How to Learn Things Faster

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1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

1:58One day last year, as I was putting my nine-year-old son to bed, he asked me, Hey, Dad, can you take me to Card Party? And I was like, what's Card Party? And so he told me, there is this YouTuber who makes Pokemon videos and who's putting on a giant event for Pokemon fans. And at the time, my son was really into Pokemon, so he was really excited about this. and I asked him to show it to me. And when he did, when he pulled up Deep Pocket Monster, which is the name of the YouTube channel, I was like, oh, I know that guy. I know that YouTuber. He's my friend Pat. So Pat Flynn, maybe you know his name too.

2:37He's a great creator in the business space. He's written a bunch of books, has a podcast, built a blog that turned into a community called Smart Passive Income and more. And then while doing all of that, Pat also started making Pokemon videos on YouTube. And that's not my thing. So I didn't pay much attention to it, but it blew up. And so I said to my kid, sure, I'll take you to card party. Let's go see Pat. I figured it would be a small, cute thing. So we fly down to Orlando where card party is happening and we check into this hotel and then we go to the conference center where the opening show for card party is happening.

3:11And I walk in and I was like, oh man, I was not prepared for this. at all. This thing was huge. I don't know how many people were there, but it looked like thousands. Kids, parents, adults who just love Pokemon, and they all love Pat. And Pat is on stage running this thing like he is Jimmy Kimmel. He's fun. He's relatable. He's bringing up guests. He's holding contests. He's just seamlessly transitioning from one thing to the next. He's relatable to the audience. And I'm watching all this and I'm thinking, how is Pat doing this? Like, actually, how did he learn to do any of this? So people go, Pat, you you're like a Midas.

3:52Everything you touch turns into gold. And I'm like, no, but I figured out a framework to figure out things faster, learn from my mistakes and implement and achieve more. That's Pat. And the framework he talked about is something he just wrote down. Pat just wrote a new book called Lean Learning, How to Achieve More by Learning Less, basically explaining how he's learned to learn so many things. And the reason I wrote this primarily is because I have two kids who are entering their young adult life, a 15-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter. And I know the world they're living in. It's very overwhelming.

4:25There's a lot of information and it is very difficult to navigate. And Pat came to this theory. The problem with learning is that we try to learn it all. Like there is so much information available to us right now and we get stuck trying to absorb it instead of trying to put small parts of it into action. Because the truth is, we all have access to information today that we need. If information were the answer, we'd all be where we want to be. It's not that. In fact, we're at a buffet line of information now. And we as humans, we just want to hoard it all. I mean, I don't know about you, but I remember there was a point in time where I was subscribed to like 30 podcasts and I couldn't miss any of those episodes because I felt like if I did, I'd be missing out.

5:07We live in a new world now. And back in the day when Encyclopedia Britannica because it meant you were smarter and upper class because you could afford that information. Information's freely available now. It's not about that. It's about what you do with it and how you navigate through it and find success. So today on Problem Solvers, Pat Flynn is going to walk me through his concept for learning, how to achieve more by learning less. Coming up after the break. All right, I'm back. I'm talking with Pat Flynn, author of the new book, Lean Learning. He's got this framework for how to learn new things faster.

5:42But I started by saying to him, before we get to the framework, how would you articulate the problem in that, let's imagine someone wants to set out and accomplish some specific thing? What are they generally doing or what have they been taught to do or how are they interacting with all the information that's available right now that is not getting them to where they want to go? If you look at a graph or a chart of all the information available about a particular topic, you have an interest and you want to dive into it. Cool. We get excited. There is so much information just about that one thing.

6:17And we want it all because we want to set ourselves up for success. We feel like if we don't get all the information, we might make mistakes or fail. But the truth is there's only one or two percent of that information you need to get started. And the learning actually happens once you get going. It's the difference between just in case information and just in time information. And the way that I found success is by learning about what my next step was and then hyper-focusing on what I would need to master that next step, to do it correctly, right? Like, for example, my first book that I wrote in 2008, which was in fact a study guide for architects, I didn't know how I was gonna publish this book or how I was going to sell it or put it online, how I was gonna deliver it to people.

6:59I didn't understand any of that. And if I went through the process of going through everything that I needed to do to get it out there and sell it on my architecture website, I would have been overwhelmed. I would have gotten distracted. I probably would have found other avenues that would have piqued my interest or, very common, were like, oh, this is not for me. It's not coming easy, therefore I'm probably not gonna be good at it, so I'm gonna try something or hold back into my comfort zone. Rather, I knew that the first step was I just need to write the book. Once I have the book, then I'll figure out, okay, how do I format it?

7:29Okay, once I have it formatted and ready in a PDF file, well, then I'll figure out how to sell it. And the truth is when I had that book finally complete, because I learned how to do that, then formatted it, which I learned how to do at that time, I mean, I was driven to figure out how to sell it. It was so much closer. The momentum was building, right? So we have been conditioned to read the entire textbook and then take the test. Rather, let's take it chapter by chapter and implement and learn as we go, because a plan, a business estimate, a roadmap that you create and set out for yourself, sure, it's good, it's giving you direction, but we all know it never goes according to plan.

8:07And you learn by doing, and that's the biggest thing. The other thing that happens is because we are so easily able to find other people who are doing the kinds of same things we are, and we have access to Instagram and all these other moments, we have a lot of opportunities to get inspired by other things that are happening when we've already committed to something. And this is what I like to call a junk spark. So a junk spark is something that excites us just for a little bit of time and pulls us away from the things we've already committed to. And we get junk sparks every time we're on Instagram and the people we're following or the people that we're reading about, we're learning about the strategies and tactics they're using, or we're seeing their success.

8:44And it pulls us away from the action that we should be taking because we're like, oh, maybe I should do this instead. Maybe I should do that instead. It's bright light syndrome, squirrel syndrome, as we call it. And the truth is, if you can put the blinders on and not even focus on what other people are doing, it's hard, though, because we have FOMO. This is the biggest thing we're up against, right? Well, if I don't consume that really hot article that everybody's talking about, then I might be behind. I might miss out on something. And so it's this idea of not the joy of missing out, which is often that's a popularized counter to the fear of missing out, which is the joy of missing out.

9:18I don't believe in that because like you're kind of pretending or lying to yourself. No, of course you do. You do want to do those things. Instead, it's the joy of opting out, saying, OK, I do want to do this thing. I am conscious that I'm being pulled in this direction, but I'm going to opt out of that to re-opt into the thing I've already said yes to. We're just so distracted. But that's again, this book is not about how to defeat distraction. It's how to lean deeper into learning and finding the right people, mentors, resources to help push you forward. And, you know, it's simple, but it's hard.

9:48It sounds like what it's really about is how to get the thing done, not how to lose all your time studying how to get the thing done such that you never actually get the thing done. Because we often get overwhelmed by information, right, Pat? I mean, we might set out to do something, see that there is so much to learn, so much to know, say to ourselves, there is no way I will ever know all of this. And therefore, maybe it's not even worth doing it. As you were talking, I was thinking about what was the last thing I set out to do that I just didn't know anything about where there is a wealth of information available?

10:21And the answer was setting up a home studio. I had dreams for like two years of just getting a bunch of cool equipment so that I had a nice studio. It's a thing that looks, frankly, more like yours. Like you have this nice composed, like you're well lit. I was never that. I'm just a guy standing in front of a computer. And so I looked into it. I saw that there are endless courses on it. There's endless information. I could learn everything that there is to know about cameras and lenses. And I got, frankly, very overwhelmed. I ended up doing something that was, I think, similar to what you instruct people to do.

10:57But I want to hear your framework, your way in for someone who might be like me in that moment and feeling overwhelmed. Walk us into, I loved your way of saying just in time information versus just in case information. But how would you walk someone like me through getting into and actually actioning something that they want to do and they're getting stuck on all the information that they don't have? Yeah. The first question to ask yourself is, and I got this from Tim Ferriss, it's if this were easy, what would it look like? Love that question. That filter, that question alone helps you slow down and go, OK, well, what do I actually need to get going?

11:39And what am I just kind of putting in here? Because I think this is what I might need. and that question changed my entire life. If this were easy, what would it look like? If somebody's starting a YouTube channel, oftentimes, and similar to you in your home studio, I need the best equipment, I need to write all my scripts out, I need to master every little bit of this before I even get started because I want the first video to be perfect. But even in the space of YouTube, very clearly, there are only things you can unlock once you hit publish that will teach you like your retention graphs and how well you edit and how much faster you can get and optimize that.

12:11If this were easy, what would it look like? Well, I would just press record and talk about something that I have interest in talking about. Right. OK, do that. But what about this? What about this? But what about you'll learn those as you go. I spoke with MKBHD, Marcus Brownlee, who is a prominent YouTube tech reviewer, the biggest. And he told me on my show that his first 100 videos were for less than 100 subscribers. And so that was so powerful because I'm like, dude, you have like 18 million subscribers now in your first 100 videos. People don't even get to five videos because they don't think it's working because they're too worried about the numbers.

12:49That's the second half of this. Besides trying to simplify this pathway forward, thinking about the goals of what you're doing is really key, too, because a lot of times we get bogged down by not seeing results right away. So before you even get started with the thing, have your goals be something that you can control. If I was, again, I'm thinking about YouTube because that's just on top of my mind right now. If I'm helping somebody with YouTube, I would say count uploads, not likes. Count uploads, not views. And that is such a powerful thing because let's say you get 60 days into this. I'm going to publish two videos a week for 60 days.

13:27And if you cared a lot and more about the numbers and the vanity of it, then you might give up halfway through. And I remember when I started my shorts channel recently, this was less than 300 days ago, Jason. I started a shorts channel and I said, I'm going to go daily for 60 days. That's what I can control. Hitting upload and recording and publish. I don't know what the numbers are going to be, but I'm going to try to just get a little bit better every single day and practice what I like to call micro mastery, which we can get into. Day 25, 26, I was only seeing a couple hundred views a day.

13:56And normally I would have said, well, I'm trying everything I can. It's not going anywhere. I'm going to give up. But again, the views weren't the goal. You would set success at the thing that you were already working towards. Correct. So you could feel the progress towards success because you knew exactly what it would take to succeed. Correct. And if I got to 60 days, I won. Whether I had the big channel or not, I won because I actually gave it a chance and gave myself enough time to learn and try to master this thing as much as possible before I decide, okay, I'm going to put this aside or not.

14:31Too many people put things aside before they even give the thing a chance to do what they wanted to do. Now, what happened with the Shorts channel is around day 35, one of those videos hit a million views in 24 hours. And then all my videos started to grow from there. And currently now 270 days into it, we've had 2 billion views across TikTok, Reels, and Instagram, and YouTube. And it's just, again, something I had never done before, you know, shorts. And now what once took one hour to create now takes daily 10 minutes to create because I'm just doing the thing every single day. Now, as far as finding the information, like getting your first steps, you want to follow somebody who's gone through that path before.

15:10In the book, I talk about three different kinds of sort of mentors or people that you're going to need in your corner. I like to call them champions to help support you in what you do. And there's different levels, right? There's the emotional champion. And this is often a spouse or friends who can support you. They don't know exactly what you're doing. They don't know the steps or even maybe even what you're up to at all, but they're the emotional support. I needed that when I got laid off and when I've gone through tough times, just having a shoulder to cry or somebody to kind of vent to who can support you more emotionally and morally is really, really key.

15:41You can't do this alone. Then there's the colleagues and peers that you have. This is a support group, your mastermind group, if you will. These are people who are in it with you and they are kind of figuring things out as you go along with you and they might have things to share because they're just a couple steps ahead of you. You can help them, they can help you. These are your peers and colleagues, sort of like a round table of people that you surround yourself with. That's really important as well. And from them, you can get a lot of, okay, well, what did you do to go start your studio? What cameras are you using?

16:08How did you make it look like this? Going directly to somebody who's done it before can be much easier. And if you already have connections with them, start there. However, the best kind of support you can get is from a trusted mentor, whether it's a person that you hire or coach or you're an apprentice of theirs. These are the people who can teach you directly and literally guide you with blinders on across the entire spectrum of all the other information and people that are out there. You're following this one person and the steps that they took because they are stepping forward to help somebody who is in their position.

16:39They were in that same position not too long ago. So with those three kinds of champions in your life, you really can't fail. You have all the information you need. You have to trust, even though you don't necessarily know where this is going, if you take those first steps, you have to trust that the resources for step two and three and four are out there from the people and just the library of information we have access to that's there but don't even worry about that for now right now just hit record and for you jason for your studio it's like just i would say from somebody who's a colleague of yours lighting just focus on lighting don't worry about getting the right script i know that lighting is going to change so many things more than others so i would help you on your lighting even though there are are millions of other things you can do.

17:21Just let me help you nail that first. And let's focus on that. Let's fine tune that and get that right so that the next time you hit record, the lighting's already good. So now you can focus on how you start the hook of your videos. Okay, let's micro master that on your next three videos. We're going to master the hook of your videos because I know as a YouTuber, again, somebody who's done this before helping somebody who maybe hasn't focusing on the hook is going to really help with the retention of your YouTube videos. And the more that you can get people to stay on your video, the more YouTube's gonna push it out to more people.

17:52Okay, cool, you got your hooks down, great. You're learning from that, you're learning from others, you're watching and paying attention to other YouTube videos. When you watch them, you're hyper-focused on the hook and you're internalizing that, you're bringing it in. And then, okay, now let's focus on thumbnails. Now, who's doing good thumbnails? Where can I learn about that? Okay, I'm gonna buy a course about just thumbnails. I'm gonna watch all these videos that Mr. Beast talked about related to thumbnails. I'm gonna hyper-focus on that. And these things begin to stack over time. This is what I did when I learned how to public speak.

18:17something that I was deathly afraid of, never knew how to do before. And I would approach it as a micro mastery experiment, meaning one day I would go in and focus on just my hands. What would I do with my hands today? Okay, I'm going to watch TED Talks and read about public speaking, but specifically in the realm of what do I do with my hands? And then, yes, I go into a presentation, not just moving my hands around. I give the presentation, but it's hyper focused on that day on my hands. And then I learn it. It's internalized so that the next one I can go in and tell better story or the next one I can go in and learn.

18:48OK, depending on where you are on the stage, you can highlight and support certain moments of the story you're telling front of stage is bigger. It's grander. It's bigger moments in the presentation backstage. It's more vulnerable. It's more closed in. It's while you're telling a darker part of your story, like these little things that make you look like a master happen in small little moments over time. And so that's a big thing I do with all the work that I do is micro mastery, as I like to call it. Yeah, you've got this four essential steps that you list in the book. Number one, identify what you want to accomplish next.

19:20Number two, learn only what you need to move forward. Number three, implement what you've learned. Number four, review and repeat to refine the process to deepen understanding and skill. So Pat, as I'm listening to you talk and I'm thinking about applying this to what I did, which I haven't told you yet with the home studio that I wanted to set up, I am also thinking about this wonderful piece of advice about learning that I picked up from an academic a while ago, which I see infused into what you've shared here. So I want to tell you about it and then tell you what I've learned and then hear your reaction to it.

19:58So the academic, whose name I wish I could remember, this was a number of years ago, explained to me that learning is scaffolding. That was the imagery that she used, which I really loved. So the idea is that we learn by attaching new information to existing scaffolding. So if we don't have the scaffolding, if we don't have the basics of some information, that we don't have anything to attach new information to, which is why we won't remember it. So, for example, I love reading news stories about crazy things that we've discovered in space. A new black hole, a new something, but I read them and then I forget them.

20:33And it drives me crazy because I love this information. But the reason is because I don't have any foundational knowledge about space. I'm just kind of interested in it, but I don't have anything to attach this new information to. So I read the story about the black hole. I say that's so cool, but it doesn't advance any existing knowledge that I have of black hole. So I can't retain any of it. So I've lost it all because I didn't actually just start at the very basics and get going and build the scaffolding of knowledge that I need so that I can learn more. I take that and now I apply it to what I did with my home studio, which you don't see.

21:04Well, people who are listening to this don't see any of this, but you are in your nice home studio setup. I'm just standing in front of a camera, but I do have a home studio setup of elsewhere in this room that I'm talking to you. And here's what I did. What I did is I just found a list of recommended things to buy. A certain camera and a certain lens and a certain key light and a certain side light. And I just bought it. And then I just tried to figure out what looked good in front of me. And I am sure that I could spend hours and hours and hours learning about how to use every single piece of this equipment.

21:39But you know what? I don't need to know every single thing about all this equipment. I will never know all this thing. But I am finding that now that I got all this crap in front of me and I'm trying to use it, I am starting to understand the nuances of each little thing because now I've got it. And now every time I test something, I gain a little bit more understanding about what that is. And I feel like slowly, slowly, slowly I'm building my scaffolding. And in doing so, I think I've done exactly what you have taught in this book here, which is that I just started and I sat in front of this thing and I looked like crap, but I knew I had all the material.

22:13and then I just started futzing with it. And I got to the point where I'm actually pretty happy. And Pat, I am also happy that I don't know more about this stuff than I need to know. I'm happy that I didn't stuff my brain full of information about these lights and cameras because I'm not gonna be a lights and cameras guy. All I need to know is what looks good in my room so that I can understand how to make the videos that I wanted and the rest I can let go. And it's so freeing and it allows for more time to do other things, right? I remember when I was learning Photoshop for graphics and stuff for websites and things that I was doing in the early blogging days.

22:47I mean, Adobe Photoshop, there are a million things you can do with it. And I probably only use 0.05 % of the capability of Adobe Photoshop. That's all I needed it for. And I could have dove in and tried to figure all of it out just so I could be the master of Adobe. It's funny because I was pulled toward that direction. I wanted to learn more. All the buttons are there. What does this do? I'm curious. And that's what a lot of our lives are like. We have a toolbar that has a million different options everywhere we go. And it's up to us to understand what are the one or two things that would make the most sense for us to master within this giant toolbar.