Albert Einstein famously said:

If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.

We should aim to attain this level of leaning.

But we don’t start at this level.

We start small. Then we practice more, work at the skills we want to attain and then we keep learning and practicing until we are proficient. This is a commonsensical approach.

There is a better way to make learning fast, thorough and sticky by using proven frameworks.

One such framework is PLUS, MINUS, EQUAL.

To learn anything;

Find plus, minus and equal.

PLUS: a mentor who can teach you.

EQUAL: people who you can learn and practice with and who can challenge you.

MINUS: people you can teach to solidify your learning.

For PLUS, your mentor can be virtual if you both can’t be in the same place at the same time. If you can’t find a real person, start with a book.

EQUAL: if you are a student practice with your friends, or get coaching where you have other learners.

MINUS: a blog is a great way to teach others what you learn. A big myth is that to create content and publish online you need to be an expert. But that’s a myth. There are people out there at all learning levels. If your learning goal is physical like becoming an athlete then offer to teach people in your community.

A SIMPLE 3-MONTH PLAN TO IMPLEMENT PLUS, MINUS AND EQUAL

For your 3×3 learning (learning something new in 3 months) following this plan,

• 1st month: spend time with your PLUS to build the foundation
• 2nd month: continue with your PLUS to learn and add EQUALs to practice
• 3rd month: continue with PLUS and EQUALs and add MINUS

If you are building a business then I have something lined up for you to take care of PLUS and EQUAL (via a community) in the coming months. So stay tuned.

Mastering something big may take longer than 3 months but if you are focused then in a year you can get 250-1000 hours of learning under your belt starting with as little as 1 hour a day.

You can aim to learn one new skill or learn about a new topic every quarter. In the process, you can become proficient in one topic and be decently skilled at other two.

So, what is that you plan to learn?