Here's why.

I was actually a bad student when I was in school.

I had bad grades, I missed classes, and I definitely slept in for a few exams or two.

Fast forward to my 20s, I actually discovered that I love learning, getting my hands dirty, gaining new knowledge, experimenting, really deep diving into topics that I found interesting.

So the problem was never my interest for learning, but was that I never really had a system that worked for me that helped me learn effectively.

So if you also love learning new things or you're in a class right now and you're just really struggling to keep up, here are five of the best strategies that I found that will help you learn anything faster as well as more deeply.

All right, let's get meta for a second.

No, but for real, the first step to making sure that you can learn anything quickly and effectively is to actually figure out the best way to learn that specific topic, aka this video is actually about how to learn, how to learn, how to learn.

Anyways, every topic or subject actually has a specific efficient route that will help you gain the knowledge more quickly, aka if you're a climber, it's like your beta.

A beta in climbing is essentially the information that you need to be able to climb the route to reach the top, and that includes your footing, where to put your hands, how to move your body, and all the little strategies that it takes to get to the top.

So for example, if you're learning a language, it can be really helpful to start with the a thousand most common terms in that language or to start by learning the grammatical structure of sentences.

We're all probably sick of hearing about the Pareto principle because I talk about it in so many of my videos, so do so many other YouTubers, but that rule of how 20% of the work that you put in actually produces 80% of the results really does apply here.

So when you are doing your meta learning, the best way to tackle it is to deconstruct whatever it is that you're learning, figure out what are the smaller steps or skills that you need to acquire to master that larger thing.

Also consider what are the best tools and methods that you can utilize to learn this topic because once you have all of these little steps planned out, it'll make your learning process that much more efficient and it'll make it easier for you to focus on learning as well.

The second strategy to really optimize your learning is to start by building up confidence.

We all hate the feeling of the unknown, the fear of failing, and the fear or feeling of just like feeling stupid.

As Josh Kaufman, the author of The First 20 Hours, said in his TED Talk, the barrier to your learning is actually not intellectual.

It's emotional.

In that same TED Talk, he shows the infamous learning curve, how the first little period of time, you can actually gain a lot of knowledge pretty quickly because you're starting at completely incompetent, total newbie, and then as time goes on, when you have reached a certain level of mastery, it'll take more and more time to dive deeper and deeper to continue to hone that mastery.

There is a point between complete beginner to decently good where there is that emotional barrier.

So in order to help you get over that hump, the best thing to do is to start creating small easy wins to incorporate into your learning.

This could look like creating little side quests and just making it easy for yourself to feel like you are succeeding.

So setting smaller goals every day for your learning, making sure to celebrate those small wins as well.

The key here is to also remember that although your ultimate final goal may be mastery, your goal right now should just be to get decently good.

This is not the point of your learning journey where you need to worry about perfection.

What you need to focus on is actually just to get good enough so that you can start practicing and self-teaching and self-correcting.

So taking that language example again, get good enough where you can say a few simple sentences or write down a few simple sentences and then try to grow that knowledge as you go.

So adding a few more words, adding another sentence, and if you make a mistake, self-correct so you know what you did wrong.

A common misconception that people have when they're learning something new is that they think that if I just buy these 20 books about the topic and then I read them all, I will have mastered it, but that is just not how it works.

Yes, gaining that knowledge is really important, but actually putting it into practice and understanding it so that it makes sense to your brain is what matters the most.

So you've done the metal learning and you've created your small wins.

The next step is to encode the information in multiple formats.

To understand this strategy, let's first look at how your memory works.

So your memory can kind of be separated into two phases.

The first is your short-term memory and the second is your long-term memory.

Your short-term memory is where all the immediate data lives.

So when you learn anything new, when you have a new thought, they all kind of go into this first stage.

In order to move data from your short-term memory to your long-term memory, you actually have to engage and remember and understand what you are thinking about for 30 or more seconds before it actually moves from stage one to stage two.

Now, it's important to remember that your long-term memory is not static.

So it's not like a hard drive or a memory card where once you put something in, it just stays there.

When it comes to your brain or your memory, once you add new data in, it actually starts to interact with all of the other data that you already have.

So data in your memory can actually be combined.

It can be attached to another one.

It can be overwritten or forgotten.

And the most common reason we are losing data from our long-term memory is actually because we are not re-engaging with that information over and over.

So taking all of that information, you can kind of see why encoding in multiple formats is a really great way for your brain to continuously engage with new information so that it can retain it for longer.

By forcing your brain to interact with the new information in multiple formats like reading, writing, listening, watching, or even immersing yourself in an environment where you're constantly exposed to the data, not only does it create stronger neural pathways for you to remember that information, it also is creating a dopamine hit which triggers an emotion tying it to that piece of information, also helping you remember it for longer.

So whatever it is that you're trying to learn, you should read about it.

You should then write and take notes about it.

Maybe watch a video about it.

And then you want to make sure you're actively encoding it as well.

So don't just try to memorize it, but actually understand it.

Visualize it in your head.

Try teaching it or paraphrasing it and writing it down so that you are rebuilding that information so that it makes sense to you.

Or you could even force a new neural pathway to be created by attaching that new information to information that you already know.

If learning a new language is the goal you're trying to accomplish, my favorite place to learn a new language is by far Lingoda.

Lingoda is amazing because not only does it already offer you a bunch of different ways to learn, so reviews, PDFs, group classes, individual classes.

It also has all these different programs to choose from to find a learning schedule that really works for you.

My personal favorite is definitely their Sprint Challenge.

The Sprint Challenge is a 60-day course built to really help students learn how to build the habit of daily learning.

Through consistency and focusing on actually communicating in your classes, this method is proven to help boost your confidence when it comes to communicating in your target language.

Not only is the Sprint Challenge designed to help you, it is actually incentivized as well.

And I absolutely love this about Lingoda because it shows that they actually really care about you as a student and want you to be able to achieve your goal of learning a language.

If you're able to meet these requirements of the Sprint Challenge, students are actually able to earn 50% cash back or get more credits to take more classes.

If you know that you want to further your learning and continue to learn a new language, if you choose the credits version, it is actually the equivalent of getting a hundred percent of your money back through more classes.

It is so, so nice that they do this.

They definitely don't have to, but it really helps to motivate you as a student to continue your learning.

So if you're motivated by challenges like I am, if you want to make learning a language into a daily habit, or if you're just looking to make really fast progress with language learning, I would definitely recommend checking out the Lingoda Sprint Challenge.

If learning a new language is your current goal, like it is mine with Italian, then make sure you use the link in the description because it'll actually give you $20 off your subscription, meaning you're going to end up saving so much money on language classes if you are up for the challenge.

So thank you Lingoda so much for creating this opportunity for students to learn a new language quicker and for supporting my channel and sponsoring this video.

Now that you've gathered a bunch of new information about the topic that you are learning, it's time to identify and attack your weakest point.

As you're learning and teaching and practicing, you're going to quickly realize there are certain aspects of the topic that just feel harder for you to understand.

It's important that once you identify these weak points, you jot them down or make a note of them so that when you are actually going through and reviewing and practicing the information that you actually spend a lot of time drilling on your weak points because what's the point of continuously practicing the parts that you're great at?

You're already going to be great at them and yes, it will improve you further, but if you always leave these weak points as opportunities, you're never going to be able to fully master the topic.

The goal here really is to increase your proficiency and not to continue to practice what you already know.

So start by giving yourself an honest self-assessment or get feedback for somebody who understands the topic better than you do and just pinpoint the parts that you feel like you don't know as well.

Once you figured out what those are, some tools that you can use are Anki or Quizlet if you just want to drill them over and over.

You should also spend time specifically practicing those parts by starting slowly and then gaining speed as you go.

Depending on what you're learning, there's other techniques as well.

So if you're trying to learn how to play basketball, make sure you drill your dribble or whatever it is you're bad at.

If you're learning how to speak publicly, maybe it's the anxiety that is your worst or weakest point, then just practice by talking in front of your mom or your friend or a group of friends.

Essentially, you just want to create a problem in a small safe environment and then practice to solve that problem so that slowly over time all of your weak points rise to meet the points that you are best at.

The last step and probably my favorite step is the quantifiable amount of time that you need to spend to get good at something.

I know we've all heard about the 10,000 hours rule how you need to spend 10,000 hours to master something but something to remember about that is that number is based on complete mastery aka you're getting to expert level, like professional level and oftentimes that's not really our goal when you're just trying to learn something for a hobby or to gain some new knowledge.

So Josh Kaufman who I mentioned earlier from the TED talk actually did a bunch of research to figure out how many hours it takes to go from that completely incompetent spot up to that point in the learning curve where you are decently good at something and he figured out that it actually only takes 20 hours of focused practice to get you from that first point to the second point.

So that is where the practice comes in.

It's nice to sort of know this quantifiable goal because you can set that as a goal and slowly check off the hours spent over time.

If you're learning to do something that's easy to put into practice like learning to play the piano or learning to speak a new language, then you can just start practicing those things and what you have learned and track your progress over the span of 20 hours.

What I learned from the book Make It Stick is that all you have to do is go into your brain and retrieve, recall, and use that information that you've learned.

So as you're going about your day at random points of the day, set little reminders for yourself on your phone to just quickly think about a topic that you've learned about within your overall learning goal and then either recite it to yourself or think about it and visualize it or even just teach it to someone who's next to you like a friend or a family member because as long as you are using the information, your brain will develop further understanding about it as well as remember it for longer.

I also love this other strategy that was in the book Ultra Learning by Scott H.

Young where he says one of the best strategies is to be direct with it, aka go straight ahead.

Instead of spending too much time in the consumption portion of your learning, just go ahead and start using it.

So if you're learning a language, just find some people to talk to in that language or tell yourself a story in that language.

If you're learning to code, stop reading those coding books and looking up stuff online.

Just try to code and build something.

Being direct or directness is all about learning being closely tied to the exact situation or environment that you want to use it in.

All these little strategies that you can use when you are practicing what you learn is ultimately what's going to help you get to that decently good or even mastery level.

I know I just threw a lot of information at you, but if there's anything that you should remember about how to learn anything faster at any age, it's to start with meta learning and learn how to learn, get those early wins and start building up your confidence, encode the information and learn through multiple formats, identify and drill into your weakest points and spend 20 focused hours practicing your new skill or knowledge.

To help you out, I actually created a PDF worksheet that you can print out and write on or digitally write on that'll help you make sure that you are on the right path when you are learning any new topic.

So you can find that in the description box below.

It's completely free and I really hope that it helps you.

If you felt like you've never been a great student, just like I did when I was young, my parting words for you is that there are no right ways for learning.

So what works for your typical straight-A student in your class may not work for you and that's okay.

Learning is going to be this process that works differently for everyone and the best thing that you can do is to continue to learn even though you feel it's hard and continue to explore those meta learning options so that you can really figure out what's going to work for you to help you understand the material better.

Learning should not be this competitive process like what school has led us to believe.

Learning should really just be about enhancing your knowledge or skill set and it can be a really really fun process if you allow yourself to make it one.

I truly believe that as long as you keep trying and continue to want to learn, you're going to find what works for you.

Now learning how to learn is really important, but it's also important to learn how to actively use your memory.

So if you want to learn how to remember more of what you read or consume, click here.

Thank you so much for watching.

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I hope you're having an amazing day wherever you are in the world and I will see you in my next video.