How to Use Smarter People to Your Advantage

Corner that nerd!

• Have you ever had difficulty learning new material?
• Have you ever read a book for hours with little to no study?
• Have you ever felt dumb while studying?

If you answer Yes to any of these questions — you need the following trick.

To learn the new stuff, you need persistence and motivation. These two are the cornerstones of any business. It goes without saying…

But there is a trick that simplifies life and accelerates the process of learning.

You can spend 100 hours getting from point A to point B, or you can use money, help, and tricks to spend only 10 hours. What is better for you?

The Salt

The most efficient way to learn something is to find someone who did it already. You need an expert in the area of your interest.

Corner that nerd and ask him all the questions you have.

Even better to make a deal for a long-term relationship. Learning isn’t a one-night event. It’s a continuous process.

It isn’t only about getting someone to mentor you and guide you through complex topics. That potential teacher can save you hundreds of hours of self-learning.

The main benefits you get with a mentor VS learning on your own.

Source of structured information

All information that you need is on the internet. Maybe it’s even free to use. But it isn’t enough to access the info. You have to know what you need to learn first and what second. You need a plan.

Trying to dig into a new field without a plan is similar to planning a trip without a roadmap. Easy to miss something important, then waste hours searching for the right way.

Your mentor can provide you with a working plan and insights based on his experience and cases.

Constructive critics

You don’t know what you don’t know.

You don’t know if you are making a mistake, especially while learning new stuff.

But your mentor should be more experienced than you. He should note and report your mistakes.

Receiving feedback and constructive critics is crucial for your growth. In the IT sphere, there is even a special profession for this. Quality Assurance Engineer. His responsibility in the project is to find mistakes and report them.

If it is worth in business — it is worth trying in education.

Practice matters

Learning always has a goal. There is no sense to learn something just because. Pursuing your goal gives the required motivation.

Still, there is a question of how to use learned material in practice to achieve the goal?

You have a bunch of concepts, but you don’t know how to use them all together to get the desired result. To figure it out in the fastest way, you need someone to show you a practical use case.

Using ideas in the real world is different from using them in the educational context. Real-world is more complex and requires more additional knowledge.

Practical and working experience is the most valuable thing you can get.

Final Thoughts

Learning new is a big part of life. But it doesn’t mean that you have to waste a lot of time. It’s better to learn smarter than learn harder.

You have different options to learn the same material. Some will bring you to the goal faster than others. Use a mentor or pay money for a piece of structured information in the course. This will buy you time.

Still, you can achieve everything on your own. It’s a simple question of price. What do you value more your time or something else?

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