Simple Framework - School D'nt Taught you...

Learning is the most valuable skill you can develop.

But, school taught you learning was hard and no fun.

Here's a simple framework for you to master anything with ease:

• Growth mindset:

Internalize that you can learn and grow:

• Books

• Coaches

• Online courses

• Business teachers

With a growth mindset, you'll realize you can achieve anything with hard work and time.

No matter what you know today,You can know more tomorrow.

• Type of learner

Know what type of learner you are.

We each learn best in our own unique way:

• Aural

• Social

• Verbal

• Logical

• Solitary

• Physical

• Visual / Spatial

Tailor your method of study to your personal learning style.

• Learning Pyramid

Activities are retained differently. As a rough example:

• 5% listen

• 10% read

• 20% audio visual

• 30% demonstrations

• 50% group discussion

• 75% practice by doing

• 90% teaching to others

Work your way up the ladder to retain more.

• Draw a map ; You want to answer three questions:

• What do you want to learn

• Why do you want to learn it

• How are you going to learn it

Interview people who've done what you want or read what you can about them in books or online.

A crap map is better than no map.

Take note of the:

• Concepts to understand

• Procedures to practice

• Facts to memorize

If available, base your plan on already existing plans and modify as needed. As a general rule of thumb, keep your planning time to 10% of your total expected project time.

• Focus

To learn, you need to focus.

To focus, use these four techniques:

• Setup your environment

• Pomodoro technique

• Five-minute rule

• Eat the frog

Start with an environment that's set up to be free from what distracts you.

For the Pomodoro technique, break your workday into 25-minute chunks that are broken up by five-minute breaks.

For the 5-minute rule, start something for 5-minutes and you will find you do more.

Eat the frog means you start with your most important task first, always.

• Direct practice

The best way to learn is to practice.

If you want to be good at basketball, play basketball.

If you can't practice directly, practice deliberately:

• Break an activity down into component parts

• Practice those parts that transfer to the main activity

• Drill

Direct practice is good.

Deliberate drills are even better.

Understand what your weaknesses are.

Design drills and practice to attack those weaknesses.

Using our basketball example, focus on specific skills repeatedly, such as 3-point shots and driving to the hoop.

• Retrieval

If you need to study for a test, science shows you should test yourself before you study. 

This will prime you for better results from studying.

Ways to test yourself in advance are:

• free recall

• flashcards

• closed-book method

• Feedback

What separates a poor learner from a good learner is often the immediacy, accuracy, and intensity of feedback provided.

Outcome feedback tells you whether you're improving or not without specific details.

Informational feedback tells you what you're doing wrong but not how to fix it.

Corrective feedback tells you how you can fix what you're doing wrong and normally requires a:

• coach

• mentor

• teacher

• Retention

You need to overcome 3 challenges:

• Decay

• Interference

• Forgotten cues

Our memory decays with time.

When we learn something new, we lose old memories. We interfere with them.

Even if it's not forgotten, we may lose the cue to access the memory.

Some techniques to improve retention are:

• Spacing

• Overlearning

• Proceduralization

For spacing, study for short periods of time at set intervals.

For overlearning, practice beyond perfect.. Go beyond the level of skill required.

For proceduralization, study specific behaviors or information until they become procedural.

Also, always focus on knowing how and why you are learning something over what you are learning.

When you know the why and how, you may find a better way to do it or learn it.

• Intuition

Don't give up on hard problems easily. Work until the problems yield and you will learn more.

Prove things to understand them and understand them by demonstrating them.Always start with a concrete example, it's how humans learn best.

Ask questions, lots of them.

• Feynman technique

Write down the problem or concept

Explain the idea as if teaching it to someone.

When you get stuck or have a gap in your knowledge, study until that gap is removed.

Continue to refine this process until you can explain it to a 5th grader.