Become a Learning Machine, to Get Exactly What You Want (Faster)
Execute while you learn. Starting > Waiting
School teaches us to be learning idiots.
We spend most of our days practicing memorization of facts that we’ll probably never use. School dulled my brain down.
It killed the natural spark of creativity I had for music because, according to the school career counselor, “It doesn’t pay well, Timothy.”
A person who is a learning machine has recoded their school brain.
Their mind is open and curious again. They learn one new thing per day. They don’t seek to become a master of a topic quickly or get a Ph.D. in it. Instead, they seek to learn 1% more every day on stuff they’re passionate about.
The #1 trait of a person who is a learning machine is that self-education is a habit. They don’t wait to get told.
They learn on their own, quietly, after hours.
None of us, especially me, are born learning machines. Over the last 5 years I’ve spent a stupid amount of time learning. It’s why I can write 40+ articles a month and not run out of ideas.
Here’s how I became a learning machine and you can too (or level up if you’re already on your way).
I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, but they are LEARNING MACHINES.
They go to bed every night a little wiser than when they woke up — Charlie Munger
Quit focusing on the damn money
Learning, to immediately earn money, is desperation — not useful inspiration.
I read an eBook recently from a software company owner. He does all of his marketing on Twitter with free content. He’s surrounded by people who’ve grown huge audiences on the platform.
This thought threw me out of my seat:
“The best way to make money is not needing the money.”
He says that those who crush it on Twitter do it because they’re not needy. Money isn’t why they are learning how to use the creator economy to grow an audience.
They start by using what they learn to be helpful.
Because they don’t ask the audience to do anything, their stats grow 10x faster than the monkey who keeps spamming people with requests to buy stuff they haven’t earned the right to sell yet.
When you chase money at the start of your learning goals, the chance you will give up is extremely high.
Dan Koe says “To everyone on the verge of giving up: You may not be getting paid in money, but you are getting paid in lessons. Learn from them.”
Time used to learn equals time used to earn … in the future.
Work to learn, not to earn
I’m a crazy son of a b*tch. For most of my career I chose jobs based on what I could learn. I smiled at getting paid less than I was worth.
Learning machines see lessons from execution as being worth more than a 6-figure salary. Choose jobs where you learn.
Learn from people closer to reality
The tycoons of history can teach you a lot.
They can also waste your learning time too. Instead of spending every night learning how the Elon Musks of the world made billions of dollars, get more realistic teachers. Choose people who are three steps ahead of you, not one-thousand steps ahead and on their way to Mars.
Realistic teachers provide relatable lessons. Relatability equals applicability.
Pay someone smarter than you
Free content is everywhere.
The problem?
It’s not curated. Curating ideas and lessons to learn from takes an enormous amount of time. That’s why I’m an online course junkie. I prefer to piggyback on someone else’s execution so I can get a headstart and learn faster.
I give up money, but I spend less time.
Value money over time when you decide how to learn.
“I need to learn as much as possible before I get started”
Becoming a learning machine is pointless if it doesn’t lead to execution.
Without execution, the chance you’ll stop learning is high. Life will get in the way. Learning time will disappear because your boss wants you to stay back and build their business on the weekend. Applying what you learn can be hard. Use this approach:
Aim. Fire. Ready.
Many forget that action is part of learning. Andy on Twitter says to adopt this mindset: “I need to get started, then I can learn as much as possible.”
Starting > Waiting
Execute while you learn.
People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves — Paulo Coelho
The #1 reason we don’t apply learning
Fear of failure.
Never trying means you drown in regret, fear, and the prospect of your goals sitting idol for another year. When you try to apply learning, yes, you might fail. But you collect tiny lessons that can get applied on the next iteration.
And, most of all, your confidence increases because you’ve got evidence that you can try, fail, and get back up again.
Take action, fail, learn and then succeed is the revelation I had last week, thanks to a guy named Syed.
If you fail to learn from a mistake, that’s when it’s called a mistake — Aaron Will
Thread your knowledge together into a thing of beauty.
Don’t fall for the biggest loser trap
When people succeed at becoming learning machines and apply the knowledge, they produce exponential results. Many become rich.
The popular thing to do online is eat the successful for breakfast.
Don’t fall for this loser trap. Don’t be jealous or think another person’s achievements are out of reach. Instead, learn from them. Then take what you learn and head down your own path towards the good life.
Life isn’t a competition. It’s a team sport full of unlikely teachers.
Turn the learning game on its head
There’s one detail I left out.
My learning went to the next level when I became a teacher. A while back I started an online academy for content creators who want to make money online. This goal forced me to question everything I’ve learned.
- “Is this lesson good enough?”
- “Can they actually apply this technique?”
- “What struggles would I have if I started again?”
While teaching, I cemented the lessons I’d already learned deeper into my subconscious. That allowed me to jump on podcasts and teach complex concepts without preparation.
Famous American educator Edgar Dale found the same thing.
We remember:
10% of what we read. 20% of what we hear. 30% of what we see. 50% of what we see and hear. 70% of what we discuss with others. 80% of what we personally experience. 95% of what we teach others.
Teach what you know to become a level two learning machine.
The stoic paradox of teaching
Socrates says, I cannot teach anyone anything. I can only make them think.
Eight years of writing online taught me this lesson the hard way. You may want to teach but not everybody wants to listen. Why? Opinions limit the ability for people to listen to your lessons.
The plague of modern society is to make new ideas either right or wrong, instead of using them to think deeply on a topic.
Guaranteed there are people reading this right now that disagree with some of my teachings. F*cking brilliant. If you agree with everything I teach, you’d be the member of a cult, not an eager learner.
Learn from people you disagree with to make yourself think.
What causes learning machines to suddenly stop
“You become a learning machine when criticism doesn’t trigger a reaction and is distilled into feedback when criticism comes from someone better than you”— Kunal Shah
As you learn, teachers or other students in the world may criticize you (especially when you’re in the execution phase).
Critics can destroy gorgeous learning machines.
Criticism from those on the sidelines doing nothing should be mostly ignored. But criticism from those at the same level or higher in your learning journey can become helpful feedback. Decipher the difference between criticism and feedback. Act on it to learn faster and level up.
Bringing it all together
You don’t need to be the smartest person in the room to become a learning machine. In fact, the smartest people often learn too fast and then forget about executing on the knowledge.
They wear knowledge as a badge of honor rather than use it as a blueprint to success. Stupid.
Whatever you want in life, there’s a lot to learn.
Use the mindset of a learning machine to acquire knowledge faster and blast through the execution phase in a blaze of glory.
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