Gap Effects & Quizzes For Rapid Learning

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” - Nelson Mandella

Often, the best entrepreneurs are readers.

Arianna Huffington has said she loves reading.

Bill Gates advises young founders to “read a lot”.

Warren Buffet has told audiences to read 500 pages a day.

The issue is that learning happens not on the reading but on testing.

Here is the fastest way to retain information based on the literature.

1. Before you sit down to read, watch or learn new information, remove all other forms of distraction, put your phone on aeroplane mode and limit browsing by installing something like Blocksite, which will block sites based on URLs and search terms
   

2. Set up a mantra and say to yourself, “What I am studying is important to me, and I need to focus on this” or some version of this
   

3. When reading the material, introduce gap effects.
   
   These are 5 -10 second intermittent pauses during your learning session where you do nothing but stare at the material
   

4. Once you’ve finished a learning session, test yourself immediately on the material you’ve been reading. Here are the best types of questions for testing:
   
   “What themes did you take away from the last chapter?”
   “What was the core message that the material was sharing?”
   “What concepts or formulas are important to retain here?”

That’s it.

Most of my time at varsity was spent re-reading or re-watching when I should have been testing immediately after learning.

The best in business, learn the fastest.

Fooled By Randomness

I was going to write about Kester Black. A crowdfunded company that's gone into administration. And the stupid actions the founders have taken to avoid their responsibilities.

But the real story here is not the Anna Delvey-level financial fraud (wait till investors find out the founders have been swanning through Europe - presumably on the investor's dime while this unfolded). It's a lesson I learned from the book "Fooled by Randomness".

I've met tons of business operators. Very few are impressive. Most of them have left me confused, like, how the f**k do they have a successful business.

Well, the first answer is that most of them don't. It's all BS.

But the more interesting one is that they've gotten lucky. They were in the right place at the right time. They might work hard and have the right temperament. But they also won the lotto - so does it count?

The funny thing about lucky people is that they don't see it that way. There's this famous experiment where a bunch of people were asked to flip a coin. Naturally, some flipped heads many times in a row—pure luck. However, after reviewing their results, the lucky flippers attributed their luck to skill.

These entrepreneurs; the lucky ones. Barely know their lefts from rights. They’ve fooled themselves and everyone else around them. Opportunities just seem to fall into their laps.

They have no actual knowledge. Few real skills. They're about as adept at answering simple business questions as Kamala Harris. They know much about nothing, keenly sharing empty advice shaded with overly complex, wordy explanations.

But eventually, on a long enough time scale, their luck almost always runs out. And when it does, what's underneath is never pretty.

You want to avoid these people like sour milk. But how?

I'm not actually sure. It's hard to see through someone who believes their bullshit. Maybe you need to get burned a few times to recognise that off smell.

All I can suggest is being aware that they exist, is a good start.