How to Learn Faster If You Are Not a Genius



Here's the thing: whatever you want to learn, don't just pick a course and dive straight into it – most curricula, whether online or in school, aren't optimised for your personal needs. You must build a learning map that helps you reach the outcome you want as fast as possible. This technique of building learning maps is known as meta-learning. Scott Young discusses meta-learning in his book: "Ultralearning". Many famous entrepreneurs, such as Elon Musk and Gabriel Weinberg, use it.



To give you an example, imagine you must empty a hundred water bottles as fast as you can. If you don't know the trick of fast discharge (by swirling the bottle), you'll do what most people do – flip the bottle into the sink and squeeze it – a massive waste of time. Meta-learning is like the trick to empty a water bottle faster – it's all about the methods that can help you speed up your learning.



Here's a three-step strategy to build learning maps that will help you learn any topic super-fast.



1. Know Your Type of Motivation to Learn



When you learn something new, your motivation is either internal or external. Internal motivation: you learn because you genuinely enjoy the topic; you have a passion for it. For example, you want to speak French because you love how it sounds. External motivation: you learn to achieve a specific outcome not related to the topic you want to learn. For example, you want to learn software, writing, or entrepreneurship, to make a lot of money.



Here's your first step: Know which kind of motivation drives you to learn. Why? Because a topic has many sections, and most of them are irrelevant to your goal. Once you have a clear image of the outcome you want, focus your time and energy on the best sections and skip the trivials forever or later.



2. Build the Structure Before You Start



Learning a skill is like navigating a building to look for a treasure. If you know the structure of a building better than anyone, you'll take the fastest route to get what you want inside that building.



Here's your second step: Learn the structure of the topic to speed up your understanding. To do so, create a table with three columns: concepts, facts, and procedures. Concepts are the things you need to understand the topic. They are the fundamental principles, theories, and formalisms. Facts are truthful things that you must know and remember about the topic. They come in the form of laws, techniques, or statements. Procedures are all the actions you must take to get better at the topic. They increase your skill level and practical knowledge.



1) Find all possible concepts, facts, and procedures and write them down. 2) Order the items from each column by the level of challenge and importance – give an impact factor to each item. 3) Gather the resources relevant to each concept, fact, and procedure. Once you finish, you'll have a good knowledge tree for the topic.



3. Know Where to Start and What to Leave



Knowing where to start and what to leave later will make a massive difference to your learning speed. The B.E.E (Benchmark, Emphasis, and Exclude) method will help you do that. This brings you to the third step.



Benchmark

Gather highly-rated resources – best-selling online courses, books, articles, and top university courses. Download the syllabus of the resources you gathered. Look for common patterns in these syllabi. Focus on areas with maximum overlap.



Emphasise and Exclude

To reach the desired level of mastery as soon as possible, you must customise your curriculum to fit your personal goal. The way to achieve this is by maintaining what is important to you and excluding what is not. Here are two examples. If you want to speak Italian during a trip to Florence, emphasise learning to pronounce and exclude learning how to spell. If you want to build apps quickly, focus on app development rather than theories of computer science.



No matter what field you dream of mastering, meta-learning will speed your learning compared to your workmates and competitors. And the more you use meta-learning, the more efficient you become at learning, it's a certain way for you to become a super learner.



词汇表

genius [ˈdʒiːniəs] 天才；天赋，天资

dive straight into [daɪv streɪt ˈɪntuː] 一头扎进，直接投入

curricula [kəˈrɪkjʊlə] 课程（curriculum [kəˈrɪkjʊləm] 的复数形式）

meta-learning [ˌmetə ˈlɜː(r)nɪŋ] 元学习（指关于学习的学习，即学习如何更有效地学习）

discharge [dɪsˈtʃɑː(r)dʒ] 排出，放出

swirl [swɜː(r)l] （使）打旋，旋转

flip [flɪp] 快速翻转，轻抛

sink [sɪŋk] 水槽，洗碗池

internal [ɪnˈtɜː(r)nəl] 内在的，内部的

external [ɪkˈstɜː(r)nəl] 外在的，外部的

entrepreneurship [ˌɒntrəprəˈnɜː(r)ʃɪp] 创业，企业家精神

trivial [ˈtrɪviəl] 琐碎的，无足轻重的

navigate [ˈnævɪɡeɪt] 导航，穿越，横渡

column [ˈkɒləm] 列；栏目，专栏

formalism [ˈfɔː(r)məlɪzəm] 形式体系，形式主义

benchmark [ˈbentʃmɑː(r)k] 基准，参照标准

exclude [ɪkˈskluːd] 排除，不包括

syllabi [ˈsɪləbaɪ] 课程大纲，教学大纲（syllabus [ˈsɪləbəs] 的复数形式）

overlap [ˌəʊvə(r)ˈlæp] 重叠，重合

mastery [ˈmɑːstəri] 精通，掌握

customise [ˈkʌstəmaɪz] 定制，定做



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