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    The Only Skill that Matters: The Proven Methodology to Read Faster, Remember More, and Become a SuperLea
    The Only Skill that Matters: The Proven Methodology to Read Faster, Remember More, and Become a SuperLea
    The Only Skill that Matters: The Proven Methodology to Read Faster, Remember More, and Become a SuperLea
    Ebook172 pages2 hours

    The Only Skill that Matters: The Proven Methodology to Read Faster, Remember More, and Become a SuperLea

    By Jonathan A. Levi

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    About this ebook

    In the next ten years, every knowledge worker on earth will become one of two things: invaluable or obsolete. No matter the industry, the pace of progress and new information is faster today than ever before in human history—and it's accelerating exponentially.

    In this new reality, how can we possibly hope to keep up? How can we learn, unlearn, and relearn fast enough to stay relevant in the world to come?

    In The Only Skill That Matters, Jonathan Levi unveils a powerful, neuroscience-based approach to reading faster, remembering more, and learning more effectively. You'll master the ancient techniques being used by world record holders and competitive memory athletes to unlock the incredible capacity of the human brain. You'll learn to double or triple your reading speed, enhance your focus, and optimize your cognitive performance. Most importantly, you'll be empowered to confidently approach any subject—from technical skills, to names and faces, to foreign languages, and even speeches—and learn it with ease.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateSep 3, 2019
    ISBN9781544504353
    The Only Skill that Matters: The Proven Methodology to Read Faster, Remember More, and Become a SuperLea

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    Reviews for The Only Skill that Matters

    4/5

    58 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Excellent book, loved it. Good kills to learn n improve upon
    • 1/5
      How to become a super learner? Skip this book.
      Disappointed - nothing new under the sun.
      Written by an amateur author.
      Stick to the top books about reading/learning not by books written by so-called authors who make summaries of other books and some lousy studies.
      The reviews are pretty fake too.
    • 5/5
      Great book, very insightful and a good stepping stone to accelerate your learning.
    • 5/5
      It can't get more simple. This is a life-changing book for everyone that want to learn more, read faster. A amazing book to start with if you are into learning, reading more, memorizing like a champion and stuff like that!!!
    • 5/5
      A book that changed my mind about speed reading! Love it. I'm also looking forward to using the sq3r technique. Thanks for writing this.
    • 5/5
      Really useful book! Some concepts I've previously learned, but they worked as great review material. I will be using the methods laid out in this book going forward and definitely will be coming back to fully comprehend and test my understanding.
    • 3/5
      abre puertas pero no se mete de lleno en ninguna. lo mejor es que te hace conocer a maslow abraham
    • 5/5
      Told in simple and easy way. I now completely believe that Learning is the only skill that actually matters.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book! Downright practical and full of interesting details which help to understand the processes behind "the learning of new skills". I highly recommend it.
    • 5/5
      Ante todo doy gracias por encontrar este libro en medio de miles y miles de libros que se encuentra hoy en día y nos tienen abarrotados de información
      Es un libro que suma a tus habilidades en tu día a día

    Book preview

    The Only Skill that Matters - Jonathan A. Levi

    ]>

    ]>

    Copyright © 2019 Jonathan A. Levi

    SuperLearner and Become a SuperLearner are trademarks of SuperHuman Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.

    ISBN: 978-1-5445-0435-3

    ]>

    To the 200,000+ SuperLearners out there in the world.

    Thank you for giving my life purpose.

    ]>

    Contents

    Special Invitation

    Introduction

    1. Information Overload and the Explosion of Knowledge

    2. The Only Skill That Matters

    3. Learn like a Caveman

    4. The Adult Brain and How It Learns

    5. An Ounce of Preparation

    6. Why (and How) to 10X Your Memory

    7. The Mnemonic Nuclear Option

    8. Never Forget Again

    9. Priming Your Brain for Learning

    10. Learning to Walk on Your Hands

    11. Cross-Pollination and Brute Force Learning

    12. Check Yourself

    13. Pay it Forward

    14. High-Performance Habits

    Conclusion

    Acknowledgments

    Special Invitation

    About the Author

    Bibliography

    ]>

    Special Invitation

    Thank you so much for picking up a copy of this book. If you are passionate about improving your reading, memory, and learning, I’d like to invite you to join our thriving community of over twenty thousand members. There, you can share your progress, learn from others, and stay up to date on the latest new content. To join, please visit http://jle.vi/bonus.

    ]>

    Introduction

    Why are you trying to read that? the principal asked.

    Silent sustained reading. Eighth grade.

    Of all the students, in all the classes, this evil bastard had pulled up a chair behind me.

    By now, I was used to interrogations anytime something went wrong on campus, and even to the occasional teacher reminding me of my very limited potential.

    But this time, even I was surprised.

    I looked up from my Java 2 textbook—which I understood almost nothing of—and sheepishly replied, I want to learn how to program computers.

    What followed took every ounce of the disdain that comes from decades of reprimanding problem children in a British boarding school.

    He scoffed.

    If you’ve picked up this book, chances are you know what it feels like to wish you could learn faster.

    You’ve spent the late hours studying, trying to keep up with your peers, your industry, or your passions.

    You’ve faced the exam you thought would kill you, struggled to transition between industries, or even missed that big promotion.

    But even if you have kept up, no matter.

    You no doubt can feel the pace of information and change constantly creeping up around you, slowly drowning you as you attempt to tread water.

    And deep down, you know the unspoken rule of the game we’re all playing: in our information economy, if you can’t learn quickly and effectively, you’re going to get left behind.

    In the next decade, this trend is only going to accelerate as we transition into a society of nearly 100 percent knowledge workers.

    And in that time, every single knowledge worker in the world is going to have one of two conversations. In the first, your employer will thank you for your service and tell you that it’s no longer needed. Your job has been outsourced, eliminated, or automated. Best of luck.

    In the second conversation, they’ll use phrases like irreplaceable, leading expert, and invaluable asset. Then, they’ll ask you what it would take to keep you around.

    Which conversation do you want to have?

    Fortunately, there is a better way to learn. A way that harnesses your brain’s innate abilities to make learning both easy and fun. A method that makes new information as memorable as your most cherished memories. That allows you to accumulate knowledge faster than you ever thought possible. This method is based on proven neuroscientific principles and has been developed and refined for over 2,500 years. Once you know it, you’ll be able to learn anything you desire, from industry trends to foreign languages, in a fraction of the time.

    In this book, you are going to learn the techniques that comprise this method in an easy, entertaining, and step-by-step way. You will learn to use the evolutionary strengths of the human brain to create and retain strong, linked memories. You’ll learn to maintain those memories effectively over time. Plus, you’ll learn strategies for reading faster, optimizing learning, and maintaining peak brain health.

    Over the last five years, I’ve taught this SuperLearner methodology to over two hundred thousand students and readers in 205 countries and territories. Those students have gone on to pass every exam imaginable, from the bar exam, to technical certifications, to the MCAT. They’ve used these techniques to change careers, start businesses, learn languages, and master musical instruments. And while some subjects do lend themselves more to these techniques than others, we’ve yet to find a topic that can’t be learned easier using them.

    Are you ready to claim your birthright and become a SuperLearner? Keep reading.

    ]>

    CHAPTER 1

    1. Information Overload and the Explosion of Knowledge

    Unless you’ve missed the last couple decades, you know what information overload feels like.

    Every year, there are six hundred thousand to a million new books published in English alone. Not to mention the millions of books published in other languages.

    And that’s just books. More and more, as a society, we are consuming our information from an ever-growing flood of newer media. These range from the traditional media, like magazines, television, and newspapers, to the more modern blog posts, podcasts, audiobooks, and videos. In short, we are producing (and consuming) more information than ever before.

    Not long ago, books were a precious commodity. People were lucky to own one or two books, and they read those books over and over again, savoring each page. In 1731, when Benjamin Franklin established the first subscription library, he pulled all kinds of strings to amass just forty-five books.1 Today, around 250 years later, the Library of Congress holds over thirty-nine million books. And again, let me remind you: that’s just books. (Every weekday, the library receives about fifteen thousand items, adding about twelve thousand of them to the archives).

    For the most part, this is a very good thing. Throughout human history, progress has been loosely correlated to how easy it is for the average person to create—and access—knowledge. In this light, we might look at a few key events throughout history as major turning points in our development. The foundation of our world, then, started with the invention of writing, around five thousand years ago. Sure, we take it for granted today, but writing is what allowed us to asynchronously record and deliver information and knowledge from one person to another. No longer did we have to transmit information from person to person orally. More importantly, we no longer had to rely on our imperfect memories to store that information. This might not sound like a big deal, but it is. After all, every great empire is built on technology. For the British, that technology was ships. For the Romans, it was roads and metallurgy. But thousands of years before that, it was writing and accounting that helped the Sumerians build the first massive kingdoms.

    Of course, even then, new information technology was not without its critics. Socrates, a proponent of memorization and oral education, often spoke against the use of writing, claiming it weakens the memory and softens the mind.2 Imagine that. I guess every generation has their own version of that thing is turning your brain to mush!

    Controversial or not, the creation of writing was a massive technological breakthrough. It empowered us to disseminate important texts—mostly religious ones, mind you—to millions and millions of people. This enabled mass education and mass collaboration on a scale never before seen in human history. Pretty great, if you stop and think about it.

    In the 1440s, Gutenberg’s commercial printing press took this a step further. While printing presses had existed in Asia for hundreds of years, none of them were as practical or as scalable. Gutenberg’s design, once perfected, enabled printers to easily reproduce and distribute many copies of books. This, in turn, made it much faster and easier to spread thoughts and ideas using the printed word.

    For centuries after this revolutionary invention, the rate of information produced and consumed climbed steadily—and for good reason. Information—and therefore education—became cheaper and more readily available. This meant a more educated public, which, in turn, meant that more people were able to contribute to the growing body of knowledge. By the time he wrote Part III of his autobiography in 1788, Benjamin Franklin proudly proclaimed that his public library system had made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries.3 In fact, Franklin himself was a perfect example of the effect a well-educated public can have on the body of human knowledge. Though he was denied a formal education and dropped out of Harvard over ideological differences, his life of autodidactic learning served him very well. In his lifetime, Franklin made significant contributions to the fields of politics, literature, science, governance, and more. And, in his roles as both postmaster for the US colonies and one of the most prominent printers and newspaper editors in the New World, he personally presided over this information explosion.

    The next waves of innovation in information technology were, without a doubt, revolutionary. But despite that, they all had one flaw in common with traditional print publishing. Be it radio, broadcast television, or satellites, the next few waves of technology still had gatekeepers. Besides the occasional community radio or TV show, it was just about impossible for your average person to spread information on a massive scale. This meant that the information shared was, for the most part, carefully curated.

    All this changed with the advent of the internet. Sure, in the early days, you needed to know a bit about computers and HTML to produce something people could actually read on the internet. But no longer. Today, technological literacy is a given, and all it takes

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