How to learn anything faster and deeper (when you are busy)

Read time: 4 min

Hey my friend!

Do you want a better life?

Who doesn’t?

I am in my senior year of college.

I want to learn so many things and achieve a lot of achievements (buttery butter) but I have so many obligations.

I am also about to graduate which means I am going to have a full-time job.

I am about to start a real life (it freaks me out but everything is fine…).

Why do I want to learn and achieve many things?

Because I want to have a better life.

Everyone wants a better life but we face two most prominent challenges of our time:

1. There is no time

2. The world is moving freakishly fast

Do you know that feeling when you want to do this and that but you look at your calendar or just think about your days and realize you have almost no time to do any of those?

But you need to learn in order to get good at anything.

If you want to improve the quality of your life in any area, you need to get good.

But there is no time.

Dilemma…

The only solution I see is to learn anything faster and deeper.

It means to become good at something faster.

The world is moving fast.

Innovation requires new skills and knowledge.

Most of you will be left behind if you don’t catch up.

You cannot slow the world down, but you can speed up.

Two Things You Need to Speed Up and Deepen Your Learning

Alright, Merdan, then how?

If you combine these two things, you will be able to learn and build your dreams in record time:

• Deep Work

• Experience Framework

Deep work

I fell in love with this concept after reading the book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport.

I am involved in deep work every morning.

I write my newsletter (45 min) and 2 posts for LinkedIn (45 min) and engage with people on LinkedIn (45 min).

It feels amazing!

Deep work enables you:

1. To learn hard things quickly

2. To produce on an elite level, in terms of quality and speed.

3. To be actually productive

The opposite of deep work is shallow work.

After implementing this concept in my life, I have been managing school, work, building a personal brand, gym, and family without working after 6 p.m. the majority of days.

Some people work in a state of complete chaos when everything and anything can use their attention without any regard.

Some people work in a state of dead focus, muting the entire world and protecting their attention like their motherland during the war.

Shallow work is like US borders - it allows anyone in without proper examination.

Deep work is like North Korean borders - it allows nobody until the task is done.

When you work, you should isolate your attention from everyone and everything like North Korea.

When you are done, you can open it up like the United States.

Experience Framework

This model was inspired by Dan Koe.

You learn something on a deeper level only when you apply your learning to real life.

Throughout my life, I noticed that I learn the best when I apply my knowledge to some project.

For example:

• I learned how to plan, film, and edit YouTube videos and thumbnails by actually having a channel

• I learned copywriting by writing content on LinkedIn and a newsletter.

• In addition to all of these skills, I also learned marketing, persuasion, and branding by having these life projects.

My favorite thing about this model is that you can incorporate life with learning.

Every successful person can agree on one thing:

True learning comes from direct experience and immense focus.

Now let’s dive into how to implement a deep work and experience framework.

How to Perform Deep Work

This equation demonstrates the power of intense focus.

Let’s look at these examples:

3 hours * 10 intensity units = 30 quality score

2 hours * 90 intensity units = 45 quality score

1 hours * 170 intensity units = 170 quality score

Do you see the pattern?

If you increase your intensity of focus, you can decrease your time spent on a particular task or goal without losing any quality. In fact, you will do an even better job!

Here are 5 steps to increase your intensity of focus:

Decide On Your Philosophy

Cal Newport in his book “Deep Work” identified 4 philosophies that might fit your lifestyle:

The Monastic philosophy of deep work scheduling:

The practitioners of this philosophy have only one well-defined goal that bring value to the world (for example, writing novels).

They spend long, consecutive, uninterrupted time chunks working on their thing by disappearing like monks which allows them to eliminate any distraction.

If this is you, then consider this philosophy.

The Bimodal philosophy of deep work scheduling:

The practitioners of this philosophy divide their time between deep and open.

They disappear for a day or more to do deep work on whatever goal they work on and then come back to engage in their day-to-day lives and be accessible.

The minimum deep work time stretch is one full day.

The Rhythmic philosophy of deep work scheduling:

This philosophy is for busier people who cannot disappear for a day or more.

People who practice this philosophy schedule the exact time and duration of deep work sessions (90 minutes is preferred) every day.

They create a rhythm for their work or learning

The Journalistic philosophy of deep work scheduling:

This approach to scheduling is not for deep work beginners because it requires switching from shallow to deep mode in an instant.

People who use this approach, fit deep work sessions wherever they can in their extremely busy schedules (such as journalists) - 30-40 minutes increments.

It takes time to switch from one mode to another so if you are a newbie, this is not for you.

I personally chose the rhythmic philosophy where my deep work sessions are from 6:00 am - 7:30 am from M-W and 6:00 - 8:15 am from Th-F.

Choose whatever philosophy works for your schedule and goals.

Plan In Advance

It is as simple as determining in advance

• Time

• Location

• The task you are going to work on (either learning something or the better way is to work on something that will help you learn [experience framework ;)]

Eliminate Distractions

These are the things that help me:

1. Put your phone on “don’t disturb mode”

2. Put your headphones on

3. Choose isolated places where your friends and family cannot find you or wake up early before everyone else

Focus For 25

Get a timer and start by focusing only 25 mins at a time with 5-10-minute breaks (4 sessions of 25 mins).

As you become better at focusing, you can increase the time up to 60 minutes (then break is necessary).

Celebrate Lavishly

Crack open whatever you drink, sit back, and watch how your performance and learning skyrocket.

How to Implement an Experience Framework

This framework is very simple to use.

It consists of 4 steps:

Identify

Identify a problem in your life that you want to solve.

For example, I want to be financially free without working 9-5.

Narrow Down

Research with the intention of learning the ways of solving the problem.

For example, I found a way that I think will solve this problem - building a one-person business online.

Break Down

Now that you know the problem and the solution, you can break it down into quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily goals and what you going to do to achieve them.

Dive in

This is when you start learning at exponential speed and depth.

Research more and just dive into everything you need to learn to build a one-person business (in this case).

Experience framework makes learning effective because you have way more motivation to learn in order to solve your problem than passively learning something.

Combine deep work sessions with learning through problem-solving and you will be a learning machine.

Oh, did I mention that it would also improve your life tremendously? I think so.

I hope it was helpful and valuable for you!

Talk to you later,

- Merdan

P.S. If this letter was educating or entertaining to read, could you please share my newsletter with others who you think would like my content? Just share this link: https://creator-chronicles-letter.beehiiv.com/subscribe

P.P.S. Bereket means abundance and blessing in my native language - Turkmen.