If you learn faster, you will stand out from everyone else,
if you learn faster, you can go from underpaid to overpaid
and if you learn faster, you can have an unfair advantage over others.
So the question is, how do you learn?
You name any person who has achieved extraordinary levels of success,
I can tell you that that person has committed to lifelong learning,
they keep on learning new things on a regular basis,
like Oliver Wendell Holmes said a long time ago, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience
can never go back to its old dimensions”. And that is the reason I say
that you're learning ability decides your earning capacity.
And that's also the reason why if you learn faster,
you will stand out from everyone else, if you learn faster, you can go from
underpaid to overpaid, and if you learn faster,
you can have an unfair advantage over others. So the question is, how do you learn?
So it all starts with input, and what I mean by input?
Now, most people just focus way too much on input, what I mean by input is
they go to seminars, they read books, they watch videos,
they listen to the podcast, they follow blogs, it's input, input, input, input and more input,
but there's nothing wrong with learning, the problem is,
if you have too much of input with no output, what happens is you have shallow learning.
That's not good. What we want is not shallow learning.
Well, what is the point of learning something if you can't implement it and benefit from this,
that is pure intellectual entertainment, nothing else.
We don't want shallow learning, we want deep learning.
And how do you do that? It is very simple.
For true mastery, you need to focus more on the output rather than the input.
You need to focus more on the output rather than the input.
This is so true with learning. When you learn something, if you don't use it,
if you don't output it, you lose it.
So that's the reason why we should become more of an output person than input,
and here's my formula of how you can be a master at anything.
The first thing is, of course, learn, which is what you already are doing.
Now, the interesting thing is when you are learning, you must ensure that
the quality of input is really, really high. You must be paying 100 percent attention,
but the problem is when people are learning these things, what do they do?
They do multitasking. Because of what?
Because of the devices that you are actually holding right now,
because of the phones that we have, people do multitasking, just imagine
when you're reading a book, when you're watching a video,
you have your phone nearby and while you're reading what you're learning,
while you're understanding and the phone message goes off,
there's a notification goes off, what do you do? Of course you attend to it, and when
you attend to it what happened, what you just did, you killed your momentum,
you messed up with the quality of input. Now, here's the thing.
Your quality of input determines the quality of retention.
How well and how long can you remember information,
it also affects the quality of recall. That's the reason why my suggestion
is if you are learning something, at least for the time you're learning,
you should be doing not multitasking, but the exact opposite of it,
which is single tasking. Do one thing at one time,
especially when it comes to learning, stay away from distractions,
pay 100 percent attention, and then you'll be well on your way to mastery.
That’s the first thing. The second thing of course, is reflect.
Many people are in the rush to learn new things, which is good,
but the problem is you also need to do reflect, what I mean by that?
After you learn something, pause for a while and ask yourself,
“hey, what's the takeaway from this thing and how can I use this information in my life,
how can I use this information in my work, in my family?”
When you pause, when you reflect, when you ask these questions,
that's how learning solidifies, otherwise, it's all just wasted.
And after reflect, the next step is implement. And this is where the magic happens,
and unfortunately, many people miss out on this one.
What they do is, they go on learning new things,
they get excited and they feel good, they feel inspired
and they go on to learn something new. You just messed up.
The problem is, if you get into the habit of just learning without implementation,
do you know what you get? You get the illusion of competence.
You feel you've learned it, you feel you're competent,
but it's not competence at all because you haven't implemented it.
So my suggestion is, when you are learning something,
stop, write down what are the few things I can take action on,
schedule it in the calendar and take some action, because this is what my one of my mentors told me.
“Nishant, a lousy action is better than no action”.
Do you agree with that? Thank you very much.
And of course the last step is, share. Raise your hand if you’ve heard this thing before,
the best way to learn something is to teach it. You’ve all heard that, and that is so true.
When you learn something, just output it, just share it to the people,
now if you don't want to teach, you could just share it, you could just discuss it,
but what happens is when you share things with other the people,
what you're doing is you're helping your brain to pay more attention
and then you will be on your path to mastery. So I have not seen anyone who became
a master at something just by doing the input.
They all became masters by doing the input and more of the output.
So I have a question for you, when you're learning something new,
how much time do you spend on learning, and how much time do you spend on reflecting,
on implementing and on sharing? If you're spending X amount of time on input,
my suggestion is at least spend two X amount of time on output.
And when you do that, you are well on your way to be a master at achieving anything you want.