0:02 I've been obsessed with figuring out the
0:05 [music] fastest and easiest possible way
0:08 to learn new skills for the last decade.
0:10 And after years of teaching people and
0:12 reading the research on this, I've
0:15 stumbled across a mistake [music] that
0:20 guarantees an almost 100% failure rate
0:22 on learning any skill. And sadly, this
0:25 is a mistake that most people make every
0:28 single day. I call this mistake theory
0:30 overload. And I think it is one of the
0:33 most important things [music] to know
0:35 about when you're trying to learn any
0:36 new skill. But first, we have to
0:39 understand a key, often overlooked
0:39 ingredient [music]
0:43 to learning any new skill that allows us
0:46 to even learn skills in the first place.
0:49 And this ingredient is experiential
0:52 cycling. So, if I practice shooting this
0:57 bow every day for a month, I should get better,
0:58 better, right?
1:01 right?
1:05 Maybe, but maybe not. Once I let go of
1:08 this arrow, I cannot control where it
1:12 goes midair. At least as far as I know.
1:15 Where this arrow lands depends on
1:18 everything that I did in the setup
1:20 beforehand. And by the way, like any
1:22 skill, learning to learn is the same.
1:24 Our exam results, our memory, our depth
1:26 of understanding, these things depend on
1:29 the processes we used before when we
1:31 were studying. Now, imagine I shot this
1:34 arrow and it landed
1:37 here. Not very good. But to do better
1:40 next time, I have to know what to change
1:43 to get it into the center. I cannot keep
1:46 just firing arrows off randomly
1:48 expecting to get better. I might get a
1:50 bullseye once in a while, but it's not
1:51 going to be consistent. And once the
1:52 target moves further away, it's not
1:54 going to work anymore. Same thing in
1:56 learning. If we get a bad exam result,
1:57 we need to know what did change. And
2:00 just because we get a better exam result
2:01 in a different exam, it doesn't mean we
2:04 actually solved the problem. So this is
2:07 essentially the experiential cycle. We
2:10 have an experience. We observe the
2:13 result. We think about what we need to
2:15 change and then we do an experiment to
2:18 see if it made it any better. Without
2:22 this cycle, we cannot learn any new
2:24 skill. This is pretty straightforward
2:27 and obvious. But here's the part that
2:29 traps people. Whether it's learning
2:31 about learning skills or learning to
2:34 shoot an arrow or learning any other
2:39 skill, the fastest way to learn any
2:44 skill is to learn more slowly. This is
2:48 the theory overload trap. Now, most of
2:49 you know that I've got a program that
2:50 teaches people to learn more
2:52 efficiently. And one of the things that
2:53 I can do on the program that I can't do
2:57 on YouTube is I get to observe how the
2:59 students behave and I can track their
3:02 progress much more closely. So take a
3:04 look at these two students and see if
3:06 you can guess which one ended up being
3:08 more academically successful. First one
3:12 to look at is this one here, Suresh, who
3:15 was on the program for 5 weeks and got
3:17 through 31%
3:20 of the program. And the second [music]
3:22 student that I want you to look at is
3:26 Enzo, who was on the program for 54
3:30 weeks and got through 20% of the
3:31 program. Who do you think [music]
3:35 improved the fastest? So despite
3:38 covering less of the course, it was
3:41 actually Enzo who ended up with better
3:44 academic results. He went from a
3:46 baseline of 62%
3:50 to the latest exam result of 92%.
3:52 Compared to Sesh, and this is the
3:56 surprising part, Sesh actually went from
3:59 80% to 71%.
4:02 Sesh actually got worse after working on
4:06 it for 5 weeks. Why did Sesh get worse?
4:09 I'll give you a clue. It's not just
4:12 because Enzo had so much more time to
4:15 work on things. Well, the answer is
4:18 theory overload. Okay, now imagine this
4:22 bowl is your brain.
4:24 Very smooth. Just kidding. Now, your
4:28 brain has a limited amount of cognitive
4:31 resources that it can spend. It's like
4:33 how much memory or RAM your computer
4:36 has. So let's say that these wooden
4:38 blocks represent your cognitive
4:41 resources. Now whenever we learn a new
4:43 skill, we're introduced to new things
4:47 that we need to think about. So each
4:50 thing takes resources to keep it in mind
4:53 and think about it. Hold my arrow more
4:57 tightly. Stabilize my core. Keep my
5:00 shoulders uh relaxed. Breathe more
5:04 slowly. Aim a little bit lower. You can
5:07 see that my bowl, my capacity is
5:09 becoming filled up. And on top of that,
5:11 there's a certain amount of resources it
5:15 takes to just perform the activity. Now,
5:17 once a new skill eventually becomes a
5:20 habit, the amount of resources it takes
5:22 goes down. But when you're learning a
5:24 new skill, it's not going to be a habit.
5:25 It's going to be unfamiliar and
5:28 difficult and awkward. And all of those
5:31 things [music] take additional resources
5:34 to overcome. So more and more needs to
5:36 be invested [music] into just doing the
5:40 actual skill. And as you can see now, we are
5:41 are
5:43 overflowing. We've overloaded our
5:46 brain's ability to think about things
5:49 because we have given it too many things
5:51 to think about. In the research, our
5:53 brain trying to think about lots of
5:55 different things at the same time is
5:57 called multiple element interactivity.
5:59 And it's a common reason why we enter
6:01 into what's called cognitive overload.
6:03 But here is the thing about learning a
6:06 cognitive skill like learning to learn
6:08 for example unlike learning a physical
6:11 skill like archery. For a physical skill
6:14 we burn energy using our body using our
6:18 muscles. For a cognitive skill we burn
6:22 effort with our brain. Which means that
6:25 the amount of cognitive resources it
6:30 takes to just perform the skill the act
6:35 of learning is innately very high to
6:37 begin with. It takes a lot of mental
6:40 resources to understand new information
6:42 and process it and organize it and think
6:45 about where it belongs and create new
6:48 memory. And all of this effort helps to
6:50 translate the learning into [music]
6:52 memory and understanding. If we didn't
6:55 feel this effort, we wouldn't have any
6:57 memory and that would be called passive
7:00 learning. But with effective more active
7:03 learning, it takes a lot of resources to
7:07 begin with, which means adding just a
7:11 few more things can put us into overload
7:16 very quickly. So in that case, what is
7:20 the best way to learn a new skill,
7:22 especially a cognitive skill? Well, at
7:24 the end of the day, all of that means
7:27 that when we're learning a new skill, we
7:29 should only ever be trying to experiment
7:33 with one or two things at [music] the
7:36 same time. So Sesh, who covered like 30%
7:38 of the program in a month, would have
7:40 learned over a dozen new techniques. And
7:42 each technique has two or three things
7:45 to think about. So that means that Sesh
7:48 would have been trying to juggle 20 or
7:51 30 things at any given time. He was
7:54 completely overloaded and therefore his
7:56 brain was not able to actually learn
7:58 [music] the skill. And this is exactly
8:01 why some students, if they don't realize
8:04 this trap, can [music] spend months or
8:08 even years trying to learn a new skill
8:10 [music] and feeling like it is
8:13 impossible to get it right because no
8:15 matter how much time they put into it,
8:16 they do not seem [music] to be
8:18 improving. It is incredibly frustrating.
8:21 So, here's the secret to learning any
8:24 skill the [music] right way. Always
8:28 balance your new theory with practice.
8:31 If you practice without any theory, it's
8:34 aimless. If you practice with too much
8:36 theory, you're getting overloaded. So,
8:38 the trick is to [music] balance new
8:42 theory coming in with your existing
8:45 skills becoming habits. Like I mentioned
8:48 before, when skills become habits, your
8:51 brain figures out a more efficient way
8:54 to do it. It doesn't require so many
8:57 cognitive resources anymore. It finds a
9:01 shortcut. And so the amount of cognitive
9:03 resources it takes [music] to perform
9:07 the skill goes down as more of this new
9:10 skill just starts to become an old
9:13 habit. And eventually what took a lot of
9:16 concentration to do now takes virtually
9:19 no thinking at all. and you can still do
9:21 it just as accurately and just as
9:23 consistently. We have freed up more
9:26 cognitive resources to take in some new theory
9:28 theory
9:30 and turn those into habits. For some
9:32 skills and techniques, it can take
9:35 [music] weeks if not months to develop
9:37 them into habits. Whereas for some it
9:38 can just take a few hours. And by
9:40 balancing the [music] theory with
9:44 practice, we can achieve optimum skill
9:46 growth [music] where we are practicing
9:48 and every time we practice, we're
9:52 improving with focus and direction, but
9:54 we're not getting overloaded. So, here's
9:56 what this looks like in practice. Let's
9:59 say we've only got 5 hours a week to
10:00 [music] practice.
10:03 Now, that is not probably enough to form
10:05 new habits very quickly. And so we're
10:08 going to need to reduce the amount of
10:11 new theory we take in. And because we've
10:14 got a low amount of practice and
10:16 therefore a low amount of theory, the
10:18 two of them are aligned and we can
10:21 achieve our optimum skill growth. Now
10:23 let's say we now have a little bit more
10:24 free time and we want to dedicate a
10:25 little bit more time to learning this
10:29 skill. So we have now 20 hours a [music]
10:31 week that we can dedicate to practice.
10:34 So the amount that we can practice has
10:36 now gone up,
10:38 which means we can also go up in the
10:42 amount of theory we [music] can take in.
10:45 But it's proportional to the amount of
10:46 extra practice we're getting. So as a
10:49 rule of thumb, I usually say for every
10:52 hour of theory, we should have at least
10:55 5 hours of practice. So, for example, if
10:57 we have 5 hours of practice, we would
10:59 only be able to take in 1 hour of theory
11:02 in this first example. Whereas, in the
11:04 second example, we've got 20 hours of
11:07 practice. Therefore, we can have up to 4
11:10 hours of theory. Now, unfortunately,
11:12 that's just a rule of thumb. And in
11:13 reality, it's a little bit more
11:15 complicated because 5 hours of
11:18 practicing a very complicated skill is
11:22 not the same as 5 hours of practicing a
11:23 very simple skill like a new way to tie
11:25 your shoelaces. In [music] which case, 5
11:27 hours of practice is probably overkill.
11:29 And so, what's more important and
11:32 accurate than just the number of hours
11:35 of practice is actually monitoring how
11:38 quickly we're able to form new habits.
11:41 When new habits form, we have the mental
11:43 space to take in more theory. [music]
11:46 So, if we're very slow at forming new
11:49 habits, then we're going to be slower at
11:52 taking in new theory. And the way you
11:53 can know that new habits are forming [music]
11:54 [music]
11:57 is when you can feel that things are
12:01 becoming easier and faster without
12:04 compromising your accuracy and your
12:06 consistency. And most of the time,
12:09 you're able to get faster without trying
12:12 to get faster. The speed comes with the
12:15 efficiency that your brain develops at
12:17 just getting better at doing it. Now,
12:18 this is where I have to give props to
12:21 Enzo because Enzo realized that he was
12:25 developing new habits more slowly than
12:27 we would have anticipated. [music] And
12:32 so, he took a year to cover 20% of the
12:34 program. So instead of 5 hours of
12:36 practice for every hour of theory, he
12:39 was doing more like 15 20 hours of
12:42 practice for every hour of theory. So
12:44 even though on the surface it looked
12:48 like he was going very slowly, his skill
12:50 growth was being maintained at an
12:53 optimal rate because he was never
12:55 letting himself get overloaded. And by
12:57 the way, if you're interested in the
12:58 program yourself, there's a link in the
13:00 description that you can check out. Now,
13:03 while theory overload has an almost 100%
13:06 failure rate, [music] the reverse is
13:10 also true. Almost 100% of the time, I
13:12 see someone balancing their theory
13:15 intake rate with their practice [music]
13:19 and habit forming rate. They are able to
13:23 learn their desired skill very smoothly
13:25 and very quickly. which is why I said
13:27 that I think this is one of the most
13:29 important things to understand if you
13:31 want to learn any [music] skill. I hope
13:32 that helps. And if you've got the
13:35 capacity for just one more bit of
13:38 theory, then check out this video that
13:40 YouTube thinks you'll like. Thanks for
13:41 watching and I'll [music] see you next time.
