Nick Hutchison recommends Learn, Improve, Master by Nick Velázquez as a guide to meta-learning. The book uses neuroplasticity to explain how repeated practice creates smoother neural pathways, like forging a trail through tall grass, making you more patient and effective when learning new skills.
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Learning is the greatest power of the human mind, without a doubt. I mean, everything around me, everything around us, everything that our civilization has been able to accomplish and that we have become personally is a result of our ability to learn. No questions asked. But let me ask you a question. Have you ever spent any time learning how to learn? That's called meta-learning. Have you ever spent time with learning how to learn. If not, then I would recommend checking out this book right here, Learn, Improve, Master by author Nick Velázquez. And the subtitle reads, How to Develop Any Skill and Excel at It. I had the opportunity to read this book last year and also interview Nick for our podcast. You should check it out on any podcast platform. Just search Book Thinkers or Nick Velázquez Book Thinkers. And we had a really fun conversation. And then I was fortunate enough to meet up with him in person. Nick is very similar to me. My name's also Nick. We love to work out, go to the gym, to travel, and to educate ourselves. And he's very obsessed with meta-learning, learning how to learn. And so when he went through this process, he started taking vicious notes. He was researching stuff and he decided to put it into this book. This book is a great tool for all of us because we can amplify our behavior change. We can realize more ways to implement from the books we're reading if we understand how to learn more efficiently. Learn faster. And I love this book. I mean, it's a really cool book. Check this out from the back. Nick says, develop the power to learn and master any skill. We usually see the polished performance or refined work from the people we admire— a virtuoso cellist giving a concert, a great quarterback in a championship game like my boy TB12, or an inspiring speaker commanding the stage. What we don't see is how they develop their skill, the process behind their greatness. And so we believe that what they do is beyond our capabilities, which is unfortunate, but it happens to the best of us. But we too can learn, improve, and master anything we want. Here's how. This is the roadmap right here. So I'd recommend checking out the book. Like I said, I had the opportunity to meet up with Nick. He's actually from Medellín, Colombia. He lives in Canada and spends a bunch of his time in Tokyo. What a cool life. And in that process of growing up, he went to a very special school, and that school gave him a lot of freedom and flexibility. And so he was able to really learn how to learn and focus on things that he wanted to focus on. Pretty cool education growing up. And in this book, you'll learn a lot about the human brain and how it works and how we can learn, improve, and master anything. In the section on neuroplasticity, I really love this metaphor. We all know that the brain can change, right? I mean, it was— it's only common knowledge now that the brain can change. Recently, uh, it was common knowledge that the brain couldn't change. And so now we realize that neuroplasticity, the brain rewiring itself, is possible. And it can happen in a couple different ways, but the most common way is by rewiring a pathway over and over and over. Repetition leads to retention in our brains. We know that. And there's this really cool metaphor that Nick has in the book. He says, imagine you are on a hike and you come across a field of high grass. There's no path ahead, so you have to make your way through this grass to the other side. The next day, you go on the same hike and face the field again, but this time a trail of tramped-down grass made by the steps you took the day before is available to you. You focus on the same route, and in doing so, you make it more accessible to walk the next time. If you keep doing this for several days, that rough trail will turn into a smooth path. Neural pathways work the same way. And so by reading something like this, you might be a little bit more patient the next time you try out a new skill, whether you want to pick up the guitar or the cello like they talked about on the back of the book, you want to become the next Tom Brady and you throw your first pass, whatever the case is, you'll be a little bit more patient. You'll start to understand how the brain works. So this book is broken into 3 sections: learn, improve, and master. And so pick it up, check out what's most necessary for you, where you stand today, or listen to our podcast episode so you can get a little primer on the book. We talked about some fun subjects. Nick is a really cool guy. I would recommend following his Instagram, get awesome updates, check out his work, check out his blog online as well. And that's that. Go read something. Bye.
