I was listening to a podcast recently where author Tim Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body) was talking about all the best practices for learning.

According to Mr Ferriss, if you apply certain principles to the process of acquiring a new skill, you can make a quantum leap in how quickly and effectively you reach your goal. 

He made a number of great points, but here are three that really stuck out for me:

Simplify. Tim says you should try to focus on just one goal at a time. Saying yes to too many things is a problem. You must decide what the first, most important thing you must accomplish and then put your attention on that for a concentrated period of time. Do you need to learn to build your list? Create a group program? Get more clients? Pick the thing that will move you toward your goals most quickly and dive into that.

Deconstruction. Most skills are overwhelming and in order to successfully acquire new ones quickly, you need to break them down into pieces, or steps. It’s much easier to follow a system than to randomly try to master something.

Selection. He goes on to explain that discovering and selecting the most effective (and the fewest number) of those pieces or steps to concentrate on is essential. This is why learning from someone else – someone who has already done the “selecting” for you – is so important. That way you get to sidestep the trial and error phase (because they’ve don’t it for you) and greatly accelerate your success.

As I reviewed what I learned about learning, I realized exactly why I have always had a coach of my own and taken many courses, programs, and workshops.

It is so much less time-consuming and stressful to have someone help me simplify my choices, deconstruct the task into understandable pieces or steps, and allow me to learn from their trial and error so I can see results much faster. 

Not only that, I know that all the time I have spent being mentored and taught has made me a better mentor myself!