How to Learn Faster

How do you learn faster? I get asked this one actually quite a bit because people come to any of my seminars or programs or they're experts in any given space and they're like, okay, Brendan, I want to advance, you know, I want to become a high performer in my area. And I know to become a high performer I got to learn faster. So how do I do that? Well, let me first tell you what not to do, because a lot of people just jump in, they say, oh, I want to learn faster. I want to learn speed reading, I want to learn, you know, a new language. I want to learn all these new skills. I want to learn all these things. And what is happening is people are very transient with their learning goals. What do I mean by that? I mean, they're kind of phony about. They really don't want to learn. They say, I'd like to learn this, I'd like to learn that someday I'd like to learn this someday I'd like to learn French someday I'd like to learn how to do photos. Some days I'd like to blog. Someday I'd like to do video. And they never actually learn it because learning doesn't happen someday. It has to happen consistently. And that's the thing. It's. If we're really going to get the point where you learn something faster, we have to approach learning itself differently. It can't be these one off little goals of little things we want to learn that doesn't work for people. They don't stay consistent. Just like people don't stay consistent on a diet if just their goal is to lose five pounds. There has to be a broader vision for who they are and what they want to be about and what they want their life to be about. If they're going to stay on a diet, same thing for learning. If you're going to stay on a learning habit, then you have to have a bigger vision for yourself. So let's start with this conversation. If you want to learn something faster, you must first and foremost know the connection between what you want to learn and your dream life, your real lifestyle that you want to have. I tell people all the time, like, don't just come up with things you want to learn. Because guess what? We want to learn everything by human build. We are curious animals. We, we're deathly curious. I mean, we are literally the curiosity killed the cat sort of society right now. Everyone wants to learn 50 new things immediately, but no one ever learns anything. Why? Because it's not real for them. It's a transient desire. If you want to become a great learner, it has to be attached to a dream life of yours, a true lifestyle that you see for yourself. Let me give you an example. Lots of people say, I'd like to learn some French. Someday I'm going to learn French. Someday I'll learn how to talk French because it's a romantic language. I like the food and they give lots of allowances on cheese and wine. I like that. Right? So I'm French. I can say a little bit of that. Okay, so I have a little piece of French in me, I should say. So here's what's happening. If I don't have the vision for myself, someday going to experience France, or someday going to a place where they speak French, or someday having real interactions with a human being, especially speaking French. And it's important to me, and it's a deep sort of dream, desire, vision for that. I'm never going to do the work to actually learn French. There's no why there? You have to know what you want of your life before you become a master learner. Let me say that again. You have to know what you want of your life before you become a master learner. Until I know what I want my life to be about, what I want to experience on a daily basis, what do I want my dreams to be? Who am I, who I want to be? I don't know what to learn. I'm just gonna be curious about things and I'll dabble in them. But that path to real, true mastery is that part where we say, okay, what do I want my life to be about? Now let me develop the knowledge, the skills, the competencies, the capabilities to build into that life. And that's where you get someone who becomes a master learner. I have mastered almost every skill that was necessary for for me to achieve my personal dream life. Everything I said, okay, gosh, if I want to do what I want to do. And for me, I want to become a writer and a trainer and an online thought leader. Wanted to write books, wanted to train people, live, and I wanted to do online marketing and online thought leadership so I could share my message with the world and hopefully inspire people to live more fully, to love more openly, and to make a greater difference. I had the message I had, and then I had the mediums, books, seminars, lives, events, online stuff, right? Well, for me, that was part of my dream life. So I had to learn things along there to get there. I never wanted to really learn per se, but I had to Learn how to do video. I had to learn how to code and build webpages. I had to learn online marketing. I had to learn what to do on Facebook, what to do here on YouTube, what to do on podcasts. I had to learn all of that. And I became a master learner because I was deeply attached to my mission. That makes sense. You won't know what to learn and what to develop real competent capabilities into until you know what your mission is, until you desire what a real dream is. Otherwise, you just kind of play around with skills. You'll play around with learning something, but you'll never immerse yourself into them. So once you know, okay, what do you want your life to be about? What are your real passions? You'll learn what you have to learn along the way, then everything changes. Now, I'm not saying you have to know your ultimate purpose in life before you can learn anything. Just saying if you want to learn faster, start figuring out that purpose, Start figuring out your direction. You'll learn a lot faster from there. It's really tactic and what the tactic in learning is, as we all know, all tactics to learning always begin with number one. Examples. If you want to learn something, you need to be able to model something. You need to be able to see somebody who's already done it. You need to be able to read about somebody who's already done it. You need to experience somebody who's already done it. You have to not start from scratch. The worst thing you can do in learning is, is start from scratch. Because with no foundation of what's worked before, you're just making stuff up and you're reinventing the wheel. And that's the slowest way to learn. Cause you know, the wheel was invented a couple thousand years ago. So the worst thing you could do is say, oh, let me just go start trying a bunch of stuff that's not learning. That's called being an idiot. And being an idiot is about just bumbling through life without realizing somebody's already done it for you. So go read a book about somebody who's done what you want to do. Go take a course from somebody who's already accomplished what you want to accomplish. Go follow somebody's online thing about who's already done what. There's so much example for you to learn from. And it has to begin with that. Because if you have the dream, you have the goal of what you want to learn and how to mean something to your life, once you've got that goal, now it's about, okay, Go learn from somebody who already did it. That will give you a leg up so fast once you learn what they've already done. The second element is practice. You've got to make a consistent practice out of mastering skill sets if you are going to ever really learn anything. What does that mean? I mean daily exposure and immersion into what it is you're trying to learn daily. If you're going to try to learn piano, you're not going to learn it. You know, going to piano class once a month, if you want to learn French, you're not going to learn it. You know, talking to somebody who's speaks French once a month or even once a week. It has to be more than that. If you want to learn something, you have to deeply immerse in it over a long period of time. It can't be a weekend event or seminar, it can't be a one time course. It has to be something you get into. For me, personal development. I mean, I read a book a week on personal development and I've done it for 17 years straight, never missed a week. Even when I was in the hospital. It was a dedication to me. I was going to learn it. I was going to master my life, I was going to learn to master my mind, master my relationships, master my finances, master my health. It was so important to me that I made a daily reality. I read every single day something that can further my personal growth every day. And I never miss. But I do that same thing with everything else. I get into any skill I want to learn. When I wanted to learn video man, I immersed myself in learning how to use the cameras and learning the lights and learning how to. And I was doing it myself first before we had Mr. Shields here rocking it. I mean, I was just by myself and I had to learn those things. I had to learn. When I wanted to do webpages every day I was building, trying to do something. When I wanted to learn coding every day, learning, trying online market every day. And if you're someone who's like Brenda, I can't give every day to learning something great, then you're giving every day to the steady decline, your competencies. Don't tell me that you can't take something every day to learn and grow. If you don't feel like you can take some time every day to learn and grow, then you're mismanaging your life and somebody's got to say that to you probably already know it. So I'm not trying to be flippant. I'm just being Real if you're not taking some time every day to learn something, I don't know that you're ever going to develop mastery in anything. And if you don't ever develop any form of some level of mastery in something, you'll never become the most influential in what you do, or the highest paid in what you do, or really have a connection to it where it feels like it's art and it's part of you. And I think that what's lacking for a lot of people right now is they have a disconnection or a disassociation from any sense of mastery in their life. Because if we're not mastering something and working towards getting better at something, then we're never ever going to sense progress. And if we never ever sense progress, we'll never ever sense that deep sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, joy, happiness that comes from being excellent at something. So you have to practice something and something constantly at some level every day. If you check into it, or you look at, or you read it, or even if it's just following somebody who is doing it and you read their tweets every day, or their Facebook every day, or you read a segment or a book or an article on it every day, whatever it is, make it a daily practice of constancy that lasts over a long period of time. And people go, wow, how'd you get so good at this? And you'll tell them, I worked at it every day. That's why there's no mystery. I got good at it cause I did it every day. I got good at these videos because I do them all the time. It's natural for me. I don't have a script here. I'm just talking with you and I can do that because I've done it so much so I'm sharing with you. It's immersion and constancy in a practice. A habit of learning that very thing that you have a goal for and a dream life for that will take another level. And then that next element down is feedback. Getting feedback immediately from somebody. You want to become world class sports person, you need a coach. You want to become a world class person at whatever you're doing, you need somebody look at it and give you feedback. Maybe it's a mentor who gives you feedback on your presentations or your art. Maybe it's a friend of yours who has a discriminating eye who can look at things and give good, valuable, constructive feedback. And you say, hey, before I send this out, could you guys look at this? Alright, it's about getting feedback from even. It could be your friend, your family, your spouse, your lover, Somebody who can look at what you're going to contribute to the world first and say, I like this, I don't like this. Now lots of people will judge. And there are some things that can destroy learning, and that is when people are so brutal in their feedback, their judgment about something, that it stops your learning. Your goal in getting feedback is to never stop the learning. Take the feedback for whatever value it is. If it came from a dark place and a mean person, don't listen to it. There's nothing relevant there. It's from the wrong space. But if it's somebody who loves somebody you know like and trust, and it's delivered in a way that you didn't like, well, you're listening for the value in which you can improve something. Not listening for, how do you feel? Right. Lots of people say to me things all the time, all the time, very brutal feedback. I'll get on YouTube sometimes, just people saying horrific, mean things about me or my life or my business or whatever. They'll make stuff up, but I don't listen to that. I see it, but it means nothing to me. And it shouldn't mean anything to you either. Once people are harsh for you and they don't know you, but if someone does know your heart and they do know who you are and they give you feedback but you don't like the way that was delivered, or you feel that they were too confrontative or rude. I don't need you to listen to the emotion of what they're delivering, and I don't need you to feel what it feels like. I wonder, is the content of what they are saying relevant or capable of improving your learning and your mastery there? If it is, you got to take the content for what it's worth, find the nugget of wisdom they gave you, even if it was wrapped in a big turd. And you could quote me on that one. Right. There's probably something there that you can say, oh, right, that is relevant. And if I, if I applied that, I could probably get better. And so that's vital. So you know these things, right? Yeah. You have to have your dream. Like, what is the dream you're working towards? What is your passion, your purpose, your vitality? That legend you're working towards, that thing you want to contribute, what is it? Then go, what would I have to learn to get there? Because you'll be passionate about learning those things because you know they bring you directly to your dream. Then within each learning element, what's your goal there? What do you really want to learn? Then get examples, then practice it, then get feedback. And the last piece is have a deadline. How fast do you need to learn that? How fast do you need to master that? Is that something you're going to master this month, this year, this next decade? Have a timeline to that mastery. So that way now you have like a competency map. You're building up, right? You know what you need to learn. You got people who can learn it from. You can practice it with these habits. You can get feedback from these types of people and these types of experiences. And you know, you got to do it and get good at. At this certain time frame, you will start to learn faster. You'll be more engaged with your life. You'll have more enthusiasm for learning. You'll notice things more. You'll feel like you're growing and more satisfied with your life. That's what we call feeling the charged life.