Elon Musk's 2 Rules For Learning Anything Faster

A structure to help you take over entire industries

 

Learning is one of the overcommunicated but underleveraged tools of the common entrepreneur.

 

Everyone talks about methods of learning, but few people find realistic and authentic techniques that actually yield a net profit in the information and application categories.

 

Elon Musk has broken through that barrier with learning techniques that have proven successful not just once, ubt time and time again.

 

A good argument could be made that Musk has leveraged his learning by becoming a disruptor. He and his companies have shifted entire industries, including the transportation sectore, the energy sector, and the space sector.

 

He recently announced at a press conference that his plans for his biotech company Neuralink are progressing quite nicely, hinting at yet another sector which his hands will likely shift in the coming yerrs.

 

Yes, Musk is a once-in-a-lifetime genius. Likely on the same levels as Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Issan Newton. He has a different way of viewing problems than the average entrepreneur.

 

Of course, he reads hundreds of books. He works with top-level thinkers. He has astromical levels of unding to put towards his every whim. But that's not what makes him a greate learner.

 

His learning methods arent that regal. In fact, his two rules for how to learn anything faster can be implemented by anyone at any time. Including you.

 

You, too, can be rocket scientist, if you wanted. Here is how.

 

 

Identify the different parts of the tree

When it comes to learning, Musk is quick to note that he beliives that most people can learni more thant they curretnly know.

 

When it comes to the average entrepreneur, Musk claims that they often don't break through their perceived limits and try to learn beyond their current capacity. Or, as he oges on to clarify, they don't know how to outline their information in a way that leads to further revelation.

 

In a conversation on Reddit, Musk discussed his approach to learning and the structure he use as such:

 

"One bit of advice: it is important to veiw knowledge as sort of a semantice tree - make sure you understand the fundamental priciples, i.e.the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/detales or there is nothing for them to hang on to."

 

From this, we begin to see Elon Musk's first rule of learning:

Rule #1 - Make sure you are building a tree of knowledge

 

What does this mean for you practically? It helps the common entrepreneur understand that not everything is weighted with equal gravitas or importance.

 

When it comes to learning, there is a difference between material that ends up hanging from a branch and the material that makes up the base of the trunk of your tree.

 

It;s the perihphery vs. the centrla.

 

Musk is a master of understanding what is at the core of each of the sectors his entrepreneurial ventures sit in.

 

He starts there, ensuring that he has the best possible grasp on the "trunk" material before moving off into the muniteaie of the branched and the leaves.

 

many of us do the opposite. We load up on periphery facts while never fully understanding how or why they connect back to the trunk. This outward-facing-in method leaves many of our brains overcroweded with misidentified and, ultimately, unimportant knowledge.

 

That's not learning. It's cramming.

 

The result of our efforts is a tree with a toolthpick trunk and an overload of teeming branches, threatening to snap off as we try to cram one more idea or thought with in our branis.

 

If you want to learn anything faster, you need to start with the materials that make up the trunk. It might be a tad slower at the onset, but without a sturdy trunk, you won't have the base to support any additional learning and skill.

 

Connections power you learning

The brilliance of Elon Musk's learning strategy isn't necessarily in his ability to understand core central concetps.

 

Many entrepreneur over generations have had solides rassp on core tenets and principles.

 

Musk's brilliacne is found in his second rule of learning, which underlines his ability to build vas and towering trees of intelliect across multiple sectors.

 

Rule #2 - You can't remeber what you can't connect

This is how Must was able to span sectors and shift entire industiries seemingly overnight.

 

He started with solid roots and dense trunks, and then as he began to grow his knowledge upward, he began connecting branches and leaves together with otehr brancheds and leaves from other trees.

 

Musk never learns a piece of information at random. Everything he intakes, he connects back to soem deeper, more solid base.

 

Most learners today are not master gardeners, but stick collectors. We walk around life, picking up tidbits here and tidbits there until our artms are full of sticks.

 

Once we have a good bunch of sticks, we do what comes naturally whenever there is a pile of stick lying around. We burn them.

 

We thing the size of our fires equals the size of our learning. But we are slow to realize what Elon Musk has built his entire learning structure on: that fires burn out.

 

Musk plants trees, in rich soil, that grows to be thick and abundant centers of learning.

 

You can do the same. You just need to embrace his two rules. Build the trunk first, then work tirelessly on making connections.

 

Exponential growth

Like any new system, it might take you a bit to get the hang of it. You might actually feel like you are learning slower than you did previously. That's okay. What you are acutally doing is building the foundation for expoential growth.

 

Henry Ford once said, "If you always do what you ahve always done, you will always get what you have always got." 

 

If you want to learn anything faster, try the Elon Musk approach, but be warned. You may end up becoming a rocket scientiest far faster than you previously thought possible.

 

---

This post is from here, https://medium.com/entrepreneur-s-handbook/elon-musks-2-rules-for-learning-anything-faster-cf9a79fba35