Rapid Knowledge Acquisition & Synthesis: How to Quickly Learn, Comprehend, and Apply, and Master New Information and Skills (Learning how to Learn Book 11) By Peter Hollins

00:02:43 It’s Not About Smarts

00:11:24 Maybe It’s All About Avoiding Failure

00:19:23 More Effective Goal Formation

00:22:05 Style, Format, and Sources

Hear it Here - https://bit.ly/rapidknowledge

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DMZNGZ8

From novice to expert: tools and techniques to make your learning faster, deeper, and stronger.

Time to master the most important meta-skill of all: learning. Too bad you didn’t have this book years ago!

Scientifically-proven, step-by-step methods for effective absorption, retention, and comprehension.

Rapid Knowledge Acquisition & Synthesis is a collection of the very best methods to get ahead of the typical learning curve. You’ll learn how to create an environment for information absorption at shocking speeds. From scientifically-validated tips to best practices of some of the world’s smartest polymaths, you’ll get it all. Faster, deeper, stronger.

Directly from one of self-education's thought leaders.

Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with a multitude of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience.

Clear guidelines for every stage of the learning process.

•The most common obstacles of learning and how to overcome them.

•Single loop learning, double loop learning, and how to fundamentally change your comprehension mindset.

•Best practices for reading, note-taking, absorbing knowledge, and making things stick inside your brain.

•The most strategic questions to ask that will make information become memorable and 3d.

•Dual coding, REM sleep, shifting locations, the efficacy of variety, and catching your own blind spots.

Unlock the most important meta-skill of all: learning.

Make yourself recession-proof, upgrade-proof, competition-proof, absent-minded-proof, and stagnant-proof.

Rapidly acquire, absorb, and apply anything you come across .

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Rapid knowledge, acquisition, and synthesis. How to quickly learn, comprehend, and apply, and master new information and skills. Learning How to Learn, book 11, written by Peter Hollins, narrated by Russell Newton. Whether you’re a university student, trying to grasp a new skill or simply attempting to improve your performance at work, learning how to learn may well be the best skill you ever acquire. Whatever our chosen area of expertise, we’ll always fare better if we pay conscious attention to how we learn—whether that’s taking more effective notes, processing new information better, quickly comprehending material or simply learning to read lightning fast. How we learn is what gets us from Point A to Point B; it is the vehicle that we drive, and we can choose to arrive in a rusted jalopy, or a smooth and sleek Ferrari. We often assume there is only one way to learn, or that people will naturally find the optimal approach without trying too hard. We believe everyone learns through processes that they are most comfortable, and thus productive, with.

Nothing could be further from the truth—effective learning is a “meta skill” that improves our ability to learn all other skills, and it’s something we need to deliberately and consistently cultivate in ourselves if we hope to improve. This book is about learning—about how to become better at acquiring, processing and retaining knowledge and skills of all kinds. Learning is a complex process of being aware of, managing, comprehending, absorbing, synthesizing and recalling information on an ongoing basis. The better we’re able to manipulate and handle information according to our goals and needs, the more deeply we understand, and the more thorough our learning process. With that being said, why do so few people spend time developing their ability to learn? Why is there not more attention paid to learning for its own sake, or to sharpening those abilities that support and enable all our other ones? Unfortunately, becoming better at learning is seldom easy. There are obstacles that prevent people from fully exploring their intellectual potential, and have them operating at a lower, less efficient level out of pure habit.

This is why we’ll begin this book not with the techniques themselves, but with all the things that ordinarily impede our mastery of them. In removing our own resistance, we gain better access to better learning. It’s Not About Smarts Can you think of any potential obstacles to learning? If you’re like most people, you might have listed poor time management, not having great study skills or simply lacking intelligence. Maybe the kind of environments where you typically try to learn—home, school, etc.—haven’t been the most conducive to acquiring knowledge. Distractions, and negative past experiences such as bad teachers or boring, one-dimensional school curricula, are all reasons why someone might be turned off by the concept of learning something new. In rare cases, obstacles might also be presented by physical disabilities such as perceptual or memory issues. The truth, however, is that most learning attempts are jeopardized way before you get to the stage of sitting down to learn.

In other words, the obstacles that are most likely to derail your effective learning are usually psychological and behavioral, not strategic. This means that improving your methods may have a very limited effect in the first instance if you haven’t addressed the deeper barriers that are preventing you from ever getting started with them. Firstly, this is not a matter of laziness or a poor attitude. In fact, many of the mental and psychological obstacles we’ll discuss here are simply part of human nature, or are otherwise encouraged and even rewarded in our workplaces, schools and society in general. Human beings want to learn, in many cases, because they desire mastery. What is mastery except the ability to control and command something? Instead of being at the mercy of an unknown, we might seek to dismantle and understand it, so that it’s us who can then manipulate, control or predict the phenomena we confront in the world around us. But it’s this need for control that can actually backfire in the learning process.

In our struggle to retain control, and to avoid any state of vulnerability or ignorance, we may act in ways that actually limit our perspective and keep us failing harder and for longer. Stemming from this larger unconscious motivation is the need to think of learning as mere problem-solving, as something we do to “win”—over our colleagues, over our own weakness, over nature itself. It follows then that we’ll be squeamish and intolerant of “losing” (or what we characterize as losing) and so behave, again, in ways that actually ensure we lose all the more often. This is often a question of ego, pride, and the avoidance of the nasty feeling of failure. As you may have noticed in other areas of your life, this avoidance of pain can be a quite powerful motivator. Using learning and knowledge acquisition as a means to increase control also encourages us to be as “rational” as possible, to be infallible, perfect, complete. We will want things to follow neat, orderly and linear logic and be unable to bear uncertainty or ambiguity with any patience or nuance. Again, by doing so we only close down our field of possibility and force a narrower vision of learning on ourselves.

An attitude that approaches learning in this way may work in some contexts, for some of the time, but it will never be as good as approaching learning with a truly open, curious mind—one that is receptive, creative and willing to tolerate the unknown or feelings of incompetence along the road to mastery. One attitude is expansive, open-ended and curious. The other is fearful, controlling and narrowing. Both can lead to learning, but one path will be far easier and more successful! Being “bad at learning” is seldom a question of technique and more a problem of attitude or perspective. Today, there is a popular model proposed by psychology professor Carol Dweck outlining the difference between a “growth mindset” and a “fixed mindset." This model closely mirrors the fundamental differences in attitude one might bring to learning. A fixed mindset is just that—fixed.

Static. This is the person who insists that the experience of life come to them in a predictable, unalterable way. This is the person who believes that human abilities are inborn and that you either have or don’t have. Creativity, intelligence or being a fast learner are simply attributes you possess in an unchanging way. A fixed mindset implies a view of the world and yourself that downplays deep and genuine learning. After all, if you are already all that you can be; what more is there to learn? It would be largely impossible, beyond a few tiny improvements. You look at other successful people and assume that things were simply easier for them because they were smarter or more talented.

This close identification between skill and identity also means that failure is not just failure—it’s a damning statement about your worth as a human being. You don’t fail, you are a failure. With a fixed mindset, not understanding or knowing something is embarrassing and experienced as a deficit in character—something that should be hidden or denied. Not exactly the right conditions for learning to occur! On the other hand, a growth mindset sees learning in an entirely different light, as something that is dynamic, constantly moving, and always possible to change. With this mindset, we don’t see ourselves as saddled with an unchanging set of abilities, but rather as living and developing beings who can grow and improve with effort. Whereas a person with a fixed mindset will give up quickly (why try when you can’t do it immediately and easily?), the person with a growth mindset knows that struggling is just part of the process—they expect to feel a little stupid when they begin, and it doesn’t stop them. Failure doesn’t threaten their identity.

They’re OK with making mistakes because it doesn’t say anything about who they are. It’s merely a step in their journey, and they see all learning as a process that necessarily involves a little trial and error. While the person with a fixed mindset will avoid challenge and gravitate to only those areas where they can be assured of winning, a person with a growth mindset isn’t scared off by difficult tasks, by the feeling of being a beginner, or by having to try over and over before getting better. Put another way, these two mindsets see learning differently—fixed as a means of control, growth as a means of satisfying curiosity. One seeks to dominate and command the skill in question, while the other is willing to approach it humbly, to submit to the learning curve involved and become a disciple (i.e. one who takes a path of conscious discipline) to the process of learning, rather than merely wanting to rush to the flashy end result or outcome. Ironically, it’s those people who possess more raw intelligence who may be especially bad at learning. Being blessed with large amounts of talent can easily blind us into thinking that inborn skill is the only thing that matters.

Experts and professionals of all kinds can fall into a trap precisely because they have been primed by their own experience and past expectation—i.e., they are even less able to see the world clearly, with a “beginner’s mind” and an open-ended curiosity instead of a blanket assumption about how every problem should be solved. We also lose the chance to develop learning skills and techniques if we’ve skated by largely by the luck of a gigantic memory or talent of rapid understanding. Or, sometimes, we think that we’re good at learning when in fact we’re only habituated in one small, particular style of thinking that we have learnt over time. We may think we are being creative problem solvers, when we are really operating in a very narrow set of assumptions. Similarly, we may believe we are trying to understand the information in front of us, when in fact, what we are doing is not saying “what are you?" but “how can I control you and get the better of you for my own benefit?" Maybe It’s All About Avoiding Failure The fixed mindset rears its head in all matters of fear and failure. The inner monologue seems to go like this: “If I fail it will mean that I’m a bad person, and I can’t bear that.

It’s better that I don’t even try at all than try and fail." This only has the effect of sabotaging any positive effort and dooming it to failure before we even begin to learn. This particular obstacle can partner up with the previous one—when we feel pressured into a challenge we don’t feel equal to, we can unconsciously avoid, delay or pull back from our learning in an effort to never be judged a failure. If others’ expectations of us are high or unreasonable, procrastination can be something of a self-preservation tactic, designed to spare us from not performing up to scratch. But what’s so bad about failure, really? If we can uncouple our sense of self-worth from our performance, failure will no longer threaten us. Failure isn’t something we are, it’s merely something we do. A low tolerance for failure (or for poor performance, or bumbling around unskillfully) gives us a clue that we may be operating from a fixed mindset.

Author Stephen McCranie said, “A master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried”—and it’s true. Many of the most successful people today have suffered miserable failures before they experienced success. The founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, Jack Ma, is worth $36 billion today. However, as a college graduate, he was rejected for over thirty jobs, including one at KFC. Speaking of KFC, Colonel Sanders himself was rejected 109 times before someone would believe in his chicken recipe. Other big names like Walt Disney and Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, similarly faced hundreds of rejections. Yet, their persistence ensured that they would eventually be successful. The fact is that failure is not only possible, it’s likely.

It’s necessary. The massive proliferation of success stories deludes us into thinking that failure is only for the incompetent, that the successful are fated to be so. But in truth it is our failures that teach us what we need to turn the tide. When you were a baby, you didn’t simply get up one day and start walking perfectly. Instead, you bumbled along over a period of time, sometimes falling over, sometimes needing a little help, sometimes trying a new technique or reverting back to crawling. You would not have learnt to walk any faster if you had been judgmental of yourself, or condemned any fall as a “failure." When you resist failure, you are in fact resisting learning itself, since the two are inseparable. As Albert Einstein once said, “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new”.

A person who is learning a new dance choreography may try to do a complicated move forty times before mastering it. However, if they shy away from those forty “wrong” attempts, they never get it right. If you have a fear of failure, there are a few ways to tackle it: • Get to the root of what failure (and success) actually means to you • Work at redefining this definition for yourself, so that you truly accept failure as a necessary and valuable part of the learning process • Deliberately set out to fail. Make a plan to play around without any goal of how your efforts should look. Try things out, mess around and try to see what doesn’t work—the idea is not to perform and be perfect, but to grow, learn and experiment • Constantly remind yourself that you have value whether you succeed or fail, that who you are has nothing to do with your achievement on any one task • Try giving yourself mini rewards and accolades along the way, to mark your successes as “checkpoints” on the road to mastery. This will remind you that you are learning, even when you feel like you’re not making progress On the other hand, some people may unconsciously fear success. Why? It comes down to pressure again.

“If I perform well on this, then I set a new precedent and everyone will expect even more from me, and I don’t want that." Again the antidote is to disentangle your identity from your performance, and relinquish your focus on the outcome in favor of optimizing the process it takes to get there. Closely connected to the obstacle of fear of failure is low self-esteem, or the idea that we are worthless, useless or somehow not as good as everyone else. For those suffering from both, failure isn’t just a sign of incompetence, it is confirmation of what they suspected all along. If you sincerely believe that you will fail, or even that you are not deserving of success, then you will never really try wholeheartedly, and even if you do succeed at something, you will not acknowledge or enjoy it. As an example, a student may consistently do poorly at exams not because they are unintelligent or incapable of hard work, but because they don’t really believe they are the kind of person who deserves good things in life, or they think success and achievement are really for other people, and not them. Without even knowing it, they may jeopardize themselves, undermining their attempts even before they start, downplaying their achievements and setting up self-fulfilling prophesies that confirm their beliefs about themselves. To fix the problem, the instinct may be to praise yourself for what you achieve.

Teachers often resort to over-the-top compliments and admiration to get a student to believe in themselves, but this can backfire. As long as a person believes their value as a human being is tied into their performance on a task, they will never possess true self-esteem (or any sense of their own inner drive and motivation). An authentically confident person is able to say, “I did poorly on this task. That’s OK. I’m going to try harder next time” and never once assumes that they are lazy, bad, stupid or untalented. On the other hand, a confident person will also approach their achievements in the same way: “I did well on this task. That’s great, but I’m going to keep going,” without ever thinking that they are finished with learning for good and can now rest on their laurels. Again, it’s the difference between a growth and fixed mindset.

Sometimes, focusing on the final goal can be debilitating, since it only reinforces how far you have to go. Instead, if low self-esteem is tripping up your learning, try as much as possible to forget about the end goal, at least for a while. Make smaller targets or create objectives that are related to your effort and not the outcome. For example, tell yourself that you will spend an hour on your new venture each day, or read a chapter, or work on one section of your project. These goals are always achievable, whether you succeed or not. Goals like “get an A,” “beat my previous time” or “win such and such award” are trickier because you are not always in control of whether these will be fulfilled or not. You are always in control, however, of how much effort you make and the attitude you have when you pitch up to learn. More Effective Goal Formation Having said that, goals are still important.

However, it’s worth thinking about different kinds of goals, and the different functions they could serve. You’ve probably heard that it’s wise to make SMART goals—i.e. those that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Sensitive. This means that it’s better to say, “To improve my conversational English, I’m going to learn fifty new English phrasal verbs by the end of the month” instead of “I’m going to get better at English." Goals, however, can go further than this. We’ve seen that it’s easier to achieve process goals (“I’m going to study ten hours”) versus outcome goals (“I’m going to pass with a distinction”), but a goal is more than just a marker you set in the future. It’s a commitment, and a conscious decision for an intention that’s important to you. Your objective can be anything you want it to be; you could, for example, simply set the goal that you will face all the challenges you encounter in a new learning module with patience and determination.

This is a goal about the meta-learning process itself, rather than the specific content you’re studying. Goals always work best when they tap into your deeper motivation. We’ve seen that its harder to work on a thing that you don’t genuinely care about. Goals need to speak to your inner desires, and the reason why you are learning in the first place. It can be useful to imagine how you will be different once you have learnt what you need to learn or acquired the skills you want to acquire. Becoming better at anything is so much more than just acquiring certain skills or bits of knowledge—it also comes with a shift in perspective and attitude. Perhaps a more global, creative or compassionate worldview. Perhaps the maturity to not be freaked out by mistakes.

Perhaps the experience gained from having to be patient and trusting as the learning unfolds. The ability to take responsibility, to be proactive, to dig into what the goal really means for you…. If you can understand the motivational engine behind your goals, you know how to tap into that when learning is difficult. Whether you’re simply trying to learn something small and quick, or attempting a grand project that will take many years, your aim is essentially to transform who you are now into the version of yourself that is proficient in this area. What will that look like? And what will that take? Find out what your motivation is and you have won half the battle! Style, Format, and Sources Some barriers to your learning are obvious—the information you need to take onboard is simply presented in a confusing way that hinders your understanding, rather than helps it.

If you’ve ever had a terrible lecturer at university, you’ll know what a big difference presentation can make! Unhelpful learning environments can undo all your hard work. Think about the effect of constant interruptions, distractions, an environment that is too hot or cold, noisy, not bright enough, not private, or not comfortable. Think also about the form your learning materials take—are you relying heavily on text-based materials when you’re a more practically oriented, hands-on learner? Are you using poor quality or outdated tools or practicing with exercises or instruments that are too advanced for you? Especially if you’re embarking on self-teaching, you need to pay special attention to supporting your learning in every way possible. Invest time and energy into getting the right materials, tools, software, ingredients, teachers, and so on that you’ll need to do your best. Often, you’ll find that discovering these support materials only takes minimal effort.

Depending on the type of resources and the specific topic you’re trying to learn about, a few Google searches might well suffice in pointing you to productive tools for learning. However, keep in mind that popularity does not necessarily mean utility, and learning is not one size fits all. The fact that many people have tried or even found a particular resource helpful does not mean you will too. Instead, focus on descriptions and make informed choices based on them. If one mode of learning isn’t working for you, you don’t need to force yourself along—try something different. Ask a different teacher, source study guides or online forums, watch YouTube videos or get a practiced expert to show you in person. Listen to audiobooks or take notes according to your own learning preference. The more you mix things up, the better (we’ll explore this more later in the book).

If you’re not doing well with some study materials, you might find you can learn a lot by designing your own improved materials, or supplementing as you see fit. Whatever your area of learning, use plenty of imagery and metaphor, mnemonics, video and audio, presentations or podcasts, webinars, tutorials, hands-on practice, mind mapping diagrams, summarizing or even compiling a lesson to teach others. The important thing is that you proactively take charge of your own learning. If you encounter difficulties, become curious about why, and find a path around it. If you’re disorganized, spend an afternoon devising your own protocols that are completely unique to you. If you’re unimpressed with your teacher or trainer, get another one, or seek out a few different teaching perspectives. Sometimes, you learn best when you are forced to forge your own path. Be glad when you have the opportunity to really puzzle your way through a challenge—it’s often the knowledge you attain while struggling that is best anchored in your mind.

Takeaways • Learning new things to increase your knowledge and skill set sounds good in theory, but many of us hesitate to try learning something new. We cite common excuses like not having enough time, not having access to good resources, or fearing failure in new endeavors. Our years in school have left us with the impression that learning is one-dimensional and utterly boring. Yet this is far from the case. Here is where learning how to learn becomes so important. • Those of us who are afraid to learn are often unknowingly suffering from a fixed mindset. This way of thinking assumes that people are born with a static set of qualities and talents that never change. If we aren’t immediately successful at something, we just don’t have what it takes.

Yet this sort of thinking is extraordinarily unhelpful, as it prevents us from exposing ourselves to new skills and knowledge. Fixed mindsets are particularly common in people who fear failure, have low self-esteem, or excuse themselves by pretending to be too busy. For them, failure isn’t a natural part of learning, but a damning indictment of one’s abilities. They fail to recognize that mistakes are as natural as breathing, and that learning well necessarily involves failing, and failing repeatedly. • However, if we adopt a growth mindset wherein the possibilities for development and expansion are endless, we find that we are much more open to learning, as well as failure in learning. Some common issues that people face when trying to learn new things include not forming their goals properly, and failing to discover good resources to study. While both of these issues are surmountable for those with a growth mindset, they become impossible to overcome if you have a fixed mindset that refuses to consider more than one option. As such, cultivating a growth mindset is essential to learning new skills and acquiring more knowledge.