How to Become an Expert in Anything FAST (and think like a genius)
a 3-step framework to speak like an expert and think like a genius
The video version of this newsletter:
it’s simple if you know what to do (and herein lies the problem)
A genius is someone who has developed their own unique and deep understanding. They can explain complex topics in their own way that's individual to them and how they confront the world. This is why experts can solve problems that most people can't.
The smartest people in the world are not any different than you.
But they do learn things differently.
This newsletter will teach you how to become an expert at anything, fast. The framework has 3 steps:
Pre-Learning (define success criteria)
Consumption (focus, apply, identify gaps)
Understanding (make it your own)
Want to become an expert in anything?
Do you want to learn how to think like a genius?
Let’s begin.
no matter how hard I try, I just cannot f*cking learn this
Just because you got good grades in school or have a fancy degree, doesn’t mean you’ve learnt a thing.
When I was younger I had a lot of dreams:
I wanted to be big and strong
I wanted to be confident
I wanted to be able to speak to people
I didn’t want to be sad and miserable all the time
I wanted to stop suffering stupidly inside my own mind
Thus, I wanted to learn about these things in order to change the way I lived.
But it always felt like I never knew how. This never made a lot of sense to me.
I was really good at school, and I always hated it.
Trying to memorise my Irish essays, word for word, was absolute torture. I got the highest grades in my school’s history at the time, and yet, I went into the world feeling lost.
I was a master at remembering but a fool at understanding.
Literal hell on Earth.
Surely this isn’t how the greatest minds of the past developed their intellects? Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Jung; the list could go on for hours.
How the f*ck did they think the way they did? How can we do the same?
so… anybody can do it?
Yes.
But only if you realise this.
the modern-day learning lie
The answer is not information consumption.
It never has been.
Reading 52 books a year will never transform you into a deep thinker
Studying for 6 hours everyday does not make you an A+ student
Watching hours of educational content on YouTube or TikTok does not mean you’re actually thinking
Content, in other words, information, is always presented in a way as to make it seem like it does all the thinking for you.
This is the modern-day learning lie.
Content, be it a newspaper, a book, a media outlet, or an Instagram reel does not think for you.
And it never will.
Being informed is not the same as being enlightened. Just because you know something, does not mean that you actually understand it.
Merely knowing something, is not the same as knowing something, understanding why it happens to be the case, how it relates to the world, and whether it is true or even relevant.
This is what separates the deepest minds from the shallow ones.
why most people fail at learning
Most people are obsessed with chasing titles.
We’re more concerned with having the “piece of paper,” given to us from an esteemed university, while ignoring what’s actually important:
Skill acquisition
The ability to solve problems competently
The ability to turn information into actionable knowledge
The transform your identity into one of a competent thinker
A month ago, I successfully graduated from college with a Bachelors degree in Multimedia from Dublin City University.
The best skills I acquired from the entire course?
My jiu-jitsu blue belt :)
I got my degree. But I didn’t learn a thing.
It wasn’t until I read Adler’s How To Read A Book, that it all changed.
It felt as though I had shattered the glass window through which I viewed the world my entire life.
I realised that I had never learned how to think.
I knew how to remember, but I didn’t know how to comprehend.
My entire conception of how I read books changed once I went from trying to remember only “what” I read, versus:
Understanding what was being said and how in a logical, structured way
Evaluating whether what I was reading was true or false
Knowing why it was true or false
Fully grasping what the author was trying to say and why
Being able to talk about the concepts in my own words
I don’t think that reading books is a specific skill; it’s a broad skill that applies to learning anything.
Information is information, and it doesn’t just come from books. And understanding something is not just limited to the written page.
It applies to anything.
If only I’d have had this learning framework back in college.
It would have changed everything.
Let me explain.
what do the “experts” do differently?
This is why most learners fail to escape the beginner’s trap:
Most people confuse information activity for learning progress.
Have you ever read an entire book, but within a few days, you’ve completely forgotten everything you read?
This is because there’s a huge difference between surface level knowledge and deep understanding.
preparing beats consuming
You don’t just open up page one of a book and start reading.
You must go into any form of learning with a plan of attack.
What separates the beginners from the experts is the first step in this framework.
Experts place more attention on preparing to learn, than the actual learning itself. You wouldn’t venture out into the darkness without a light? So, why give yourself a goal with no actionable plan?
Do not go into learning blind.
You need to know what you need to learn in order to gain clarity.
Directionless learning has destroyed more minds than hard concepts ever will.
You feel lost when learning because you’re wandering around a desert.
You don’t need study harder; you just need more clarity.
understanding = 80/20 rule
Here’s your golden rule for creating your learning plan:
80% of your understanding will come from 20% of the material.
It’s the Pareto principle.
Think about the most important concepts that relate to your topic.
Don’t get lost in the details.
Less is more, especially when it comes to understanding something.
If you can understand a topic in your own way, there will be not limit as to what you could potentially say about it.
Thus, simply being able to recall information ceases to be important.
But what if you do have a plan?
What if you’ve written down your key concepts, but no matter how hard you try, you cannot get your mind working whatsoever?
Nothing seems to “stick.”
the 3 essentials
If you cannot retain information, you’re missing one of these three things:
Focus
Application
Gap Identification
You cannot learn if you are not focused on learning itself.
Nothing will ever “stick” if you cannot apply it to something in your life, be it your daily life, or a problem in your mind.
Moreover, you will always struggle to improve yourself if you cannot identify your weaknesses and the gaps in your understanding.
If you can master these 3 things, becoming an expert will only need consistent practise and dedication.
FRAMEWORK: become an expert with these 3 steps
To be as effective as possible, learning must be done systematically.
If you want systematic help with this, I made a prompt that guides you through becoming an expert in anything in 30 days using this exact framework.
These 3 steps would have fixed my rigid thinking leaving school, instantly changing me from a master of remembering to an expert at understanding.
If you have no learning framework encased within your mind, you will waste countless hours struggling to learn, simply because you don’t know how.
This framework will change you from being an information consumer to an intellectual creator.
You’ll be able to build up your own understandings of multiple complex topics, concepts, even physical skills.
And through these newly built understandings, you will actualise your potential and become more authentic in the process.
Give this framework 30 days and you’ll go from being a shallow thinker to making everything you consume your own.
This framework has 3 steps:
Pre-Learning
Consumption
Understanding
Mastery is easy if you know how to get there. Here’s how to reach it:
step 1 - pre-learning: define success criteria
You need to define your criteria for success. If not, you will always be aimless like most students today (my past self included).
Only doing a single jiu-jitsu class might be “success” to me. But it could also mean “failure” to the full-time jiu-jitsu athlete, or be deemed “impossible” by guy who hates the idea of rolling around with sweaty men.
The same idea applies to learning anything.
Success is distinct to you and your needs. And by defining them carefully, you give yourself a clear metric for achieving it.
If you don’t know what to learn, and why, you’ll become directionless. You’ll waste thousands of hours chasing an invisible goal. I was a victim to this through all my school years.
Clarity is clear, and less is more.
Only devote a small portion of time to this phase.
Think a couple hours at most.
the 4 pre-learning questions
Within these hours you must answer the following questions:
What are the major concepts to learn?
What order should I learn them in?
What would be the most efficient way to study this subject or skill?
Are there any prerequisites in order to learn this subject or skill?
I’ll end this step with a warning (that I’ve personally fallen to on countless occasions).
Beware of the planning fallacy.
Excessive planning can easily turn into motivated procrastination.
Set a hard deadline and do not cross it.
This will stop that unnecessary pain of feeling lost when starting to learn something.
Once you have your map, it’s ready to start your journey towards enlightenment. It’s time to start consuming.
step 2 - consumption: focus, apply, gap identification
In order to become an expert at anything you need 3 things:
Focus
Application
Gap Identification
focus
This is a necessity. In order to keep focused, you must learn actively. When consuming information, consistently ask yourself these questions:
What is being said?
What is the reasoning behind what is being said?
How does this apply to a particular problem or question (or my personal life)?
Do this moving from chapter to chapter, page to page, concept to concept; always have these questions at the forefront of your mind while trying to learn anything.
Passive learning will always be less effective than active learning. Without deliberate focus, your brain has no reason to change. When you deliberately pay attention to something, you signal to your brain that it’s important, and it adapts accordingly.
There needs to be a reason to change; this is the purpose of focus. If you give something your attention, and actually mean it, you deem it valuable and worthy of attention. Hence, the brain will change if you give it reason to change.
application
Aristotle said that the purpose of knowledge is action. Learning for learning’s sake is pretty pointless.
Why?
You need to solve problems with what you learn in order to make it a deep part of how you understand the world.
A problem can be physical or metaphysical; a question, a solution, a particular place on your mental shelf.
Always consider the big picture, especially with regard to how what you’re learning applies to your daily life. This will make it stick.
Again, why?
Context and relevance is more important for learning than repetition ever will be.
Competence, is birthed from the ability to solve everyday problems.
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems quickly, efficiently, and effectively.
Always be thinking about how what you’re learning solves something.-
gap identification
It doesn’t take 10,000 hours to become a master.
It takes 10,000 hours of making mistakes and learning from them to become a master
Instead of trying to memorise everything, notice areas where your understanding is weak. Is there a problem you don’t know how to solve? A question you cannot answer satisfactorily?
Think about a test.
You open it, and see that you are unable to answer some questions.
This is how knowledge gaps are exposed; when you cannot give an answer to a problem.
Lean into these gaps and fill them in. Isolate them, give them extra attention. Repeatedly test your understanding of these gaps over time until you can fully articulate them in your own way.
Once you can start solving problems, that were originally unsolvable to your set of eyes, congratulations.
Your areas of weakness have transformed into areas of strength.
step 3 - understanding: make it your own
You become an expert at something when understanding becomes intuitive. This is where the real fun begins.
Think annoying your girlfriend at breakfast with an intellectual debrief on a topic or concept for 20 minutes straight without stopping (I am not sorry for annoying my girlfriend, this is necessary, so get f*cked).
It happens naturally with little effort, and problems can be solved in a moments notice in a way unique to you.
This is the definition of true creativity.
How you solve a specific problem, or answer a particular question.
if it’s working
You can see ideas connecting across multiple disciplines:
Philosophy
Psychology
Literature
Mythology
Theology
Physics
Biology
History
Once you start seeing dots connect across multiple disciplines, and new ideas being born out of them, you’ll know your understanding is improving.
Forming your own understanding is how you give new innovations to a particular field. You give away a part of yourself to the furthering of humankind.
This is the biggest tool I lacked leaving secondary school and college:
If you can explain it in your own words, you’ve mastered it.
One objection you might have is that this is all too slow. What if you fall behind everyone else? What if you’re unable to catch up with the experts?
This is the wrong mindset to have. Taking your time means you’re being deliberate and intentional. This is the strength of this framework compared to other vague learning frameworks. It prioritises deep thinking and reflection.
Wide learning is shallow learning, but slow learning is deep learning.
This is how you actually start to think for yourself, and learn to finally feel authentic.
You’ll stop using other people’s words and feel empowered through using your own.
become an intuitive expert
Become a thinker.
Pick one subject.
Pick one book.
Pick one martial arts position or concept.
From my experience, the differences become huge within about 1-2 weeks. Give it an entire month? Total transformation.
If you can explain it in your own words, you’ve mastered it because you’ve made it your own.
You don’t need to remember everything you read. You don’t need to memorise a thing.
What you do need is to create your own understanding.
This is the biggest lesson I took from Adler’s book. I didn’t just begin to understand books more. I finally began to understand life.
how I use this framework
Recently, I’ve been using this framework to:
Study English grammar
Read Carl Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul (I’m 67% of the way through my first surface-level right now. Subsequent re-readings will be for developing my understanding)
Study the jiu-jitsu instructional series “Short Offense” by Justin Flores’s JFLO Academy online
If you’d like to see how I make the time to do all of these things across the week, you can see how I plan my life in last week’s newsletter.
Or, if you’re ready to become an expert within the next 30 days, use the prompt I made to help you complete the 3-step framework in a fraction of the time.
If a random dude who spent years memorising Irish essays can learn to think deeply, so can you.
what will you choose to understand in your own unique way?
Start your timer.
Spend 2 hours pre-learning.
Start filling in those gaps in your mind.
Because what if the fate of humanity rests upon your unspoken understanding of the world?
- Profound Ideas
Prompt Library is now live for paid subscribers
I’ll be uploading 1-3 prompts over the next month.
Leave a comment if you have any specific requests.
Here’s the first three prompts:
Prompt: Become an Expert in Anything FAST (this newsletter!)
previous newsletters
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Think of having Aristotle as your own personal habit coach. With this short eBook, you can build unlimited habit planners/templates suited to your unique needs and limits.
Don’t pay 99c when you can get it now for free.
The promotion ends this coming Tuesday, July 22nd.
You can also read it for free here on my Substack.
Happy reading!
thank you for this comprehensive article! the more we learn, the less we feel that we know. it is so important to truly engage with what we are learning, to challenge our own assumptions and beliefs systems, and to be conscious of applying our newfound learnings.
Great article! I wonder how many people are wasting their time “learning” rather than understanding.