Full transcript of “The Black Box Effect: How To Learn ANY Skill Quickly”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 What is the fastest and easiest way to learn a new skill? I've spent the last 13 years trying to figure this out. And what I've realized is that it comes down to something called the blackbox effect. My experience having coached over 30,000 learners, I've consistently seen that when someone does not understand the blackbox effect, they struggle to learn new skills. They feel stressed and frustrated because they're not improving. But worst of all, they don't even know why. So, in this video, I'm going to break down exactly what the blackbox effect is, and I'll give you three powerful strategies to help you learn any complex skill faster than ever. So, what is the blackbox effect? It originates from engineering. And it basically says that the black box is any
0:46 situation where we have an input turning into an output through some process in the middle. And when we don't know how the input actually becomes the output, that's what creates the black box. A very simple example is like making a phone call. Our input is that we tap a piece of glass a few times and then speak into it. And then the output is that somehow it connects and we make a phone call and we can talk to this person, you know, miles away. And most people don't really know how that works. What's the step in between? And for most people, you don't really have to know because you're not a phone or telecommunications engineer, unless you are. But when you're trying to learn a new skill, the black box is very important because the input is your time
1:35 and your effort. And the output is your actual performance and competence with the skill. And so if you're spending a lot of time and effort on trying to learn a skill, but you don't know how that time and effort actually goes into building the habits and the processes and the thought patterns required to master that skill, then your performance is going to fluctuate. It's going to be up and down. And this is especially true for complex skills. The reason a skill is complex is because there are lots of things going on inside the black box. There are a lot of factors and variables that influence your ability to use and master that skill. Something like tying your shoelaces is not a complex skill because there are just a small number of
2:21 very controllable, easily understandable factors that influence whether you can do it or not. On the other hand, for something like learning to learn, there are dozens, if not hundreds of variables that we have to get our head around, some of which we can't even control. And therefore, we need to learn how to overcome to become really efficient. And so, if we don't know how our time and effort is translating into our performance, then we're going to have inconsistent performance, variable results. And what normally happens is because we don't know what's inside the black box, which if we were to fix would allow us to have more consistent performance, we control the only thing we know how, which is our input, our time and effort. So we cycle that back
3:08 to compensate with more time and more effort. But because again, we still don't know what's inside the black box, our performance is still going to be variable. And this cycle continues. And this constant cycle where your performance and skill doesn't seem to be reliably improving despite you spending a lot of time and effort creates a lot of stress and frustration. It creates demotivation and eventually even burnout. And in fact, this is the very reason why most people will give up trying to learn a complex skill before ever mastering it. And so if you've ever felt these feelings where you're trying to learn a new skill, you're trying to get better at something, you're trying to create a certain kind of result, but it's inconsistent and it's variable and
3:54 you're trying really hard and you're trying harder and harder and despite that, you feel that the results do not reflect your efforts. There is an almost guarantee that that is because of a black box you have not yet opened up. to start learning new complex skills more quickly. You have to realize that your inconsistency in results and your inability to improve quickly is not because you're too dumb or you're not trying hard enough. It's because this black box has stayed closed. And that should change the way you try to develop those skills. The faster and sooner you open the black box, the faster you learn new skills. So, knowing this, here are three very effective strategies that you
4:39 should start using whenever you're learning new skills to open that black box much more quickly. Number one, never practice in isolation. How do you get better at learning a skill? Of course, you practice. Practice makes perfect. Practice does not make perfect. Practice only makes perfect when you are practicing in the right way. And then you're learning from those mistakes and you're reflecting and realizing which changes you need to make in your next practice. And even then it takes a long time. Yes, the volume of practice matters. That's your input. You need to not have zero amount of time dedicated to it. But once you get to a point where you're practicing a reasonable amount, more practice is probably not going to
5:26 improve your skill development anymore. And in fact, it's perfectly possible. and actually quite common for some people to learn a new skill for just one or two years and to be just as good as someone who's been practicing for six or seven years. So, never practicing in isolation means that we're shifting our focus away from just the volume of practice and we're going towards making sure that every practice session we do is always paired with reflection. If you make time to practice something, make time to have a dedicated critical reflection session on how that practice went. And then take this a step further by documenting what you find. Be very clear and explicit about the gaps in your
6:11 understanding. Remember, the value of practice is what you learn from the experience. And learning from the experience doesn't always happen automatically. you can cut down the amount of time and repetitions of practice you need by five to tenfold by just reflecting more and extracting more observations and insights from each practice session. And so, while it's common for people to set aside time to practice learning a new skill, it's uncommon to see someone putting aside time to reflect on their practice. And in fact, for me, when I was learning to learn, and I think about when I was 17, 18 years old, struggling through getting into medical school and then navigating medical school, I spent countless hours on just trial and error and practicing
6:58 new learning strategies. And I spent the first seven or eight months just doing things and practicing. Sometimes I do well, sometimes I don't. And I can't explain it. That means the black box is there. And once I started dedicating proper time to reflect and think about my experiences, I learned and improved more in probably two or three weeks than I had in the four to five months before that combined. And FYI, if you're on a similar journey and learning is one of those complex skills you're trying to get better at and you want to know what are some of these other insights and observations I made in my years of trial and error, then you may want to check out my free weekly newsletter where I distilled together these observations and the things that I wish I knew years
7:44 ago that would have made a difference to my improvement. The newsletter is completely free. If you're interested in checking it out, I'll leave a link in the description below. Now, the second really effective strategy to open the black box is to shift from random to targeted practice. Whenever we do a practice session, what we're basically saying is that we think that when we do the skill a certain way and we add time and effort, we think that it's going to achieve a certain type of output and performance. And we see how close were we. And if we practice and expect a certain outcome and we don't get that outcome, it means that our understanding of what's inside the black box was incomplete or incorrect. And so there are two ways that we can try to practice
8:32 and get better at a skill. The first is random practice. The random means that we don't have a clear idea about why we are doing things the way that we are doing it. We're just going to do it and see. And so if it's not what we expected, what does that tell us? And usually if you do random practice, the answer is I don't know. All I know is that it it didn't work. So obviously something wasn't working well, but it's very hard to pinpoint what you can change to make it better next time. Random practice leads to random results, which leads to very slow improvement. On the other hand, targeted practice means that we're starting from inside the black box. We're saying, okay, I think
9:18 that if I spend my time and effort to practice and do things a certain way that will lead to this output. And we're being very clear and explicit about how we think it works. We're not sure what's inside the black box, but we're creating a hypothesis. Here's how we think it works. And now when we do the practice, we can test that hypothesis. And now our next practice session is much more targeted because we can just change one of those variables in a way that we think will work. And so with each layer of practice we add our understanding of what's inside the black box gets more and more accurate. And the best analogy I can give about random versus targeted practice is actually playing the game Wordle. So if you're not familiar the
10:03 game Wordle, you've basically got these blank slots and you're trying to guess what this word is. So, let's say for example, we think that this word might be the word bread. And it tells you, okay, well, there's no B, there's no E, and there's no D in this word, but the R is correct, and it's in the second position. And there is an A, but it's in the wrong position. And so now, when we have our second attempt, it looks more like this. We know the R is in the second position, and we know that there's an A that fits in there somewhere. So, we might try to guess the word crazy. Uh, and then we might find that, okay, well, there's no C. uh there's no Z and there's no Y. Uh and then the A is also not in this position, but it's still in here somewhere. And so since we know that the A can't be here and it can't be here, the A must be
10:48 here, here or here. So we might guess the word aroma. And we find that there is an A here and there is the R here. Uh and there is actually an O, but it's not in this position. And then there's no M. And then there's no A at the end. And so through this process, we may continue to go on and then eventually discover that the word is arrow. And so even though at the beginning we had the totally wrong idea, through a series of iterations, we gained more information about how we were right and how we were wrong until eventually we arrive at the correct answer. This is basically targeted practice. The black box is your understanding of how you think it all comes together. And each practice is giving you clues about where you might be right and where you might be wrong. Random practice, which is what most
11:35 people do where they just practice, see what happens, practice, see what happens, is like shouting out words until you get it correct without ever checking if any of the letters were correct. So, do targeted practice. Whenever you practice, have a clear intention. If you don't know what your blackbox hypothesis is, don't practice until you've thought of it. And this approach of targeted practice links directly with the third way that you should be trying to open the black box and improve new skills, which is to ask why constantly. One of the things that makes targeted practice and reflections more powerful is to build a working theory of how you think this skill works. And so when you learn a new skill, you usually have a certain set of
12:21 guidelines and certain sets of instructions on using this skill. Like do it in this way. And the first few times you practice, it's just to get a feel for it. But after that, you should start challenging and asking why those instructions are the way that they are. Don't just do things because someone says this is how you should do them. Spend time to rationalize why that step is important. When you ask why you need to do things a certain way more often, it allows you to build an understanding about what's inside the black box more quickly. And more importantly, when you inevitably don't get the results that you're expecting, it allows you to troubleshoot and self- adjust much more effectively. And I think here is where you can really see the difference between someone who struggles to learn new skills and someone that can learn new complex skills very quickly. The
13:08 person that struggles feels like they need to practice lots in order to improve. And they're resistant to being reflective and asking why because it takes a lot of thinking power. And it's frankly just easier to mindlessly just do it again and again and again hoping that you'll get better. And they also feel like this is a waste of time. I should be there practicing to learn. There's an impatience. On the other hand, someone who is very quick at learning new skills realizes that the value of learning and practice comes from opening the black box. So the time that they invest in asking why and building this model and figuring it out directly translates to needing less practice and therefore improving more quickly. And the powerful thing about asking why constantly is it actually
13:54 reveals even more black boxes that would otherwise have been hidden for you. So for example with learning to learn a lot of people will realize that they subconsciously every time it feels mentally too challenging they revert back to their old habits of thinking. Some people realize that it's not the technique or the process that's holding them back, but actually their sense of perfectionism stops them from learning from mistakes. In fact, I often find that people who generally struggle to learn new skills tend to have these personal habits and tendencies that hold them back from practicing in the way that they need to to open the black box at all. And so this is the blackbox effect. And these are the three strategies that you can use to try to open that black box a little bit more quickly. And if learning to learn is the complex skill that you're trying to open
14:39 the black box for, then I recommend checking out this video here where I explain some of how learning works and how you can become a more effective learner. Thanks so much for watching and I will see you next time.
