Michael Simmons

Webinar by Michael Simmons, see more at https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/317602

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.

Upsell

• Work with me or do it alone.
• Benefit from 1000s of books, network
• Go alone: benefits: cheaper financially, but in time it will be slower. It will be frustrating. Delay success by years, or reduce chance.
• Time doesn't replenish itself.
• Books, consulting, conferences, masterminds - 4 investments one can make
• Learning ritual course -
• Learning Ritual - program. 6 months dev time. 100 interviews with people who went through the course. MS spent whole career as social entrepreneur and teacher. Did road tour on educating people on how to become an entrepreneur.

Outcome

• Reframe STEAM Camp to OSPD Mastermind for the instructors. We are learning together how to transform the world with OSPD.
• A mastermind needs to have a point of action
• Study -> Practice -> Feedback