Brian Gubernick breaks down Jim Kwik's FAST learning framework: Forget your assumptions, engage Actively with material, manage your State, and learn with the intention to Teach others. Each step has concrete applications, from note-taking to emotional management, designed to make learning stick.
Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it. Today I want to talk a little bit about learning, how to be a better learner. See, my guess is if you have been listening to our podcast for some time, Hopefully you picked up a few things, you learned a few things, and you've applied them in your world. However, my guess would also be that there are certain things you heard that you really liked, that you may have even implemented, but it fell off because you hadn't learned it at a deep enough level. You hadn't developed consistency with it. See, I'm saying that to you because I know I'm guilty of it too. There are plenty of things that I read or listen to or study that I learned. And then there's a lot of other things that I just don't internalize at a deep enough level to move the needle in my world. Well, in 2024, I'm committed to being a better learner, to internalizing more of what it is I'm reading or listening to or studying. There is no better person, I believe, to turn to than Jim Kwik. The author Jim Kwik wrote the book Limitless and just a brilliant guy who understands the brain and how we think and how we memorize things at a very, very deep level. So I want to run you through what Jim teaches around what he calls the FAST method, F-A-S-T, the FAST method of learning. If you want to learn something faster, you need to do these things according to Jim. The F in FAST stands for forget. If you want to speed up your learning, if you want to more deeply understand something, you've got to forget a few things. First, you've got to forget what you already know about the subject. A lot of people don't learn faster because they feel like they already know the subject, but your mind doesn't operate like that. It's only gonna— it's not gonna take in new information unless it's open. And willing to take in new information. So Jim would encourage you to forget what you already know about the subject. Just put it aside. Next, forget about anything that's not your focus at this very moment. Forget those things that are not urgent or not important. Put it to the side so that you are fully present and that you can learn. Lastly, around forgetting, Jim would say, forget your limitations. These beliefs that many of us have that our memory is just not good, or, you know, we're slow learners or slow readers, or I don't have the right background or the right knowledge. It's, it's all BS. If you fight for your limitations, as Jim would say, you get to keep them. So your memory is not fixed. It is possible to learn. It is possible to grow. So forget your limitations. So forget what you already know, forget what's not urgent, important, and forget your limitations. Now the A in FAST, that stands for active. See, when you go back to elementary school or middle school or high school, even college, we're taught to learn by just sitting there quietly and receiving information via a lecture. But that's not actually how you learn. You don't learn by being lectured to. You learn by being active in the process. Jim says learning is not a spectator sport. It's a very active sport. So how can you be more active in your learning? For me, that would mean sitting in the front row. That would mean asking questions. That would mean engaging in the conversation that's being had, or from reading a book. Maybe it's taking notes, maybe it's highlighting, Maybe it's closing that chapter and sharing with my wife or my kids what it is I just read, what it is I just learned. The more active you are, the more you will actually learn. So keep that in mind. The A in FAST stands for active. How can you be more active? How can you make this an active sport versus a spectator sport? The S, the S in FAST S stands for state. Your state, your state of your mood, the state of your mind, the state of your body, your emotional well-being in that moment of learning makes a huge, huge difference. As Jim teaches, information combined with emotion becomes a long-term memory. Many of us probably don't learn or don't remember what we learned in, say, high school Because many of us, the, the, the state at that time was boredom, or it was focused elsewhere and not on the subject at hand. You've got to control your state. So the question then becomes, how can you improve your state? Can you change your posture? Can you change your breathing? Can you sit or stand in a way that gives you energy? Can you get your mind right in terms of thinking about how you'll benefit from this new information you're learning? All learning, as Jim teaches, is state dependent. So choose states of joy, state, a state of fascination, maybe a state of curiosity, and that will lead to a deeper understanding of what you're learning, or at least a more quicker, I should say, a faster understanding of the subject at hand. Now, lastly, in FAST is the T, and you've heard me talk about this here at the No Days Off podcast quite a bit. As a matter of fact, in our last episode, I encourage you to teach the 8 core habits of failure and of success. And that's what the T in FAST stands for, teach. If you want to cut your learning curve in half, learn with the intention of having to turn around and teach it to somebody else. Think about it. Whatever you're learning, I want you to think, gosh, I've got to give a presentation on this. I've got to turn around and teach it to somebody else or an entire classroom today. If that were the case, how might you learn differently? How, how might you pay attention differently than what you would have done if you weren't teaching the class? How would your notes potentially look? What kind of questions might you ask if you were going to have to teach it? When you teach something, yeah, it's great for that audience to receive knowledge, but I will tell you firsthand that, and it's somewhat selfish, but if I ever want to learn something at a deeper level, if I want to internalize it, The single best thing that I could do is turn around and teach it, which is why so often you'll hear me say, what you learned here today on this podcast, go teach it. Which by the way, you should be teaching this FAST method, this F-A-S-T method to somebody else. So think about it. Think about how you could teach and how it would deepen your understanding. That's Jim Quick's FAST model. FAST, F is forget, A is for active. S is for state. T is for teach. Today or this week, when you're learning something, when it's your intention to learn via a podcast or a book or what, a class, whatever it may be, I want you to go through these steps. I want you to think about, you know, what you need to remove from your brain. I want you to think about your energy and how active you are. Like, are you standing up? You sitting down? You energized? I want you to think about your mood and your state, and I want you to especially be thinking about whatever I'm learning, what would it look like if I have to turn around and teach this to somebody else tomorrow? I'm going to beat the heck out of this acronym, this FAST acronym, in terms of my learning here in 2024. I want to encourage you to do the same. That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day, brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
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