7 Steps to Become a Learning Machine

In my last post I wrote about finding the motivation to learn something new. Once you have the motivation, how do you do actually go about learning?

There are three different ways to go about it; some people learn by listening, some by watching, some by doing. This is how school is set up. A teacher stands in front of class and lectures about a subject, writes on the board, and then has you work on it. But, how do you go further than that? How do you go from memorizing something to becoming intimately familiar with it?

Here are 7 steps to become a learning machine:

1) Model someone successful – Who can you model yourself after? Find someone who has done it before, with the kind of success you admire. How did they start? How did they learn? What were their breakthroughs to improvement? If you can learn shortcuts that will help you avoid their mistakes it might save you some frustration.

When I was learning to write songs, I copied what my heroes did. I tried to write songs like them. Listening back now I can still hear the influences – The Beatles’ “She’s a Woman”, Fats Domino’s “Walking to New Orleans”, or Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely”. I was learning how to craft songs like they did, but eventually I developed my own style. This also leads us to number two.

2) Model everyone – When I was trying to be a better baseball player as a kid, I tried to model my swing after dozens of major league players. I knew how everyone on the Milwaukee Brewers batted, along with others from the Royals, Yankees, Angels, Red Sox, and anyone else whose swing I liked.

By trying to copy how others players stepped up to the plate, approached their at bat, and swung at pitches, I could find out what worked and what didn’t work for me. Eventually I settled on a cross between Paul Molitor and Dave Winfield. Not that I was trying to be them, but what they did worked for me.

Today, I golf instead of play baseball, but I use the same philosophy. I model my swing after Ernie Els (because we’re about the same body type) and Inbee Park (because she reminds me to be fluid and take my time). Two different swings, but I can take something from each to make it my own.

3) Read – This goes without saying. Read all you can about a subject; everything from the masters to people who might not be famous but have found great hacks to become skillful.

Make sure you mark up the book, take notes, jot down reminders or ideas as you read. If what you read just blows you away, re-read it. There will be a lot you missed the first time around. The lessons that resonated with you the first time will get stuck deeper in your head and you may look at other points differently.

4) Learn the basics first – We often expect expert results when we haven’t even achieved beginner’s skills. You need to learn to crawl before you can walk. It’s the same principle.

If you look at anyone who goes through a slump or tries to re-energize what they’re doing they always go back to the fundamentals. You’ll hear this in sports a lot.

The basics are the foundation on which you can go off in different directions, maybe in places no one else has ever gone before. But, but before that happens you need to understand the fundamentals.

5)  Practice – It takes time to learn something. We’re not going to be good right away, yet we are devastated when we aren’t. Instant gratification cheats us out of proper development time. I think our ego gets in the way of this. We expect to be good and we want to show others we know what we’re doing. We want to do this before we’ve put our time in. That’s what “paying your dues” is all about.

When you first try to learn something you’ll probably suck at it. That’s okay. Everyone starts out the same way. Give yourself permission to try something without having to be perfect at it.

We look at professionals and think they burst onto the scene overnight or they have natural talent that they didn’t have to work on. It may even be portrayed that way in the media. That’s false advertising. Those people spent countless hours practicing their skills before they got any sort of notoriety.

Nobody sees the sacrifice that went into developing their craft. Nobody sees the musician practicing scales at all hours of the day and night, or the swimmer doing laps at 4:00 am, or the baseball player at the batting cage all winter long, but we do see the concert, the Olympic Medal, and the home run to win the game.

Without those private hours of practice those public moments of glory would never have happened. They couldn’t happen. So, don’t take practice lightly, it’s your building block to personal greatness.

6) Never think you’re done learning – No matter how good you are at something, you’re never an expert. This keeps your mind open to continuous learning. Once you think you’ve mastered something you are closed off to new ideas about it.

Think of yourself as an explorer. There’s always something new to discover. With all you know, there’s so much more you don’t know. You needn’t look any further than the library. There’s so much information that’s written that it’s physically impossible to read everything out there and know everything there is to know. You’ll never know it all, so keep your mind open.

7) Share your expertise – When you share what you know it keeps you on your toes. It reemphasizes what you know (or maybe don’t know – re-read point #6) but it also allows you to see it from the vantage point of the person who is just learning.

Teaching also takes us back to each of the other six points mentioned. It can re-introduce you to the fundamentals, it can bring back memories of the people you modeled, and you may find something new to read. Sharing what you know allows you to experience learning all over again.

What steps have you taken to become a learning machine? Are there any steps that you use that I didn’t mentioned? What are they and how do they work for you?

Here’s to becoming a learning machine!