How to Learn Effectively and Efficiently

Have you ever pulled an all-nighter for an exam? Have you ever studied for hours on end only to do worse on an exam than a friend who studied a small fraction of the time you did? Or worked for hours on end on a project that didn’t do well?

I know I have. 

The issue is that we confuse time spent working, with actually accomplishing anything. 

What do I mean? Just because you are putting in hours studying doesn’t mean you are actually getting anything out of it. It doesn’t matter how long you spend doing something. You can spend 10,000 hours practicing jui jitsu, or golf, or football, or any other thing, but if all 10,000 of those hours were spent half assed, not really thinking, not engaged, not actively trying to learn, you will only be marginally better. Whereas someone who practiced 1,000 hours but was intent on learning and mastering their craft will significantly out perform you. 

We need to get it out of our heads that just because we tried to do something, and we put in time, and we want something, that we deserve it and that we should be able to achieve it. That is all wrong. The only thing that matters is how much you learn in the process. The gains are made as a result of learning, and failure is one of the best teachers if you are willing to listen. 

How do you transition from spending as much time as possible on something, to learning and growing as much as possible? 

It’s not going to be easy. You will naturally tend to revert back to spending a lot of low-quality time. There is always that part of us that feels entitled and things, that if we put in the time then we deserve some result. We want to brag at how much time we spent, and in reality, it’s easier to spend 10 hours doing something and not really learning than it is to spend 2 hours fully optimized and efficiently learning the maximum amount of information possible. 

Why is this? Because in order for us to fully optimize our work we have to think. Think about what you are trying to accomplish, think about how you are going to accomplish it, and think about what the best route is to accomplish it.

I used to set off studying for exams or working on projects and put in a ton of time, while trying really hard and learn a lot. But I never did any effective planning at the beginning to direct my effort, and I never did periodic checks to see if what I was doing was working as well as it had to.

You have to begin with the end in mind. 

Like I said, think about what you are trying to accomplish, look at the big picture, then hone in on how you are going to try and accomplish it, and be able to convince yourself why that is the best route (and the answer “because I have always done it that way” is not good enough). 

Sometimes you will do this and your work will still be ineffective, but if you are serious about finding the best way to get the task done, then you will seek out knowledge or methods from others that you may be able to implement to help you in your quest. This could be anything from talking to friends and coworkers, to researching or watching YouTube videos on a subject. Anything that might give you a new idea or perspective. That new idea or perspective may be all you need to realize that you have been focusing on the wrong thing, and thus, allowing you to move forward. 

It is okay to not have the answer.

It is not okay to accept that as final and do nothing about it. We are all learning and striving to be better. The most successful people in the world are the people who work hard and put in the time, but are also maximizing every moment by knowing exactly what they are trying to achieve and then consistently checking to ensure they are doing the most efficient and effective things possible to get them to their goal. 

There are countless people who spend a significant amount of time and energy on their work and get nowhere because they aren’t considering if they are being as effective and efficient as possible. 

The next time you are studying for a big test, or working on a big project, I challenge you to take 5 min at the beginning and really think about how you are going to attack the problem. Then, at certain intervals during your work (maybe it’s every hour if the test is tomorrow, maybe it’s once a day if your project is next week), take another 5, 10, 15 minutes to figure out whether or not the path you are going down is the right one. 

Here is the hardest part though. If you discover that you have been going down the wrong path, you have to switch. No hesitancy. Your teacher or your manager doesn’t care if you did genius but were work solving the wrong problem or learning the wrong things. They definitely don’t care if you spend a ton of time working and didn’t learn anything or didn’t get anything meaningful done.

Life doesn’t have participation trophies. 

Go out, challenge yourself, and be effective and efficient.