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- Hey friends, welcome back to the channel.
Today We're talking about learning.
Now, learning has been probably one of my main superpowers
since I was very young.
And learning how to learn is one of those meta skills
that no one ever really teaches us,
but that can have an enormous impact on our life
in basically everything that we do.
For example, when I was in med school,
I learned how to learn,
and therefore I could study for everything that I was doing
more efficiently, and that freed up my own time to do things
like set up a business and set up this YouTube channel.
And these days,
even though I don't have many more exams to prepare for,
learning is still a huge part of my life.
Trying to get better at making these YouTube videos,
trying to get better at running a business.
All of this stuff involves learning.
And so in this video, I'm gonna share nine tips
that I found really helpful that are evidence-based
about how we can learn anything we want faster, let's go.
Tip number one is to sharpen the axe.
Now this is from a quote
that's attributed to Abraham Lincoln,
where he famously said that
if you gave me six hours to chop down a tree,
I would spend the first four sharpening the axe.
And he's really talking here about the power of preparation.
And this definitely applies to learning anything as well.
Let's say we are studying for an exam
and we wanna learn it a little bit better,
reading a great book called "Make It Stick"
would be a great way of learning how to learn
or checking out my Skillshare class
on evidence-based study techniques.
Equally, let's say we're trying to learn something
like the guitar or chess or anything like that.
Something that's not related to studying.
We should still spend a decent amount of time
figuring out the meta learning behind
what we're actually gonna learn
like how we are going to learn the thing.
For example,
when I was learning how to play the piano by ear,
I spent a decent amount of time on the learn piano subreddit
where people were explaining how to learn
how to play piano by ear
and just spending a little bit of time sharpening the axe
before I actually sat down to learn the thing
really helped accelerate my learning process.
Tip number two is to use crutches to optimise our focus.
Now, whenever we're learning anything
it's really tempting to kind of learn it in the background
like practising the guitar while watching TV
or something like that.
But obviously, when we're fully focused
on the thing that we're learning,
our brain learns the thing a lot better.
And so I found a few different crutches or hacks
that have been particularly helpful
in helping me focus on things.
One is the five minute rule
which is a general tip for productivity as well,
which is that if we wanna do something
and we're finding ourselves having difficulty
in starting out doing the thing,
like actually getting started,
overcoming the activation energy.
The five minute rule says that,
we just have to convince ourselves
that we're just gonna do the thing for five minutes.
And then after we've done it for five minutes
we're allowed to just not do it, but more often than not
I find that if I've been practising the guitar,
or playing the piano for five minutes,
I do then want to actually continue to practise.
The other thing that's really helpful
is to just chuck my phone away.
I literally take my phone and I toss it onto the sofa
or on the floor like a good tosser.
And then I'm ready to focus and not be distracted
with the thing that I'm trying to learn, all right?
Tip number three is to find opportunities for immersion.
So there's a great book called "Ultralearning"
by a chap called Scott Young
where he talks about his journey through learning languages
in like three months at a time
and becoming fluent in a language in three months.
And the key to that as all language learners say
is immersion.
Just being as immersed in the language as possible.
And the general principle here is that
we learn best when we're in the environment
where we're actually gonna be using the skill.
So for example, when I was learning how to do magic
to become a close-up magician,
yes I was doing some practise in front of my webcam
and in front of my mirror
just to get the slight of hand down.
But really my webcam or mirror is not the arena
in which I'm gonna be performing in.
And so I made it a point
to try and perform magic for real people,
as much as possible.
I would take a deck of cards to school
and I'd have cards in my room at all times,
and so friends would come over,
I'd kind of, hey, be like,
hey do you wanna see a magic trick?
And eventually once I got okay at performing
for friends and family,
I started then reaching out and doing paid gigs,
even though I was nowhere near good enough in my head
to get paid to do magic.
Eventually, I did end up getting paid to do magic.
And those walk around to gigs at balls and parties
helped improve my abilities
in a way that just doing it in front of the mirror
really wouldn't have done .
Tip number 4 is to figure out what are our weak links
and then use lots of drills and stuff to improve them.
So if we use med school as an example,
I had a few subjects that I was pretty weak in.
Neurology was one of them.
If you'd asked me what is Guillain-Barré syndrome
I'd have been like, oh God, I have absolutely no idea.
I didn't even have a mental module
for where it would fit into the subject of neurology.
And so when it came to studying efficiently for my exams,
I knew that,
okay, I have to drill the things that I'm weakest on.
And I spent just a whole day
basically creating a one-page syllabus of just neurology,
just focusing on that one subject.
And just because I spent like eight to 12 hours
that day they're doing it,
I basically plugged it as an area of weakness,
and that it was no longer an area of weakness.
And the question I would keep on asking myself
every day when I was sitting down to study was,
if the exam were tomorrow,
what topic would I be the least happy,
or the most pissed off about?
And then I would just study that topic.
And this is really good because whenever we're learning
or whenever we're studying or anything like that,
it's very tempting to just do the stuff
that seems familiar to us.
If we're studying for an exam,
it's very tempting to open up the book to page one
even though we already know what's on page one.
If we're learning the guitar,
it's very tempting to just play through songs
that we've already played before.
But really the learning only happens
when we're trying to fix our weaknesses
and we're trying to operate at a decent level of difficulty.
If something is too easy,
we're not gonna learn anything at all.
And so if we wanna maximise the learning
and learn anything faster,
we wanna really hone down
on what are these areas of weakness,
what are these weak links,
and how do we use drills
to improve those as quickly as we can?
Tip number five is to test ourselves.
Now, this is a thing that in the world of studying
is called active recall
but it also applies
to the world of learning anything in general.
I have a whole video about that,
that's linked in the card over there.
And if you wanna find out more,
you can definitely check out my Skillshare course
about how to study for exams,
also linked in the video description,
by the way Skillshare is sponsoring this video.
I'll tell you more about them a little bit later.
Anyway, the idea behind active recall or retrieval practise
is that we don't learn
by trying to put stuff into our brains,
we actually learn counter-intuitively
by trying to take stuff out of our brains.
And so if you've had that experience
where you've read something in a textbook or on a website
and someone asks you about it a few days later
and you've completely forgotten about it,
that's just because you haven't tested yourself
on that knowledge.
And the word testing has all these negative connotations
because we think of testing as like a school thing
and we get graded and we get judged.
But if we move towards thinking of testing ourselves
as being a strategy for learning,
everything becomes so much easier.
That's why when learning play the guitar
there's only so many tutorials you can watch
before you actually start having to put it into practise.
When you're studying for exams,
there's no point reading the textbook
and just summarising what's in the textbook,
the point is you have to test yourself
so that your brain has a chance to work
to retrieve the information.
And that is what really drives learning.
And in the field of learning,
there is this concept called
the desirable difficulty concept.
Which basically just means
some things shouldn't be too hard,
where for example if I were to try playing tennis
against Roger Federer, it would just be too hard.
I wouldn't really learn anything.
But equally, if I were to try playing tennis
against a 10 year old who doesn't know how to play,
it wouldn't be fun, I wouldn't learn anything
because the difficulty is at two different extremes.
I wanna be playing tennis against someone
who is at my level or a little bit better than me,
because that is the real arena
in which I'm gonna be learning.
And that's why having a coach for example, is really good
because a coach can moderate their play style
to be at my level and therefore I'm more likely to learn
as desirable difficulty.
And so whatever we wanna learn efficiently,
we wanna apply this concept
to try and make it a little bit more difficult.
Learning is not supposed to be easy,
it is supposed to be hard.
And if it's hard, then it means we're doing something right.
Tip number six is to get intense feedback
as often and as quickly as possible.
So feedback obviously is how we learn.
We do something, we see that we're doing it wrong
and then we improve the thing.
And again, feedback is one of those words that
can seem a little bit like dirty at times,
especially if we're starting something out
where we're not sure of our own abilities.
If we get constructive or critical feedback,
that can really be a blow to our ego.
If you're that sort of person that needs the ego massage
then at the start of learning something,
what you need is praise and encouragement.
For example, if I was just starting to learn how to sing,
and people would just give me critical feedback immediately,
I'd probably feel a little bit like, oh, okay
I don't really wanna sing.
I'm one of those people who just can't sing,
Equally if I were to start drawing,
and people would be like, oh, ha! Ha! that's really crap
you should do this instead.
I'd probably feel pretty bad about it
and therefore it wouldn't help me continue on the journey.
So I think at the start of a journey for most of us
we need that injection of positivity and enthusiasm
rather than necessarily critical feedback.
But if we do decide to switch gears
and to start taking learning something super seriously,
we wanna kind of avoid the praise
and recognition aspect of it, which is kind of unhelpful,
and instead focus on the critical, constructive feedback.
What can we do differently?
Again, this is why having a coach for stuff
is actually really, really helpful.
Ever since getting a personal trainer,
everything in the gym has improved,
my biceps has gotten bigger.
I'm at one-step close to becoming a gymshark athlete
because now I have someone who is like there and then
giving me feedback
on the things that I should do differently.
Whereas before maybe once in a blue moon,
I'd film a video of myself, send it to a friend,
they'd reply a few days later.
It's not really a tight feedback loop.
And really it's the tight feedback loops
that encourage learning whether it's for exams
or whether it's for anything else in life.
Tip number seven is the concept of overlearning
which is that when we're learning something
we actually wanna try and understand or learn it
in more depth than we necessarily need to.
And the idea here is to continuously be asking why
a thing works the way that it does.
So for example, when I'm working as a doctor
and I see senior doctors who, you know,
most of being a doctor, admittedly,
is about following guidelines
and following a prescribed set of rules
and basically a flow chart for everything that we do.
And so there are some doctors who have that view of,
all I have to do is memorise the guidelines,
and look them up
but then there are other doctors
who have a more first principles
understanding approach to medicine
which is that, okay, I know what the guidelines are,
that I should prescribe this drug
but I'm actually gonna take a step to figure out
why that's the guideline and why do they do that?
What's the paper, what's the evidence around this.
And, you know, in my experience,
it's hard to say that
camp two is objectively a better doctor than camp one,
but certainly the sort of doctor that I want to be
is the doctor who understands stuff from first principles
and understands the rationale for doing stuff
rather than just memorising the guidelines.
This applies to music theory in the guitar as well.
I had a guitar lesson this morning,
and we were talking about how
it's very easy to learn how to play anything
by just following a tutorial.
But when you follow a tutorial,
the thing that you're learning is,
my fingers are going in this particular position.
Whereas what we wanna try and get to,
and John Mayer talks about this a lot on his Instagram,
what we wanna be getting to
is just an understanding of music theory.
So that instead of,
I put my fingers in A, B and C positions,
we think, okay, I'm playing a C7 chord
and the reason I'm playing a C7 chord is because of this.
And therefore my fingers are gonna go
in A, B and C position.
And so the end result is the same.
We're still playing that chord
and we could still probably just play the song.
But when you have that deeper appreciation
of the the reasons behind
why things are the way that they are,
it just makes learning anything else
in that particular sphere,
much easier and much more efficient.
Tip number eight is all about spacing.
This is something in the world of studying
we call spaced repetition.
Basically there's a concept called the forgetting curve
that was discovered by a chap called Ebbinghaus
in like the 1800's.
And the forgetting curve is that whenever we learn anything,
whether it's like a fact or a skill or whatever.
We're just gonna forget it.
And our memory for the thing is gonna decay over time.
And so we have to keep on practising
or testing ourselves on the thing
to actually continue to have our brain
kinda use up space for that kinda thing,
because it's like with our muscles,
when we don't use our muscles,
our muscles are gonna atrophy
and they're gonna get smaller,
and we're gonna get less hench.
Equally with our brain.
If we learn let's say a language when we were five years old
and then we don't use it for the next 10 years,
we're actually gonna forget most of the language
'cause our brain doesn't need to have that information
in it anymore.
But thankfully we can combat the forgetting curve
by using this concept of spaced repetition,
this applies not just to exams,
but to any other skill as well.
Which is that if we kinda repeat the thing
at spaced intervals,
so let's say I might learn a song on the guitar on day one,
and then I might repeat it again tomorrow.
And then I might test myself on it again next week
and then next month, and then six months from now.
And if I've spaced my repetition of this thing enough
eventually playing that song
is gonna go into my muscle memory,
it's gonna go into my long-term memory
and I won't need to practise it very much anymore
to be able to play it whenever I want.
Now, if you're trying to learn something
that has specific facts,
there's all sorts of different apps
that you can use to help with spacing.
The one that I personally enjoy the most, it's free
and it's called Anki, after the Japanese for Ankishimmers
which I think is to memorise.
And Anki is just like an incredible app
that completely revolutionised my experience of med school.
It does have a bit of a learning curve,
and so did you know, I have an entire Skillshare class
about how to use Anki, the basics
along with some advanced tips along with some guides
and how to use Anki to learn absolutely anything
along with bonus interviews from other students
all around the world that are using Anki
for stuff very effectively.
If you wanna check that out
and any of my other like 10 classes on Skillshare,
you should hit the link in the video description
because Skillshare are very currently sponsoring this video.
So if you wanna check out my class on Anki,
or my class on evidence-based study tips
or any of my three classes
about how to be more productive,
then hit the link in the video description.
When I was filming this video, Skillshare had an offer
of giving you 30% off the annual premium subscription
but it actually changed up that offer.
So now, if you're one of the first thousand people
to hit the link in the video description,
you will get a one month free trial,
completely free to Skillshare premium
where you can check out my Anki class
and all the other 10 classes I've got on Skillshare.
So hit the link in the video description,
be the first 1000 people to hit that link
to get a one month free trial.
This is amazing, it's a no brainer,
you can just watch all my classes.
So thank you Skillshare for sponsoring this video.
And finally tip number nine
is to teach what you are trying to learn.
We often have this thing of like,
oh I'm not allowed to teach something
until I become an expert at it.
But there's this concept that C.S Lewis talks about
that I talk about a lot called the curse of knowledge.
Which is that, when we're trying to learn something,
often we don't learn best from experts,
we learn best from people who are just one step
in front of us along that same journey.
And so the way I think of it
is that I would rather learn from a guide,
than learn from a guru. Guide versus guru.
And I would rather be a guide than try and be a guru.
And certainly for me,
I found that when I was going through medical school,
my favourite revision sessions or lectures
would be the ones that were given by medical students
in the year above me rather than those given by world-class
Nobel prize winning professors
because those guys were old and like really far removed
from the things that I needed at the time,
whereas, another medical student just one year above me
was like really, really helpful.
And then when I started teaching medical students,
when I started teaching guitar,
when I started teaching piano,
and YouTube as well with my part-time YouTuber academy,
I found that anytime I try and teach something,
it really solidifies my own knowledge and understanding
and learning of the thing itself.
And so now I have a general policy
that whenever I'm learning anything,
I'm documenting my process while learning it.
And that helps me learn better
because I know that
I'm possibly gonna be teaching this thing
a few months or years from now.
If you like this video,
you might like to check out two specific books
about learning.
One is called, "Make it stick"
and the other one is called "Ultralearning"
And you can actually find summaries
for both of those on shortform
which is my favourite way of getting summaries of books.
That'll be linked in the video description
if you wanna check it out.
And if you're interested in this science
of effective learning, check out this video over here,
which is from a few years ago,
but it still genuinely one of my favourite videos of all time
that I've ever made.
One of the best ones, I think as well.
And that's all about the power of active recall
and why testing ourselves is the best thing ever.
And I talk about a lot of scientific evidence around it
and loads of people have said that that video alone
has changed their lives.
So thank you so much for watching hit the subscribe button
if you aren't already
and I'll see you in the next video, bye-bye.