Dan Martell - August 08, 2025


Why Learning FAST Makes You More Successful (just copy me)


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

229.16931

Word count

1,807

Sentence count

86

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about how you can learn to learn 10 times faster by mapping a skill tree and identifying your sub-skills so that you don't have to learn a new skill every time you need to learn something new.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 Most people's process for learning is broken. 0.99
00:00:03.080 Stuck in this mental masturbation loop 0.96
00:00:05.320 of needing to know everything about everything. 0.98
00:00:07.800 Reading books, watching YouTube videos,
00:00:09.720 listening to podcasts, and just a few weeks later,
00:00:12.120 forget about what they learned in the first place.
00:00:14.200 Now I know because I used to be that guy.
00:00:16.320 Reading books just to tell people I read them
00:00:18.220 without actually learning anything.
00:00:19.840 Today, my life looks completely different.
00:00:22.040 I've built and sold three successful software companies
00:00:24.400 becoming a multimillionaire at 28.
00:00:26.480 And I attribute most of this success
00:00:28.220 to my ability to learn 10 times faster than anyone else.
00:00:31.480 But here's the brutal truth.
00:00:32.800 You're learning way too slow.
00:00:34.600 And I believe most people are on a path
00:00:36.200 to becoming a millionaire too.
00:00:37.620 The only problem is it'll take you 100 years to get there.
00:00:40.320 And if you can learn 10 times faster,
00:00:42.000 you can reduce that 100 years down to 10 or even three.
00:00:45.460 But to do that, you need to learn how to learn.
00:00:47.700 And that's what I'm gonna share with you today.
00:00:49.140 So to learn anything 10 times faster,
00:00:51.440 I do what's called mapping a skill tree.
00:00:53.580 Starting with defining your master node,
00:00:55.840 you need to define your specific end goal.
00:00:58.220 For example, learning Spanish is way different
00:01:00.720 than having a fluid conversation with a native speaker.
00:01:03.360 Another example would be learning to code
00:01:04.940 versus building a prototype app
00:01:06.680 and pre-selling it to five people.
00:01:08.360 You need to be very specific
00:01:09.640 on what you're trying to learn.
00:01:10.960 So here's how we identify our master node.
00:01:12.980 First, what does success look like?
00:01:15.020 Pick one outcome.
00:01:16.200 Don't try to do this plus this plus this.
00:01:18.400 Then when should it happen by?
00:01:20.400 Have a clear deadline.
00:01:21.700 When we give something a deadline,
00:01:23.360 our brain goes to solving the problem
00:01:24.980 with the timeframe allocated.
00:01:26.580 If we make it an open-ended option,
00:01:28.880 then it will take the amount of time we've given it
00:01:30.860 and I don't have all the time in the world and nor do you.
00:01:33.260 Finally, why it matters to you.
00:01:35.380 Tie it to a feeling.
00:01:36.600 I learned a long time ago,
00:01:37.800 purpose is the most powerful thing you can give a goal.
00:01:40.480 If there's no purpose, there's no power.
00:01:42.720 And that's how you start building your master node.
00:01:45.000 But you can't learn a skill without breaking it down.
00:01:48.160 That leads us to identifying your sub-skills.
00:01:50.540 Here's a crazy example, learning to finish an Ironman.
00:01:53.320 The first time I ever decided to do an Ironman,
00:01:55.420 i didn't know how to swim i'd never been on a road bike and i might have ran 5k if you've looked into
00:02:00.220 the distances of an ironman it is a heck of a lot more than that and the first time i went to the
00:02:05.020 pool and i tried to swim i got to the other end 25 meters stopped on the wall turn around to my
00:02:09.740 friend and say how many more of these we got to do he's like a lot i had to learn the sub skills
00:02:14.380 so i could dial in the ironman outcome and i wish it was only biking swimming and running it turned
00:02:20.300 out i needed to learn about nutrition hydration training blocks the whole thing the gear the 1.00
00:02:25.980 gizmos the bike maintenance trust me it was way more than just the master note skill of doing
00:02:31.340 well in an iron man the key is to not overwhelm yourself learn just in time not just in case so
00:02:37.180 here's how you identify your sub skills first off i like to ask chat gpt or any ai tool what skills
00:02:43.340 do i need to reach to achieve that goal and be specific and then i sequence them by how important
00:02:49.180 they are to reach that goal in my skill tree as a primary note for example building an app coding
00:02:55.340 cursor language basics problem solving these are all things that could come up but i got to focus
00:03:00.540 on what's the most important dependency first then go to the second one and then the third one and
00:03:04.780 then the fourth one the cool thing is i can just ask ai to prioritize them and then give me a
00:03:09.660 learning plan to learn them so on an iron man learning to swim is more important than learning
00:03:13.980 to bike why you can't win the race in the swim but you can definitely lose the race by not getting out
00:03:18.860 of the water now all this learning without the next step is just noise that leads us to installing
00:03:23.660 feedback loops see most people don't even ask for feedback because they don't want to know
00:03:28.460 they don't want to hear negative things from their mentors their group chats their peers
00:03:33.020 but it could make you 10 times faster if somebody else told you where your blind spots were i remember
00:03:38.540 the other day i saw toby the founder of shopify he tweeted this prompt that i just thought was so
00:03:43.420 genius and his answer to the prompt which is very vulnerable but he wanted to share how powerful it
00:03:48.700 it was with everybody that followed him.
00:03:50.380 So here's the chat GPT prompt.
00:03:52.200 Tell me something incredibly special or unique
00:03:54.540 you've noticed about me,
00:03:55.740 but you think I haven't realized about myself yet.
00:03:58.120 It doesn't have to be something positive
00:03:59.880 and you don't have to be nice to me, just be truthful.
00:04:02.420 That question is so powerful.
00:04:04.860 And I'm gonna put my answer below in the description
00:04:07.540 so that you can see what it told me,
00:04:09.500 because I think it's just a really powerful thing
00:04:11.440 for you to be motivated to try it out yourself.
00:04:13.380 See, feedback is fuel for progress.
00:04:15.720 Without that feedback,
00:04:17.340 then how are you supposed to reflect?
00:04:18.680 How are you supposed to get better?
00:04:19.920 How are you supposed to figure out
00:04:20.760 what worked and what failed?
00:04:22.140 If you don't stop to reflect,
00:04:24.180 then you'll just keep moving forward,
00:04:25.800 making the same mistake over and over again.
00:04:27.960 And technically that's insane
00:04:29.460 because the definition of insanity
00:04:31.280 is doing the same thing over and over again,
00:04:32.900 expecting different results.
00:04:34.360 Finally, once you understand what didn't work,
00:04:37.100 you need to adjust
00:04:38.100 because unimplemented feedback is just wasted potential.
00:04:41.420 The key is you have to model, then modify.
00:04:44.100 See, most people think that their situation is so unique
00:04:46.820 and they're like a magical snowflake,
00:04:48.580 and it's never been done before.
00:04:49.880 And the truth is, is most people have been there,
00:04:51.720 done it, and can give you the blueprint.
00:04:53.340 If you just ask, just if you don't ask,
00:04:55.380 you don't get the feedback.
00:04:56.280 If you just followed the blueprint,
00:04:58.040 then you can modify once it's working a little bit.
00:05:00.780 Don't modify before you model.
00:05:02.400 But if you truly want to force yourself to learn faster,
00:05:05.180 you need this next step.
00:05:06.400 That leads us to teach to lock it in.
00:05:08.760 A long time ago, I was asked by my friend Etienne
00:05:10.920 to come speak at seven CTOs, his organization.
00:05:13.600 And before I went into the room to teach,
00:05:15.560 I stopped at a coffee shop and I sat down and I asked myself,
00:05:18.740 what do I know about managing CTOs or technical world?
00:05:22.060 And I wrote down a bunch of ideas and I started designing kind of what I was going to teach.
00:05:26.220 And I looked for patterns.
00:05:27.220 I even noticed that there was these four core areas and they kind of started with the letter T.
00:05:32.680 So then I put them all in these T's and then I put it into a quadrant
00:05:35.360 and each one of these things that I was teaching, I had a really powerful story.
00:05:38.480 And I ended by asking a question about that quadrant.
00:05:41.500 And then I went and I taught.
00:05:43.040 And when I got off stage, a 10 came to me
00:05:44.780 and he said, where did you learn the CTO quadrants?
00:05:47.720 And I said, well, I just sat down
00:05:49.100 and I just designed it at the coffee shop
00:05:51.240 before I showed up.
00:05:51.920 He's like, what?
00:05:52.700 This is amazing.
00:05:53.800 Can I borrow it?
00:05:54.500 I was like, bro, it's yours.
00:05:55.940 The CTO quadrants to this day
00:05:57.680 is one of the most popular YouTube videos on his channel.
00:06:00.780 Why?
00:06:01.300 Because I learned how to teach.
00:06:03.540 And when you teach, you lock it in.
00:06:05.280 See, if you can teach something
00:06:07.240 and the other person can take it like a briefcase,
00:06:09.620 like a handle, and then go and teach it to their team,
00:06:12.040 that means you actually understood it.
00:06:14.240 Most people think they learned something,
00:06:16.100 but until you learn to teach it, you didn't lock it in.
00:06:18.500 So here's how you teach to lock it in.
00:06:20.420 After each sub-skill, summarize it in your own words.
00:06:24.060 Rewrite it in a way that makes sense to your brain.
00:06:26.360 Then we need to pretend like you're explaining it
00:06:28.200 to a fifth grader.
00:06:29.200 And first time is always gonna be complicated.
00:06:31.380 You're gonna have acronyms,
00:06:32.460 and the truth is you're gonna think it's simple,
00:06:34.080 but it's still complicated.
00:06:35.720 Simplify, simplify, simplify.
00:06:37.420 Next, we need to spot the gaps in your understanding
00:06:39.960 and go back to strengthen them
00:06:41.700 so that people, when they hear it, it lands for them
00:06:44.260 because you take so much for granted
00:06:46.080 that you understand that makes this make sense
00:06:48.020 that you need to give context and tell stories.
00:06:51.160 The stories are the glue.
00:06:52.600 So now I'm gonna ask you to lock it in.
00:06:54.560 I want you to take the last thing
00:06:55.980 that you feel like you really learned well
00:06:58.000 and then we're gonna post it on social media.
00:06:59.900 You're gonna write a blog post
00:07:00.980 or you're gonna shoot a two minute video,
00:07:02.660 whichever one you feel most comfortable with.
00:07:04.280 Honestly, whichever one you feel least comfortable with
00:07:06.320 is the one you should do and teach it to people
00:07:08.480 and really challenge yourself to explain it
00:07:10.640 in a way that anybody can understand it.
00:07:12.720 Because the whole point of all this is yes,
00:07:14.980 learn 10 times faster so you can pull forward results
00:07:18.280 into your life so you can get richer and have more wealth
00:07:20.920 and have more opportunity and have more relationships
00:07:22.860 and have all this stuff.
00:07:23.760 But I think that true fulfillment
00:07:25.760 comes from doing two things.
00:07:26.960 Number one, becoming the 10.0 version of yourself,
00:07:30.140 becoming the person that you needed most
00:07:32.400 in your darkest days and sharing the process,
00:07:35.120 what you've learned along the way with other people,
00:07:37.260 becoming somebody who teaches other folks
00:07:39.700 to get the same results they got.
00:07:41.260 If you do those two things,
00:07:42.540 wake up every day to become better
00:07:43.900 and teach other people how you did that,
00:07:45.560 that's how you create true fulfillment.
00:07:47.440 Now, if you wanna learn the 13 hacks
00:07:49.140 to be 99% more disciplined,
00:07:50.980 click the video and I'll see you on the other side.