Acquiring Any New Skill

In his talk about learning skills, Anxo Perez explains the eight secrets to acquiring any skill. This is something he calls the 8Belts Method.

In just a few months, anyone can use these eight steps to learn something new: prioritize, combine, make it bite-sized, count it, use it, limit the theory, retain and quick results. The talk about learning skills emphasizes learning less, but learning it a lot better. Instead of learning disembodied parts, bring things together to job your associative memory. Making it bite-sized is about focusing on pieces instead of the larger task. You can also turn goals into a ladder and every achievement into a step. Application is key, as is learning only the theory you can put into practice. Success is retention, because it's not about how much information goes into your brain, but how much stays in. Shrinking the time between effort and reward is also a good idea. The speaker uses the example of performing a puzzle to illustrate how these points would work in practice.