Learn or Die: 8 Tips to Learn Anything Fast
You want to learn something, but no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get it down.
Or worse…
You tried to learn something, but you got stuck and stopped learning it altogether.
Today, I’ll share 8 tips with you on how to not only learn that thing, but how to learn it as fast as possible.
First, it’s important to understand how we learn and why it’s important.
Imagine you are walking in the woods…
“crrcckk-crcckk-crckkk”
Branches crackle in the distance.
“BUH-BUMP. BUH-BUMP.”
Your heart beats faster.
You hold your breath and pause to look around.
No signs of life.
It’s just you.
“haaaah”
You sigh in relief.
“buh…bump…..buh….bump…….buh…..bump.”
Your toes clench the muddy ground beneath you with each step.
You haven’t eaten in 2 days.
“CRRCCKKK-CRCKKK-CCRCCKK”
Louder.
It’s closer now.
“BUH-BUMP. BUH-BUMP. BUH-BUMP. BUH-BUMP.”
You round a tree and it’s there.
You lock eyes.
800lbs of furry death looking you dead in the eye…
Bear.
“BUH-BUMP. BUH-BUMP. BUH-BUMP. BUH-BUMP. BUH-BUMP. BUH-BUMP.”
This isn’t your first time encountering such a beast.
You know you’re not going to win this fight.
You have 2 options:
1) Turn and run.
Or…
2) Back up slowly.
When you were a boy, you were taught to NEVER turn your back and run.
Quietly move away and let the bear be.
If it approaches you, make yourself as BIG as possible and make as much noise as you can while backing away slowly.
Locking eyes with the magnificent beast, you walk backwards, ever so slowly.
He continues to stare at you, patiently waiting for you to make your next move.
You’re not sure if he’s eyeing you up for his dinner, or if he’ll leave you be.
You keep backing up. Quietly. Further. And further.
He’s turns away.
“haaaaaaaah”
You’re alive…
For now.
Learn or Die.
These were the options for our ancestors.
Lucky for you and me, they learned.
Today’s world is much different.
We aren’t forced to hunt for our own food where we may encounter bears or other predators that could rip our faces off without batting an eye.
The collective knowledge of humanity has allowed us this luxury.
Not only have we used our ability to learn to give ourselves shelter and easy access to food, we’ve made the act of learning itself easier than ever.
We live in a time where you can access nearly any piece of knowledge, we as humans, have gathered during our time here with the click of a button.
That’s truly amazing when you think about it.
Learning now is easier than ever because the barrier to entry is so low. You used to have to get a degree from a prestigious university to become an expert at something.
Now all you need is a cell phone. That is the minimum requirement.
Let’s be clear, I still want my doctor to have graduated from a good school. There are always going to be jobs that should most certainly require degrees and certifications after years of training.
My point is, if you want to learn something, not only can you easily look up how it’s done, but also there’s probably someone who has shared their own experience learning that thing, giving you the TLDR of the process like where they struggled, tips and tricks, and if they recommend that you should learn it, too.
Let’s actually talk about doctors for a minute. Take a high school student who wants to become a doctor, for example. They can now heavily research (as pre-med students do) various doctors on social media to see what it’s really like or explore different interests within medicine, which may spark their curiosity to later specialize in that area. This is all before going to university or med school.
If you’re curious about something, there are resources and actual people online doing that thing who can help you scratch your curiosity’s itch.
The level at which we can research our interests has grown exponentially in the last 20 years. The progression of the internet and social media has opened the game of learning up to nearly the entire world.
With the game seeing the most players it ever has in the history of humanity, the stakes are at an all time high.
Let me ask you, what’s the last thing you learned?
A lot of us stop learning after we finish school and or after we get our first job. Sure you learn a bit on the job in the beginning, but after a while, you start going through the motions of life each day.
The threat in today’s age is not a massive bear who could kill you or anything in its path.
No. It’s much scarier.
To cease learning is a modern day tragedy.
You get comfortable.
Your yesterday becomes your today, your tomorrow, and your next week.
Your once open world view becomes static and closed off to new ideas.
Your relationships that were once exciting become mundane.
Your life fades to black and white.
Think back to when you were a kid. The first shot you made, the first goal you scored, the first song you played, the first picture you drew.
Life was so colorful and full of excitement.
Every day was an adventure.
You were learning at an extreme rate.
And it was so fun.
The Way
If you’re anything like me, there are things that you’ve always wanted to learn, but still haven’t. That’s okay. It’s not too late to try now. In fact, you may even be at an advantage now that you’re older.
The more we learn, the more learn how to learn.
In The Book of the Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi, known to be the greatest Samurai of all time winning more than 60 duels in his lifetime, explains his fighting strategy called the “Way.” When reading this book, I found his most memorable quote to be this:
“The Way of the warrior does not include other Ways, such as Confucianism, Buddhism, tea, artistic accomplishments and dancing. But even, though these are not part of your Way, if you know the Way broadly, you will see it in everything. It is essential for each of us human beings to polish our individual Way.”
Once you learn one thing, you start to see anything else you learn through that same lens, which allows you to draw connections between everything. This is why so many great athletes played multiple sports growing up, not just specializing in one their whole lives. This is why cross-training is a popular topic among trainers.
Phil Jackson, legendary NBA coach, had his players practice mindfulness through meditation to help them stay present in the moment when things went got hectic on the court. We also did this on my soccer team in college. And I can attest, it definitely helps.
So how can learning meditation help you get more buckets, or score more goals, or even learn to play the piano?
When you start to view your life and the world itself as holistic rather than segmented into different parts that have no bearing on each other, you begin to see the Way.
Learning compounds our awareness.
If you’re open to the existence of the Way, as Musashi says, “you will see it in everything,” including in everything that you learn.
The connections will reveal themselves to you.
So what’s the best way to learn something?
To know that, we have to understand what learning is.
What is Learning?
Anyone can learn anything.
Learning = Repetitions + Reflection
All it takes is putting the reps in and asking the right questions when reflecting upon those reps.
Do not forget to reflect! It is just as important as the repetitions, if not more.
Reflection will help you reduce the total reps required.
When reflecting, don’t ignore bad reps. Look at them dead on. Ask yourself, why was it a bad rep? What can I do next time to have a better rep?
Taking the time to reflect on your bad reps, even if its only for a brief moment, will allow you to self-correct.
This is key.
To illustrate this concept, let me share a story with you about how I learned how to catch a soccer ball on the back of my neck.
How I learned the Neck Stall
One day while on Christmas break during middle school, I was chilling in the basement of my parents’ house watching soccer and futsal youtube videos, as I often did during those days. While I was scouring YouTube for new skills show videos (iykyk), I came across street soccer and freestyling. For those of you that don’t know what this is, I’ll show you.
And if you were also watching during the Golden Era of street soccer videos, enjoy this beautiful piece of nostalgia.
I remember seeing guys like Jermaine Vanenburg, Edward Van Gils, Issy Hitman, Séan Garnier, and Touzani TV.
Eventually, I came across a video of someone catching the ball on the back of their neck, called the “neck stall.” In the video above, there’s one briefly at 25 seconds in where he goes from neck stall to backflip.
I thought to myself, if those guys can do it, I can do it too if I really tried - just the neck stall, not the backflip (maybe some day).
I’d already learned how to juggle, starting with not even knowing how to lift the ball up off the ground.
How hard could it be?
So I looked up “how to neck stall’ on YouTube and sure enough I found a video of someone breaking it down, sharing their tips on how to do it.
I started with just placing the ball on my neck, getting used to the angle I needed to tilt my head back while simultaneously bending forward. This gave me a feel for how to create the nook where the ball sits.
Then, I starting walking around with it on my neck. It fell off a bunch of times at first. But I kept placing it back on my neck each time it fell off and continued to walk around. Eventually, I could do an entire lap around the staircase. And then even a push-up, all while holding the ball on my neck.
I was ready for air.
So I started tossing the ball with my hands up and over my head onto my neck. This was much harder than the walking around or the push-ups.
I realized that the trajectory of the toss was crucial. It had to have a high enough arc to come nearly straight down onto my neck. Otherwise, it’d hit too far down my back.
I must’ve tossed the ball 100 times before I got the catch down.
Now it was time for the full thing. Foot to neck.
I tried for about 20 minutes. I couldn’t seem to figure out the correct arc by flicking the ball up with my foot.
I went upstairs, covered in sweat, got a glass of water, chugged it, and went back down.
I thought, if I had figured out how to throw it with my hands and catch it on my neck, I could figure it out with my feet.
Reps, reps, and more reps.
Finally, somewhere around 1000 reps, I got it!
It’s been ~15 years since that night.
I’m now able to use my foot to flick up pretty much anything and catch it on my neck.
A tennis ball, a dog toy, a shoe, a toilet paper roll.
I’ve tried it all.
What a useful skill. I know.
Regardless, all it came down to was reps and reflection.
Within the story of the neck stall, I learned the skill itself, but I also learned some valuable lessons in to learning how to learn.
These tips will serve as your guide for anything you try to learn.
7 Tips to Learn Anything Fast
1) Believe it’s possible.
You have to believe you can get there despite any setbacks. Mindset is more important than anything else.
“Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed. If you think a thing is impossible, you’ll make it impossible. A bad attitude slows you down and hinders your ability to succeed” - Bruce Lee, Be Water, My Friend by Shannon Lee
You have to expect failure. It’s the only way to succeed.
People often say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, which was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers.
I’ve also heard Jesse Itzler, entrepreneur and co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks, talk about the Rule of 100. The rule is if you do something for 18 minutes a day, which is equal to 100 hours over the course of a year, you will be better at that thing than 95% of the world.
The main takeaway here is, set the bar for daily activity as low as you can.
It may be 18 minutes, it may only be 10. If you commit to doing at least 10 minutes each day, most days that 10 will turn into 20 and sometimes an hour or more. It’s about consistently showing up and getting your reps in.
2) Break it down into steps
Now break those steps down even further.
Focus on stacking small wins rather than becoming a master.
Think of each step as a level in a video game. What do you need to do to get past this level?
The smaller the better.
More steps, more wins.
3) Learn just enough to self-correct
There’s a story I read on X recently shared by Dickie Bush about 2 fisherman.
To sum it up, there are 2 guys in the same village who want to learn how to fish.
One starts by researching how to fish. He gathers all of the books on fishing and starts to read all of them. By the end of the month, he’s finally done all of them. He then orders all of the gear, the best rods, the best lures, and the best bait.
He heads down to the lake to start, but when he gets there, the fish are gone.
The other fisherman caught all of them already.
How?
That fisherman started on day one with a stick and a line, and got better every day for the whole month.
Moral of the story: don’t learn too much before actually getting started.
Overloaded on research without action is the best way to never learn anything. Don’t overwhelm yourself with information.
Learn just enough to get over step #1. Then learn more as you go, as needed.
4) Reduce barriers to execution
Put it in your line of sight.
If you want to learn yoga, keep the mat on the floor. If you want to learn piano, keep a piano in your room or near your desk. Schedule those 10 minutes into your day.
Any barriers that prevent you from doing it need to be removed.
It needs to become automatic.
5) Teach it to someone else
When you teach something to someone else, you realize how well or how not so well you know it. Talking through and explaining it not only teaches your student, but it also teaches you, the teacher.
It forces you to distill everything you know down to the simplest, most easily understood package of knowledge.
These 5 lessons will help you learn anything extremely fast.
Advanced Techniques
But can I learn even faster? Is there a way to reduce the amount of reps needed to learn?
Yes, there is.
Don’t worry, I gotchu.
And by “I”, I mean Andrew Huberman, but I did distill his techniques down for you ;)
I feel like this guy is everywhere. But if you haven’t heard of him, this is what his website says about him, “Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist and tenured professor in the department of neurobiology, and by courtesy, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford School of Medicine.”
Also, fun fact - he’s Tom Segura’s cousin.
I’m a huge fan of his podcast, Huberman Lab, where he discuss all things neuroscience. Here’s what I’ve gathered on his neuroscience-based techniques on learning.
6) Close your eyes and do nothing.
Yea, you heard that right.
At random times in between your reps, close your eyes and think about nothing for about 10 seconds.
When we close our eyes and clear our minds, we let our brains process what we've just done. Our brains replay whatever we were trying to learn at 10x-20x speed when we do nothing.
When I first heard this, I was blown away. The mind is truly amazing.
This is what’s referred to as a "gap effect.”
It's something I've found extremely useful in my own learning.
Here’s a clip of Huberman explaining this technique.
7) Increase your Adrenaline
As we know, learning was key to our survival as humans. We still learn in the same way as we always have.
Yup, the bear is back. Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did ya?
When you got away from the bear, your body released adrenaline. It’s our own natural survival mechanism.
Many studies have shown enhanced memory when there is an increase in adrenaline after a learning session, or anything for that matter.
What’s happening here is, your brain knows that whatever you were doing prior to the spike in the adrenaline was crucial for your survival. So it says, “let’s remember that for next time.”
How exactly does that work?
Where my fellow nerds at? This next part is for you.
It is our amygdala is at work here. Think of the amygdala as the threat detection software in your brain. It’s not a thinking part of the brain but it is deeply connected to other more dynamic parts of the brain. What it does is, it takes whatever patterns of neural activity that preceded an increase adrenaline, and strengthens those specific synapses involved.
Aka “remember this you dummy, or else you might die.”
You can achieve an increase in adrenaline exogenously (coming from outside the body) by consuming caffeine or Alpha GPC. (this is by no means medical advice, let’s make that clear).
My recommendation is to induce an increase in adrenaline naturally within the body.
This can be achieved by using cold exposure. For example, taking an ice bath or a cold shower. Another option is sprinting for a short distance like something is chasing you (not a bear though, we know better).
All of these methods have been shown to increase adrenaline and subsequently increase learning.
The key point here is, whatever method you choose, it’s not about the absolute volume of adrenaline, it’s about the delta.
The amount of adrenaline in your system after learning should be higher than it was prior to learning. That’s how it works.
8) Utilize Non-Sleep Deep Rest
Within an hour of completing a learning session, go into non-sleep deep rest (NSDR).
NSDR is a form of meditation that has wonderful effects on the brain, and it can be used to enhance learning.
Sit down or lie down on the floor and control your breathing to induce a state of relaxation. This allows time for your brain to process everything it learned, much like the gap effect.
Slow breathes. Clear the mind. Let the thoughts go.
For me, it takes about 15 minutes to get into the desired state, which is just before you’ve fallen asleep. In this state, you’re conscious, but your mind is doing its own thing.
It’s best to do this prior to 5pm to avoid not being able to go to sleep later for the night.
Here is a full list of the Huberman Neuroplasticity Super Protocol for any of you super nerds out there.
To sum up the advanced techniques: take gap effect breaks during, increase adrenaline immediately after, then go into NDSR within an hour after.
Your Turn Now
Even if you were never the best learner, it’s not too late to start. You’re more equipped now than ever.
Take a few minutes right now to write down anything you’ve ever wanted to learn.
Here are a few ideas to help you out:
painting
drawing
piano
personal finance
how to invest your money
psychology
how to communicate better
how to run faster
nutrition
how to make latte art
how to start a business
how to surf
how to cut hair
boxing
cooking
baking
dancing
singing
how to play guitar
Great. Now pick one and start.
And remember what you learned here today:
1) Believe it’s possible
2) Break it down into steps
3) Learn just enough to self-correct
4) Reduce barriers to execution
5) Teach it to someone else
6) Close your eyes and do nothing
7) Increase your Adrenaline
8) Utilize Non-Sleep Deep Rest
Go and get those reps in. And don’t forget to reflect.
-Ryan Ward
