How to 10X Your Learning From Others' Experiences You can choose to learn all by yourself or learn from others experiences.

"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." - Isaac Newton

The effective way to grow personally and in your carrier is to learn effectively every day. It's quite impossible to do all the mistakes yourself and learn from them. It would take years to master. High Achievers and medium achievers have one thing in difference. That is the effective learning and effective doing.

High Achievers use Smartcuts. Using a Smartcut doesn't mean they work less. They work really hard but in an effective smart way. You can choose to learn all by yourself or learn from others experiences. There is no one way of learning from others but here are few effective ways of learning from others which will boost your 10X learning.

Read

You must have heard this advice hundreds of times but yet it is an important mention. It's equivalent to being in present in spirituality. How much ever you learn, you would come to rock bottom of learning to be in present and most of the humanity is yet to learn it. Coming back to our topic on reading. Be an effective reader.

A lifetime of experiences is sandwiched between two covers in a couple of hundred pages. There is no better way of learning from the great people who can be your virtual mentors. If your reading speed is 15 pages/hour and you read an hour every day, you should be able to complete a book in just two weeks and almost 24 in a year. (General reading speed is 20 pages/hours). If you are completely new to reading, start with small books so you will build confidence of reading more.

Long Conversation Materials (PodCasts, Interviews, Case Studies)

Go with long conversation materials if you want depth of the subject. Podcasts, Interviews and case studies - I keep all these in the long conversation buckets. They really go in depth and are more human in that sense. Rather than just learning tactics or workflow, you will really learn how they did, what they thought and how they felt while doing.

Many experienced people may not have books but they certainly share a lot of information in interviews and podcasts. For example, Elon Musk didn't write a book by himself by you will learn a big deal from his interviews.

Find a Mentor

Robert Greene wrote in his book - The First stage of mastering something is Apprenticeship. Leonardo da Vinci did a 7-year apprenticeship to get his skills in drawing and sculpture. Find a Mentor who has traveled the journey you want to travel. Most of the Mentors are happy to give back and teach if you show real enthusiasm. As easy way to start working to find a Mentor is going to events or finding them on social networks. You will be surprised how open they would be to help you.

Do The Work

While learning from others is great. Real Learning comes when you do. You are not what is in your head. You are what you can do. While you try doing something new, you will find resistance from your own mind. I love the analogy Steven Pressfield said in his book "Do The Work'. He says you are the warrior and Resistance is the Dragon. Go fight the dragon. This is how you implement the learnings that you got from others.

There is only one way of fighting the resistance and its by doing work even if you find resistance in your mind. Once you do it enough, your mind will stop resisting and gets into a flow in your routine.

Ask for Feedback

Rapid feedback is the key to learning faster. Choose the people you are asking for feedback. Find people who have been there done that and can give effective feedback. Take all the feedback from people, don't argue trying to prove your point and overtime learn to seperate the necessary feedback from the noise.

Do these steps and you will have 10X effective learnings than you try learning all by yourself.