How to Learn Anything 10X Faster Than Anyone

Most people's process for learning is broken, stuck in this mental masturbation loop of needing to know everything about everything.

Reading books, watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, and just a few weeks later, forget about what they learned in the first place.

Now, I know because I used to be that guy, reading books just to tell people I read them without actually learning anything.

Today, my life looks completely different.

I've built and sold three successful software companies, becoming a multi-millionaire at 28.

And I attribute most of this success to my ability to learn 10 times times faster than anyone else.

But here's the brutal truth.

You're learning way too slow.

And I believe most people are on a path to becoming a millionaire too.

The only problem is it'll take you 100 years to get there.

And if you can learn 10 times faster, you can reduce that 100 years down to 10 or even three.

But to do that, you need to learn how to learn.

And that's what I'm going to share with you today.

So to learn anything 10 times faster, I do what's called mapping a skill tree.

Most learners fail from being overwhelmed, not enough information.

The skill tree concept came from the game civilization.

In the 1980s, it was all about unlocking one node at a time so that you learned a topic and then figured out, how do I really, really learn it?

But to do this right, you need to build a map for learning.

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So here's how you map your skill tree.

Starting with defining your master node, you need to define your specific end goal.

For example, learning Spanish is way different than having a fluent conversation with a native speaker.

Another example would be learning to code versus building a prototype app and pre-selling it to five people.

You need to be very specific on what you're trying to learn.

So here's how we identify our master node.

First, what does success look like?

Pick one outcome.

Don't try to do this plus this plus this.

Then, when should it happen by?

Have a clear deadline.

When we give something a deadline, our brain goes to solving the problem with the timeframe allocated.

If we make it an open-ended option, then it will take the amount of time we've given it.

And I don't have all the time in the world and nor do you.

Finally, why it matters to you.

Tie it to a feeling.

I learned a long time ago, purpose is the most powerful thing you can give a goal.

If there's no purpose, there's no power.

And that's how you start building your master node.

But you can't learn a skill without breaking it down.

That leads us to identifying your sub-skills.

Here's a crazy example, learning to finish an Iron Man.

The first time I ever decided to do an Iron Man, I didn't know how to swim.

I had never been on a road bike and I might have ran 5K.

If you've looked into the distances of an Iron Man, it is a heck of a lot more than that.

And the first time I went to the pool and I tried to swim, I got to the other end, 25 meters, stopped on the wall, turned around to my friend and said, how many more of these we got to do?

He's like, a lot.

I had to learn the sub-skills so I could dial in the Iron Man outcome.

And I wish it was only biking, swimming, and running.

It turned out I needed to learn about nutrition hydration training blocks the whole thing the gear the gizmos the bike maintenance trust me it was way more than just the master node skill of doing well in an iron man the key is to not overwhelm yourself learn just in time not just in case so here's how you identify your sub skills first off i like to ask chat gpt or any ai tool what skills do i need to reach to achieve that goal and be specific.

And then I sequence them by how important they are to reach that goal in my skill tree as a primary note.

For example, building an app, coding, cursor, language basics, problem solving.

These are all things that could come up, but I got to focus on what's the most important dependency first, then go to the second one, and then the third one, and then the fourth one.

The cool thing is I can just ask AI to prioritize them and then give me a learning plan to learn them.

So on an Ironman, learning to swim is more important than learning to bike.

Why?

You can't win the race in the swim, but you can definitely lose the race by not getting out of the water.

Now, all this learning without the next step step is just noise.

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That leads us to installing feedback loops.

See, most people don't even ask for feedback because they don't want to know.

They don't want to hear negative things from their mentors, their group chats, their peers.

But it could make you 10 times faster if somebody else told you where your blind spots were.

I remember the other day I saw Toby, the founder of Shopify.

He tweeted this prompt that I just thought was so genius.

And his answer to the prompt, which is very vulnerable, but he wanted to share how powerful it was with everybody that followed him.

So here's the chat GPT prompt.

Tell me something incredibly special or unique you've noticed about me, but you think I haven't realized about myself yet.

It doesn't have to be something positive and you don't have to be nice to me.

Just be truthful.

That question is so powerful.

And I'm going to put my answer below in the description so that you can see what it told me because I think it's just a really powerful thing for you to be motivated to try it out yourself.

See, feedback is fuel for progress.

Without that feedback, then how are you supposed to reflect?

How are you supposed to get better?

How are you supposed to figure out what worked and what failed?

If you don't stop to reflect, then you'll just keep moving forward, making the same mistake over and over again.

And technically, that's insane because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Finally, once you understand understand what didn't work, you need to adjust because unimplemented feedback is just wasted potential.

The key is you have to model, then modify.

See, most people think that their situation is so unique and they're like a magical snowflake and it's never been done before.

And the truth is, is most people have been there, done it, and can give you the blueprint.

If you just ask, just if you don't ask, you don't get the feedback.

If you just followed the blueprint, then you can modify once it's working a little bit.

Don't modify before you model.

But if you truly want to force yourself to learn faster, you need this next step.

That leads us to teach to lock it in.

A long time ago, I was asked by my friend Etienne to come speak at 7 CTOs, his organization.

And before I went into the room to teach, I stopped at a coffee shop and I sat down and I asked myself, what do I know about managing CTOs or technical world?

And I wrote down a bunch of ideas and I started designing kind of what I was going to teach and I looked for patterns.

I even noticed that there was these four core areas and they kind of started with the letter T.

So then I put them all in these T's and then I put it into a quadrant and each one of these things that I was teaching I had a really powerful story and I ended by asking a question about that quadrant and then I went and I taught and when I got off stage a tien came to me and he said where did you learn the CTO quadrants and I said well I just sat down and I just designed it at the coffee shop before I showed up he's like what this is amazing can I borrow it I was like bro it's yours the CTO quadrants to this day is one of the most popular YouTube videos on his channel Why?

Because I learned how to teach.

And when you teach, you lock it in.

See, if you can teach something and the other person can take it like a briefcase, like a handle, and then go and teach it to their team, that means you actually understood it.

Most people think they learned something, but until you learned to teach it, you didn't lock it in.

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Now let's get back to the episode.

So here's how you teach to lock it in.

After each sub-skill, summarize it in your own words.

Rewrite it in a way that makes sense to your brain.

Then we need to pretend like you're explaining it to a fifth grader.

And first time is always going to be complicated.

You're going to have acronyms.

And the truth is, you're going to think it's simple, but it's still complicated.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Next, we need to spot the gaps in your understanding and go back to strengthen them so that people, when they hear it, it lands for them.

Because you take so much for granted that you understand, that makes this make sense that you need to give context and tell stories.

The stories are the glue.

So now I'm going to ask you to lock it in.

I want you to take the last thing that you feel like you really learned well, and then we're going to post it on social media.

You're going to write a blog post or you're going to shoot a two-minute video, whichever one you feel most comfortable with.

Honestly, whichever one you feel least comfortable with is the one you should do, and teach it to people and really challenge yourself to explain it in a way that anybody can understand it.

Because the whole point of all this is, yes, learn 10 times faster so you can pull forward results into your life, so you can get richer and have more wealth and have more opportunity and have more relationships and have all this stuff.

But I think that true fulfillment comes from doing two things.

Number one, becoming the 10.0 version of yourself, becoming the person that you needed most in your darkest days and sharing the process, what you've learned along the way with other people, becoming somebody who teaches other folks to get the same results they got.

If you do those two things, wake up every day to become better and teach other people how you did that, that's how you create true fulfillment.

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