I watch an Olivier Roland’s video  and learned good stuff.

I personally like to learn new things in different fields. Generally these are fields that I don’t know at all. This stimulates my curiosity especially when it’s something I don’t know and I see a lot of people using that. I think it’s the same for you.

That’s right, I’m curious and I like learning but how to be curious and learn a new thing effectively to use it as quickly as possible everyday ?

How long to learn

This is something that I’m always adjusting but there are some fundamental principles for it to work.

Here is an excellent example : speaking a foreign language. I hope (and if not, I advise you to learn another language) that you’re a person who speaks a foreign language at a level that allows you to have simple conversations.

Now do a little analysis. How long did it take you to reach this level to have simple conversations (a level that allows you to understand 80 % of a conversation or a text) ?

As everyone is unique in his/her method of learning, imagine that with effective learning techniques, it took you 2-3 years to reach the 80 % level of understanding in foreign langage. How much time do you think it is necessary to move from a level of understanding of 80 % to 99.9 %?

The truth is more impressive than you think. To go from the understanding’s level of 80 % to 99.9 % (the native’s level), it’ll take you 20 years !

You know, it’s not necessary to have a 99.9 % level of understanding to be bilingual. If you understand subtile jokes, you can consider yourself a bilingual. On the other hand, if everyone around you laughs and you wonder why, you aren’t yet a bilingual.

What is effective

It’s destabilizing but it’s a reality, it’s faster to go from 0 % level to 80 % level than to go from 80 % level to 99.9 % level. This is the law of diminishing returns. This law works in all fields. This law is similar to the Pareto’s principle. The Pareto’s principle is the fact that 20 % of actions brings 80 % of results, 20 % of customers brings 80 % of the company’s turnover , etc.

This means that at one time, it’s more costly to learn the little things that remain to be learned in this field than to learn something new in another field.

Let us continue with the foreign langage’s example. It took you 2-3 years to get an understanding’s level of 80 %. In the next 2 choices, what’s the most interesting for you ?:

• To spend 20 years to reach the 99.9 % level for a foreign langage

• To spend 20 years to learn 6-10 new foreign languages at a level of 80 %

You see the number of opportunities you can create in your life by knowing how to speak several langages, it’s cool.

But there is a difficulty in knowing when the law of diminishing returns is put into action, This is a difficult question to answer because it depends on the individual and the field. It’s a personal expedition. We must also not confuse this with the « crossing of the desert » that everyone does when we start a new project.

The thing I do and I advise you is to track your progress to know when 20 % of your actions bring you 80 % of the results. With this tracking of your results, you can know everyday if you approach or if you move away from your goals. If you move away from your goals, it means that you have to adjust your strategy quickly.

When you have found a smart way to track you progress, it’s cool because you have an intellectual horizon, cultural horizon, tools, methods, strategies that are extremely varied and diverse that the majority of people. You have an effective toolkit that comes from an extremely varied horizon.

You can see in my blog’s articles that I speak of different field. I’m curious and I show what I learn by giving my sources because I find that being curious give me excitement to be alive. When you travel to a country where you don’t understand either language or writing, it’s exciting, right ? You can do the same thing on a daily basis by learning things in different fields.

Assemble different concepts

Now, let’s move on to the next level in curiosity. When you know extremely different fields, have fun connecting the concepts to each other. There is a type of creativity that involves linking concepts in a new way. Have fun connecting concepts that weren’t thought to be linked together and create something new. Look at how music evolves. You take 4 music’s types that nobody listen to, you mix all it and you create a new music’s type.

Today, we have the facility to have access to knowledge with books on billions of subjects. There are books on money, cooking, foreign languages, etc.

Attention, you need to learn in an efficient way with the principle of 20/80 and action (execution) everyday, no matter how difficult. If you learn all these things only to give you a good conscience and to impress your friends in discussions, you waste you time. It’s intellectual masturbation, it’s an illusion. It’s like this expression of Julien Greaux : « To be rich on Instagram, it’s like being rich in the game Monopoly ! ».

I hope that I motivated you to explore and learn new things effectively. And most important, you learn these new things to use them every day to boost your lifestyle.

Share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph