How to Learn Anything Quickly and Easier  - 3/14/18

I came across a podcast by Josh Kaufmann on some of this material, the rest is from my lifetime of classes and learning new things.  It is so much harder to learn new things when you are older, so I was particularly interested in Mr. Kaufmann’s material which I believe is called You Can Learn Anything in About Twenty Hours.  He has about five steps in his talk and I’ll incorporate those in mine.  He talked about the book “10,000” Hours and that’s fine if you want to master something, like if you want to become a virtuoso on an instrument.  But for most of us, we just want to be able to do something halfway well, enough to enjoy what we’re doing.  So, if you want to learn something new and challenging, first ask yourself these questions.

1.   1.  Why do you want to learn this particular subject?  Are you willing and interested enough to do what’s necessary to learn it? 

2.      2. You  need to breakdown your learning into specific sub-sets of only what’s useful learning and start small.

3.     3.  You need to be willing to accept the initial frustration level.  Everyone sucks in the beginning of learning something new.  There will be a certain amount of time before you like anything you are doing.

4.      4. Make learning this one thing very convenient and workable into your schedule.

5.     5.  Practice only this one small thing for 20 hours, breaking it down daily into (2) twenty minutes sets early morning and later for 30 days.  The best practice time is within two hours of waking up or from a nap or quiet time.  Scientific research shows your brain easily builds new neurons within that time period.

6.     6.  Use simulation and all your different sensual methods of learning.  There have been scientific studies on different types of learners and retention rates and the best was using all methods visual, auditory and kinesthetic.  That means you need to read it, see it, hear it and then manually do it.  Simulation means you practice it in your head mentally and visually and later back it up with physically doing it.

So let’s take a couple of examples and work through the process.  Let’s say I want to learn a musical instrument.  First, I would ask myself why do I want to learn to play this instrument.

Do I want to play music with others, or play out at open mics or other events, do I just want to play for my own enjoyment?  Am I really willing to set down for twenty minutes two times a day to learn this?  Many of us hear someone else play and think it’s so cool, but when faced with the hard work of actually being able to do it half decent then that’s a different story.

So, let’s say you answer an enthusiastic “yes” to the first question.  Then let’s decide where to start.  If you are totally new to music you’re going to have to start with basics of notes, scales, rhythm, usually all the boring stuff.  Or, you could start with learning just an easy song and forget all the other basic stuff.  That would definitely be much more fun.  Or, if you already know music and another instrument you could just focus on one aspect of an instrument like finger picking on a guitar.  Only study what you need to do that one thing.

Accept that it’s going to be somewhat frustrating and maybe even boring when you start.  It happens to everyone.

Make it convenient to learn.  Keep your musical instrument close where you can grab it twice a day.  Carve out a time in your schedule where you won’t be interrupted and you can focus.  Maybe find an online teacher or a site that shows you how to play this song and you have your laptop at your fingertips.

Practice just that one thing for a month, two twenty minute sessions a day, first one early in the day upon awakening.  Maybe do a short meditation before the later practice session.

Make sure you use all your senses when learning, including simulation followed up by actual manual practice.

Another example would be learning another language, maybe Spanish.  Why do you want to do this?  You want to talk to the people at your favorite Mexican restaurant.  You want to be able to order in Spanish and carry on some conversation.

You don’t need to learn all the words, variations and grammar of the language.  You just need to learn conversational Spanish and more specifically what you would need to order at a restaurant and speak generally.  Hello, Goodbye, Thank you, How are you today, etc.

Are you willing to practice every day, maybe find a tutorial online.  Go to the restaurant more and engage with speaking there more.  Maybe befriend a Spanish speaking person to hang out with sometimes and speak only Spanish.