How to become an efficient learner/doer
In this article I will show you how to become focused over time and get more done
An efficient learner is basically a goal-oriented person that is very focused and a person that has an ability to cull information that does not pertain to reaching his/her goals. Furthermore, an efficient learner has good foundational knowledge and practical knowledge, which will prevent stagnation in the learning process because you have good building blocks to start from.
The setup
In order to be able to maintain a focus over time, all physical and perceptual distractions have to be removed. Physical distractions can for example be smartphone usage or social media. Distractions in perception can be sight, sound, smell, discomfort and pain to mention some common ones. If you get distracted from certain sight objects, block off your working space so your view only contains what is essential for work. If the problem is sound you can wear ear plugs or listen to focus music: I think this is a good concentration track:
If you get distracted by discomfort, try to adjust your sitting posture and position so you can focus. Working from a dedicated place where these distractions are removed enables us to more easily get into deeper focus for quality work to be done. Another important aspect of the setup is when you are entering into this physical space. If you are entering it during your peak-performance-hours of the day and if you are not stressed, it does impact the overall performance of your working session in a good way. Listen to your body and mind. You probably know when you are the most productive during the day.
Focused breathing
In my experience, in order to enter a more focused mental space, meditation is very efficient along with slightly altered ways of breathing. Start by being aware of the body and sit in a relaxed posture. It is forbidden to fall asleep, so laying down is not a good idea unless you cannot sit. Become aware and focus on the breathing. Take a couple of deep breaths, just to calm down and settle into the meditation. Do not think about what needs to be done and do not have any expectations about having a good meditation/focus session. Just relax and be attentive. Now, when breathing out, make the out-breath slightly longer than the in-breath. This will help the heart to calm down. Keep maintaining the focus on how the breath feels in the body. The breath enters the nose and travels to the lungs and down to two finger-widths below the belly button. It is not physically possible to bring air down to the belly button but the process of breathing engages the abdomen so it starts to move. All These sensations are your target of focus. After a couple of minutes direct your focus to the sensation of how the air enters the nose: The air touches the upper lip, nostrils and nasal passage. Be aware of these sensations as long as you can. The sensations will get hard to detect as the body switches from in-breath to outbreath and vice versa, but be aware of that also. With time, your focus will be improved. Do this daily.
Hone in on what needs to be accomplished and prioritize action
When still in the focused breathing state, make a focused intention of accomplishing a simple goal. A simple goal is time-limited and where you know the process of how to finish it. Identify tasks that are simple to finish and contribute to your goal. You have to prioritize action over finding ways of how things should be done. It is better to actually pick a way of doing things that is less optimal than spending time on finding the optimal way of doing things, which will require too much context switching and information processing rather than staying focused on accomplishing your goal.
Foundational and practical knowledge is the building blocks of productivity and advancement
Having good fundamentals (see post) is important because it will help you advance towards task completion. It is not very productive if you do not know how something is done, which will stop your progress towards task completion. The goal of your work or study is task completion, whether that is to learn a specific topic or finish some work. I cannot stress how important basics are, because they are the building blocks for accomplishing more complex tasks and goals. Your task should be simple enough so you know how to finish it. That means you can use your building blocks (fundamentals) to accomplish it, whether the end-result is complex or not. If a task is complex (the output is non-trivial), meaning it needs simpler building blocks to finish, then the task is still manageable and a good task for reaching your goal in this working session. In fact, when you have improved within a certain field and you know how to finish more complex work. The output of the complex work will be easier for the mind to process and thus helpful for future work. Let us look into a simple example. When you first learn math you have to learn the numbers and what those represent. After some time, you become more proficient in counting and can advance to learning basic arithmetic operations, which combines the knowledge of counting with operations like addition, subtraction etc.. The knowledge of counting will be second nature to you but not the arithmetic operations, but with practice and time it will also become second nature to you. This knowledge will then become the building block for more advanced mathematical understanding such as modeling and solving equations.
Identify bottlenecks and distractions
If you follow the instructions from above, by improving your focus and picking tasks that prioritize action along with having good fundamentals, you should have entered a very productive state. The thing with states is that they always change. Sometimes you can maintain it for longer but sometimes it is not enough for the session. In these cases probably some distractions have entered into the mind. When this happens, remind yourself of your goals and do not get stressed up or feel any performance anxiety. Be aware of the situation and feel in the body and mind what is going on. Make corrections and consider the guidelines above in order to refocus and redirect your intentions back to your tasks and goals.
During a session you may enter a bottleneck situation, which is a dip in productivity. This can be caused by fatigue, hunger, etc.. In that case if it is hard to refocus, then it is better to take a break and resume work when you are ready. Sometimes you also need to context switch (do another task that requires some initial mental setup/switching) during a session, for example when you have finished a task and need to do another one. A tip is to switch to a related task that you know how to finish and go on with that. For example if you are working in processing tables of data in Excel and has finished that task and need to go with something else, it will be a better choice to pick something similar like processing some other tables of data with the same work process, rather than switch to something like researching on articles of interest for your work. For learning, it is better to focus on doing tasks that reapplies and reaffirms basic concepts so it settles in memory, rather than switch to something entirely new. Swithining to something new is required in order to advance your learning but make sure that you know the basics first.
Summary
The efficient learner/doer is a goal-oriented person that has good concentration and fundamentals. If you want to read more about how to live a more directed life, i.e. if you want to know how to live a more fulfilled and goal-oriented life, please read my post about finding your core values and building good basics: Directing life