Michael Simmons

Intro

• 244 people on webinar
• Learning how to read
• Getting 10x in retaining learning
• Finding 1 hour to read every day
• Ex. learning to start a business - customers, sales, price setting
• The faster you learn, the more you can earn
• Ernst & Young reward and multi-million dollar business from scratch
• Co-creator of largest online community of learning how to learn?
• Think and Grow Rich - by Napoleon Hill is a classic. Takes a few hours to read, but changes life for ever.
• Michael started reading books since then en masse
• Likes learning about high performers, esp entrepreneurs
• 5 Hour Rule - read (or learn 5 hours per week)
• Worker Will, Hobby Hilda, Deliberate Danny - 3 archetypes.
• Scrooge saw the implications of his decisions - so he improved
• Focus on learning vs performance. Learning is improvement, not mastery, max mistakes, leverage 1000x. Performance is only 24hr, mistakes minimized, goal of execution, and mastery.
• Worker Will does well - but then plateaus. At that point, he must get deliberate about learning.
• Uber's first self-driving truck makes first delivery of 50k beers. Ie, that is blue collar job loss. Need to learn something new. Applies to white collar jobs, too.
• book - Disrupted. My Misadventuree in the Start-Up Bubble. Funny book. High pay + old skill = not good. Example of white collar job loss.
• Hobby Hilda - does well, then falls. How Hobby Hilda learns - ex. Industry Publication - reading what everyone else knows. You need ideas that people don't have. At best you get caught up with everyone. She also does Social Media - but that's not great (thought of day vs thought of lifetime). App called Pocket - pocket things for future. Books - books that everyone else is reading may not be good.
• Attention Bias - listening only to specific channels as above. Illusion of importance - just because something pops up you think it's important.
• Deliberate Danny - Compound interest: he who understands it, earns it, he who doesn't, pays it. So Deliberate Danny wins in the long run.
• Thrun - top players are worth $10M. Not many people have developed that skill. Deliberate learner finds what is needed and gets those skills.
• Obama did an hour per day learning when in White House - so business is not an excuse.
• Not all Deliberate Dannies are created equal - due to compound interest.
• The ladder of Lifelong Learning. AI eliminates whole professions over time. Top of the ladder people are in more demand.
• Old model is dead. School from 7-22. Not. New: Constantly learn, in and out of work
• Learning needs an RDA of new skills like nutrition on a label.
• Drive it home that exponential changes. 21st century will be 20,000 years of progress. Rate of change increases. Rate of learning needs to change, too.
• If your rate of change > rate of change of others - you are safe.
• Greatest inequality in the 21st century will be learning. You need to be a Deliberate Danny.

Specifics

• How to be a Deliberate Danny?
• How to determine what skills to get? You need to combine Your Love and The Market. But if you only follow the market, you won't do things you love.
• Get a Promotion Hack. Go to your boss - what skills could I learn right now that will get me a promotion later. Demonstrate that you have them. Then you get a promotion, maybe. If you don't - you actually have an option to go elsewhere.
• For entrepreneurs - your customers are your boss. Put together skills so you solve customer's largest problem. Increase your price 5x by understanding what your customer values.
• Ex. Original price - $2500. Talked to customers, than charged 4x as much for what they wanted more.
• Typical is starting as Worker Will (immediate performance). You burn out. So Michael changed his habits. Did reading and writing for 18 months. In one month, went to 6 figure revenue.
• How to future proof? Can't know what it will be. Can only learn valuable skills.
• Key Skills: understand cognitive bias, better planning, setting goals, learning processes, communication, energy management, behavior change.
• Workforce skills of 21st century - at a conference - Michael remembers - one woman stood up and said she can't use a computer. After decades - you just need to learn new skills.
• MS has another course: scripts for promotion, etc. Upsell.
• Learning Ritual Recipe - first, let go of the belief that you are too busy or don't have energy. Replace it with: all successful people do it, so must I.
• Fractal is the way to find time: pattern repeats itself at every scale.
• Example: 37 Signals gives a sabbatical every decade. Bill Gates - 2 weeks every year. Or a weekend: eliminate all distractions, and solve 1 problem. Weekly - 3 hours every Sat. Or in day...
• Where in the day can we find the time?
• Doubletime - Exercise, commute, chores, food time, waking up/going to sleep. Get Audio!
• Also - 10k steps - talk to people. Or sauna: after it has energy. Cold shower to wake up. SoundEver app. Audible app. Protube app. At 2x speed.
• Push your comfortable zone. Start at 1.5x, then go to 3x. Push yourself, and look at it as training.
• The above gets you 4 hours/day. MS spends 2-3 hours per day. Compounds over time!
• Weekends, quarterly, and annually, and decadewise.
• Willpower-free Protocol for weekdays, weekends, and yearly
• Principle of Habit Design.
• Accountability - build it in. Ex. deadline, people depending on you.

Leveraging the Time to 10x Learning

• Reading -> reflect -> experiment
• Thing differently: Read right books slower rather than wrong books faster
• Speedreading is BS
• Best stuff is worth re-reading
• Some info is bad, other ok, some good.
• Certain info can be 1000x more valuable. How do you find it?
• Look for the wisest teachers. People who do it again and again.
• 1000x = 10 for wisest teachers * 10 longest surviving *10 best idea of their life
• Think and Grow Rich - is surviving with many sold today. For it to survive time, culture - it must be really good.
• Find best ideas of the life of people, not best idea of the day (twitter)
• YouTube often has book summaries by the author.
• Extraordinary - rare stuff - can be good.
• MOst powerful hack - before you read a book, view an author interview. read summary - Blinkist, GetAbstract, Google
• Not everything in a book is equal. First and last chapter. First and last paragraph of chapter. First and last sentence of paragraph.
• How to Read a Book - great book on how to read a book
• Kukla - 2 free rentals per week. App from the library.

Summary

• You can find at least one hour per day easily - do audible
• You don't need more knowledge or another book - you need to act and process. Experiment.
• Learning = better results - if you are not, then you are not learning
• Value of knowledge is not knowledge - it's how you use it.
• Read -> reflect -> action in the world -> feedback -> read more
• It's not about what you know - but what you do consistently. To get value from it, you need to exercise it.
• Go from concept - to a habit.
• Value of food is not from chewing it - you need to absorb it in solar.
• Solar energy is another good metaphor - we have way more of it than we need. Same with learning. When you improve your learning process, you can harness more of the energy available.
• Learning is about results.
• Nightmare - dead end. Business failure. Separation etc.
• Business is about constant learning.
• Body gives us signals all the time about what is healthy. We need to listen to it.
• Diet and lifestyle is critical.
• Learning = results
• Learning ritual is about results.
• Q1. Do you see how a learning ritual can give you a profound improvement?
• Q2. If you see the possibility, are you committed to spending 1 hr per day? Have a system for capturing it? And turning it to results? Open to feedback on actions? Including negative so you can cover blind spots.