What does it take to learn a completely new skill? How should you approach skill learning? What's the most effective way to learn?
Today I will delve into one of the topics I am the most fascinated about. In this article will describe how I, as a magician, approach learning different skills necessary for my profession. I will also demonstrate it on one of the recent things I learned. Which was annoying as fuck to do, but after approximately month of practice & lots of fails, here is the result:
Original Image
#VERYPROUD
This is not a magic trick per se, even tho it might be tricky to understand how it works. This specific move is so-called Riffle Fan. It's basically next level of simple fan that you might have seen on TV or YT some bad-ass guys doing as a display of skill with cards.
(At the end of this article you will find a link to Dtube video where I briefly demonstrate different types of fans. Also, you will find links to where, if you fancy, you can learn basic & riffle fan yourself)
So, let's jump into the main part of this article...
INTRO
As some of you might know, if you read my previous articles, I do magic for living & learning different fancy moves/magic tricks is part of my work. So years ago when I began being much more serious about my learning process I got curious about how do we, human beings, learn in general?
What is the learning process and how to make it much more effectively...
In this article I will not get deep into the physiology of how our brain is learning, instead, I will give you 3 key things that I use that allow, sometimes, to increase my learning process up to 10x. These principles are not my brain kids. But I will describe how I used them to learn & through that, hopefully, you will understand how you can apply them & why YOU SHOULD apply them whenever you are learning something.
(In the footnotes of this article I will leave books that you can check if you want to go even deeper into this topic and also understand the physiology of it all.)
BECOMING LEARNING BEAST
1st before we get into 3 steps, I have to mention following. If I am learning something I learn it until it is an automatic. It means that I don't have to consciously think about executing a specific move. Move just happens.
Same as riding a bike or a car. If you learned how to do it, you don't think about it anymore which means you execute it on a subconscious level.
So the goal of learning any skill is to turn it into a subconscious as fast as possible. So here are 3 suggestions of how I do it ->
SINGLE IT OUT
SINGLE IT OUT Single it out means putting 100% of your focus into 1 action.
No matter what skill you are learning, 1st thing you should do is deconstruct it into smaller skills - Sub-skills.
Most of the things in life we learn are complex skills, for example, driving a car.
Think about it. What actually driving a car means? What actions are involved...
- Sign reading on a road
- Noticing other cars in order to estimate what distance to hold, how to turn, etc.
- Correct use of all pedals (the accelerator, the break, the clutch)
- Turning wheel
As you can see already basic skill of driving a car is consisting of many things that driver is doing. But when you execute all these things on an automatic level, it seems like 1 action.
(Take a second and think about something you are learning and how you could deconstruct it into smaller sub-skills.)
So when we learn a skill we have to isolate each little action we do and put 100% focus on it. Difference between putting 100% focus on 1 action compared to focusing on 2 things is not 2x less effective. It can be up to 10x less effective.
TURN UP THE "VOLUME"
TURN UP THE "VOLUME" Turning up the "volume" means that we have to do the same action repeatedly in a row. Because of that same neurons are fired in our brain and they become stronger through compounding.
That's why trainers in a gym tell you to do 1 exercise at a time. You tire 1 muscle, only then you move to another. So when I was practicing "Riffle fan" move I made sure I did it for 5-10 minutes straight in order to make sure it "sticks" much better in my mind.
From these two 1st steps key thing to understand is FOCUS on 1 THING at a TIME! All correct learning, either it is professional sports, languages, math skills, magic tricks, driving a car is happening by deconstructing it into sub-skill and practicing them 1 for certain period of time 1 at a time.
Imagine if you want to use lens and sun to burn a hole in a paper. You can do it because lens focuses 100% of heat into 1 spot, but if you leave same piece paper on the sun, no matter how long it stays on the heat, there will be no hole, no burning.
SET UP A FEEDBACK LOOP
SET UP A FEEDBACK LOOP The last thing is FEEDBACK! Even tho I made emphasis on 1st 2 points this is no less important. When you learn something, best feedback is always momentarily. It's when you do something & straight away after doing it you know if it was correct or incorrect and if so, what should you change. It is that personal trainer in your gym that tells you straight away what you should change if you squat wrongly or if you did it right.
Obviously, if I am learning something myself, for example, Riffle Fan, and cards are falling down, it means something is wrong and straight away I try to adjust accordingly. But if I did it correctly, I can see it and my mind registers that making that neural connection even stronger.
Makes sense?
All right. I hope this was valuable to you. I hope you learned something new.
As I said in the beginning, in footnotes you will find links to resources and some tutorials to learn some of those badass fans with a deck of cards.
wubalaba dub dub
All icons are taken from FLATICON
BOOKLIST (Resources):
- The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life
- The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything ... Fast
- Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice
- The Talent Code: Greatness isn't born. It's grown
- The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence