Learn How to Learn Anything with these 9 Powerful Concepts
Learning is the master skill: learn how to learn, and you can become -- and achieve -- anything you want in life. Here's how to do it.
My brain buzzed from the pressure, felt like it would explode. Like no way out.
In 2017, I had lost my dream career and found myself down bad working as a security officer for $12/hour. I had no other professional skills and my degree was unfinished.
All I knew is I needed to make more. My life was wasting away on monotonous patrols, and my family was suffering at home under financial stress.
I had no money for courses or to hire coaches…
…but I did have a secret weapon:
Learning.
Or, more precisely, I knew how to learn, but hadn’t applied myself yet.
Over the next 10 months, I started learning like a madman, pooling together all my knowledge and discovering what worked and what didn’t.
The end result:
I successfully changed careers, increased my salary by over 227%, and figured out what works and what doesn’t.
There’s a lot of static, misconceptions, bad advice, and just plain myths floating around about learning.
Out of that experience and research, nine principles floated to the top for me, and I’ve used them for every major upgrade to my life since then. You can, too.
Here are the 9 powerful, universal learning concepts at a glance.
Growth Mindset
Learning Process
Learning Models
Spaced learning
Interleaved practice schedule
Variable practice schedule
Sleep for learning
Exercise for learning
Social learning strategies
Now let’s discover how to learn.
What is Learning?
The technical definition of learning might surprise you, but it’s important to know if you want good results.
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), learning is the “acquisition of novel information, behaviors, or abilities after practice, observation, or other experiences.”
We want to focus on the behaviors part here.
We want to acquire skills, not just fill ourselves with information about things. This is how you enjoy more hobbies, do better in school, or upskill yourself to the next level of your career.
Growth Mindset
Learning starts when you believe you can learn.
Carol Dweck took this important concept, labeled it “growth mindset,” and brought it into mainstream consciousness.
Dweck describes growth mindset as a belief that abilities, intelligence, and skills can be developed through effort and perseverance—learning. This mindset contrasts sharply with a fixed mindset, where people believe abilities and intelligence are innate and unchangeable.
Growth mindset is process oriented, emphasizing effort, the value of making mistakes, and resilience.
The only thing between you and the skills you always wanted is to start practicing and seek knowledge.
You don’t have to start perfect, and you don’t have to go fast.
But you have to believe you can learn.
And just start.
The Learning Process
Learning is a process, not a singular outcome.
Or, put more like Bruce Lee, it’s a journey and not a destination.
Learning is extremely complex, and you’ll never figure it out if you approach it thinking that it works like addition and subtraction or thinking you need to do thousands of rote reps over long, boring practice sessions.
Here’s everything you need to know about learning to start learning efficiently and productively.
Learning is Nonlinear
This is one of the most important things for you to know as a learner.
The famous hockey stick curve holds for brand new beginners, but learners quickly realize that the learning curve doesn’t look like a hockey stick trajectory.
Instead, one’s learning journey looks more like an erratic sequence of hills, valleys, plateaus, and leaps.
The human learning system is what’s known as a complex nonlinear system. That’s science talk that means for whatever you put into the system, you’re not exactly sure what will come out.
It’s not a 1-to-1 relationship. A better known example of this is the butterfly effect.
All this means if you get a performance gain from a certain amount of practice, increasing practice time by 200% will not necessarily improve performance by 200%.
There’s a rate of diminishing return for all learning activities, and skill practice is a lot more complex than ramming through repetitions and putting in time.
(As you’ll discover later in the article, breaks and frequent change in practice methods are actually extremely powerful learning strategies.)
Here’s another kicker:
Part of becoming better at a skill sometimes entails a temporary decrement in performance, too. This is totally normal, and you’re not getting worse.
Armed with this knowledge, you’re ready to start learning like an expert.
Which is a perfect segue to the power and utility of a learning model.
Learning Models
Learning models are descriptors of the phases of the learning process. Learning models help you make sense of the experiences in your own learning journey.
There are many robust learning theories. Here are six of the most popular:
Behavioral Learning Theory
Cognitive Learning Theory
Constructivist Learning Theory
Social Learning Theory
Experiential Learning Theory
Ecological Learning Theory
These theories have produced an exponential number of associated learning models.
Addressing all of the theories and their models is too much for this article. Instead, I’ll address the most popular learning framework/model (Bloom’s) and the model I personally find most useful.
Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning
Bloom’s Taxonomy, developed in 1956 by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and his team, is a way to categorize learning objectives for educators. It’s the most popular learning model among cognitivist learning theorists.
Originally designed to provide a way to assess learning, Bloom’s Taxonomy breaks down cognitive skills into hierarchical levels, each getting more complex.
Its chief purpose is to help educators structure curriculum, assessments, and instructional strategies to develop higher order thinking in students.
The original 1956 Boom’s taxonomy had six levels of cognitive skills: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation.
Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (2001)
Educational theorists Lorin Anderson (a former student of Bloom) and David Krathwohl revised the taxonomy to reflect the current understanding of learning in the scientific and scholarly literature.
The revision updated the language and re-ordered the levels:
Remember
Understand
Apply
Analyze
Evaluate
Create
The taxonomy is a starting point for education, particularly for curriculum and assessment design. Teachers use it to write learning objectives, assess learning outcomes, and design assessments that move from lower to higher order thinking skills.
Gibson’s Ecological Learning Model
Profession J.J. Gibson is most famous as the founder of ecological psychology, a theory of perception and action. Out of this theory he developed another, known as direct learning, which produced the learning model we explore in this section.
Gibson’s learning model is called ecological because it places greater emphasis on the external factors mediating learning than the more internally-focused approaches associated with cognitivism and constructivism.
Gibson’s ecological model of learning is simply described as education of intention, education of attention, and a process of calibration.
Education of intention: What is my objective?
Education of attention: Where do I find the right information to act upon?
Calibration: Which learning environments optimize my actions?
The ecological learning model is closest to experiential learning theory and also floats somewhere between the behavioral and constructivist learning theories.
Personally, I prefer the ecological model because it simplifies the process of learning into three cyclical phases.
The ecological model also gives a clearer idea of how to structure your practice and gain expertise by stressing (a) the importance of intentions and (b) knowing where to find the right information to act upon. These two factors are most important for good decision-making.
Practice Structure is the Secret to Incredible Learning
Learning theory is good and all, but how do you apply this stuff in actual practice? Here we explore—but only just scratch the surface—of how to actually create your practices.
There are so, so many ways to design, structure, or schedule your practices. Too many to cover. But fortunately, the science on learning has already pushed a few strategies to the top for us.
In this section, I’ve pulled out the broadest and most useful principles I’ve ever come across in research and my own practice.
Spaced Repetition
Spaced repetition is a learning technique that involves reviewing information at increasing intervals to improve long-term memory. Spaced repetition has strong scientific support for memorization.
Spaced is based on the psychological spacing effect, which shows that revisiting information at increasing intervals helps improve long-term memory retention.
Here’s how it works.
Break Information into Manageable Chunks. This makes the process less overwhelming and allows for easier tracking of progress.
Make a Review Schedule. Begin with shorter intervals and gradually increasing them over time. For example:
First review: Right after initial learning (e.g., within 1 day)
Second review: A few days later (e.g., 3 days)
Third review: One week after the second review
Subsequent reviews: At 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, etc.
Test Recall Actively. Each review should involve active recall: trying to remember an answer or concept without looking at your notes first. Research shows that active recall, combined with spaced repetition, significantly improves retention (Karpicke & Blunt, 2011).
Assess and Adjust. Track your progress and adjust intervals as needed. Some concepts might require shorter intervals if they're harder to remember, while easier topics should be reviewed less frequently.
Common spaced repetition systems include flash cards and flash card-based mobile apps.
Spaced practice schedules are best used for memory-base activities, such as tests and quizzes for school.
On its own, it’s not good for building dynamics skills, like playing chess or basketball. For these skills, you should combine spaced learning with interleaved and variable practice schedules for best results.
Interleaved Practice
Interleaved practice is a learning strategy that involves mixing multiple topics or skills within a single study session. This is opposed to focusing on one subject or skill repeatedly (known as blocked practice).
Interleaving forces the brain to differentiate between topics, improving the ability to apply knowledge flexibly and enhancing long-term retention.
Here’s how it works:
Rotate Topics. Instead of studying one topic intensively, alternate between related concepts. For example, when learning algebra, a student might switch between equations, functions, and inequalities in a single session.
Promote Practice Differentiation. The brain is required to choose the right approach or formula depending on the context, reinforcing the ability to distinguish between similar concepts and make the right decisions.
Randomize Sessions. Use varied topics or problem types in a random sequence, preventing reliance on patterns.
Interleaving is most effective as a practice design for subjects requiring problem-solving, pattern recognition, or decision making, according to a 2019 meta-analysis from Psychological Bulletin. Examples include mathematics, science, language acquisition, and sports.
Variable Practice
Variable practice is training that frequently changes practice tasks so that the skill can be repeated in different situations. Variable practice is also known as varied practice, random practice, differential learning (a contemporary model), and other labels.
Variable practice doesn’t work in a clean sequence. Rather, it’s about understanding the different elements of practice and practice tasks that can be changed to create my dynamic challenge to a learner.
Here are important principles of designing variable practices:
Alter elements that affect how the skill is executed instead of repeating the same task in the same way. For example, in sports, an athlete might practice shooting from different angles or under varying levels of pressure.
Practice under varied conditions. In language learning, this might involve using new vocabulary in different contexts or with different sentence structures each time, for example.
Scale complexity, starting with small changes, gradually increasing the variability. For a piano learner, this might mean practicing a piece at different tempos, then adding in dynamics, and eventually shifting the key.
Track improvements and adjust practice challenge as skills improve. When a task becomes easier, add new variations and related problems to continually challenge your adaptability.
Variable practice is fantastic for retention and transfer of learning—the ability for what you practice to show up when you need it during performances.
Variable practice lends itself to better transfer because it forces you to become more adaptable as a byproduct of navigating so many different variations of doing a skill.
Variable practice design is best for any activities involving decision making and problem solving, especially sports. Pro tip: it gets supercharged if combined with interleaving.
Sleep for Learning
Sleep is critical for learning. Research shows sleep strengthens the brain’s ability to consolidate short term memories into long term memories, especially during deep sleep stages.
In a study where participants learned specific tasks, the brain replayed the neuronal patterns associated with the learned material during sleep and solidified the new knowledge, according to Journal of Neuroscience.
Lack of sleep, on the other hand, impairs memory and problem solving ability.
In fact, a study found that students who prioritized sleep over cramming did better in tests—so sleep is needed across the learning period not just before exams (University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine).
Further, deep sleep stages, like slow wave sleep, are important for memory retention, preventing a stagging reduction in recall by up to 40%, according to the NIH. This is because sleep helps the hippocampus move memories from short term to long term storage in the brain. Even small a amount of sleep loss can meaningfully affect cognitive performance and memory.
Get enough sleep!
Exercise for Learning
A 2011 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that moderate aerobic exercise increased hippocampal volume by 2%, effectively reversing age-related cognitive loss by one to two years among older adult and improved concentration and attention.
A meta-analysis found that aerobic exercise improved attention span and cognitive flexibility by up to 20% across different age groups, making it particularly beneficial for tasks that require sustained focus.
It’s clear that exercise has profound effects on learning and cognitive function. Several more studies highlight that physical activity not only improves mental acuity in the short term but also promotes long-term cognitive health.
So dust of the old running shoes and reactivate your gym membership.
Social Learning Strategies
Social Learning Theory was first developed by Albert Bandura in 1977. The theory is that we learn behaviors, attitudes, and emotional responses from others.
Social learning theory combines cognitive and behavioral approaches, we learn in social contexts through observation, imitation and modelling, not just through direct experience or reinforcement.
You don’t have to buy social learning wholesale to incorporate aspects of it into your own learning strategy. There are two strategies you can engage in that are almost learning hacks, considering how effective they are.
Those two strategies are study groups and communities of practice. Which one you choose depends on the context of the skills you need to develop.
Study Groups
Study groups facilitate learning through peer collaboration and support. It’s an interactive setting where students discuss material, clarify misunderstandings, test their knowledge, and reinforce what they’ve learned safely away from an instructor. Lagging students especially benefit from the knowledge and ability of more gifted students.
The effectiveness of study groups can be attributed to several factors rooted in educational psychology, especially Bandura’s Social Learning Theory.
Study groups are best for academic contexts, but occasionally form as part of a hobby or extra-academic intellectual pursuit.
Communities of Practice
Communities of Practice (CoPs) are groups of people who share a common interest or expertise and engage in collective learning through collaboration, sharing knowledge, and refining their practices.
The concept originates in the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in the early 1990s. They have since become integral in fields like education, business, and healthcare for fostering continuous learning, innovation, and knowledge-sharing among practitioners.
Like with study groups, novice practitioners benefit from the knowledge of, and collaboration with, experts in their field. And, sometimes, senior practitioners benefit from new ways of thinking and the creativity of prodigious but less experienced practitioners.
CoPs are best applied in professional contexts, often forming inside of existing corporations and professional organizations.
They can also find application in non-professional contexts, an example being among volunteer coaches who seek to forward the craft.