Learn How To Learn

October 4, 2021 Nate Anglin

Here’s the latest edition of my Optimized Report newsletter, a collection of actionable ideas to help you dramatically improve your business, career, and life.

One of the most important things you can do for your life is to learn how to learn.

If you don’t know how to learn, everything else becomes weaker. Learning is the foundation of knowledge. And knowledge acquisition with a healthy dose of execution is the basis of growth.

We all have incredible human potential; once we learn how to learn.

Now, on to this week’s optimized ideas…

1: Learn How To Learn

I thought the more I read, the more I’d know. So I crammed words down my cranium like a mineral dispensary. But reading isn’t about the consumption (unless it’s for pleasure). It’s about knowledge acquisition.

Reading alone doesn’t build knowledge.

It’s too passive. Even when you highlight and summarize what you’ve read, it’s still not enough.

It’s how you actively participate and engage with what you’re learning that pushes the information deeper into your brain’s long-term storage.

This week I met with Maarten Van Doorn, who is going to serve as my learning coach.

I recommend hiring a coach for every area of your life you’re looking to improve.

2: The Brutal Reality Of Supply Chain Hell

“What’s also apparent from her vantage point is that supply uncertainties, disruptions, and inflationary forces are here for the foreseeable future, perhaps into 2023.”

Many things are disrupting global supply chains.

International logistics are already complicated. When you add in COVID-19, demand increases, decreased levels of cargo capacity, labor shortages, things get expensive and reckless, fast.

At Skylink, we waited for 6-months to receive an ocean container full of Boeing 737 aircraft parts.

But it’s Economics 101, says Sahil Bloom in his Twitter thread. When demand is high, and supply is low, prices rise, bottlenecks occur, and delays are inevitable.

It’s why ocean freight has gone from $2,000 to $20,000 in some cases. For example, it recently cost me $6,000 to get a pallet of aircraft filters shipped from Germany to support Frontiers aircraft line maintenance projects for their fleet of Airbus.

The moral of the story is, don’t expect supply chain disruptions to go away any time soon.

3: Traits Of Successful People

“That’s the true secret to success. Being able to recognize an emergent strategy and implement it quickly.”

Successful people are lifelong learners.

They consume knowledge like it’s me in a potato chip factory. They’re always looking for ways to develop a skill or build upon knowledge. Successful people also learn from failure.

They can pick themselves back up “after a setback and keep going.”

Everyone experiences failure, but it’s how you deal with the failure that truly counts.

4: A $1.7 Trillion Career

“Even if you’re not sure what the business model is going to be, if you start with the customers at the center and move backward from there, you’re usually going to be able to find an experience they care about and that might have a business model as well.”

Replacing Jeff Bezos is no easy task.

But LinkedIn sat down with his replacement, Andy Jassy, in this fifteen-minute video to discuss his career.

The biggest takeaway is Amazon’s relentless focus on the customer. “You have to be good at being able to execute the details,” mentions Jassy. Amazon looks for team members who are more missionaries.

A missionary cares “most about the mission of what the team and the company are trying to accomplish, and will put the goals and the mission above the goals of themselves.”

A mercenary tends “to prioritize themselves over the team and the mission.”

5: Stone Soup

“Making Stone Soup is the only way an entrepreneur can succeed at creating something big and bold from nothing.”

Peter Diamandis retells the story about Making Stone Soup, which “is the only way an entrepreneur can succeed at creating something big and bold from nothing.”

“The stones are, of course, your passion, your labor, and your big bold idea… the villagers’ contributions are the capital, resources, and intellectual support from investors and strategic partners.”

And the most important part about the soup is a leader’s passion. People love to contribute to projects and a team that is fueled by passion.

You can’t fake it.

Related: How to Focus On Your Goals