The Mindset Mentor - 4 Steps To Learn Anything You Want Faster

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

If you want to learn, process, and retain anything that you learn faster, then you need to listen to this episode today! Follow me on IG for more inspiration here: https://www.instagram.com/robdialjr/ If you live in the US/Canada and you want to receive motivational texts from me, text me now at 1-512-580-9305 or click here https://my.community.com/robdial Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dillon. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you live in the US or Canada, and you want to receive motivational text messages from me, text me right now. 1-512-580-9305. Once again, 1-512-580-9305. And I will put you on my text list to get text messages from me that are motivational almost every single day. Today, I'm going to give you four steps to learn anything that you want to learn faster and to get it locked into your head better than any way that you've ever done it.

And this could be for a few different reasons. Number one, it could be because you want to learn something new. It might be just a new passion that you have, a new subject that you love, and it might be complex and a little bit hard to understand. So it could be for something that's new.

It could be to deepen your knowledge in something that you already know, or it could be to help your knowledge in something that you already know, or it could be to help you study for an exam or to prepare for a presentation, whether that's for public speaking, whether that's for something that you got at work and you're just nervous about it. And you know that preparation is what makes your nervousness go down. And so we're going to talk about the four steps to learn anything that you want to learn faster. And so this is actually from a guy named Richard Feynman.

Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize for quantum electrodynamics. So this guy is extremely intelligent. And he won it, I think, in 1965. So won the Nobel Prize for quantum electrodynamics. And he's famous for being able to take really extremely complex topics and get almost anyone to understand them. And not only just that, he's also really famous for being able to draw out in photos how the math works with subatomic particles with pen and paper. So to be able to take something that is that ridiculously complex

and be able to write it down with pen and paper, not through showing the math, but actually the numbers, but actually drawing it out for people to understand and making it as quote unquote dumbed down as much as you can shows the intelligence of a human. And so he has these four steps and that's the four steps that we're going to go through today. So let's go through them. Number one, hopefully I have a pen and paper, but number one, pick a topic and try to get as much of it into your brain, study it, whatever it is, get as much knowledge as you can about that subject that you want. Let's say it's, you know, it could be anything.

It could be quantum mechanics. If you want to go really deep, or it could be lions, or it could be the birthing process. It could be anything that you're like, damn, this is complex. I want to understand this better, and I want to learn better about this. It could be mindset and understanding humans. Maybe you're a coach in some sort of way, and you're starting to learn a little bit more about how the brain works and how the brain works with emotions and how the emotions make somebody feel. And if they feel a certain way, they either

take action or they don't. It could be something along that. It could be anything that you want to learn. Or maybe you're in college and you're just like, I got to freaking understand, you know, organic chemistry. And this is a technique that I could use for it. So number one, obvious, take it, study it, learn as much as you possibly can. When you're learning it, what you want to do is whenever you get key points, you want to write it down with your hand and a piece of paper. You write it down. You don't type it out.

You don't take a photo of it. You don't do any of that stuff. You literally write it out because there's proof that when you write something out, you get new neurosynaptic connections, which then make it deeper into your mind and easier to remember. It takes longer, it's slower, but because of that, there's more intention into it, which is the important thing for remembering. The more intention that goes into it. If I type something out real quick, it can be done. I can type a sentence really fast and I can type whatever I'm learning really fast. But when I write it out, it takes time, it takes attention. And there's just magic that happens

between the pen and paper and writing it down versus any other way to do it. Okay. So that's step number one. Step number two is to write it down and explain it out loud to somebody. Now, this might be the most important part of it is to write it down. You can either do it on a piece of paper. You can do it on a piece of paper. You can do it on a whiteboard or a chalkboard. Act as if you're actually teaching it to somebody. And if there's nobody there for you to teach it to, you know, say you're learning something, you're learning organic chemistry and you're in your dorm room and you don't have anybody

that lives with you in your dorm room. You can literally teach it out loud to yourself. Just act like somebody is there. The process of teaching it is actually one of the most important parts. It's the best way you've probably heard to learn something is to teach it. Because when you teach,

you're actually creating new neuropathways in your brain. And this is important because when you're learning something, say I'm just watching a lecture. If you're in class and you're just watching a lecture or if you're in, you know, your boss is giving a presentation, that is called passive learning, which means that I'm just sitting back. That's actually the worst way to learn is to passively learn, to be spoken at.

Because what happens is you don't have to create any new connections in your brain in order to passively learn. But when you actually go and physically start to move your body, you move your lips, you say things out loud, you hear your voice saying these things, you're turning something passive into something active. And this is where new neuropathways are required and where they're connected at this point. And it could cause some frustration as you're learning something new. Let's say that you're teaching your friend something that you just learned about the human brain that you thought was super interesting and you're writing it out. And there's a part of you, we've all felt it before,

right? Where you're frustrated because you're like, oh shit, I know I like had it. I thought I understood this, but like, I can't, I can't explain how this works. There's a little bit of frustration. The frustration is actually a good thing. So when you start to teach something and you feel frustrated, and this isn't something that Feynman knew back in the 60s when he taught this,

but they've actually found that when your brain goes through neuroplasticity, which means that your brain is actually physically changing itself, it releases something called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine comes from the stress mechanism in your brain is actually physically changing itself. It releases something called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine comes from the stress mechanism in your brain. So the part of your brain that causes stress, that's where acetylcholine comes from.

So the feeling of when you're learning something new and you're trying to get it into your brain and then trying to reteach it to somebody and there's a part of you that's like, oh my God, I'm frustrated because I kind of know what I want to say, but I can't really say it, that frustration and agitation is a really good thing.

That is actually showing you that your brain is releasing acetylcholine, which means that your brain is actually changing itself. So if you feel yourself like, oh, damn it, I can't do this the way that I want to, that's a good thing. You have to fight through the agitation and the frustration and eventually your brain will actually change itself. That's the amazing

part about it. So, you know, and I do this all the time. This is the thing I love about having this podcast is I will learn something really in depth and I'll take notes on it. And then I will actually come here and physically teach it to everyone who's listening. So I'll hear something that a neurobiologist says, and I'm like, oh my God, that's so amazing. It's like this whole thing with acetylcholine is exactly, I'll tell you exactly how I learned it. Andrew Huberman was being interviewed and I remember him talking about acetylcholine and the frustration that somebody has in the agitation is actually a good thing. And I remember actually physically writing it, pen and paper, acetylcholine,

trying to figure out how to spell acetylcholine. And because of the fact that I was so amazed by it, I thought it was so cool. I went to my girlfriend and actually taught it to her because I was like, this is fucking mind blowing if you think about it. And I didn't realize it, but I was using the Feynman technique to actually learn and deepen my knowledge around this. This was over a year ago. And I can recall the exact moment because it was making new synaptic connections inside of my brain. Pretty damn cool. So you want to fight through the frustration and continue to keep going. Hey, wouldn't it be great if there was a pocket-sized guide that could help you sleep, focus, act, and be better? Well, there is. And if you have 10 minutes, Headspace can change your life. Headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy to

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app in seconds. Set up your public profile in minutes. All at your fingertips. That's P-R-O-T-O-N-N.com slash dial. Proton.com slash dial. Now, this is what's important about it. When you are teaching it, you want to make mental notes or physical notes on parts that are a little bit hard to understand, a little bit, I would say, I guess you struggle teaching. So you might be teaching something about the brain and then you get to a certain part where you're talking about dopamine and you're like, oh, well, dopamine. And you start saying something about dopamine, but maybe what you actually meant was something about serotonin. And you notice the struggle. You notice that you're not explaining it the best that you possibly could. You want to make mental notes explaining it the best that you possibly could.

You want to make mental notes of that. So you want to make mental or physical notes of the parts that you struggled in teaching so that you understand those are the parts that you don't understand as much. And it's showing you by doing this where your knowledge is not as deep as it could be and that you still need work on in order to master this subject. And so what's cool about this is you're literally learning something, immediately teaching it. And then as you're teaching it, you're making note as to where you're still not clear on exactly the process or the knowledge that you might have. Maybe it's not coming through as

clear as other parts like, oh, I might know about acetylcholine really well, but maybe I don't know about dopamine really well. Maybe what I need to do is, okay, I got the acetylcholine part. Maybe I need to study some more about dopamine. I need to go back through my notebook or go back to the presentation or go back through what my boss told me and try to get deeper knowledge on it. And so then what you do is you make a note of it and then you reteach it once again to either somebody else after you've learned more about whatever it is that you are struggling with. And you go back and you teach it to someone else or you teach it to the same person. Or if you don't want to teach it to somebody else again, you teach it out loud to

yourself with nobody else in the room. And you see if it flows a lot easier. And if it flows a lot easier, it is showing you that your brain is making new connections and that you're actually hardwiring this into the system, which is amazing. Now, here's one of the most important parts as well. So that was step number three is to go back, find out where you get stuck,

restudy that part, and then reteach the entire thing. Step number four is when you are done, go back and ask yourself, can I explain this any more simply? Like, can I be even simpler in my process? Here's the key. Simple language is the art of mastery. So even Einstein says, if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. So the way that you want to think of it is, can I take this subject that I'm learning about and can I explain it to a 10 year old? And this is the key because what happens is a lot of people who are trying to overcome their lack of knowledge tend to muddy the waters a little bit and start to use big words and make themselves sound smarter. When in reality, what you're really trying to do is

you're trying to make your subject for anybody to be able to understand. And I remember that I, uh, I had a conversation with one of my friends about this one time and my friend, whenever he would, uh, he would write something like an email or write something out, he would use these big words. And I'm not a really big fan of big words because I think that if somebody's listening to me and they don't understand what I'm saying, then it's gonna turn them off

or it's gonna make them feel dumb in some sort of way. So I wanna make everything as simple as possible. And so what I said to him is I said, hey man, I'm curious, why do you have to write like so in depth? And he's like, that's just the way that I talk. And I said, yeah, but, why do you have to write like so in depth? And he's like, I don't, he's like, that's just the way that I talk. And I said, yeah, but you know, let me show you something. There's a website for anybody out there wants to see how advanced you're speaking because you

actually don't want to speak advanced. You want to speak actually less advanced. There's a website called Hemingway, I think it's Hemingway app.com or Hemingway.app, whatever it is. And you can literally type in or copy and paste an email thatway.app, whatever it is. And you can literally type in or copy and paste an email that you were about to send to somebody. And it will tell you the copy that you just wrote, what level, like what grade level that somebody has to be able to read and comprehend that in order to understand what you just sent them or said to them. So he literally took all of the stuff, the email that he was sending out, and he copy and pasted it. And it was grade 14. So here in America, that would basically be someone who's a sophomore or junior in college, right? So a sophomore in college. So somebody has to be a

sophomore in college to understand the email he's about to send them. And he's like, well, I can't help it. That's just the way that I talk. And then I asked him a question that completely changed the way that he communicated with people. I said, are you talking for yourself or are you talking for them? And he's like, oh yeah, I think I've been talking for them. I said, okay, well then doesn't that mean that you're probably alienating a lot of people who might not be as, you know, maybe they don't read as well as you do, or maybe they don't understand reading as well as you do, or maybe they don't speak at the level that you do. You're alienating everybody whose grade level is grade 14 and below. And so Hemingway app, the reason why it's called this is because Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway is considered

one of the greatest writers that exists. And if you've ever read Ernest Hemingway, he can use the simplest words. And in one sentence in words that any human can understand, he could put so much thought and detail into a sentence. It's like art to watch him be able to do it, right? And so the idea is, okay, how can I write at fourth grade or below? How can I communicate with people at fourth grade or below? Not to try to show that I'm intellectually, you know, smarter than everybody else around me by using big words, but to actually sit there and go, I'm going to try everybody else around me by using big words, but to actually

sit there and go, I'm going to try to communicate at its simplest form to number one, be humble, that I don't have to speak above people. And number two, for everybody to be able to understand me. So when you're done and you've gone through this process, then you ask yourself, how can I explain this to a 10 year old? So even a 10-old can understand? So this comes from a guy who won the Nobel Prize and obviously was in quantum mechanics and he was a, what was that? He's like hydroelectricity that he was into as well. But his whole thing was how can I take these things and subatomic particles and everything that's so hard to understand and write it out and draw it out so that even children could come to me and understand what it is that I'm doing. If a guy can talk about subatomic particles and make it easy for a 10

year old to understand, we can take anything that we do and make it easy for a 10 year old to understand as well. Because when you can simply make it easy for everyone to understand, you have mastered it. The genius in anything that you learn and anything that you do, the genius is in your ability to explain it as simply as possible. Why? Because there's one thing that kids always ask whenever you teach them something.

What's the question they always ask whenever you say? Why? So if you can then go a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper, you know, why does this work? Why do subatomic particles work? You know, why does this happen? You know, why do why, why does this work? Why do subatomic particles work? You know, why, why does this happen? You know, why do they have to do this? And you start going,

your kids ask you questions and make you actually have to go deeper in a subject. The genius of everything is to be able to explain it as simply as possible. Instead of excluding people to be able to include people so that everyone can understand what you're saying so that everyone can get it. Because when you can take something and you can go through this process, because it's been proven that if you can explain something very simply in very simple language, you understand it long, you understand it and will remember it for a very long time. And so if you're trying to master the process of taking knowledge that you don't have in your brain right now and putting it into your brain, these are the four things you have to do. You have to get as much possible knowledge as you can around that subject. You have to take that subject. You have to get as much as you can into your head and physically write out anything that you feel is a

key point. The second thing you need to do is you need to write it out and you need to physically explain it out loud to somebody else or to yourself out loud. Third thing that you need to do is whenever you notice yourself getting stuck and you're messing up on a certain part, you're not explaining it the best that you possibly could. That is showing you where your knowledge is not as deep as it could. And you need to improve your knowledge in that subject. And then number four, what you need to do is go back and repeat it and be able to repeat it to a child, a 10 year old, so that anybody in the world could possibly understand it. When you can get to the point

where you can explain it to somebody, even if it's not that complex, even if it is extremely complex, and make it very simple for everyone else to be able to understand and include every single person in the earth versus exclude them of trying to speak over them, you have been able to take a subject

that could have been really hard to understand and you have been able to take a subject that could have been really hard to understand and you have been able to put it into your brain. That's the beautiful thing about this process is that you can master the art of learning if you use these four steps. So those are the four steps to learn anything that you want to faster. So that's what I got for you for today's episode.

If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.