More From Tim Ferriss On Accelerated Learning

Tim Ferriss, bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, had some awesome lessons on how to get smarter in my interview with him.

Here’s more from Tim…

How To Find The Best Person To Learn From

You don’t want to learn from someone who’s merely genetically gifted. You want a teacher who succeeds in spite of no gifts. Those are the people who really have the skills down.

Here’s Tim:

Just find someone who is reasonably good and obsessed with anything and ask them, “Who’s really good at this who shouldn’t be?”

And when you find that person, you may not have much time to question them. So what one thing do you need to ask?

The #1 Question You Need To Ask Experts

Here’s Tim:

I find someone who is really good at overcoming their genetic limits, or their time constraints or their age. What I’ll very often ask these people is, “If you were training me for a competition in eight weeks and had a million dollars on the line, what lessons would you skip? What order would you put the lessons in? How would you train me?” That gives you the keys to the kingdom. You have to put these absurd constraints on it or there’s a very good chance you’ll get an automated response that is very conventional.

(To learn the 5 things you need to focus on to be the best at anything, click here.)

So let’s say you did everything Tim recommends and you’re picking up new skills like crazy…

How do you maintain all those talents and not just forget them?

He had a very surprising answer…

Forget Maintenance

Don’t bother trying to regularly practice all these new skills. If you have his accelerated learning tips down, you’re better off “catching up than keeping up.”

Here’s Tim:

I’m not a big believer in extended maintenance. I think it’s a waste of time, unless you enjoy it. It’s easier to catch up than keep up. Why on earth would I spend months of my life spread out in a really ineffective way to try to maintain something that I’m probably going to fail at anyway, if it only takes me a few weeks of concentrated practice to get right back up at a high level of proficiency? It’s not a good investment choice. If you have a really powerful set of learning tools, then you can move really quickly.

(For more from Tim, click here.)

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