07/08/2017 How to Learn in 2 Days What Normally Takes 6 Months | Inc.

com

CREATIVITY

How to Learn in 2 Days What Normally Takes 6 Months

ByBenjamin P. Hardy @BenjaminPHardy

NEXT
ARTICLE

CREDIT: Getty Images

Research has found that having clarity about your goals is essential to having motivation to achieve those goals.

If you're not clear on what you're doing, it's hard to be motivated. Which is why seemingly easy tasks, like sending a fax, could end up taking
months. There's a lack of clarity on how to do it, so you don't -- until either you have to or it's too late.

Can you relate?

Unfortunately, having a lack of clarity is why so many people settle for less than their dreams. Said Robert Brault, author of Round Up the Usual
Subjects, "We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal."

You want clarity so bad that you're willing to settle for lesser goals, simply because the path to getting your true goal is less obvious.

https://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/how-to-learn-in-2-days-what-normally-takes-6-month.html?cid=hmside1 1/9
07/08/2017 How to Learn in 2 Days What Normally Takes 6 Months | Inc.com

http://thecreatormind.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/what-success-really-looks-like.jpg

When you're trying to accomplish something big, you have the why but rarely the how. The path to achieving your goals is far from obvious.

You have no clue how you're going to do what you want to do.

According to some scholars, fear of the unknown may be the foundation of all other fears. In order to avoid the unknown, most people bail on
their dreams.

Embracing the Unknown

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you
might be swept off to." -- J.R.R. Tolkien

When you experience the unknown, what is your emotional experience?

Most people perceive the unknown as threatening, signifying a low tolerance for ambiguity. However, some people are more open to the
unknown.

Interestingly, researchers have found that children generally have a higher tolerance for ambiguity than adults. Children are often more willing to
accept murky conditions -- situations where the likelihood of winning or losing is unknown. As you get older though, your desire for surety and
security keep you safely protected in your comfort zone.

Research has found that the more satisfied you are with your work, the higher will be your tolerance for ambiguity. In other words, if you enjoy and
believe in what you're doing, you'll take-on the emotional discomfort of the unknown. Said Bill Walsh, former 49ers Head Coach, "If your why is
strong enough you will figure out how!"

Get Clarity as Quickly as Possible

It's settled then. If you want to achieve big things, your path will be unclear and hazy. The emotional need for clarity and fear of the unknown leads
people to abandon their dreams for more straight forward pursuits.

Having goal clarity is essential to motivation. Consequently, in order to get motivated to achieve your big dreams, you need clarity. However, this
does not mean you have "it all" figured it. It means you're clear on the next step or two.

If you're at mile marker 1 and your dream is at mile marker 50, you just need enough info and support to get to mile marker 3 or 4. Once you get
there, you'll need further instructions. But you have no clue what those instructions will be, because you don't currently know what you don't know.
When you get to the next step, you'll be able to ask better questions. You'll be able to better assess who can help you get to mile marker 5, 6, 7,
or 8. What got you here, won't get you there.

You're on a treasure hunt and you're finding clues and guides along the way. This is the process and emotional experience of pursuing a big
dream.

Here's what you need to move forward right now:

1. A clear "check-point" (so you actually know what to do)

2. A hard and fast time-line

3. The right tools and systems

https://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/how-to-learn-in-2-days-what-normally-takes-6-month.html?cid=hmside1 2/9
07/08/2017 How to Learn in 2 Days What Normally Takes 6 Months | Inc.com

4. A support structure

If you have these four things, you'll have enough clarity-- and thus enough motivation-- to move forward. You'll be stretching, growing, and moving
while most other people are overwhelmed by the distance between mile marker 1 and 50. While they're staring at the forest from a distance,
you're winding your way through the trees. And soon enough, you'll be on the other side.

With this backdrop, here's the most effective way I've found to getting just enough clarity to continuously move forward.

Context-Based Learning
How the Mormon church trains their young missionaries to speak foreign languages so efficiently has garnered lots of attention. When an 18 or
19 year old enters the "Missionary Training Center" (MTC), they enter something of a language learning boot camp. Students at the MTC learn in
a few weeks what takes most college students three or four years.

Many universities have applied the MTC's methods to their language learning curricula. The U.S. Military has also studied and teamed with the
MTC for decades to better understand how to efficiently train their soldiers. As a result, the Army's Intelligence Brigade, based in Utah, draws on
former Mormon missionaries to fill their ranks.

So what are some of the MTC methods?

Primarily, the MTC uses what is called, "Context-based learning." They start by reciting a phrase and working on the pronunciation. Once the
student has a basic grasp, they are put into groups of two to role-play real world scenarios. Role-plays make up approximately 70% of learning at
the MTC -- learning while doing -- with a teacher standing by to individually coach when needed.

The system is simple:

1. Learn a concept

2. Practice and use that concept in a real-world scenario

3. Get coaching and feedback

4. Repeat

5. Get coaching and feedback

Interestingly, researchers examined the effects of role-playing on the self-concept of shy adolescents. One group of adolescents got traditional
discussion-based training while another did role-play based training. The group that did role-plays experienced a significant positive change in
their self-concept, which has a significant impact on their behaviors.

In our digital world, simulation training -- based on role-playing real world scenarios -- is becoming increasing popular.

Additionally, research has found that getting consistent feedback is essential to effective learning.

How to Apply Context-Based Learning

"If you want lasting change, you've got to give up this idea of 'trying something.' You've got to decide you're going to commit-to-mastery. Most
people dabble. They say, 'I'd like to change my body,' or 'I'd like to make my relationship better.' These people don't have enough detail to
follow-through." -- Tony Robbins

In this article, I define learning as a permanent change in cognition and or behavior. In other words, true learning involves a permanent change in
how you see and act in the world. The accumulation of information isn't learning.

If you want to learn something quickly, you need to immerse yourself in that thing and immediately implement what you're learning.

The fastest way to learn Spanish, for instance, is by immersing yourself in a Spanish culture. Flash-cards for 15 minutes a day will eventually get
you there. But you'll make deeper connections with a few days fully immersed than you would in months of "dabbling."

You need enough clarity to have high motivation to move forward. The more clarity you have of the path set before you, the higher will be your
motivation to go down that path. Thus, rather than trying to motivate yourself, your goal should be to clarify the next few steps ahead of you.

1. Get a Teacher
"When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready, the teacher will disappear." -- Lao Tzu

When you move beyond dabbling to full commitment, you'll want to learn quickly. So, you'll need a teacher. Someone who can help you take the
next few steps.

This teacher can be in the form of a book or an online course. Or, it can be an actual person. The benefit of a real person is getting immediate
and relevant feedback and direct answers to your questions.

Recently, I hired someone to help me learn software for my online business. I wanted an immersion-type experience. Turns out, he lives seven
hours away from me. So I drove down to his house and spent two days straight with him. I slept on his couch in my jeans and t-shirt.

https://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/how-to-learn-in-2-days-what-normally-takes-6-month.html?cid=hmside1 3/9
07/08/2017 How to Learn in 2 Days What Normally Takes 6 Months | Inc.com

In these two days, I learned more than I could've learned in six months on my own. My teacher could quickly assess where I was. I was able to ask
him questions. On an easel board, he would explain to me the software and how it worked.

After explaining the concepts and answering my questions, he would have me immediately apply my learning. This exposed the true gaps in my
understanding. Being able to apply something, after all, is the difference between knowing something and understanding it. Hence, Napoleon
Hill has said, "Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action."

2. Repetition Until Your Learning Becomes Unconscious

While implementing what I learned, my teacher would watch me from a distance. He let me struggle as I tried to remember what he had just
shown me.

The first time applying what he taught took a lot of time and effort. So we did it again, and again, and again. Overtime, I become competent and
thus also and confident.

Learning something new is all about memory and how you use it. At first, your prefrontal cortex-- which stores your working (or short-term)
memory-- is really busy figuring out how the task is done.

But once you're proficient, the prefrontal cortex gets a break. In fact, it's freed up by as much as 90%. Once this happens, you can perform that
skill automatically, leaving your conscious mind to focus on other things.

This level of performance is called "automaticity," and reaching it depends on what psychologists call "over-learning" or "over-training."

The process of getting a skill to automaticity involves 4 steps, or stages:

1. Repeated learning of a small set of information. If you're playing basketball, for instance, that might mean shooting the same shot over and
over. The key here is to go beyond the initial point of mastery.

2. Make your training progressively more difficult. You want to make the task harder and harder until it's too hard. Then you bring the difficulty
back down slightly, in order to stay near the upper limit of your current ability.

3. Add time constraints. For example, some math teachers ask students to work on difficult problems with increasingly shortened timelines.
Adding the component of time challenges you in two ways. First, it forces you to work quickly, and second, it saps a portion of your working
memory by forcing it to remain conscious of the ticking clock.

4. Practice with increasing memory load -- that is, trying to do a mental task with other things on your mind. Put simply, it's purposefully adding
distractions to your training regimen.

Essentially, you want your understanding of something to be fluid and flexible. You want to be able to apply your learning in different contexts and
for different purposes. Thus, you learn your skill in-and-out.

3. Set Specific Goals with a Hard Time Line

"Inevitability Thinking is thinking and acting as if what you are doing is a forgone conclusion because you set up the conditions for it to
happen." -- Eban Pagan

Once the "training" is complete, you need to take it into the real world. You do this by setting huge goals requiring you to use the knowledge
you've just acquired.

Just before leaving my teacher's house, we set goals together. Although the goals seemed overwhelmingly big, I felt confident I could achieve
them because I now had clarity.

The time-line to achieve my goals was three months. At the end of those three months, I'd be back at his house for more training. We were on
each other's Google calendars and I paid him in advance for our next immersion learning experience.

4. Tracking and Accountability

"When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement
accelerates." --Thomas S. Monson

Clarity is what creates motivation.

Tracking is what creates awareness.

Reporting is what creates accountability.

Having these three are essential for rapid progression and learning.

If you're not tracking your daily behaviors, you are undoubtedly doing worse than you think you are. For example, most people have no clue where
there money goes, because they don't track their expenses.

According to research, self-regulation is the psychological process that detects inconsistency between your goals and your behaviors. It is the
ignition of your motivational forces helping you get from where you are to where you want to be.

Specifically, self-regulation works in three ways:

https://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/how-to-learn-in-2-days-what-normally-takes-6-month.html?cid=hmside1 4/9
07/08/2017 How to Learn in 2 Days What Normally Takes 6 Months | Inc.com

Self-monitoring determines how well you are currently performing.

Self-evaluation determines how well you are performing comparative to your goals.

Self-reaction determines how you think and feel comparative to your goals. When you feel dissatisfied with your performance, self-
reaction pushes you to reallocate your motivation resources.

Beyond tracking, research has found that accountability improves performance. When you report your performance to someone, particularly
someone you respect, it adds external and relational motivation to succeed.

During your accountability sessions, you can get coaching and feedback on where you can improve.

Conclusion
Striving to accomplish big goals is not easy. Most people will give-up on their dreams in order to have a clear path to lesser goals.

If you want to move quickly toward your big goals, you'll need to become proficient at acquiring clarity for the next few steps of your journey. The
best way to do this is through context-based and immersion-style learning.

The deeper and wider your clarity, the bigger your goals can be. In order to ensure you achieve those goals, you'll need to daily track your
behaviors and have an intense accountability system in place.

It's all in the set-up. When you set up the conditions effectively, you make the achievement of your goals inevitable.
Like this column? Sign up to subscribe to email alerts and you'll never miss a post.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
PUBLISHED ON: AUG 1, 2017

MOST INNOVATIVE WOMEN

Why These Entrepreneurs Are Running for Public Office (Even at the
Risk of Their Own Businesses)

ByZo Henry @ZoeLaHenry

Brianna Wu is the co-founder of the independent game studio Giant Spacekat. She's running for Congress in 2018. CREDIT: Shannon Grant

When Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2016 U.S. election, it was, for many women, a reckoning. Ahead of the vote, the President
was accused of sexually assaulting dozens of women; meanwhile, on the campaign trail, he threatened to overturn a number of key protections
for women, including de-funding Planned Parenthood.

"Personally, I was very sad and scared the day after the results were announced," recalls Sara Innamorato, a Pennsylvania Democrat who runs a
small branding company outside of Pittsburgh. "I was scared for myself as a woman, and for my friends who identify as queer and as people of
https://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/how-to-learn-in-2-days-what-normally-takes-6-month.html?cid=hmside1 5/9
07/08/2017 How to Learn in 2 Days What Normally Takes 6 Months | Inc.com

color."

Still, Innamorato did not take the news of Trump's victory sitting down. She's one of thousands of women across the country who have since
decided to run for public office, in order to affect change at the local, state or federal level. In fact, an unprecedented number of women have
announced their candidacy since November: More than 13,000 and counting.

Clare Breshnahan, the executive director of She Should Run, discussing the 250Kby2030 campaign CREDIT: Courtesy Company

All told, female candidates are expected to enter hundreds of different races in 2018--positioning women to potentially tip the balance of power
from Congress to your local city counsel. And of the more than 13,000 candidates, dozens are entrepreneurs--representing both Democrats and
Republicans.

"We're leveraging the momentum around the Women's March, and all of the dialogue that's happened since the election," says Erin Loos
Cutraro, the founder and CEO of the non-partisan organization, She Should Run, which supports women candidates. She adds that while women
politicians still only number in the minority among elected officials, they do have more than a fighting chance at victory. "When women run for
office, they win at the same rates as men," Cutraro tells Inc.

What's more, they're not just interested in a single issue. For women entrepreneurs in particular, there's a greater incentive to create a more pro-
business environment. One that isn't permissive of sexual harassment and discrimination.

Seeding change

https://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/how-to-learn-in-2-days-what-normally-takes-6-month.html?cid=hmside1 6/9
07/08/2017 How to Learn in 2 Days What Normally Takes 6 Months | Inc.com

Brianna Wu (pictured left) and Co-Founder Amanda Warner CREDIT: Shannon Grant

Brianna Wu is one such candidate. The engineer and co-founder of the independent gaming studio Giant Spacekat recently announced that she
would be running for Congress in 2018, representing Massachusetts's eighth district, which includes parts of Boston. Wu first came to
prominence during the 2014 "Gamergate" scandal--where she was targeted on the basis of her gender. These days, she says she's focused on
economic development and housing. She intends to pass a billion-dollar infrastructure bill to protect the state from global warming, for instance,
and also wants to raise wages in her district by creating more jobs in tech.

"If I'm elected, I don't just get to serve the people that agree with me," Wu explains. "I get to represent everyone. I want to stand up for a
conservative union worker, just as much as some white transgender person trying to get access to healthcare."

Unique challenges, benets

Of course, running for office is not without sacrifices. For many candidates, that means giving up on their businesses entirely. Wu, for one, says
she's been forced to put Giant Spacekat on hold--even as the company was developing an exciting, virtual reality prototype. "It was some really
advanced, awesome stuff that we put on hold," Wu says. These days, she spends most of her time cold-calling individuals for money. "It sucks,"
she concedes. "I'm an engineer, and nobody gets into engineering to do fundraising calls all day. The social skills are something I've had to
develop, and it's not my passion."

For others, like Innamorato, the issue is not as much conflict of interest as it is time management. The entrepreneur says she'll maintain her
business, at least in name, if and when she's elected. Recently, her company signed a long-term contract with a client that works in reproductive
justice, which Innamorato intends to see through. "People get scared, and ask if I'm going to be able to keep my job," she says. To manage both
the business and her political ambitions, she launched her campaign relatively early--in June of this year--well before the May 2018 election. She
also concedes that it requires a fair amount of multi-tasking.

There are, of course, advantages to approaching politics with an entrepreneurial mindset. Megan Hunt, an Omaha, Nebraska-based
entrepreneur running for the state senate, attributes much of her early momentum to her business attitude. Hunt runs a fashion boutique called
Hello Holiday; prior to launching her nine-person business, she started a bridal wear startup that she grew to around $100,000 in revenue.

"I know what it's like when your dream is bigger than your bank account," Hunt explains. "That's entrepreneurship. You have to be scrappy, and
you have to be creative." To her point, when Hunt--a single mother--first launched Hello Holiday, she was on Medicaid and food stamps, earning
just $300 a month. Now, the business generates hundreds of thousands in annual sales.

"You have to be willing to sacrifice some things for a long-term vision," she says. "Fundamentally, that's the mindset of any effective leader."
That's the same energy she's now channeling into her local campaign.

A centuries-old problem

https://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/how-to-learn-in-2-days-what-normally-takes-6-month.html?cid=hmside1 7/9
07/08/2017 How to Learn in 2 Days What Normally Takes 6 Months | Inc.com

To be sure, the greatest challenge that these candidates face is sexism. Hunt, for her part, says she won't date during the election cycle, for fear
of being labeled lewd. "The opposition is coming after me, saying I'm really promiscuous," Hunt says. "They would never say that about a man."

Wu, for her part, has weathered far worse. Back in 2014, the Giant Spacekat founder received a plethora of death and rape threats on social
media, ultimately forcing her to flee her Massachusetts home. In a way, she reflects, the trauma prepared her for running for office, and the public
scrutiny it's sure to bring. "Gamergate taught me that I'm a lot stronger than I thought I was, and I could stand up to more than I imagined," Wu
says. "What are they going to do to me now? Call me ugly?"

She laughs this off, then grows serious. "There's something different about running for office. I didn't ask to be targeted by Gamergate. I was just
speaking out for women in my field. But running for public office is a choice. And for whatever reason, choosing to enter a lion's den doesn't sting
as much."
PUBLISHED ON: AUG 7, 2017

https://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/how-to-learn-in-2-days-what-normally-takes-6-month.html?cid=hmside1 8/9
07/08/2017 How to Learn in 2 Days What Normally Takes 6 Months | Inc.com

https://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/how-to-learn-in-2-days-what-normally-takes-6-month.html?cid=hmside1 9/9