all about? Four Hour Chef looks and quacks like a cook book, but as a

self-described non-cook it's a little odd that I would write such a thing. This is really

a guide to have become world-class in

just about anything in six months or less.

So this is not just cooking, right? I mean, you have this reputation of acquiring

bazaar unique skills quickly. When did you first discover this process?

The meta learning

concept really hit me when I was in college and I became fascinated by

two things simultaneously. The first was smart drugs for excelerating

acquisitions and recall and all these things. And then I realized that maybe

snorting antidiuretic hormone is not the best long-term strategy and simultaneously

became fascinated with how different companies were teaching language learning.

And that's when I also noticed the same pattern in kickboxing.

Yeeeahhhh...

Ughhhh….

and I ended up applying it to kickboxing to win the national championships in nineteen

ninety nine just a few months after starting practicing. If you

believe that instead of being limited to be world class in one or two things in

your life that you could actually become

world-class in one or two things per year, how do your decisions change?

How does your outlook change? It changes completely! Okay, let's get specific then.

So, if I want to learn some kind of complex skill quickly and I want to become

world class at it, what's the process I have to go through? Yeah, so the core

principles of meta learning are pretty simple.

The acronyms that I use D.S.S.S. and it stands for deconstruction, selection

sequencing, and stakes.

This is the process you apply to any complex skill. And that involves

deconstruction, so what are the minimal learnable units, the lego blocks

that I should be starting with?

Selection, what twenty percent of the blocks will produce eighty percent or

more of the outcomes I want? And sequencing, in what orders should I learn

these blocks? And then stakes. How do I set up real consequences to guarantee

that I follow the program? So, based on what you know then about how people

acquire skills

what piece of advice would you give? My piece of urgent advice would be very

simple and it sounds morbid, but I would say you are going to die

and the sooner you come to terms with the fact that you have a

limited amount of time on this planet

and that time is your most valuable, non-renewable resource, you should

learn to squeeze every ounce of life added every minute and every hour that

you have on this planet. I really cannot think of a better way to do that then to

sharpen the blade of the mind and spirit that you have by emulating the

world's fastest learners with meta learning.

Okay let's get specific then. So if I want to learn some kind of complex skill quickly and I want to become

world class at it, what's the process I have to go through? The principles of meta learning are pretty simple.