How to Get Good at Anything
Meet John, a self-taught home baker who bakes beautiful loaves of sourdough bread and pretty layer cakes that look like they could be store-bought. Marvelling at his creations, you remark that he must have worked long and hard at perfecting his baking skills. However, he tells you that he only got into baking recently, about a year or so ago. You’re stunned. It doesn’t seem possible. You’ve been baking far longer than that, and your creations deserve participatory awards at best.
How do these high achievers do it? More importantly, how can you replicate their success? You may be surprised to know that becoming an effective learner is itself a skill. Here’s a collection of five books that’ll teach you how to learn effectively and make your time spent learning more worthwhile.
1. Mastery by Robert Greene
In his book, Robert Greene sets out the path to mastery, explaining each step in detail:
- Discover your calling: You have an inner force guiding you towards your Life’s Task. In childhood this was clear, and it directed you towards activities and subjects that fit your natural inclinations.
- Find an apprenticeship: Choose places of work and positions that offer the greatest possibilities for learning.
- Find a mentor: The right mentors know where to focus your attention and how to challenge you. Their knowledge and experience become yours. They provide immediate and realistic feedback on your work, so that you can improve more rapidly.
- Develop social intelligence: Train yourself to read people well. Being able to smoothly navigate social environments gives you more time and energy to focus on learning and acquiring skills.
- Awaken the dimensional mind: As you accumulate skills and your mind becomes more active, you must avoid becoming conservative and fitting in with the group. Instead, become increasingly bold and begin to experiment, challenging the rules in your field.
- Fuse the intuitive with the rational: Over time, you will develop an intuitive feel for what you are studying. This form of intelligence helps you to process complex layers of information and attain a high level of critical thinking in mastering your field.
Greene states what we might have known intuitively — that the barriers to learning are boredom, impatience, fear and confusion. We might all approach new endeavours with both excitement and fear (ironically for the same reason: how much there is to discover ahead of us), but what determines success depends on one’s ability to manage these emotions. By pushing forward, once daunting basics become the foundation on which you can take on bigger and better challenges.
Get the book here: Physical Copy, eBook, Audiobook
2. Ultralearning by Scott Young
Ultralearning is defined as “a strategy for acquiring skills and knowledge that is both self-directed and intense”. This means that it’s best suited to informal learning environments where a high level of commitment is required.
In his book, Scott Young introduces the nine principles of ultralearning, which fans of the book say work well even when applied in a piecemeal fashion. They are:
- Meta-Learning: Learn how you, as an individual, learn best and how to learn a specific subject most effectively.
- Focus: Build the ability to concentrate your resources on tasks and avoid distraction.
- Directness: Learn by doing. The more precisely you can practice a skill, the quicker it will be learned.
- Drill: Do targeted practices to improve your weaknesses—not to be confused with mindless repetition, drills should be designed to isolate weak areas and produce improvement.
- Retrieval: Practise your ability to recall information accurately.
- Feedback: Seek indicators for how you can improve.
- Retention: Remember what you learn in the long-term.
- Intuition: Build a broad understanding of a subject that allows you to quickly feel for answers.
- Experimentation: Explore outside what you have done to develop broader and deeper mastery of the skill being learnt.
You can apply these principles to self-driven projects across many skill areas, such as picking up new languages, new academic subjects, or even hobbies like playing an instrument.
Get the book here: Physical Copy, eBook, Audiobook
3. Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel
If you’ve ever tried to study but feel like nothing is being absorbed, then this book on effective learning is for you.
The secret to effective learning is understanding how your brain works. Many people encounter difficulties making information “stick” because successful learning isn’t intuitive. The most effective learning methods, contrary to belief, require less time but more mental effort.
When learning something new, you want to focus on the “why” and “how” instead of the “what”. Understand the principles behind what you’re learning instead of just remembering the facts.
For more successful retrieval of information that you’ve read, the authors recommend adopting activities that employ active and effortful retrieval of content to improve your retention of the material. Recalling information strengthens your knowledge, and is called “the testing effect”. Make It Stick proposes the use of frequent, low-stakes quizzes and other activities that require active and effortful recall.
Spaced, varied practice is another strategy to improve your retention and knowledge. This means spacing out and mixing up your practice exercises so that you break mindless repetition and simulate retrieval in a more realistic, random and varied nature—similar to real-life challenges.
The authors also recommend proven strategies such as:
- Elaboration, where you try to relate and connect what you have just learnt to your personal experiences.
- Generation, where your brain attempts to solve a question or problem before you understand what the answer is.
- Reflection, where you ask yourself questions such as “What went well?”, “What could I have done better?” and “What other strategies could I use to make my learning better?”.
- Calibration, where you use a tool (such as quizzes and tests) to assess what you have learnt so that you don’t get a false impression that you know more than you think you do about the topic that you are learning.
Lastly, the authors call on us to adopt a learning, growth mindset. This involves:
- Forgiving yourself, because everyone starts out awkward and clumsy.
- Being optimistic, because learning inevitably leads to setbacks. Realise that progress lies on the other side.
- Experimenting and trying new things.
- Persisting, because the biological processes behind learning take time.
Get the book here: Physical Copy, Audiobook
4. The 4-Hour Chef by Timothy Ferriss
Despite the cooking theme, this isn’t your typical cookbook. It’s something of a cooking class, with recipes designed to teach specific skills where every subsequent recipe builds upon the last.
It’s interesting because Timothy “Tim” Ferriss is a “self-made savant” who built his career transforming himself into a high achiever. Ferriss holds a world record in tango, is a champion Chinese kickboxer, #1 best-selling author, has over 600 million downloads on his business podcast series — the list goes on. He’s built a reputation for learning things quickly, unusually and effectively.
In his chapter on meta-learning, Ferriss introduces two learning frameworks:
DiSSS, which comprises:
- Deconstruction: What are the minimal learning units or the lego blocks that you should be starting with?
- Selection: Which 20% of the lego blocks will give you 80% of the results?
- Sequencing: In what order should you learn the blocks?
- Stakes: How can you create real accountability stakes to make sure you follow through on the program you’ve prescribed yourself?
CaFE, which comprises:
- Compression: Can you compress the most important 20% information into an easy-to-grasp one-page document?
- Frequency: How frequently should I practice? Can I cram? What walls will I hit? What’s the minimum effective dose for volume?
- Encoding: How do I anchor what I already know for rapid recall? Acronyms are an example.
His learning frameworks may sound utilitarian, but if what you’re looking for is a crash course of sorts, his approach will serve you well. The rest of the book is a manual on how to cook, which he admits was a skill he struggled with.
Get the book here: Physical Copy
5. The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin
The Art of Learning differs from the books above in that it’s a collection of stories about learning gathered throughout the author’s life, rather than a manual on how to master new skills.
John Waitzkin is an American chess player, martial arts competitor, and author. As a child, he was recognised as a prodigy, winning the U.S. Junior Chess championship in 1993 and 1994. The book Searching for Bobby Fischer is based on his early life (it was also released as a film of the same name).
The book gives us insights into the practicing mind of a master and tells the amazing story of how Waitzkin came to achieve his accomplishments.
Some of the timeless gems from this book include the following excerpts:
- “The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.”
- “Growth comes at the point of resistance. We learn by pushing ourselves and finding what really lies at the outer reaches of our abilities.”
- “In my experience, successful people shoot for the stars, put their hearts on the line in every battle, and ultimately discover that the lessons learnt from the pursuit of excellence mean much more than the immediate trophies and glory.”
- Being present and clear-minded is essential to learning, writing, and being the best. With presence, you can maximise the creative opportunity of each moment. You have an inner-focus no matter the external environment. You are unstoppable.
- Interval training: Instead of always trying to be “on”, learn to take short rests to allow yourself to recharge.
- If you face uncomfortable emotions, lean into them and understand them. Sit and observe them without having them rock the boat. Create a stillness even when the waves get big.
Get the book here: eBook
