How to Learn Anything Fast: A Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering New Skills Quickly

Do you wish you could learn new things faster? It doesn’t matter if it is a new language, a professional skill, or even just mastering a hobby. The ability to learn quickly, and efficiently can change your life. Think about it: Being able to grasp new concepts in a fraction of the time it takes most people. 

The great news is that it is possible! You can learn faster, and you don’t need superhuman abilities to become a fast learner. What you do need is focus, consistency, and the right approach.

In this guide, we will take you through some powerful strategies and methods to learn anything quickly. From working on the outcome as much as the input, to using deliberate practice, we will cover every step you need to take. 

Using these strategic methods, you can create a fast learning process that uses your training time wisely to maximize your training efforts. If you are sick and tired of spending hours trying to learn new things, then carry on reading. By the end of this article, you will have several new strategies to help really improve your ability to learn quickly and efficiently.

1. Focus More on Output Than Input

One of the main errors people make while trying to learn something new is putting the focus on gathering too much information.

 A common example is when someone gets stuck endlessly consuming potentially helpful content, such as reading articles, watching videos, or listening to podcasts, and they think they know more because they have taken in more information. However, the trick to learning quickly is not just gathering information, but generating output using that information.

Why output is more valuable:

Learning is not just storing facts; it is about using facts in the real world. In fact, output is where real learning occurs. Your brain stores, uses, and recalls information when you practice applying what you have learned. For example, if you want to learn a language, you will learn significantly more by speaking (output) than if you only read and listen to passive input. 

Likewise, if you are learning to code, you will learn the material far better if you write code and are building projects than if you are reading about programming.

How to prioritize output:

Do it in the moment: Instead of waiting for a huge amount of information to then apply it, start applying it as soon as you learn it.

Make something: Blog posts, videos, little projects – output makes you think critically about what you’ve learned.

Pay attention to making mistakes: Output gives you the opportunity to make mistakes, which are a key part of developing.  

So, next time you are on a quest to learn something new, change your frame of thought. Spend a little less time on ‘knowing’ and more time on action, and you will double your retention and ability to learn.You can also explore how being in a state of flow boosts your learning performance and focus.

2. Steps to Follow: Learn, Reflect, Implement, Share

Learning is a process; it’s not just a one-time deal. The fastest people to learn tend to break their learning process down into steps that involve learning, reflecting, action, and sharing. Each one of these aspects has importance so let’s focus on what they involve:

Learn:

We start with the low-hanging fruit. Gathering base knowledge. You could read books, watch videos, or go to courses, whatever you need to know to gain a base understanding of the topic.

 But, let’s also take the next step. Start taking notes. Putting pencil to paper helps you to take action and begin to reflect. Highlight the key points. Ask “the right questions” and make connections that push your thinking.

Reflect:

Depending on traditional learning style, reflection isn’t an area that we typically process or consider during learning. But, reflection is an important step in the Learning process. After you learn a concept, take a second and reflect on the concept. Ask yourself:

How does this notion connect with what I already know?

Can I conjure real-world memories or examples for myself that I might use this piece of information that I learned?

What gaps do I still have in understanding the concept?

In short, reflection is a critical step to deepen your learning and make the bridges between otherwise disconnected pockets of information. To make your reflections more powerful, check out this guide on how to remember everything you read.

Implement:

It’s now time to implement what you have learned. Implementation is the exciting part. Implementation could be participating in a skill, designing or creating something, or using what you have learned to perform some action in the real world. By implementing what you learned, you are helping your brain encode the knowledge – you will recall it better long term.

Share

The last part is sharing what you have learned with someone else. Teaching or sharing your thoughts about concepts with another person forces you to examine and clarify your understanding. When you explain something to someone, you do more than engage, which helps remember the knowledge as you link your existing knowledge to new knowledge more deeply.

By continually going through the cycle of learning, reflecting, implementing, and sharing, you will reinforce what you learn while retaining it faster.

3. Spend Double the Time on Practicing Than Learning

When it comes to learning quickly, practice is everything. You may have heard the saying, “Practice makes perfect” and it is true. In fact, if you want to learn in a way that retains your skills and knowledge with maximum effectiveness, the sooner you start practicing, rather than passively learning (reading, watching videos, etc.), the better your retention and acquisition of skills will be.

Studies have shown that the most effective learners spend much more time actually practicing, than they do consuming content. The prime examples include athletes, musicians, and other professionals. They practice for hours each day, actual practice, which is why they excel, and the amount of time that these people practice in a day far exceeds the time they spend learning the theory of the task.

Ways to practice more:

Set your practice goals: focus on one specific aspect of the skill that you are trying to master, at a time. For example, if you are trying to learn a language, focus on your speaking and listening first over learning grammar rules and how to read.

Practice schedules: Devote time blocks, for every day work towards being focused. Make sure to practice consistently.

Spaced Repetition: This method of learning is taking a piece of material and then reviewing it at spaced intervals. Spaced repetition strengthens connections in the brain, and will make it easier to keep the information you have learned in the first place, long after the time period of review has passed them by. 

By practicing more, you will learn faster, and you will build those concepts and practices into your abilities.

4. Teaching Others: The Fastest Way to Learn

One of the fastest ways to learn is to teach someone else. Teaching someone else requires reorganizing your knowledge and giving it to them clearly. In teaching someone else, you will find the gaps in your own understanding, which will help clarify, solidify and deepen what you learned.

Why teaching accelerates learning:

Active Engagement – Teaching requires you to encounter information in an active way versus passively acquiring information. You will need to express information in simple terms which helps consolidate your understanding of it.

Gaps in Understanding – When you are teaching others, you will most likely come across things where your understanding are weak. These gaps are your opportunities to explore more deeply and actually know the information.

Reinforcement – Teaching someone else will reinforce your prior learning. The more you explain something to someone, the more the strength of the neural networks related to that information increases.

You do not have to be an expert in order to teach. By simply explaining what you learned to a friend, family member or through an online community, you can accelerate your own learning.

5. Avoid Multitasking While Learning

In today’s quick-paced world multitasking is praised as a valuable skill. In learning it’s the enemy of speed and retention. Research shows that multitasking hurts memory retention and reasoning. When you switch from one task to another, your brain has to refocus each time, and this takes valuable time away from learning. 

A few different ways multitasking interferes with learning:

Cognitive overload: your brain can only focus on one task at a time. When you try to multitask, it overwhelms your cognitive resources, resulting in limited ability to absorb and keep information.

Shallow learning: Multitasking produces shallow learning because your attention is divided. To fully learn something, you must truly focus.

How can you prevent multitasking while learning: 

Focus on one thing at a time: Block out time on your calendar for learning, and focus on that one task. 

Minimize distractions: Put your phone on airplane mode, close random tabs, and turn off distractions that will capture your attention.

By focusing on one task, at a time you’ll learn better, and faster!

Conclusion

Learning fast doesn’t happen by simply consuming more content, or memorizing facts; it relies on focus, consistency, and deep knowledge of how your brain acquires, retains and retrieves data. 

By emphasizing output, learning versus teaching; the cycle of learn > reflect > implement > share; and spending more time practicing than learning, teaching others, and avoiding distractions, you will significantly enhance your ability to learn absolutely anything quickly. 

You now have the strategies and tools to build a better learning experience for yourself; now it is time to take action!

 Are you ready to learn faster so you can develop the skills you need in record time? What are you going to learn first?