How to Learn So Fast People Assume You're Naturally Gifted

As a learning coach, there is one strategy that I see only the best learners use. In fact, it's so powerful that if I see someone using this strategy, I know that they're going to become a very efficient learner. And if someone is not using this, there's almost no chance. And while I don't think there's anything as a best learning strategy for every single context, if I could only teach one strategy to use for the rest of your life that allows you to learn faster And the good thing is, it's very easy. I call this the confusion compass. Let's say you're learning something for the first time. How do you know you're learning it well? Well, normally, if you're learning something well and you're good at learning, then it feels simple. You understand it, it feels manageable, it makes sense in your head. You're not filled with confusion. Whereas if you're not learning something very well, then you're always confused and it feels overwhelming. Right? Wrong. Learning should be confusing, but confusion doesn't feel good. And so here's what happens. Anytime we learn any type of new information, whether that's upskilling for work, whether that's studying for an exam, anytime new knowledge comes in, your brain is just trying to figure out, what does this mean? What do I do with this? From your brain's perspective, it's just data. It is just data coming in, but it doesn't know where to put that data. And your brain asking, what should I do with this? Where do I put it? Where do I store it? How do I organize it? That creates the feeling of confusion. Confusion is the symptom of learning. If you feel confusion, your brain is trying to figure it out. If you don't feel confusion, your brain is not figuring anything out. So the analogy I give is like a police detective trying to solve a murder mystery. There's all these clues that are up on the board, the photo of the car, the body of the murder victim, and they're looking at this board and they're trying to see how the pieces all connect together. They're trying to solve the mystery. They're confused, they're thinking, they're not sure what the answer is. And in their brain, they're highly active. They don't know how the dots connect, but they're trying to connect them anyway. And that is exactly how it should feel when you're learning something new. But the issue is, and this is where most people waste hours, days, months even, is that when they feel this emotion of confusion, they just leave it there. It stays an emotion. And we can't do anything with that. We can't do anything with just feeling confused. And so instead of just sitting there feeling confused, feeling overwhelmed for hours, days, months, all we're gonna do is use this confusion compass technique to turn this into a targeted learning strategy. So once we feel this emotion of confusion, all you're gonna do is ask yourself questions. These are the questions that if you had the answers to, you think it would help you be less confused. Write those questions down, make a list, and then just go and answer them. That is, as simple as it sounds, an entire learning strategy. And it is insanely effective. So I'll give you some examples. Let's say I'm a software developer and a new library has come out that I might be using at work. I open up the documentation, I read through the website, and as I'm reading, I feel like my eyes are glazing over, I'm getting bored, I'm potentially falling asleep. I'm not feeling any confusion whatsoever. That's your first red flag. That means that you're not trying to connect the dots. So if you're not feeling any confusion, we need to engage in the process that triggers that confusion. And one of the easiest types of questions that you can ask yourself to trigger that confusion is to put that learning in the context of the reason you're learning it. So if you're learning about this new software library because you're trying to apply it at a project, ask yourself, how does this help me with the work that I'm doing? What are the implications on my work? And once you start thinking about those implications, naturally, you start feeling a little bit more confused because you're looking at this library and you're realizing it's very similar to another library that you're using. It's saying that there's all these benefits, but you're not really sure why it's so much better than all the other alternatives. You're meant to insert it as part of your workflow, but you're not really sure how it would fit into your workflow. You're confused about how you're meant to work with this new knowledge, work with this new library. So you turn that confusion, which is great now that you feel, into questions. How does this library compare to this library? What are the benefits of it? How am I meant to implement this? What are the challenges to implementing it? How long is it gonna take? How much is it gonna cost? What complexity is there? Maybe the reason you're confused is that you can't really visualize it. So the question you would ask is, what are some use cases or examples that show how it has been implemented? This is the confusion compass technique. And now by creating a clean list of questions, there are two benefits. First of all, in turning that confusion into questions, you're forcing yourself to examine the gaps in your knowledge. That alone helps your brain focus in and learn more efficiently. Number two, you now have a targeted list of questions that if you were to answer, help you be less confused. And this process repeats. As you answer those questions, you may be confused by the answers that you find. And those trigger even further questions. And it is simply this process of being confused, asking questions, and answering those questions that creates the cycle of learning. And the faster you're able to engage in that cycle, the faster you can learn. The major issue is not that people don't understand what they're reading or consuming. It's not that it takes them so long to find the answer. It's that they don't even know what answers they need. They stay generally confused and assume that if I just keep reading through this documentation, if I just spend another couple hours on it, I will eventually figure it out. But if you do that, you just become more overwhelmed. Because mentally what's going on is that when you ask questions, you start connecting things together in a way that makes sense. But if you're not asking these targeted questions and you're just reading more, hoping that it's gonna give you enlightenment, all you're doing is adding more and more data. All you're doing is creating more points that are disconnected. There are more things to be confused about. And when this happens, is when you go from just merely feeling confused to now feeling properly overwhelmed. And although I've given you an example with software, this works for any body of knowledge because it's just how the human brain works. I use this strategy for when I'm learning about business, marketing, content creation, medicine, AI, learning science, and almost every effective learning strategy that exists uses this cycle in some way. And as a learning coach who has coached thousands of people for almost 15 years, I can tell that if someone is not able to embrace confusion, trigger confusion, and turn that confusion into questions, there's not really any point teaching them any other learning strategies because this is the thing that is gonna block them. Now, the confusion compass is an example of a technique that is incredibly simple to perform, but it gives you a lot of bang for buck. And that's really what learning efficiency is about. It's not about having an entire suite of connected apps that are perfectly tuned to exactly what you need on every single day. It's about having simple strategies that just work. And if you wanna learn some more simple strategies that just work, a great place to start would be my free weekly newsletter. These are fairly short emails that I write up myself three to five minutes each with a practical takeaway at the bottom, emailed to you for free every week. They're the things that took me 15 years of trial and error to learn, which I want you to learn in five minutes. So if you're interested and you wanna learn more, I'll leave a link in the description below for you to sign up. You can unsubscribe at any time if you don't like it. If you're interested in what I think is maybe the second best learning strategy that you can learn after the confusion compass, then check out this video here where I walk through my system for thinking on paper, one of the most life-changing skills that you can learn. Anyways, thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next time.