A method to speed up learning a skill

General Memory Chat
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Hi everyone, I wanted to ask if anyone has managed to learn a skill faster than the usual time it’s supposed to take — for example, drawing, sculpture, etc. Normally, it might take 3 years, but has anyone, using special methods or even AI, been able to learn these skills in record time ?

Drawing and sculpture are just examples — it could be anything, like plumbing or other trades. For instance, in a field like plumbing, does anyone know how to learn it without actually being able to practice in person? Because to really work in that field, you usually need to go on job sites or help out acquaintances, which is rare, and most job sites aren’t accessible.

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Do you draw, paint, or want to learn? Share your goals, tips, and progress here
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In short, no.

You can’t know your way to success. Kkills are alive, they literally grow inside of you. Actually using them is the biggest part of what that growth requires, so you must practice them in person.
What knowledge does is make learning a little smoother, although it can also give moments of cognitive dissonance when you sit there going “Ok I know what to do, but somehow I can’t do it.”

What I’ve seen time and again is it takes people about 5 years to get good. The first year there’s a lot of progress, second year there’s visible progress, then the progress looks invisible for 3 years until suddenly things click and there’s a massive improvement.

Whatever skillset you want to invest in you should be thinking of as a long term, or lifelong journey. If it’s plumbing, get to know your local plumbers and get their advice on breaking into the trade. Also check what kind of protection racket certificate programs are required of you in your country.

That said there are a lot of easy wins if you just want to become handy around your own home for example. You could learn to replace screens, cut and solder copper pipe, wire a light switch and other little things like that over a weekend.

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The only thing I see where you could go a bit quicker is if you are organised and if you have a coach (not loosing time procrastinating, or practicing the wrong things).

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5 posts were merged into an existing topic: Do you draw, paint, or want to learn? Share your goals, tips, and progress here

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To avoid derailing this topic, I moved the posts about art into a new topic.

Do you draw, paint, or want to learn? Share your goals, tips, and progress here
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Farnam Street has a section about ideas related to learning and better learning approaches:

They focus more on skill mastery as opposed to learning and memory, but I find it ironic that I don’t see memory techniques.

Commoncog also has a body of material

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These articles on commoncog seem really good. I really liked Outcome Orientation as a Cure for Information Overload - Commoncog

It’ll take time for me to assimilate… and more importantly putting the idea effectively into practice of course.

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50 hours. We break down the activity into several basic skills and actions. Each skill action should be practiced for 3-4 hours per day, alternating between them. After the first week, each action should be thoroughly practiced. The second week is a practical week. The first week was a training session. If the activity is complex, the second week can also be a training session.

A practical week is when you’re actually doing it, rather than just practicing each individual element.

Look at how the professionals do it, what their standards are, and how they do it. Then try to replicate their skills in two weeks.

For some things, 50 hours is enough. For other things, 100-300 hours may not be enough. These are arbitrary numbers. What matters is the principle of training and how you do it. The time is only for checking how you are progressing and what you have done. The quality of training on each skill element is important. Plus, you need to know how and what you are actually doing.

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I think the best way to learn quickly is to see a practical example directly, like drawing shapes such as cubes, cylinders, triangles, etc. Instead of struggling with trial and error, it’s better to find drawings by people who have already mastered all the shapes in every possible way and copy them until it becomes natural for us. In another context, like plumbing or sculpting, you watch a video of a practical case and try to replicate it step by step, whether through visualization, practice, or both.

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I’m not sure if I’d say it’s “faster than usual” since I don’t have data on what usual looks like, but I’ve been applying techniques to my violin practice that have been very helpful: interleaved practice (contextual interference) + variability of practice.

Interleaved practice means only doing a few minutes of practice on something at a time, then switching to another task. So instead of the traditional way of practicing for maybe 30-60 minutes straight on one piece (“block” or “batch” practice), I might practice just line 1 of a piece for 3 minutes, then switch to another piece for 3 mins, then practice a scale for 3 mins, then go back to the first piece.

Contextual interference Variability of practice involves adding variations to the task you’re practicing, so rather than trying to play the same piece the exact same way every time, I might play it normally, then play it again but with an altered rhythm (dotted instead of straight, etc), then play it again but alternating between loud and quiet notes, or staccato / legato etc.
Much of the research comes from sports, where they’d do stuff in baseball training like “hit every 3rd ball as far left out of bounds as possible”.

There’s some controversy in psychology/education research over how helpful these techniques are, with conflicting results in some of the studies. But I’ve found it helpful in the learning/practice tasks I’ve used it on (violin, piano and snooker), and perhaps more importantly it makes practice more fun so I’m more likely to actually put quality time into it. Plus it keeps me slightly more focused and engaged, rather than just mindlessly playing the same way over and over on autopilot.

[edit]
Oh, regarding the learning without actually doing the task thing: there has also been some research on visualisation as a substitute or booster for real practice. From what I heard, it’s (much) better than nothing, but not better than real practice, so you should try to really do the task.
But if it’s not always practical to really do the task (e.g. you can only access your piano on weekends), then visualisation practice can be helpful. It seems that it’s most effective when you do it for short bursts (maybe 10 seconds imagining yourself playing one small section, repeatedly), and without trying to imagine too much visual detail (which might place too much load on your working memory and detract from the practice). You should also actually move your hands along, although it doesn’t have to be the full range of motion.

[edit 2]
Note: I mixed up “contextual interference” and “variability of practice”. Contextual interference is basically the theory that led to interleaved practice as potentially more valuable than blocked practice. Variability of practice is about adding variations so you’re not doing exactly the same thing over and over.

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It helps to be organized with some flexibilty about that as you go. The book “Ultralearning” is useful for this.

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I liked that book. There’s a discussion about it here: Ultralearning by Scott Young

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Now you have me wondering how to optimize block practice… And I wonder if something I experience from it is a common phenomena, which makes block practice appear less valuable than it really is.
Things practiced in isolation don’t (always) automatically integrate. I read a comment about drawabox some time ago that stuck with me. It went something like “After doing all this when I started drawing again I just used my fingers (instead of shoulder) so what’s the point?”
I tend to find the same kind of “problem” where the skill doesn’t become intuitive, or generalized after you get good at it in practice.

The only “fix” for this I can think of, is to pick one thing you want to integrate and try to remain mindful of it while actually using the skills you were learning. So for the above example, the artist just needs to try and remain mindful they want to use their shoulder more often while drawing something.

I wonder if other types of practice basically skip needing to integrate what you were doing in block practice? (If it’s even common for people to need that second stage).

Unrelated: Something I’m pretty familiar with is the game mechwarrior online. I watched a handful of newbies pick it up and stream it over the past few years, and there is a pattern I see. The first 1000 matches or so people are green. It takes 2000 to 2500 matches to become generally proficient. After 2500 matches, natural progression seems to really slow down. The average time in a match is probably around 6 minutes, so 100 hours to stop being a newbie, 250 hours to peak your natural aptitude.

Those observations don’t mean much, it’s maybe 6 people if you include myself, and filtered entirely through my own bias… But I thought it was interesting.

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To learn a skill effectively, start by mastering the basics theoretically and experimenting a bit to understand how things work. Then, learn by copying a professional. For example, if a pro is sculpting a highly detailed character, follow along in real-time, copying their actions while trying to understand why they make certain choices. Repeat this process for different poses, body parts, or specific details—like a hand at a certain angle, a fist, or a thumbs-up gesture. This approach saves time compared to trial-and-error.

For instance, in drawing, instead of struggling to imagine how a cube looks from different angles, you can use a real cube, rotate it in a 3D software, or check sites like DeviantArt to find examples of cubes drawn from various perspectives. Copy those examples, and afterward, practice active recall by redrawing them from memory.

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You may find “The Art of Practice” by Laido Dittmar an interesting read

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There is a time, a place, and a way to study what masters are doing, but it’s almost never near the beginning of your journey. At the start it’s best to spend a portion of your time studying the fundamentals, and a portion of your time studying specific things that attract you to the skill to begin with.

Not to harp on drawing too much, but it’s a domain I have some familiarity with and is easy to comprehend; if you’re drawn to drawing because you want to make pictures of anime girls, start by making anime girls for 50-75% of your practice and put 25-50% towards fundamentals.

When you see someone who’s really mastered their domain at work, it quickly warps your perception on what you should be capable of. Things flow effortlessly that take years to achieve at that level, if you ever make it. They integrate steps so deeply that they bypass them entirely.

Seems like every aspiring artist goes through a Kim Jung Gi phase, and you will find people on this very forum asking how to do what he did. Thing is, the man was deeply obsessed with drawing and spent every waking second on it. He not only mastered perspective and came up with mental visualization techniques to skip steps, but he also drew so many things from observation that his “visual library” was enormous.
Trying to do what you see him doing will have you falling flat on your face. Perfectly fine if you go into it knowing that, incredibly demoralizing if you fall into the trap of “looks easy == is easy.”

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Hi. I believe it could be good but if only it’s a game. Like when a young player copy a messi play. But he wouldn’t do that in a areal match.