Actionable Tips and Systems To Improve You Life

Do you love learning and want to get better every day?

Do you have a strong drive to learn as much as possible and continuously improve your life? At the core of this are the habits and routines that we follow in our daily life. If you really want to become a master performer, you have to practice your skills every day.

Realizing Your Potential

Are you the type of person who listens to audiobooks on the way to work, watches videos, and reads books before going to bed? All in the pursuit of becoming as good as possible at the things you find valuable and fascinating in life? Me too. Everything I do and care about I want to do in the best way possible. Whether it is my work, social life, hobbies, or health and fitness. I also want it to be efficient. Because time is limited.

Focus on the “How”

The problem is that the majority of content is written in a way that makes it impractical to apply in real life. I’m on a mission to change this. My writing gives you a short summary of the what and the why something is important. But the main focus is the how. To make it easy and practical for you to implement what you learn in your life. Because that is how you really get better. If you want to learn more about the what and why I suggest that you seek out the sources I link to directly or research things yourself. But if you hate wasting time and want the 80/20 that focuses on the how. Keep reading here. Then go do things in practice.

The Problems With Learning By Consuming Content

I have encountered several problems with learning by consuming content:

1. The majority of the content does not transfer well to the things that I actually do in my work and daily life.

   • Reading a book on negotiations is one thing. Negotiating better in practice is a different matter.

2. The majority of the content is not practical.

   • The mediocre content explains what. The good content explains what and why. The great content explains what, why, and how to do something. But these pieces are few and far between. You read 100 pages to find 1 golden nugget that is something you can do in practice. My goal is to write content that focuses on the how and that is practical so that you can actually apply it in your life.

3. You only remember a small fraction of the content you consume.

   • Of the golden nuggets, the majority are forgotten within a couple of weeks. In the end, only a fraction of them are things that you actually manage to implement in your life.

The alternative to learning things by consuming content is to figure everything out yourself. This is the best way of learning, but it is also inefficient and your time is limited.

Keys to Learning Better

This realization resulted in the following insights:

1. The problem of transfer means that you need to flip things around.

   • You should not start by trying to learn something, that you may or may not use in the future. You should start by deciding what you want to do and try it in practice. Then go learn more once you get stuck or practice valuable activities that you do often.

2. We need to learn how to learn.

   • Because learning is a meta-skill. If you become better at learning, it will affect every other thing you do in life positively.

3. Select your content wisely.

   • Prioritize learning things that have a high probability of having a large impact on your life. My foundation is setting up routines for work, nutrition, training, and my social life. Because those factors impact me every day. Once that is running smoothly I focus on learning how to improve other areas of my life e.g. investing. Decide what your priorities are and make systems for improving them. See Big Rocks.

4. We should not just spend all of our learning time-consuming content.

   • The majority of time should be spent doing. Because that is how we learn the most, plus we get output from doing it too. Also, spend time reflecting on potential improvements to what you are doing. Complement this with spending some time on General Learning to expand your knowledge e.g. reading a book on marketing and Specific Learning when you need to find the best way to solve a specific problem e.g. how to set up a Facebook ad campaign for your business.

5. Knowledge compounds.

   • If you are able to increase your knowledge by 5% per year for 20 years, you will know 4 times as much in 20 years as you do today. The sooner you are able to increase your knowledge, the more years you will have to take advantage of it.

6. Whatever problem you are trying to solve, chances are that someone has already figured out how to solve it.

   • The good news is that this can save us a lot of time. So to learn efficiently, try to find the solutions and best practices of other people. Then apply their insights to the areas of your life that are the most valuable for you to get better at.

How can you implement what you read into your life?

The majority of your time should be spent doing things and producing actual output. Because learning by doing is by far the best way to learn and it reduces the problem of transfer. You have not really learned something until you are able to apply it. And if you have knowledge that you can't apply to something, then is it really worth knowing?

We want to strive to be producers. Not consumers. Producers are the ones that are creating value. And they are also the ones that benefit from it.

I was also shocked when I learned that one of the best ways to learn something really well is to teach it to someone else, referencing the Feynman Technique.

This led me to the realization that instead of just reading something and/or taking notes, I should start writing articles and making videos. Not only would this enable me to produce output, but it would also enable me to learn more effectively. A win-win.

Why You Need To Have Systems and Routines

Finally, you need a system. Olympic medal winners don’t just show up for the race and win. They build a system over many years. By planning their training and keeping a training log, they have direction, purpose, and get feedback on what worked and what did not. So they can adjust their system to achieve their goals. The same goes in the world of business. The best sales teams in top organizations follow scripts, measure results, and adjust their system accordingly.

Process beats goals

A wise man once said that amateurs focus on goals. Pros focus on the process. Having a goal for squatting 100 kg won't get you anywhere. Going to the gym 3 times per week to practice squats does. Focus on the process and develop a system. This is key because having a system enables two things:

1. Developing good habits.

   • Once something has become a habit our brains spend less energy doing it. Which means that it gets easier to do it.

2. Writing down our process digitally enables us to leverage the computer’s perfect memory.

   • Specifying the process also enables us to make continuous improvements as we repeat it. I call this a Routine, which essentially is a recipe for how to do something.

Building systems in Notion

To organize everything you learn, I recommend using Notion. I've been a long-time user of Evernote, but Notion makes it much easier to organize your system. Inside Notion, I have a page for all of the important topics in my life: Such as Work, Nutrition, Training, Sleep, and Learning. When I read something that can improve my sleep I write it down in my Sleep Routine in Notion. This way you are always connecting what you learn to what you already know. You also have it handy for when you want to use it.

Each Routine, has sub-Routines e.g. inside Training, have subpages for Strength and Cardio. And so it goes on. Always expanding your system as you learn new things. Did you read a book about how to hold effective meetings, but only remember a fraction of it? Make a Meeting Routine, and review it 5 minutes before the next meeting. Reflect on how the meeting went after. Did you follow your Routine steps? If not, why? E.g We forgot to specify an agenda and spent too much time discussing the unimportant. Next time, have an agenda made in advance. Also ask yourself: How can I improve my Routine? This enables you to have a continuous system for learning. You also don't have to remember everything all of the time. Because you can review the Routine before performing it. What you practice often will eventually become proceduralized knowledge. We know how to do it without thinking. Like driving a car. This happens automatically to the Routines that are important and that you perform often enough.

Purpose: Teaching you to build effective systems

Having a system enables us to learn more effectively and continuously improve. The goal of this blog is to teach you how to build systems that improve your life.

Title: Actionable Tips and Systems To Improve You Life

Author: Marius Norheim

Subject: Building Systems

Language: English

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