is an illusion and what they seek is mastery which comes only with time.
The adverse effects of perfectionism are very real. View this research, it discusses the effects of perfectionism on career development.
Summary
We often make small mistakes in learning that have a huge impact.If we avoid them and take a better approach towards learning a skill. Then we are certain to get the results we want. The five tips above will help you learn any skill faster.