In an era of AI, true mastery lies not in innate intelligence or temporary skills, but in developing a superior learning system that enables rapid and continuous adaptation.
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I grew up a poor kid in Mumbai who
struggled in school, who struggled with
learning. Today I am an MIT grad, former
CEO and board adviser to billion-dollar
companies. And it's not because I'm
smarter or read more, but because I
learn how to learn faster than everyone
around me. And here's the truth.
Intelligence is a commodity in the world
of AI today. Any skill advantage you
have is temporary. The only real edge is
how you learn and how fast you can stay
ahead. So, in this video, I'm not going
to give you any hacks. I'll share with
you how our brains actually work and
show you a learning system that puts you
in the top 1% even if you've always felt
like a slow learner. But first, you need
to understand why 99% of people fail at
learning. Your brain weighs only three
lbs but it burns up to 20% of your
body's total fuel. One of its hungriest
part is your prefrontal cortex. This is
the uh CEO function of your brain. Every
new theory, every new idea you cram into
that region spikes up the demand for
glucose and oxygen. And that's
metabolically very expensive. This
region is your tiny cognitive bowl. 99%
of the learners try to learn by jamming
and cramming. Now, if you dump a gallon
of theory into a 4 oz bowl, how much do
you think it will retain? Well, exactly
4 oz of it, right? And it's a trap that
has an almost 100% failure rate. Today's
AI can run millions of processes in
parallel, but our human brain cannot do
that. We're built for serial learning,
serial processing, one transfer at a
time. So give yourself and your brain a
break. Now the next thing you have to
understand if you want to learn like the
top 1% is that your brain is lying to
you. Carnegie Melon University tested an
adaptive learning system for its
students. The material would get
increasingly difficult based on the
students prior success. Now of course
students at CMU totally hated it but
they ended up learning twice as much as
those who took the standard test. And
that's the point we miss. Sometimes we
feel friction and we assume failure.
Neuroscience calls it the generation
effect. The harder you work to generate
the answer, the deeper it's wired in
your brain. 99% of us use AI as a
crutch, not as a coach. Your brain
doesn't hate struggle. It hungers for
it. The real question is how do you feed
it? Well, for that we have to build a
better learning system. And I call it
the 3C protocol. Compress, compile, and
consolidate. Each step accelerates your
learning machine. And when you fire all
three of them, you will break out of the
orbit of the ordinary. So, let's dive
into the first C, compress. The best way
to learn that is from one of the best
chess players. If you watch Magnus
Carlson sitting down at the chessboard,
he's not thinking about any specific
move. What's happening in his brain is
really fascinating. Cognitive studies on
chess grandmasters estimate that they
can internalize 50,000 or even 100,000
patterns on the chessboard. But they're
not memorizing. They compress what they
have learned into patterns that their
brain can actually handle. Now, why do
they have to do that? Because recent
research shows that our brain can only
juggle about four independent ideas at a
time. Any more than that and it drops
the ball. So the first C is compress and
it's not about memorizing more. It is
about reducing many ideas into fewer
stronger chunks and patterns that your
brain can carry. So how do you actually
compress? The first step is selection.
Here's an example. When I want to learn
from a book, I first compress. I ask
what's the 20% of the book that I must
read that will give me 80% of the
benefit. Most books are just about one
single idea. So I read only selective
chapters. Sometimes I would read them
more than once until it sinks in. That
is selection. Always pick the 20% that
matters. Then comes association. A paper
in Science magazine showed that you
can't learn something new until you
connect it to something you already
know. That's the secret behind mastering
how you learn. You have to ask, where
have I seen this idea before? How does
it connect to something I already know?
This is why Magnus Carlson wins, right?
Because he connects a new move to an old
pattern. He sees the harmony. Then comes
chunking. This is the third step. You
take these ideas and compress them into
a simple model. It could be anything. A
drawing, a short summary, a metaphor you
can remember, a song in your head. 99%
of us get overloaded. But the top 1%
compress before they consume. But the
next C is about how you cut down the
tree, compile. A lot of you might have
watched a movie called Rainman, and it
was actually based on a real person. His
name was Kim Peak. Kim grew up in the
Midwest. He was a savant, kind of like
walking, talking Google. He could
reportedly recall every word of any of
the 12,000 books he had read. And he
could also add events tied to that day.
He would tell you exactly what happened
that day. And his unique abilities were
linked to his brain's unusual design.
His brain scans found that the bridge
between his brain's hemispheres was
missing completely from birth. But
here's the part that broke my heart.
That uniqueness also made his daily life
very difficult to navigate. His father
would have to take care of his basic
needs that you and I take for granted.
He lived with his father until he passed
away at 58. Never got married. Kim had
these incredible gifts, but he had
difficulty mastering simple chores and
social cues. It tells you that memory
alone is not mastery. You can store the
entire world and still struggle to live
in it. That's Kim's tragedy. And this is
the 99% trap. We focus on the goal of
hoarding information and mistake
consumption for learning. And you need
three things to do that. The timer, the
test, and the tools. The timer is about
managing your learning cadence. This is
called the ultradian cycle. Your brain
operates in 90-minute cycles. then it
needs to rest. So you get about 90
minutes of peak focus and then your
brain must rest for at least about 20
minutes. So here's something actionable.
Look at your weekly calendar. Do you
have one or two blocks of deep work? If
yes, then use this timer. 90 minutes of
deep work plus 20 minutes of rest. Have
one or two such blocks per week and
protect them ruthlessly. This is how
you're going to learn fast. Second, the
test. Most people learn, learn, learn
for 6 weeks, for 6 months and then there
is a big test and a big presentation at
the end. This is a giant waste of time.
This is one of the biggest mistakes we
make in learning. You know, software
engineers talk about agile development
all day long. Everything is a twoe
sprint. In fact, in today's AI
companies, everything is a single day
sprint. So, why not apply the same
concept to learning? Build a different
loop. Learn, test, learn, test, learn,
test. So, pick a concept, learn it, and
then test. Then pick another concept.
And how do you test? That's where the
tools come into play. There are three
that are my favorite. Tool number one,
slow burn. If you're learning something
physical, like playing a guitar, do it
at an excruciatingly slow pace and do it
a lot of times. But don't turn off your
brain because slow is boring. Focus on
every micro move. The slower you play,
the faster you learn. Tool number two,
immersion. Every musician will tell you
this. No matter how you practice and
rehearse with the band, the moment you
start playing on stage, everything goes
haywire. So, you must test in the arena.
Practicing a speech in front of a mirror
is a good start. But practicing it in
front of real people, that's even
better. And the third tool, teach to
learn. Now, this is the boss tool. I do
this all the time. Once I learn
something, I teach it to someone.
Sometimes I even lecture the wall as if
I'm giving a TED talk because I'm
learning, I'm internalizing, I'm
connecting, I'm refraraming. And I would
do it a few times and try different
angles until I feel I have learned it.
Well, we compress the map. We compile
the work. Now comes the final C. you
have to consolidate it to retain what
you've just learned forever. If time was
money and you wanted to invest it in
learning, then relying on stickies and
flashcards will give you short-term
gains but terrible long-term returns.
And the most important insight is this.
Learning is a two-stage process. Stage
one is focus. You're sending the request
to your brain to rewire. But stage two
is even more important. Rest. This is
where the actual consolidation happens.
So you've got to leave some room for it.
You have to manage your rest as much as
you manage your work both at the micro
and macro level. So think about the
learning cycle in terms of work rest
work rest work rest. First on the micro
level inside your 90minute block you
have to think about taking frequent 10
20 second breaks. Research shows that
after some heavy learning, if you pause
for just 10 seconds, your brain replays
the information you just learned at 10
to 20 times the speed. And it might fire
that sequence 20 times over. So you're
literally getting 20 free reps in your
brain just by taking a break. And on the
macro level, we're talking about the
ultradian cycle of 90 minutes of work
and 20 minutes of rest again. And what
you do in those 20 minutes is also
important. I for one do NSDR which is
non-sleep deep rest in Sanskrit is
called yoga nindra which literally means
the rest that helps you connect. So what
do you have to do during that 20 minute
NSDR period? Absolutely nothing. For
instance, I just lie down or sit, close
my eyes for 15 minutes, 20 minutes and
do nothing. And sometimes I would go for
a leisurely walk if I can. But the point
is not to distract yourself and do
nothing. And the third most macro thing
is a good night's sleep. There is a lot
of research that suggests that when
we're sleeping, our brain replays the
entire thing we learn in reverse. So
these three rests are super important.
You know, in this postindustrial
technological age, we've forgotten what
farmers have always intuitively known.
You can't keep plowing the field every
day of the year. The soil, the ground,
it must rest to regain its fertility.
And that's the most important lesson. I
struggled with learning when I was
growing up. I failed every single course
in college. Couldn't focus, couldn't
retain anything. But these techniques,
they changed my life and they might work
for you too. Remember three things.
First, stop racing other people. There
will always be someone who learns
faster. So what? There is someone faster
than them. That loop never ends. Your
only competition is you from yesterday.
Second, get out of your head. You cannot
be the performer and the critic at the
same time. While you're learning, be the
performer, not the critic. And finally,
give yourself time. Learning is like an
ocean. It has its rhythm. It es flows.
Honor that cycle. With enough time,
there is nothing you can't learn and
nothing you can't become.
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