Transcripts
1. Welcome to Your New Class: Learning at your maximum
potential is really just a matter of understanding
the repeatable habits that cause powerful
learning and then figuring out how to optimize
them for our own lives. Hi, my name is Edward
Atkinson and I'm a software analyst working full-time in the US
for about a decade. I worked simultaneously
as an operatic tenor, a choral conductor, and a professional
tournament poker player. But now in addition to
software development, I alter my blog, teach online, and
run a design studio. Back in my 20s, I was able to earn three degrees,
a Bachelor's, and to graduate
degrees while working a full-time job and
running a side business. And the reason I mentioned
this is not to brag at all. I don't like talking about
myself anymore than you do. It's because one of the things
my friends and students have asked me the most
often over the years is, how do you do all these
things and how do you do these different
things successfully? And so I want to share with you and everyone at possibly can, everything I know about unlocking your
learning potential, but specifically, unlocking
your learning potential when life is difficult
and challenging. So what's really important
to me is to teach the things that
would have helped me 15 years ago when
I was struggling. You're trying to
start a new degree, but you don't have
to pay for it. And working multiple jobs. You've got a family, you're
stressed out, you're tired. Learning how to learn in those
challenging circumstances. That's different. And it's been the
highest impact skill that I've ever learned
in my own life. I don't have magical
abilities. I'm not special. I wasn't born with an extremely high IQ or
anything like that. But I have been a
massive nerd in a voracious reader
and been able to follow my face
hundreds of times. This course is 20
years of failure, success, observation,
behavior adjustment, pulling together the advice and wisdom of people who are
much smarter than me and distilling all
of it down into the seven simple
habits that I use in my own life to unlock
my learning potential. So we're going to talk
about some of the myths of learning and get rid
of them right away. We're going to
talk about each of the seven symbol habits and give it a story,
put it in context, and then get into
some very practical, very actionable
steps that you can use to install it
into your own life. We're going to talk
about 12 or so bonus tips and habits that each on their own or
very high impact and high leverage to
further your learning. Lastly, we'll do a very short evidence-based three sentence
reflective writing project, very short but very powerful. As part of all this, you'll have access to a learning community both here and on discord
and on my website. And you can interact
with other students, but you can also ask
me questions directly. All of these
additional resources, including the downloads,
they're free for forever. What this class is
really about is about the highest impact habit to unlock your
learning potential, because learning can
transform your future. Hopefully you can find
something in here to make your own life better and to unlock your own
learning potential. Thanks for checking
out this trailer. There are tremendous
resources in here, and if you are interested, I hope to see you on
the other side.
2. Busting Unscientific Myths: Alright, let's bust some
myths and get going. Number one, I'm not your guru. Nobody is. I'm not going to
solve your problems. I'm certainly not going to
solve any of them for you. I can tell you
real-world simple skills that have worked for me and
hundreds of my past students. I can help you nurture your
own skills, your own growth. I can help you unlock
your learning potential, but I'm not your guru. Nobody is idealistic teaching. It's extremely common
and it's poison, giving you a bunch
of ideas that work. If you're rich, you're in
a privileged position. You've already got a great job. You had some free time,
you got motivation. You're caught up
on all your sleep. You don't mind spending
100 bucks a month on software subscriptions to
enhance your workflow. You don't have kids,
you don't have pets, you don't have a side hustle and nobody in your family is sick. Forget all that. This is real-world
techniques for real-world people who
don't have an idealistic, everything is perfect life
already or anything like that. This isn't for only
the smart people, this isn't for the
altar motivated people. This is for real people in real life who also
want to have hobbies. Guilt based learning. It's a waste of time, wrong path, scientifically
speaking, that is true. This is not going to be anything to do with
skill-based learning. Work through any
issues you've got. If learning is constantly
associated with self critique, self-hatred,
negative self-talk, work through those
issues if you at all possibly can
talk to therapists about it at whatever the
way that your parents talk to you and parenthood
you as a child, that usually becomes
some version of your inner voice as an adult. And they are absolutely ways to work around that
and work through it. Guilt based learning. It's a short-term fix and it's an extremely bad
long-term approach to learning and life in general. Be kind to yourself. Not just for some hippie reason. You can be yourself for no other reason that it
makes you better at life. It makes you better at learning. There are an infinite
number of ways to be wrong and extremely few
ways to be correct. It's really important to know when it comes
to learning as well, because the list of what
doesn't work is infinite. And the list of what does
work is really quite short, then the list of what
actually works for you is even shorter. Understand that you can
waste infinite time and what doesn't work, right? Good teaching is a time machine. It brings your new
and improved self who's learned all these things, who's actually been transformed. And it brings that
version of you closer to the present at a much, much, much faster rate. You want it to take ten
years to learn how to learn, or two months,
That's your choice. Remember that
there's an infinite number of ways to be wrong and extremely few ways to
do something correctly. Steel sacrifice increment. I'll everything I'm
going to teach you, I learned by failing
a lot with a lot of my own activity
over the years and doing a lot of dumb things. I wouldn't trust
anybody who sells you some bowl feathers system. And I wouldn't trust anybody who tells you it's easy
because it's not. But what you can do is
learn from others who have failed spectacularly and then climbed into the
hole that they dug. Save yourself some trouble. Steal ideas from someone who's gone down the
path before you. It will always
necessitate sacrifice, which is painful and
incremental steps. It's the best trick
in the world to massively shorten
the learning curve. Steal from someone else
has done it before? No, the right sacrifice to make an only work incrementally. Successful learning
is individualized. There are general
principles of how to learn. But if you spent any time
as a teacher or paid attention as a student to yourself or your
colleagues growing up. You know that each of us learns in slightly different ways. It is important to know
that learning styles, like I'm a visual learner, that it's actually both others. It's not scientific. However, individuals
absolutely do learn differently and we'll
incorporate that as we go. We're going to talk
about that some more. You cannot exceed
your self-image. And I'm going to say that again. You cannot exceed
your self-image. If you believe things like, I'm a words guy or
I'm a math guy, or I can't learn this, it's too hard or I
don't do this subject, then that's that you've got
to at least believe you can learn something
or just a small part, then that belief
can be nurtured, it can be ritualized, but you cannot exceed
your self-image. Good learning requires at
least some good nutrition. This course assumes
you're already doing some of the basics
like sleeping, eating some vegetables, getting some healthy fats
here and there. I don't eat perfectly at all. Just eat some good food, especially as your first meal, especially if you want to learn. You can learn while eating
crap, I've done it. It just won't go as fast. You're more likely to
hit a wall earlier. You will retain less. Accept limits with
an open heart. Accept your limits. Because I got them, you
got them, we all got them. Learning takes time. There are absolute biological limits on what you can learn. Their high, don't let that discourage you, but
there are limits. You can't learn to speak
Chinese in one day. Learning requires certain
things of your biology. Fats in your system, hydration, certain times of day are better for
learning than others. You go through something that's
called encoding at night, your mindset before
you start learning, there are certain things that
all affect your learning. Just speaking biologically. Big thing to know
is that when you accept your limits though, you actually count
or negativity, you stop blaming
yourself for things. You counter your discouragement. We'll get into that later, but accept your limits
with an open heart, we all have limits and that's actually a positive good
thing to know about. Lastly, to learn is to
transform and to transform, it requires the right sacrifice. The word sacrifice,
it means to fully give something up to
relinquish it entirely. And no one can
sacrifice your time, your energy, and your
focus, except for you. Those are the three things you sacrifice to everything
in your life. They're required to
sacrifice for learning, for transformation,
but they also have to be sacrificed
the right way. There's a wrong way, There's an infinite number
of wrong ways. But there are some
right ways as well. I know all about the wrong way. I do know a good bit
about the right ways to have the perfect segue
for habit number one.
3. Off = On: Alright, number one, demand time off with equal
importance to time on. When I was younger, I was
14 years old and I thought, I want to be the best
organized in the world. I wanted to be a concerted
and organize to win all around, play these
great commentaries. I wanted to be the best
organized in the world, right? 14 years old, very ambitious. And of course I heard
about that rule, that 10,000 h rule, it takes you 10,000 h
to master something. What I learned later on is that's actually not scientific. It's kind of a pop
psychology idea. It's not scientific or
supported by the evidence. There are many things that
require more than 10,000 h. There are many, many,
many things that require far fewer than 10,000 h. And what actually
makes the difference is not the quantity, it is simply the quality
of the seconds of focus. It's never the hours that is the seconds of
focus that matter. But I went down that road and
I really believed 10,000 h. So my thought was if it
takes me 10,000 h to become the best in the world at something or at
least to master it, then I need to get to 10,000
h as fast as possible. I started off in 14 years old, practicing for hours a day. That became 5.6. By the time I got to college
for my undergraduate degree, I was practicing 10 h a day. And boy, I thought
it was something special because the
more hours I practice, the faster I'll get to 10,000, the faster I'm a
master or something. What I learned was that all
of the greatest musicians, the singer is the violinists, the organists, the
pianist, it didn't matter. They didn't practice 10 h a day. They didn't practice 65 or even for almost all of them capped
out at about 3 h a day. And that blew my mind because there are
diminishing returns. It's just not how we work. If you instead optimize for
an incredible 3 h a day, you will actually
get much, much, much further than if you have
ten mediocre hours a day. Very surprising to me, maybe to a lot of you. I don't know, but I was certainly
glad that I learned it. I made that mistake. I don't anymore. The important thing is
this principle demanding equal importance to time
off that you do to time on. Our modern life
doesn't help us do it. We're not really hardwired
to do this in the context of our modern life that in
general fields like always on. But this is one
of the techniques that extremely high
performing individuals use, both in business and a music to really maximize
their productivity, maximize their learning, is to give equal
importance to the time. Oftentimes, it's not just, oh, I want to take my time off so
that my time on is better. It's actually that they
are equally important, very important to think
about the concept that way. So there is a practice
that you can very easily adopt that will
help you do this and what is called as
the shutdown ritual. And first time I did it, I
thought it was very silly. Took me awhile to
actually get into it. I would say it was about
two or three weeks before I really started
to see the full benefits. But it only takes a few seconds. At the end of your workday. If it's work or if it's studying for school,
whatever the case may be, there's always a point where
you have to be done, right? What most people do is
they say they're done, but then they're actually
thinking about it. Either it just a little bit in their conscious brain or very much when they're
subconscious brain. If you can shut off
both of those things, you will find that your time off is much more restorative, which will then lead
into the next day. You will have much better days. And then you start to see that
compound interests effect, where each time that
you're able to set a proper boundaries and give equal importance
to time off, really nurture that your
time on gets better. And then it goes
back-and-forth, back-and-forth. It's a positive feedback loop. Here's the shutdown ritual. It's the end of your day. And this is the practice
you simply say out loud, that's key, both
psychologically and physically. You say out loud,
shutdown complete. I thought this was
a silliest thing when I first started it. I have taught hundreds
of people do it. It's incredibly effective. You say shut down complete. Now, what most folks
do myself included, kinda look over your
calendar and see, Okay, this is what I did today. Maybe think of
what the next day. Okay. Here are the few things I
need to do for the next day. And then you say
shutdown complete. Then you move on
to the next thing. It's so important to set up that hard boundary,
very easy practice. I highly encourage you
to start with they're very low-hanging fruit.
Easy thing to do. If you need to be
alone when you say shut down complete so
you don't feel silly, whatever fine, do it. But say out loud, shutdown, complete, and move on. Do not spend any time, every moment that you spend with your conscious or
subconscious brain thinking about or
simply general, generically stressing
about work, school, whatever it is,
family every moment. What does that
ever done for you? Nothing. How is it working for you? It's not. This is a very simple technique
to help you get out of that kinda hamster wheel of stress and constantly
thinking about things. Here's another simple
practice, time blocks. You may or may not
have heard of these, but they're really
important also in conjunction with that
shutdown ritual, all you need to do is
take a piece of paper and label that the hours
that you're awake, 06:00 A.M. to 07:00 A.M. 08:00 A.M. go all
the way down to when you go to sleep and PM
10:00 P.M. whatever it is. And what you do is you
simply make a block. This is my block for
coffee and breakfast. This is my block for
working out and showering. This is my block for work. This is my blog for playing with kids or going
out for drinks. This is my block for
playing games at night, whatever it is, I don't care. Make a time walk. When you make that physical visual
representation of your day, you only need to do it once
and then just glance at it. It will actually very much
it will help you with things like this shutdown ritual
where you're partitioning off, hey, here's my on-time
and my off time. This is the first step to really developing in your brain
the habits that will help you to be off and on
entirely with zero work, zero pings of notifications
inside your brain. Oh, hey, I forgot about this. You can get rid of all of that. First step, shutdown
ritual, very easy. Another great practice to put
in here is time blocking. Another thing I want
to say is to commit to this idea of learning how you work and going
backwards from there. So we talked a
little bit before, you need healthy fats and
vegetables, of course, for you to learn, you also
need sleep, of course, to learn something very
important to know is but the process of encoding at
night when you go to sleep, getting your REM
cycle as you deeply excite your deep sleep cycles, your brain goes
through the process of what's called encoding. And that's where your
short-term memories are moving into your
long-term memories. That's where actual
learning begins. Because for you to stack
where you can on Tuesday, build on what you learned
on Monday, right? And you stack. And then there's another compound
interests to effect a positive feedback loop of constantly building on what
you've learned before. That is only made
possible through the process of encoding. So, why don't we
kinda optimize that? When you drink alcohol at night, it will disrupt your REM cycles, so it disrupts deep sleep. That's why even a
single beer at night, you will wake up the next day feeling a little
bit more groggy, maybe a little bit
foggy in the brain. And even if you don't
realize that our field that you're deep sleep
cycles have been affected. If you're going through a
period of intense learning, trying to switch careers, whatever the case may be. That's a good idea.
It's actually limit alcohol intake or even eliminated at night when you're doing this learning
because you will therefore be interfering with the
process of encoding. And the way that I would
motivate myself to do that is, you know, I'm a beer lover. I love all sorts of
different craft beers. I love exploring. That is, if I have bad
encoding at night, I'm going to have to go back and spend more time learning. I want to get to the
learning process as fast as possible in a way
that I can do that is by making sure that I get
my sleep and I don't see things that interfere with
the process of encoding. One other thing I'll
say is commit to the idea that it is
not about quantity. It has never built quantity
is always about quality. Number of hours spent
is no predictor. It's a correlation, but
it is not a causation, it is not a predictor of
success at something. Seconds of focus is. It's not about the number, it's about the seconds of focus. It's about the quality, the true quality time
that you spent focusing. Let's pop this all
under the real-world. Okay, let's give a
real-world example here. So let's say you've got
a job, It's exhausting. You've got to work 9 h a day. You got to commute,
you come home, you're physically exhausted. You've got a couple of kids, feed them, got play with them. It's great, it's fun, but
that's also exhausting. You want to switch
careers and you want to move into
software development. Let's say it's a, you know, you've got to spend some time taking a couple of
online courses, learning how to code, give me some object
oriented programming. And you've taken a
Python course of Java course, who cares? You know that you've
got to study and learn. You start down that path. You've got an hour every day. Maybe after the kids
go to bed, you got 1 h a day where you can focus and actually try to start working on
this career switch. Every time you get to that
hour you're exhausted. You just don't want to do it, but you try to push
yourself through it, you power through
because you tough. And after a month, man, it feels like you've
gotten nowhere. That's a lot of people. There's a different
way to approach this. You're busy, you're stressed, you got no more
time in your day. You can take more time off, but you do have that 1 h.
What you can do is this. The first five-minutes of that
hour you do what's called box breathing. 4 s. Inhale for 4 s. Hold your breath for seconds. Exhale 4 s, hold your breath. Just kind of like a box. Just kinda helps people
visualize it in, hold out, hold. Right? That's for five whole minutes. It's going to feel like an hour because you're not
used to doing that. Then you've got 20
min to set a timer of actual focus.
Man, you get to it. That box breathing,
what it did was it put your brain in
alerting state. It also changed the oxygen
levels in your blood. Things are actually a little
bit different for you get 20 min at the end
of that 20 min, when the timer goes
off, you switch. If you had another
five-minutes of box breathing, you
do that. Again. It feels like it takes forever. Boy, I've been here for
an hour but it's only been 2 min a box breathing. Keep doing it for
all five-minutes. Then you have 20 more
minutes of focus. And then you're done. You've got 10 min
left and you're hour. What you're going to do in those last 10 min is
just kinda review. Okay. This is what I did today. And I got a couple
of things that I know I can work on next time you write those down,
and then you're done. You can do another
shutdown ritual. Shutdown, complete, learning,
complete whatever it is. You have not added more
time into your day, but what you've done is
the first thing you did in that hour was you took time off. They gave you time
on and then you took time off and then you
gave your time on, and then you gave
yourself a minute to have a higher perspective as well. If you approach it that way, you will be shocked at how
much more you will get done. You haven't changed the
number of hours of off or on, but you have changed how you spend them and you've also
changed the priority. The first thing you
do is take time off, is to do things to
prime the pump, is to make your brain
ready to learn. This is a real-world example. This was me, this is how I switched into
software development. This is a lot of people
I've helped kinda make these career
switches by being able to actually maximize
and optimize their time. Most people don't have jobs where they can
have massage therapists come to their house
and they can have all these different things that put them in his prime
state all the time. Most people don't
have that, right. But we can, in very real life, in stressful
sub-optimal situations, still learn a dramatic
amount and change our lives. Give equal importance to
time off as to time on, it's not a little bit different. They are both equally important. Last thing I'm going
to say, does this always on as always mediocre? That helped me shift
my perspective. I was very reluctant to
prioritize my off time. Always on is always mediocre. That helped motivate me. Maybe
that'll help motivate you. Alright, Onto the next habit.
4. Choose Small: Habit number two here
is choose small. I used to think that the
more you can bite off, the more ambitious you were, the bigger the picture
of the braver you were as totally backwards. Choose small, too small things. Now, if you're going about
a project or a goal, and everything that you're
choosing to do is sets often. Alright, Gs or man, that's gonna be a lot and I just need to go do blank first. And I can't do
this unless I have 4 h of uninterrupted time, you'll never get it done. The only thing you're
practicing as being bad at doing things. Here's an example. You can't clean the kitchen. It's overwhelming.
There's junk everywhere. There's old food
that's caked on. The dishes are piled up
in the sink and so on. It's overwhelming. We've
probably all dealt with that. Right. Can't claim the kitchen
cleaned the plates. When you say I'm going
to clean the plates, but then you feel
that resistance on the inside and you just
want to just not do it, just leave it for another time. Don't clean the plates. Clean one plate and walk away. The important part is you
got to actually walk away to anybody can clean one point and walkways can take you 30 s tops, go in there, scrub
it, you're done. But then the key
part is walkaway. Be willing to do small things. It is so much better to be tasked with something
very difficult to do one tiny little
thing and walk away than to look at
it and walk away. Either way you're going
to walk away, right? Think about it that way. Small actions are infinitely
more powerful than avoided. Big actions. Small actions are
infinitely more powerful than avoided big actions. So let's tie this into learning. All learning is incremental. Embrace that all
learning is incremental. Sometimes from the outside you see someone make a huge leap forward that was only made possible by 10 million
increments before. The same goes for you. It's small increments, small increments,
small increments. And he perceived the
leap is only made possible by the infinite number
of increments before it.
5. Tend to Your Inner Voice: Tend to your inner voice, tended to your inner voice. So the external world is already trying to
do this for you. It's trying to mold
you into tend to your inner voice to make
you do something for it. Be that media, family, friends, work, and so on. Every interaction you have
with the external world is going to be molding
your interior. Get in the driver's seat. Give yourself a fighting chance. You probably already
know that you are hardwired for negativity, replaced roughly as
seven times weight on negative news as we do to
positive news right there, all these different things. And that's a very,
very tiny sliver of the importance of tending
to your inner voice, right? So understanding that
all the external influences are at you, you gotta do something about it. You've got to get yourself
in the driver's seat. One day, I chose to leave all of my jobs and the
performing music world, and I left to work in
the finance industry. Really difficult
decision for me to make. I did it because it was the
best thing for my family. And a lot of people
do that is, you know, they work in the arts
for X number of years. They decided eventually
want a better life. I wanted to send my kids to better schools, those
kind of things. So I chose to move to
the finance industry. But even with that choice, it was incredibly
difficult for me to make. Then on top of it,
we had several very, very serious family
health issues crop up an incredibly
difficult time. What I'll tell you is
that everything I learned about tending to my inner voice that allowed me to survive. And shockingly even to me, thrive in those circumstances. Within my first year, I move to one of the
biggest financial firms in the nation, in the US. Within that first
year, I was top 5% across the whole nation. And the only reason I
was able to do that with all these previous years of actually practicing in nurturing I practicing how to nurture, I guess I should say,
that inner voice. So to scientifically backed ways to really nurture and mold your inner voice and give yourself a little
bit more spine. And your inner voice isn't
meditation in visualization. Here's one practice
is a mental workout. And it's a meditation, but it's kind of more like
a professional meditation. Not necessarily a traditional
kind of meditation, but more one that's used by professionals with
your mental workout. All that you need
to do is you can do a long breath with
a whole something like 7 s in hold for
5 s out for 4 s. So that's the start of
your mental workout. Then in the middle, you simply
have a couple of things. You can do. A couple of recalls of,
hey, this is what one? Well yesterday and this is what I'm going to fix
today and make it better. And then you have your
statement of identity. And what it really is is
a statement of becoming. It's who you want to become. And it's something I've used
for many years in my life. And I use it during this
transition period was I had zero experience on the professional side of
the finance industry. Long time hobby of myself learning and reading about that. But it's something that
I used was to become basically at the top of my
fuel as fast as possible, was to actually
make that statement in the middle that I was going to be blank and how
he's going to be at the top of my game
within that first year. And it's nothing to
do with with kind of airy ideas or manifest in your destiny or
anything like that. It's much simpler. Instead, the breathing plus
the statement puts you into a state where you are more optimized to achieve
these things. When you're in that state. Also different kinds of
ideas will come to you. Maybe able to execute
on them that will help you be better at your job. So it's very simple
thing your mental workout is that breadth. What went well yesterday? What am I going to
do that It's better. Here's my statement, my
identity. Do that same breath. It takes about 30 s. Easy practice and other
practices, visualization. Visualization is where in the most extreme level of
detail you possibly can. You can shut your
eyes and try to visualize what you're
trying to make happen. That could be one year from now, it could be five years from now. Or if you're really trying
to make it smaller, it could be what you're
trying to actually make happen today, but visualization. So both of those things
actually gonna be laying down neural pathways so that
meditation, right? And then that visualization. They're both incredibly
powerful practices nurturing that inner voice. Another thing is using
something like task bracketing. And the idea here is task bracketing is we all have
things we're trying to do. But what we forget is actually that there are things
that come before and they're things
that come after. The example of the gym is if
you're gonna go to the gym, you first have to put your shoes on and then when you come home, you have to get your shoes off. So what you're doing there is by actually thinking
about those things, you're being intentional about something very, very small. You can do this whole
task bracketing thing, which takes a whole lot more time than you
really need to do. But if you pick
one thing and just say I'm going to try
to pay attention to the small things,
the smallest details. It's actually going to be you taking care of
your inner voice. And the more that you do that, the stronger it becomes more grit you have, the
more spine you have. And when the proverbial
crap hits the fan, you will be so thankful
that you did that. If you have control
of your inner voice, you can actually also connect
your learning to meaning. This is where it
really gets powerful. If you can connect your
learning to meaning, it changes from
information to purpose. And that will stick
with you forever. Things that you learn that are just information they go in, they're gone if you're
not using them. Things that you learned that you have attached to meaning. Become purpose and they'll
stay with you forever. That's one way to retain
knowledge over the long term. So control your inner voice
so that you can also, when you approach to learning, be approaching it and try
to attach it to meaning, knowledge and information
aren't going to change you. Meaning and purpose will
ignite desire within you. They will change you. Your identity also can
be chosen in this and you can choose
your open mindset. You can say, I am an
agent in my own life, not just some passive receptor, but I am an agent and active
person in my own life. And what I choose to be
someone with an open mind. I choose that maybe I can
be someone who can learn to program or maybe I can be
someone who can learn to, well, I don't care what it is, but you can actually
choose that intention. Use that meditation,
use the visualization. You don't have to believe
you can learn anything. You can, you can learn anything. It doesn't mean you
can learn it to be at the top of your field. But it's important to at
least skirt with that idea that you can believe that
you can learn anything, go down that row, tying it back to earlier, right? To choose small, you gotta be willing to be bad at
something for a while, be willing to be bad, right? And then choose small with it. And then combining that with
a little bit more control, a little bit more spine, and your inner voice, it's shocking how much
you can get dm. Another practice here is problems are frustrating very easily and they can
produce anxiety, they can produce
procrastination. A great approach in life is that every problem
has a solution. You can remind yourself of that. It's a practice. You're frustrated. You remind yourself, every
problem has a solution. If it has a solution, then it's not you trying to figure out whether
or not it has a solution which is endless
and anxiety producing. It is simply you
trying to find out the solution which is a, to be much simpler. So it's a great
practice approach everything as a problem
with a solution. You can choose your
mindset, right? You can choose things. To say that this problem has a solution from the beginning, you can choose to have
some more humility. You can choose small. One note here is
that self judgment, self critique is basically
a waste of time. It's dumb when his shame helped you ask yourself
that question. It's a non-judgmental question. How has that been
working for you? How is shame working for you? How is self judgment and being hard on yourself
working for you? Probably not great. Just get on with it. Be willing to be
bad at something. Take action to think
less about yourself, think a whole lot less. And that kinda half
circle that looks back at you and look forward, get on with it and
take the action. It's a waste of time. And by choosing to ten
your internal voice, you will actually find yourself
doing a lot less of that. Shame and guilt are
not helping you. Write. The last thought here
is that instead of shame and guilt and self
judgment and so on, which is extremely common, observe instead
observed yourself. And that's it. You ask yourself non-judgemental questions like, how's that going for you? Oh, maybe not great. Okay, try something else. Just simply observe yourself. And that's great
attitude to take. And you'll find that
it's easier to do all of these things the
more that you tend to your inner voice within their meditation
and visualization. And then habitual phrases like every problem has a solution. Incremental learning. All of these other
things that we've talked to a little bit earlier, they all come into play and they become more and more powerful. The more that you're
able to tend to that inner voice system
that I use in my life is it always makes sure
that I'm literally visualize in the morning that
I started out with chips. I think of them as poker chips because they used to
play a lot of poker. I call them decision
chips because you have x number of
decisions you can make in the day before your
decision-making ability drastically reduces you
start making poor decisions, or you simply give up and go with whatever
is easiest, right? So you have x number
of decisions. And every day I start
off with that idea and I visualize my decision
chips and then make my most
important decisions, all of them before noon. After that, the important
decision-making goes way down by 04:00 P.M. I tried to make
important decisions. And that's just
another little mental habit I'm able to hold onto and very easily
practiced at this point. Because of doing those things like meditation
and visualization, tend to your inner voice. Make your inner voice stronger. All the other stuff comes along, it becomes more powerful.
6. Do, Don't Think: Alright, number four, do, don't think, sounds pretty
funny about learning. Do don't think, I
mean, it literally do. Don't think. If you're even
taken this course, you probably already
think enough. Chances are you
probably overthink. I would say that the
majority of people have some measure of overthinking
in their lives. Do, don't think. Now the idea here is to
actually short-circuit much of the decision-making
and overthinking. That's basically a waste
of your time in life. You do want to think
through things, but the majority of the time, you're much better off
simply taking action. Don't think about
it. Take the action, observe the consequences after
the fact, and then adjust. That in general is a much faster and radically more productive
way to go about your life. You're tired, your this
and that, whatever. And you come up with
all these reasons to not do something, you just forget all of that. You get home. It's your time to do something,
it's your time to learn. You just simply begin. That's it. You don't spend anytime
analyzing yourself, even spend any time thinking
about your feelings. You simply do. Don't think. Okay? So it's a little bit hard to necessarily get into this
without sounding kind of weird, but let's dive a
little bit further. There are a number
of practices here that can actually
enable you to do this, which is to get out of that destructive self analyzing loop, which the majority of
time isn't helping you. How self awareness and
self analysis is extremely important when it's done in
the proper time and place. Most of the time
we don't need it. Some of the time it's incredibly powerful. So here's a practice. Organize tomorrow, okay? Whatever tomorrow is, just scribble it down
what you're gonna do. The practice that you
don't need to keep a full journal or
a full calendar. The practice of that
is simply writing down what you're
going to do tomorrow. That process want to
go through encoding. It's in your brain and
when tomorrow comes along, as opposed to having resistance
for doing the dishes, you'll see, oh, it's
on my list for doing. You do it. It's amazing how this works and it works with
your brain chemistry. It works with your way
that we make memories. Is you simply organized what's
going to happen tomorrow. Do it today, that simple list and you don't
need to organize everything, just pick the three things gonna do tomorrow
that important. Do the dishes, spend
an hour learning, play with my kids, right? When it comes time to do that, no matter how tired you are, it will already be primed and this is something I just do. I don't analyze whether I can or if I've got the
energy or the time, you just simply do it
organized you tomorrow. So for most things in your life, you want to simply get to it. Start doing it as
opposed to get to it. Start thinking about
it, start feeling about it and maybe do it
or do it poorly. No, you get to it. You do a short-circuit
that process. I'm gonna give you
a second practice that's going to help
you out with this. And this is a mantra. And I'm gonna give you
the PG version of it. Now some people might
find this to negative. Some people love it,
some people hate it. Decide what you
wanna do with it. The mantra is directed
to yourself and you simply say this is
the PG version. Screw you, do, it. Gets a little brush, a
little bit Neanderthal. But we all have a
very weak sign to us. We have a weakness
in us that's kind of rolling and trying
to get out of things. And it never helps us write. That mantra is
basically directed at that weaker side of
yourself and just says, screw you, screw the
weaker part of yourself. Do it. And it's kinda something
that can get you through some tough
times as well. Action, not thought, action, not feelings, action
not analyzing anxiety. Don't give yourself the time to go through one of
those loops, right? This is one of those phrases and you can come up with your own. You can talk to you too, that, that weaker instinct
you have and just say forget you, do it. You've given yourself direction. Don't give yourself the
time to be fearful. You can mold that into whatever
works for you. Alright? If you take action, you'll
get immediate feedback. You take action,
There's a consequence. You get feedback. You take thoughts and
you'll analyze and so on. And then there's potential
maybe consequences, ramifications. Who knows? It is much faster
to take action. You've got the feedback, adjust. Just try things. That's it. Just try thing is
just take actions. Be more like a toddler. Bang your head on
the wall, right? And see what happens, right? Throw something and see what
kind of sound it makes. That's actually, obviously we don't want to
be like this all the time, but it's incredibly powerful to be acting more in thinking, less for most things
of your life, you will need a
certain amount of wisdom to go about this. You need to have the kind of
self-awareness to realize, okay, this is my weaker side. Kinda wanted to procrastinate, wanted to be anxious. Oh, I need 5 h of uninterrupted time before
I can do this, right? All that. We want
to short-circuit that waste of time and
just do it, right? Okay, so do more. Thinking about taking more
action, do, don't think. Alright. So an easy real-world
example is if you are struck with either anxiety
or procrastination, right? Or feeling that you
can't get something done is you can simply
do that practice, which is kinda forget
you weaker side, do it, giving yourself that
direction or the other practices the day prior. If you've organized your
next day and you say, I need to study blank for 1 h today when it comes to if it's 05:00 A.M. if
you don't do it earlier, 09:00 P.M. you're
going to do it late, whatever the case may be, you come to that slot and
your brain is already prime, you will find that you have
much less resistance, right? So it's kind of some real-world
ways to implement it. On to the next habit.
7. You Are Your Own Teacher: Alright, number five, this
one's a little different. It's a saying, you
are your own teacher. I am my own teacher. You are your own teacher. Sounds a little
strange at first, but shifting your focus, shifting your perspective
to understanding, learning this way is
radically transformative. I've seen it in, again, hundreds of my students lives. You are your own teacher. It's best to view other
teachers or people who are learning from or the world or your workplace or whatever
you're learning from as guides or inputs or the
second level of teacher. And you are your own teacher. Remind yourself that
you have agency. And that only some
agency you have all the agency that
matters in your own life. You are your own teacher. No one else can make you learn. Others can put it
in front of you. They can try to lead
a horse to water, that kind of thing, that
can try to inspire you. You are the one who learns. You are the one who decides
what sacrificed to omega. Am I going to make that
sacrifice of time, of energy, of focus? Am I going to choose to
not focus on anything else in the world and only
focus on this one thing. Nobody else can make
that decision for you. You are your own teacher. Others will guide
you on the path. They will lay the
path in front of you. But you are the one
who teaches yourself. Again, it's a little
strange and I encourage you to think about this one and
see if there are ways that, that perspective, if you
can apply that perspective, how you learn matters. Of course, you need to find the methods
that work for you. And in the end though, whatever method you are finding
that are working for you, you're the one putting
them into practice. You are the one in time
and space who was actually teaching yourself and everybody
else is kind of a form, a kind of a guide, right? You don't need anyone else
to tell you what to do. What you actually need is for you to tell yourself to do it. Science is very clear on this. If you voluntarily choose
to engage in the learning, you will learn radically
more multiples more than someone
else who is their reluctantly or someone else
who must be there, right? So for instance, if
you're going to driving school and someone is
forced to go to driving school because they had too
many traffic violations, I gotta go back to
driving school versus the person who chooses to go to driving school because
they want to drive, that person is actually
go in and take away far more knowledge
and information. The second person
than the first, it changes the way your brain
responds to things as well. So understanding that,
that voluntary choice to engage deeply, the learning will change
your ability to learn fast. Okay, let's talk about
a couple of practices to really put this
into the real-world. One practice is to go and take a walk and remove the inputs. Don't go with the podcasts. Don't go with AirPods. Don't go with your phone. Leave it behind. Take 45 min to actually
think for yourself. I would say that most people in my experience are following the life that's been set
out for them by others. And maybe they're happy doing
that and maybe they're not. But whether or not
you are doing that, I would say that
most of us would prefer if we at least knew what we were doing and had a little bit more
choice in the matter. So a practice is to go for a walk without
inputs to simply go. And the only thing that
you're really experiencing is what's immediately
viscerally around you. If it's birds, if it's snow, if it's rain, if it's mud, if it's dirt, whatever. But to actually have that
time of true solitude, which will enable you to help think for yourself
a little bit more. Let's talk about practice
number to completely throw out. I don't have time. We all know it's not true, literally speaking, because you have the same amount
of time that I do. We both had the
same amount of time that Tim Cook does, right? I don't have time. Throw it out, replace
it with something else. Because I don't have
time as passive is to say that no one else
has given me the time. Instead, choose
not to do things. And that's it. And it's
okay to say you have choices and you have priorities
just like someone else. You're going to choose
to go to sleep. You're going to choose
to spend your time watching a TV show. You're going to choose your
time working hard at work. You're going to choose your time goofing off with your kids, whatever it is thrown out. I don't have time. It's one of those
many phrases which, which helps train
us to be passive as opposed to active
in our lives. You are your own teacher. You are also the one who chooses how to spend all of your time. You were the one who chooses what to focus on and
what not to focus on. Another thing I
mentioned this before is what you focus on groves, which you focus on
expands what you do. There will be more of a very simple practice
is to stop for 1 s. If you've got kinda ping in the back of your
head that says, Oh, this is good or this is bad. But sometimes we just notice
and to stop and to ask, do I want more of this? Because whatever you're doing, there will be more
of down the line. That's another kind
of practice to it to help put this into place. This one's a little bit hard. It's not as maybe brass tacks and some of the other things
that I'm talking about. But it's radically
important that you are your own teacher. You are the one who chooses. You are the one who chooses to learn or chooses not to learn. Everybody else is a guide. One of the ways that I see
people waste vast amounts of time is they're looking for someone else's
solve their problem. They're looking for someone
else to teach them, to give them something, to give them the skills. And that's not how it works. No one else can do it for you. No one else can live your life. No one else can
learn the skills. You are your own teacher. No one else can do
any of this for you. That's a hard thing and a wonderful thing
at the same time. Let's just talk a little
bit about how to put this into practice
in the real-world. I think that practice
of going for a walk without any inputs, do it once or twice a
week is so important to actually have a moment to see if you're thinking
for yourself. And then to make sure that when you do approach your learning, Let's go back to that example. If you've got 1 h of learning is to remind yourself
and maybe make that part of your mental workout is that I am my own teacher. I am the one who is
learning and I am the one who is teaching
it as my engagement, that is teaching it to myself. If you didn't want to learn, no one can teach you. It's so important to do that
because it shifts you from passive to active and puts
you in the driver's seat. Okay. Let's move on. Next one.
8. Recognize Patterns: Alright, number six,
recognize patterns. This is something I
learned at a young age. Thanks to my music education. At first, you just can see
a big blob on the page, and eventually it becomes
individual notes on a page. Eventually those notes,
you've kinda start tying them together into scales. And that might be
your first pattern. And then you're
going to see, oh, there's a horizontal
pattern to this, right, which is gonna
be my map, my melody. And then I'm going
to notice, oh, there's also a vertical pattern, which is going to be my harmony. And eventually I'm going
to see all of this together with multiple
instruments at the same time. And that's actually going to be my symphonic patterns seen it all together
at the same time. Everything in life is patterns, and that is actually
the primary way that our brains learn to perceive
anything from this finger to learning the concepts
behind opera singer into software engineering to
poker, pattern recognition. So make sure you
know that that's how your brain is working. Recognized patterns. So the first time I was
learning JavaScript, I found it very difficult. And then I moved on to my second programming language for my third, my
fourth, and so on. And then you realize, oh, they're actually all
fundamentally extremely similar. And you realize
patterns between them. And anyone who's learned three or four
different languages would tell you the same thing. That first one is tough, that second one is still tough. But boy, they start
coming faster after that because patterns emerge and it becomes very easy for you
to map those patterns with their tiny differences,
two different languages. Everything is
pattern recognition. If you understand that you can understand how to teach
yourself as opposed to teaching yourself blocks
of individual information? No, you teach
yourself patterns of information across multiple
swaths of information, right? So understand that. Recognize patterns,
that is how you learn. Also turn that inwards, recognize patterns in yourself. Some people find it very
difficult to focus, and that's definitely
a big challenge in some folks even
have ADHD, right? And that focus is very
hard and they need to switch things very
frequently, right? So once you can do is recognize that pattern
and work with it, work with your patterns, right? When you're, when
you're turning that in on yourself, harness it. So one thing I found
was in my '20s, I got very bored
very quickly with doing one thing and I
loved to switch quickly. And at first I thought that was a flaw and then I realized, why don't I lean into this? What I ended up
doing was running my multiple businesses while also studying to become
an operatic tenor. And then at the same time also running some coral programs. And I ended up launching the biggest client I
ever had a launching. There is a giant
e-commerce website while also doing my first debut
as a tenor in a show. And it was kinda funny to
me looking back at it, but the only reason it happened and then the
reason I was able to do it was I got very
bored in class. I would always bring my laptop and I would switch
back and forth. I'd be working on a web design or software development for
the e-commerce platform. And then I'd switch back to learning about Renaissance french opera
or something like that. Switching back and forth with so much more engaging to me, I had more fun, I
had a great time. Now, it's actually not
the ideal way to learn. You're much better
model tasking, learning how to use focus
blocks, things like that. But whatever do
what works for you. It was not a long-term
sustainable way for me to go about it, but recognize patterns in
yourself and also realize that everything you learn is based
off of pattern recognition. Okay? So putting that into
a real-world example, let's say you have to study for a certification because
you want a new job. And you've got this whole course you have to
go through and then you're studying for the
test that you have to pass. A very easy way
to go about that, that most folks do is they're going to something
like flashcards, although use like software prep, that's going to help them
learn how to pass the exam. And what you can do
is when you're making your own flashcards or
you're trying to trace how you can understand something
instead of trying to memorize different
concepts or words, you always trace them in patterns so that you're
connecting them to one another. By connecting them
into a pattern, you're going to actually also
attach meaning to it and that's going to make it stick in your long-term memory better. But so making sure that when you're going about
the test prep, let's say go to stat, go on or flashcards that you
gotta go through. What you do is you actually, you can take those flashcards
and start sorting them into a pattern so you can kinda trace them and now they
have a relationship. And that relationship is
so much more meaningful to your brain than simply
a single point of data. Our brains don't really care
about single points of data. We care about the relationship
between the data, right? So if you've got
flashcards, lay them out, and try to find some patterns between them and
put those ones in a stack and then memorize
them as not as a group, but as a string
of relationships. And you will find that
you will learn things much faster and you
won't have to keep going back and back and back
and back to keep relearning the same things. On
to number seven.
9. Focused Seconds: Number of focused seconds, not the hours spent.
I said this before. And I'm breaking it
out as its own habit. Number of seconds, number
of focused seconds, not the number of hours spent. We've talked about
a lot of different habits that you can build. And it starts from number one, you're equal giving
equal importance to time off to time on. And it can all lead into this. That it all depends your
learning and your ability to learn quickly
and your ability to retain information
for the long run. Your ability to do things like switch careers and
to learn a new skill sets into learning skill sets that are high demands that you can earn more money. It depends on this because
this is ultimately going to be the predictor of whether or not you're successful
with your learning. Unlocking your learning
potential comes down to this. The number of focused seconds, not the number of hours spent. Use a lot of the habits
that I've talked about before to kinda get into this. It's really important to shift your mindset to have
focused seconds, not hours, not even focused
30 min or focused 20 min. It's focused second,
because in the end, that's the only
thing that counts. I talked earlier
about recognizing your patterns and kinda
share with you and how I learned very bored with
one thing at a time. And so I learned to shift
rapidly between them. In the end, when you're getting
into higher value, right? If you're trying to become
a higher value employee, we're trying to learn a high-demand skill set
because you want to earn more money or shift careers or something that's just
more interesting to you. You have to also
realize something else, which I didn't realize
in my '20s at first. Which is that you
cannot multitask. It's just impossible. But you can mono task that you can switch
between your tasks, but you cannot multitask. You can only mono task. Ultimately when you're
especially getting into more and more
complex subjects and you're trying to
get to higher value and higher demand
things as well. Want to mono task, right? So practice mono
tasking and that can be a time block
where you say for 1 h, I'm only doing this
and nothing else. And for most folks, you can't start a
one-hour start at 20 min and build it up over six months. It takes a long time. Your ability to focus
really is not going to be 67 8 h a day
to think of it as maxing out as three or 4 h a day of truly hard focusing work. If you really only
ever got to two, you would be way further
than most people. But it's the number of
seconds spent a focus. If you top out at 45-minute
to focus today, cool. If they're 45 focus minute, you can do tremendous things
versus ten mediocre hours. Okay. Part of this too
is the following. Which is, I strongly
believe that one of the most important
things any modern person can do is learn to say, no, we have more options than any other human beings
and all of history, learning to say no
is as important as the other things we
talked about, which is grit. Their psychological
things that we know are going to
help predict success. Learning to say no is as
fundamental as anything else. You don't have a
chance of focusing, of having those focused
seconds unless you learn to say no, right? So most folks are addicted
to their phones because they are incredibly
well-designed to do that to you, right? So put it on airplane mode, fine, that's not enough. You can easily get out of that. Put it in the other room. Probably not enough. Put it in the other room, in a box and top of the shelf. While you go into
your focus mode, learn to say, no, treat yourself like a toddler. If you have two Who
cares, be humbled, choose small, but learn to say no to all these things that
are going to distract you. For some people, it's
technology for a lot of people, it's food or getting up to
go get coffee 18 times. Learning to say no. And start small by saying no, you're not going to
change overnight. But focused seconds, not
number of hours spent. Take everything else. Those other six habits
and they all lean into this and they
all nurture this. And really focusing on
that, That's seconds, not the hours is what's going to make a
difference in your life. Okay, let's talk about putting this into a real world example. Alright? So I keep using the example of
trying to switch careers. We can also just
simply think you're in a job and you're trying
to further your career, you've got 8 h a day and
they're jam packed full of meetings and different groups asking you to do
different things, okay? How do you actually
focus to learn something new that's going to stack over time and
build your skill set. You've got to set
aside the time. And something that most
people don't want to do is they don't want
to demand things. They don't want it
to be difficult, which of course makes sense. We don't want to be projecting those things
to other people. It's not going to be making
you successful in life. But what you can
certainly do is you can either say to your
manager, your boss. You could say
something like, Hey, I need 30 min, where I am not
touched and I turn off my phone and I
turn off notifications because I want to
learn something difficult to further my career. Anyone with any
sense, It's going to say, you don't get 30 min, you get an hour because
that makes you a higher value employee to them. They're going to love that. If they don't give you that fine that time before or
after work as well, or when you wake up in the
morning, something like that. But it's actually time, block, a focus block, 30 min an hour, whatever you can start
with, that's realistic. And the only thing you
do during that time is learn that one thing
you're trying to learn and you practice mono
tasking that way, it is really hard. It's very difficult to do. I have worked with folks who
start with five-minutes. They can only focus
for five-minutes. And then we do five-minutes
for a whole week and then we move up to eight
and intent, right. And you do it
incrementally as well. Have the humility
to start small, focus on those time blocks. I've given you seven,
but we're not done. I've got a bonus section of other things that I think
you can cherry pick from, find what works for you and
become your own teacher. And to really unlock
that learning potential.
10. Bonus!: Alright, so this is
first on the bonus list, which is never lie to yourself. Never lie to yourself. I just allowed myself to
myself and lots of ways. And I think most of us do it. Little white lies that we tell ourselves are little lies we say that
make ourselves feel better, I think is incredibly common. Here's what happened to
me when I chose to never lie to myself. It
helped me lose weight. We lose 40 pounds. In fact, what happened was I had all these like
guilt and body shame, things like plenty of folks do and does he didn't didn't
feel good about myself. And I eventually realized I'm never going to
lie to myself again, I stopped buying
clothes that I was kinda aspirationally hoping
that I would fit into. And I said, No, I am what I am when I'm
at the way that I'm going to buy clothes that
I fit in and I feel good. I did that. And funnily enough, it popped the balloon of guilt and
shame that I filled up my body and kinda got over all the guilt complex stuff and I was able to simply be
more truthful with myself. Just ramped down
the emotion, right? And so I was able
to lose 40 pounds and I completely credit that
tend not lying to myself. Part of that too is when
you don't lie to yourself, you can set goals
that are reasonable. You have to be willing to
look at yourself and say, sometimes I'm lazy or sometimes
I can't do that, right? Cool. Start small. You can observe yourself. I certainly observed
myself and go, Oh, I didn't follow
through that time. And that's okay. It's not a judgment, it's just simply I'm not
going to lie to myself. And the more you do that, what ends up happening is you can actually trust your inner voice. If you don't lie to yourself, you can trust your inner voice. You become stronger, right? So don't lie to yourself and just an incredibly powerful
thing to become more of a truth-teller to yourself
in a non-judgmental way. Just don't lie to yourself. You might find that you're
able to let go of guilt. Often you're able to be
more easily motivated. Your emotions aren't as high, but certain things because
you're just simply a more trustworthy
voice to yourself. It helps you set reasonable
goals and pathways as well. Quick tips to questions that
asked myself every day. Is that working for you? And do you want more of this? Because whatever you do,
there's gonna be more of another one memorized or learning while
locking, walking. That left, right engagement of the feet changes how your
brain processes information. If you want to look
into things like emdr, that's something can I teach
you a little bit about that? But learning flashcards,
studying while walking has a big effect on how the brain is going to
process that information. Rapid memory test
memory techniques. One of the chief
ways that you can memorize something quickly is to try to recall it before you
think you actually should. You look at a flashcard. You got 0.5 s, you got to put it away, and now you've got to
try to recall it. So trying to
challenge yourself to recall things in
difficult situations, that actually the
act of challenging difficult scenarios which
very hard for you to remember something that actually produces long-term memories. So rapid memory tests, making your brain work for it, going beyond what
you're capable for. Obvious one, take frequent
breaks, worked for 15 min, take 5 min off, drink a lot of water
and other obvious one. Teach others, explain
something out loud. You will actually
reveal your own gaps and you'll put things into
your own words, which again, if you can rephrase
something in your own words, but also stored in
your long-term memory better than remembering
someone else's wording. Teach something to others, or just say it out
loud, teach it to nobody in general, if
you want to do that. Very powerful way
to learn something, set aside a specific time and place, control your environment. Have a little corner
with a little desk. This is my learning desk, right? Those kind of things
are powerful as well. Don't try to memorize
without understanding. Understand it first,
attach some meaning to it, understand it deeply, and
then work on memorizing it. Because like I said before, it's the relationships
between things that creates meaning
and memory for us, it's not data, right? Information machines were relationship machines is a
better way to think about it. Exercise, eat fats, do breath work to Congress also to put yourself
in a learning state. Explain things in
your own words. Write long hand. If you write long hand, again, that's another way for you to take something
that's simply data. And then two becomes, becomes
something that you've actually physical
eyes and again, will help you learn something. A lot of studies on this
where people who type things, we'll learn much,
much, much less than people who write
them out longhand. Small chunks, do everything
in small chunks, nothing in big chunks because
the only way you want it is incremental small chunks. Whole part hole is another
great way to learn. You look at the whole thing. Big perspective. You get in there
breaking up and add 25 different chunks and then
see it from the hole again. Whole part, whole. Very common educational
theory that teachers use. Take notes while
learning by hand. You're in a class, whatever,
take notes by hand. Don't do them typing,
make up stories. So pattern-recognition is a
fundamental way we learn. You can take a bunch of concepts and make a story with them. You're going to remember it. Similar to a memory palace if you've ever tried
to do one of those, I've never worked in it much, but the concept is
roughly the same, where we learn to this
visualization and hyperbola details
and things like memory palace or stories, narratives are, that's what we're drawn to on the deepest level
as human beings. So if you can take
concepts, ideas, turn them into stories, you're
going to remember them. Another thing that if you get bored and you gotta be one of those people who I can
only focus for 10 min, fine, focus for 10 min on this. Focus for 10 min on that
focus for 10 min on this. What you gotta do, be realistic, recognize your own
patterns, right? Focus on what matters. There's too much data, there
are too many teachers, there's too much crap out there saying no to almost everything. Focus on what matters. Put your phone away, do all these things
that are very easy, and then focus on what matters. Lastly, great thing. Richard Feynman made this a popularized technique
I use all the time is you make a note book titled notebook of things
I don't know about. You just keep a track of
this stuff you don't know. And then maybe a week later
you'll go back and go, Oh, I already know this and
you can scratch it off. And by the end of
going through a course or going through €1 at work,
whatever the case may be. Instead of having a notebook or things you don't know about, you've actually got a map. And by mapping it out,
what you don't know, your brain is always
going to be actually looking to plug those holes. So make a note
book of things you don't know about, helps
you stay on task, helps you learn in along
and helps you create a mental map in the
future as well. A whole lot. Cherry-pick, take what you want to try,
throw it the rest. I don't care. Do what works for you because you
are your own teacher.
11. Project: This is your course project. It's very easy to do. It's very powerful. Their scientific
literature behind it. Are you going to do is
write three sentences, three short, punchy,
powerful sentences, and then you're going
to also share them. Number one, you sentence is
going to answer the question, what do you want to learn? That's it. What do you want to learn?
Maybe feels daunting, maybe aspirational.
I don't know. What do you want to
learn sentence to? What single practice will
you adopt seven days a week, day in and day out to help you achieve
this learning outcome. One practice, only
a single practice. I've given you probably 50. Pick one thing that
you're gonna do day in, day out for seven days a week while you're going after this. What single practice you're
going to adopt? Number three. How will you feel once you've
overcome the obstacles and the difficulties
in trying to achieve which were
identified in sentence one. Number one, what do
you want to learn? Remember to what practice
you're going to adopt? Number three, how are
you going to feel? Once you've achieved
this learning? Once you have that
written, please share it. You can share it in
the comments here. If it's here on Skillshare, you can scare it in our charity
and our discord channel. You could email it to me. I encourage you to
share it either here in the comments or on discord because
you can share with other students and we can
encourage each other. But I strongly encourage
you to do this as step one before moving on to achieve and what
you're hoping to learn.
12. Free resources to continue learning: I want to make sure
you also know about all of the other
free resources here. So we've got a discord
learning community that was just launched where all of the
students can get together and ask each
other questions, help each other grow and also
have access to myself where all the answering questions
I'll be posting videos, just making sure that there's
ongoing support for use. If there's really a sense of community that really helps you a lot when you're going through
these learning processes. There's also the blog
where I'm putting out free resources,
writing articles. Then there's also, of course, the course downloadable PDFs, spreadsheets on their different supporting me says
for each course, Of course, there are
other courses as well. And then lastly, you
can just always use a website to shoot me a message. It goes right to my inbox, read every single message I get. I respond to every
single one as well. So I'm happy to connect
with you there too. One of the ways that
you can really help out myself and also your fellow students
and future students as well as if you
leave a review, it really helps me to learn what worked for
you, what didn't. But I always take all of that student feedback
and we'll put a new videos, change a video. I'll add course content, downloadable, whatever
needs to be done. So these are kind of always evolving and I'm always trying
to improve them over time. So please leave a review if
you have the time that really helps me and helps the
other students as well. But the main thing is, I
want you to know there's so many free resources
here for you to continue your
learning journey. So please reach out to me, connect with your
other students, use these resources and have a wonderful learning
journey going forward.
13. Thank You!: Thank you. Thank you for your time and
your attention, your focus, and sharing that
part of you with me in trying to better yourself. It truly is my privilege to
get to spend time with you, with all my students, to share what I've
learned and to help shake you and to help
you have a better life. I appreciate it. I appreciate the gift of your time today. Please stay in touch in
the comments on Discord. You can reach out to
me through my website. I want to keep improving
this course and to keep improving the other
courses as well, and to give you more over
time. Thank you again. And until next time
I'm Edward Atkinson.
Edward Atkinson, Teacher
