10 Techniques Very Smart People Use To Learn and Adapt Quickly (13)
10 Techniques Very Smart People Use To Learn and Adapt Quickly
10 Techniques Very Smart People Use To Learn and Adapt Quickly
As we all know, Internet marketing is a notoriously fast changing field, where the knowledge you have right now can get quickly outdated in a matter of months.
This is why it is important not only to know a lot, but also, to be able to learn new things quickly.
Learning new things quickly is a skill in itself. We all need to get good at it, since traffic channels, offers, rules, competitors and regulations change pretty much from day to day.
So what learning strategies do people who are "quick learners" follow?
Here are 10 of the best practices for optimizing the learning process, along with the latest in productivity research, below.
1. Use the 80/20 rule.
The 80/20 rule states that you get 80% of your value out of 20% of work. In business, 20% of activities produce 80% of results that you want. Fast learners apply the same logic to their research areas.
When I look at a book, for example, I look though the contents page and make a list from 1-5 with 1 being the chapter with the most relevant material. When looking through a instructional video, I often skip to the middle where the action or technique is being demonstrated, then I work backwards to gain the context and principles.
This works since the beginning of most videos will be fluffed with exposition, and most books are layered in with filler to make length requirements. So with a little cunning, you can extract most of the knowledge from those materials while investing a fraction of the time.
2. To understand a problem, ask "why" five times.
In "The Lean Startup," author Eric Ries offers the "Five Whys" technique for getting to the root of an issue. The idea is to get to the underlying cause of a superficial problem — one that, more often than not is more human than technical error.
To see the quintuple-why strategy in action, lets look at his hypothetical startup example:
b) Why did the server fail? Because an obscure subsystem was used in the wrong way.
c) Why was it used in the wrong way? The engineer who used it didn't know how to use it properly.
d) Why didn't he know? Because he was never trained.
e) Why wasn't he trained? Because his manager doesn't believe in training new engineers because he and his team are "too busy."
By pushing the inquiry five times, Ries says we can see how a "purely technical fault is revealed quickly to be a very human managerial issue."
3. Don't just learn about it; practice it.
"You can't learn golf from a book. You need to swing a club at a ball," says Quora user Mark Harrison, the head of technology at British financial company FundingKnight. Similarly, you can't learn PHP from a book — you need to put together a site, and you can't learn Facebook marketing from a forum post, you need to run your own campaign.
4. Find an expert, and then ask them about their expertise.
If you're trying to learn a subject, talk to an expert who can explain it. Buy them lunch, and ask them all about their craft. Tim Ferriss, author of "The 4-Hour Workweek," is a master of this. Whenever he's trying to learn a sport, he'll seek out the nearest silver medalist, arrange for an interview, and then grill them on technique.
5. Get an accountability buddy.
Find somebody else who's trying to build the same skill as you — as in a Mastermind — and experience the learning process with them. Set up regular times to check in on your progress, whether in person or via Skype.
6. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
It's not so much that practice makes perfect; it just makes actions go faster. This is because when you do something again and again — recall how you recited the alphabet as a kid — you strengthen bonds between brain cells.
"Repetition leads to synaptic conditioning," shares user Hwang Min Hae, a medical student in Australia. "The brain is plastic, and it allows the neural pathway to fire at a faster pace than before. That's why repetition over a long period of time creates an instantaneous recall — that's why you can recite your ABCs and 123s. Try reciting your ABCs in the opposite way, and you'll have a bigger difficulty than doing it forward."
7. Don't just write it out; draw it out.
Dan Roam has written two books about visual thinking, "The Back of the Napkin" and "Blah Blah Blah." He also consults for companies like Google, eBay, General Electric, and Wal-Mart. They bring him in to help explore the "aspects of knowledge that can't be expressed through words."
Words and pictures complement each other. "Often the best approach to solving problems and generating ideas involves a combination of words and pictures," he says. "When you add pictures, you add layers and dimensions of thought that are almost impossible to achieve with words alone ... It's a way to get your idea down while still keeping it in a fluid state."
You can do that with a "mind map," or diagram, that visually outlines interrelated ideas.
8. Learn the difficult stuff at the start of the day.
Willpower is finite, research shows. We have lots at the start of the day, but it gets depleted as we make decisions and resist temptations. (That's why shopping is so exhausting.) So if you're learning a language, an instrument, or anything else that's super complex, schedule it for the start of the day, since you'll have the most mental energy then.
9. When you don't understand, say so.
Another tip from Harrison: When you don't understand something in a meeting, go ahead and put up your hand and ask, "Sorry, can you just explain why?" Dumb people will think it's dumb, he says, but smart folks will admire the curiosity.
As Mortimer Adler advises in "How To Read A Book," learning is very much a matter of being aware of when you're perplexed, and then following up on that perplexity.
10. Keep a positive attitude.
Worrying that you're not going to be able to learn something is a poor investment of your mental energy, says Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks.
"Anxiety precludes you from exploring real solutions and real thought patterns that will come up with solutions," she says. But when you're feeling good about what might happen, you get into an opportunity-oriented mindset. "So you think of all of the good things that can happen. You're more likely to make decisions and take actions that will make that world likely to occur."
Adapted from http://www.quora.com and http://www.businessinsider.com/strat...#ixzz2zvOdIVVq
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Cmdeal, are you writing a book? Because you could! You post such an awesome content, it makes me want to complie it together and publish it.. or something like that 
I enjoy all your shares, cmdeal, but this one's particularly good!
#2, #4, #6 and #9 are especially true. To misquote Bruce Lee,
"I do not fear to compete in the ten thousand verticals in which you have launched one campaign.
I fear to compete in the one vertical in which you have launched ten thousand campaigns."
One thing I would say - whilst I agree with #3 about doing more than just reading a book, books are still great too.
I've noticed that a lot of people will attempt to learn various skills from PHP to copywriting by reading around on the Internet. Generally, if you're trying to learn a skill that has been around for a while and has a considerable body of knowledge attached, buying a book will be a considerably faster approach. They're more complete, better organised, and usually better written too.
My standard approach to learning a new non-physical skill is to buy the top 3 books on the subject from Amazon, read them all and make notes, then practice. Then read them again. Repeat.
(This applies less to physical or visual skills. There, I tend to look for a DVD course or similar.)
#2 looks so simple but I know it's something most of us neglect to do. We're all looking for quick answers, instant solutions that we forget asking question and finding the root cause is really what solves problems.
Great thread man!
#5 accountability. That's a huge one. It's always good to have someone there keeping you grounded, and asking you the tough questions.
Some great tips here! Thanks bro... I think mastermind is particularly important (with the right people of course!) ...
The 80/20 rule is gold. I see so many people waste time on things that don't matter or will not make a big difference.
Originally Posted by Humbleaid
Originally Posted by stackman
Needless to say, boiling the ocean is not a good strategy.
Always think 80/20. Don't boil the ocean!
I try to only boil the part of the ocean that has fresh Lobster
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Now this is thread I thanked with heart -- this type of thread requires no more discussion, it is up to the point, concise and teaches you a valuable lesson - by demonstrating lets you decide on its credibility.
Cmdeal - good post bro!
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