How To Learn Any Skill In 30 Days, While Actually Being Better Than Others At It — The ISGCE Learning Framework
The framework I used to learn all my business skills in the last 2+ years
Learning is inevitable
You spend every waking moment of your life experiencing things
From those experiences you pick up understanding
From that understanding you form your own knowledge
That knowledge gets turned into solutions to problems
Solutions turn into long term memory
Then the next time you encounter a problem..
You go through your mental library..
And use the solution you came up with
But there’s one problem..
This process can take a very long time
Without consistency and mental discipline..
You won’t learn anything
You will spend months sucking at something..
Before you become average at it
And even then, your progress will be minimal
The more complex the skill, the harder it will be to learn
Learning to jog is easy
Learning how to jog at a competitive level is difficult
Anyone can learn how to jog..
Not just anyone can run a marathon
Sure, you can try to figure it out on your own
You can struggle over, and over, and over
Until one day.. You hit a switch
Or maybe you don’t hit it at all
Why? Because not all skills are easy to learn
Some require years of study and research..
Or they would, without a system
Your current learning system is natural..
But sometimes man made things are better
This is one of those cases
Because of the distractions in the world right now..
People suck at learning
Ironic, since information has never been this easy to come by
So how do you take advantage of the digital information age..
To learn skills much faster than you normally would?
By using the ISGCE Learning Framework
- That means no more mindlessly scrolling social media
- That means no more worrying about learning skills you don’t have time for
- That means no more worrying about staying consistent with it
- That means most problems can be solved by learning a skill yourself
- And of course, this also means building a business while not hiring many people
This framework will teach you how to:
- Learn new skills
- Keep learning them consistently
- Learn them much faster than previous skills
- And condition your mind to turn them into enjoyable activities
Now, let’s begin with the first step in the framework
Step 1 In The ISGCE Learning Framework — Identify
To learn a new skill, you need something to learn
A new skill can be anything you’d like to master
Even niche based skills can be learned using this framework
With 8,000,000 people on the planet..
There’s a 99% chance of someone already teaching the skill you’re interested in
But to identify a skill you need to do the following:
1.1 — Categorize
In what category does your skill fall?
Depending on where it falls, the educational material you will need might differ
Most categories can be found on YouTube for instance, so keep that in mind
By dividing a skill into a category, it gives you the ability to..
1.2 — Find authority
Who are the people teaching this skill, that you know can be trusted
What are their achievements? What is their track record?
There are many posers in digital education..
So when you want to learn from someone, research them
Visit their website, look at their products, read their emails
Authority is established through experience and results
If you cannot find results, then don’t trust this person
But if you CAN find results and credibility..
Then this person can be trusted when it comes to education
Step 2 In The ISGCE Learning Framework — Stockpile
Your ability to learn, is attached to your ability to manage resources
Only by finding the best resources, and making them easily consumable..
Can you consistently learn something, without distraction
2.1 — Gather
First thing you need to do in the 2nd step, is gather resources
After going through step 1 in the framework, find every educational resource this person has produced
Then take that resource, and stockpile it
Meaning, put it all of it in one place
Then you need to keep adding people and their produced resources
Build a stockpile filled with valuable resources
Videos, articles, free courses, breakdowns etc.
Anything that you can use to learn this new skill of yours
And remember, you can learn multiple skills at once using this method
2.2 — Habitize Your Learning
Tiktok, YouTube shorts, Instagram etc.
All of these have 1 thing in common
Watching these is one of your habits
To turn learning into a habit, you need to add it to your routine
Because if you don’t, you will keep mindlessly scrolling social media
To do this, we need to isolate your resources
Instead of going to tiktok or YouTube for resources..
You’re going to put all your resources in one place
Because if you stay on tiktok or YouTube..
You’ll get distracted by something within 5 minutes
Another YouTube short, another funny video etc.
This will keep happening
Because let’s face it, you can learn so much on social media..
But if you keep sacrificing education for entertainment..
You won’t be getting anywhere
These are instructions:
- Go to your documents on mobile or computer
- Create a folder called “My Learning Hub”
- Copy & Download all these resources
- Put all the resources inside this folder
- Switch off the internet
- Time yourself for 1 hour and 30 minutes
- Just start learning
Don’t leave the folder
Keep your phone far away from you
Close all internet tabs
Keep only this 1 folder open
If this process sounds too tiresome, feel free to use my Notion template here
This way your curriculum is stored online, and you don’t have to download anything
This method can be used for any kind of resource, and even entertainment
This time in your study, needs to be turned into a daily task, for your routine
To learn how to exploit psychology to create a routine without destructive habits, read my article on it here
Step 3 In The ISGCE Learning Framework — Gamify
3.1 Incentivized Performance
Nobody likes learning. This is a fact
Unless that learning is part of an enjoyable process
When it comes to this, video games can teach us a lot
They incentivise progress and learning, through reward
Ever played a video game? Then you should be catching on
When you complete a quest in a video game, there is usually a reward
When you break it down, human beings (and animals), will do more of something, if that something rewards them in some way
In many ways, this exploits their survival instinct
People work a 9–5 to survive, and they survive by being rewarded with money
When a child brings their parent a drawing, they are rewarded with affection
If an action is rewarded, the mind is incentivized to repeat it
This is why when you do something and people praise you..
It gives you that warm fuzzy feeling inside
This is how human beings have been conditioned to behave a certain way
Children go through this in their upbringing
Businesses do this to keep their employees in check
Parents do this to teach their child important skills
This means you can do it too
But this time, it will be self imposed
So you will need a little bit of discipline to pull this off (but not much)
3.2 — Sources Of Reward
Now you know that you will want to do something more, if you are rewarded for it
But where do you find this reward?
Anything that increases dopamine in the blood stream, can be seen as a reward
Before I jump in the freezing cold water as part of my routine..
I imagine how it will feel when I take a nice hot shower in 8 minutes from then
This makes doing the difficult thing easier, because I have a reward waiting for me if I get it over with
Without thinking about it too much, I am being psychologically conditioned to learn a skill (cold temperature endurance), because of the hot shower
Sources of reward can include:
Intimacy
Hot showers
Delicious Food
A cold swim during warm weather
Exhilarating activities like bungee jumping
etc.
So here’s what you do:
Learn the skill using your custom curriculum, and reward yourself with something every time you finish your 1 hour and 30 minutes of studying (can be increased)
And the little bit of discipline this will take, is to stay away from the reward..
Until you’ve completed your study session
With enough tries, you will slowly start to realize something..
If you skip straight to the reward..
The “reward” does not make you as happy
This in itself, is psychological conditioning
You are teaching yourself to do something that might not be fun..
By incentivising progress, using greater reward
Step 4 In The ISGCE Learning Framework — Conditioning
4.1 — Negative Consequence
We have already talked about conditioning, but not negative reinforcement
If you DO NOT complete the study session, WITHOUT leaving the page or folder..
Then you do not get the reward
It works the same here → If you reward yourself without completing the task..
It will feel less rewarding as a result of psychological conditioning
This means no nice treat or reward if you don’t finish the session properly
Instead of reward, you receive negative consequences
Anything you perceive as a negative consequence, can be used to condition you, so you do not repeat failure
IMPORTANT → Some negative experiences can cause trauma
The result, is that your brain struggles to do that activity, or think about it at all
Negative consequences need to be low in volume and intensity
Meaning enough to make you regret an action, and want to do it differently next time..
But not so bad, that you fear anything related to it
There is such a thing as a negative consequence that is too severe
This is why soldiers suffer from PTSD
Their brain could not adapt to the negative consequence
Fear and psychological trauma is the result
Make it inconvenient, upsetting, or uncomfortable
4.2 — Repetition
And of course, to learn something you need to repeatedly commit to it
With enough time, you will learn how to become consistent
Instead of it being difficult to learn skills..
It will become second nature
By including this habit in your routine, you will learn skills every single day..
And be rewarded for it as a result
At the start, you will struggle
It will feel unnatural to do this activity
Just like starting to jog the first few weeks
But the more you do it, the more unnatural it will feel when you don’t
Until eventually.. You stop missing days
This is how you become consistent. This is how you become obsessed
Step 5 In The ISGCE Learning Framework — Experience
“There is no substitute for experience”
I’m sure you’ve heard this before → It’s a fact
Without practical experience, you will always be second rate
You will never be 100% sure if you can pull it off for real
This is another reason why modern education is outdated
Instead of making children experience things practically..
They force feed them theory WITHOUT reward
So once this daily task, has turned into a habit..
You need to start building up experience
Not only does this allow you to actually master the skill you want..
It also makes you an authority in that skill
This means you can sell a product or service related to it
Except for the outliers where you require a certificate to qualify
That’s it for the article, from me to you -> Cheers, Ian
This article was originally written on substack, check it outhere