Becoming an Advanced Learner

I’ve had the privilege to work with some extremely smart and successful people. Very quickly I came to the conclusion that these people know something others don’t, and they do something others don’t do. The real question was, what’s that?

It took me some time to understand what this thing is.

But I finally found it, and I‘d like to share it with you.

You see, there’s a huge difference between knowing something, and benefiting from it. Just knowing is simply not enough. Knowledge in action is the only thing that actually brings results. Did you miss it? Let me repeat it: Knowledge in action is the only thing that actually brings results!

That was the “secret” these successful people knew. No one told me about it. I came to it myself. But knowing this wasn’t enough. I had to experience it. And finally, I truly understood it.

I thought that reading a lot of books would make me smarter. From 2015 to 2018 I’ve read around 300 books. Somewhere along the way, I started to feel good about sharing with my friends the number of books I’ve read.

Soon enough, for me (for my ego, to be precise), it unconsciously became important to have read a bigger number of books. Yes, it’s a mistake that I’m not proud of. And I share it so that you don’t make the same one.

The faster I went from book to book, the less knowledge I actually acquired.

But that isn’t the worst thing. What’s worse is that I had completely stopped adopting the new knowledge. I didn’t apply it in my own life. So all of that reading had become pointless.

There’s a quote saying: The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who never learned to read.

And I would add: „The man who doesn’t apply what he learns, has no advantage over a stupid lazy slacker.“

Read, learn and apply new knowledge to improve your life! That’s what I call effective learning. That one skill that makes all the difference.

If you want to become an advanced learner, you have to make sure you have the right mindset for it. If you love learning and you enjoy reading, you’re halfway there. The other half is a bit trickier. In order to improve your life based on what you learn, you must be action oriented. You have to take action, as I already mentioned in the previous section.

Only when you apply the new things you learn in real life, you really make a change. Whenever you’re learning new things, always think of ways to test your new knowledge. Look for the ways to put it in action.

Here are few quotes from Jim Rohn, an American entrepreneur and author, shared in a Foundation for Success video course. These should give you a better idea of the mindset I’m talking about:

“For things to change for you, you have to change.”

“Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.”

“Don’t wish for [fewer] problems, wish for more skills.”

“It’s not [fewer] problems that make you successful, it’s more skills that make you successful.”

“Don’t let your learning lead to knowledge. You’ll become a fool. Let your learning lead to action, you can become wealthy.”

You get the point: read, learn, and take action to apply your new knowledge. It’s easy to say this, it’s much harder to actually follow through.

You just read this, and maybe learned something new. If so, take some action! Share this blog post on social media, tell someone about it, etc. There are many possibilities. Just take action!