Avoiding the Prep Trap: A Key to Rapid Learning

And why so much "rapid learning" is bullshit

I once tried to learn French as quickly as possible.

I was already a connoisseur of the rapid learning canon. I knew all the tactics: breaking down the skill, finding the highest leverage “80/20” aspects to learn, using tools like spaced repetition to memorize faster, so I figured this was a perfect opportunity to apply them.

I spent weeks drilling the vocab, grammar, common phrases, everything I would need to speak to locals.

Then I arrived in Paris and sat down with my tutor for my first lesson. I explained what I’d been doing, and he gave me a smirk and said “Okay great, let’s go.”

“Go?”

“To see you speak French!”

I stammered, gulped, and followed him out the door. He led me down two packed blocks of locals, then stopped outside a pâtisserie and said “Why don’t you get us two of their favorite pastries.”

“I, uh, don’t know how to do that.”

“Okay, try ordering something then. A baguette or croissant if you have to.”

I debated backing out, but nodded and entered the shop with as much confidence as I could muster.

“Bonjour, I— Je voudrais…”

“English?”

“No no, je voudrais…”

“What would you like?”

I stepped back out a minute later with two croissants, my tutor glowing with self-satisfaction. I didn’t have to explain. He knew what had happened. And I’m sure the question he wanted to ask was:

“Are you ready to start learning now?”

This was my first big wakeup call to how much bullshit there is in the “rapid learning” ecosystem.

Deconstruction and 80/20 selection and spaced repetition are often useful for doing a Wizard of Oz man-behind-the-curtain performance. But they leave you with a rickety foundation that gets knocked over by the slightest challenge.

They aren’t a complete waste of time, but if your goal is to actually learn how to do something well, they’re a distraction. They give you a false sense of competence that distracts you from the hard work of Real Learning.

Skill acquisition doesn’t have to be slow though. It is possible to learn new skills, almost entirely on your own, much faster than most people think, using the right tools and techniques.

I’ve done this a few times now. Around 2014, I had to teach myself marketing to get qualified for a job I wanted post graduation. In 2017 I taught myself sales to grow my agency. And in 2021 I taught myself programming to break into crypto.

Along the way I’ve learned a ton about skill acquisition, and want to start sharing some of it here again. It’s been a while, but, it turns out I have quite a bit to say on this topic.

So let’s start with the trap I fell into when learning French.

If you want to learn a new skill quickly, you have to understand that there are two distinct phases in learning:

1. Prep

2. Practice

In Prep, you’re gathering the knowledge you need in order to start doing the skill.

And in Practice, you’re doing the skill and finding your weak points so you can start to improve on them.

The big mistake people make is what I call The Prep Trap: Spending too long on Prep, thinking they need to keep studying, keep reading books, keep taking courses, before they’re “Ready” to do the thing.

It’s easy to fall into because Prep is simple, cozy, safe. You can’t fail at practicing your French flash cards. But you can definitely fail at trying to have a conversation with a waiter.

The Prep Trap is how you can waste years getting badges on Duolingo, graduate from a fancy college with no job prospects, or read a dozen books on entrepreneurship without a business to show for it.

So what is the right amount of Prep? Just enough to start Practice.

You’ll know you’re there when you’ve reached a sufficient degree of understanding of a skill that you can start trying it in the wild. You can try something to see how it goes, and most importantly, can fail.

Put more succinctly: You’ve done enough Prep when you can try the skill and fail at it.

You can try to have a conversation with a waiter, you can try to replace your toilet, you can try to build a website, you can try selling something to a stranger.

Finishing Prep does NOT mean knowing you can succeed. The Prep Trap will consume you if you think you need to know how to succeed at doing something before you try it, because study can never prepare you for the unpredictability of the real world. You’ll spend ages studying one way to do something, then finally try it, only to realize there were other things you needed to learn that you didn’t know about because you spent all your time in books and blogs.

This is where a substantial amount of the rapid learning “tricks” fail. They keep you in the prep trap, giving you a false sense of progress, when you could have made much more progress doing almost anything in the wild!

Thankfully you can go from Prep to Practice in most skills in a few hours, often less. All you need to do is find a simple project you can work on, ideally independently, and the basic information you need to get it started. Not finished! Started. Some examples:

Language Learning: A very basic conversation script you can try with someone who speaks the language and your language so they can tell you where you mess up.

Sales: Something to sell and a script to try.

Programming: A simple project you can try to do, like build a website or automate some part of your work, and a ChatGPT subscription so you can start asking it how to get started.

Fiction Writing: An idea and a basic story framework (like Hero’s Journey).

Advertising: Something to sell, and a basic understanding of an ads platform like Facebook’s.

Carpentry: A YouTube video of how to build something simple like a box and some tools.

Remember: the amount of understanding and Prep you need before you start doing is extremely small. Figure out what that first super-simple-project might be for your target skill, gather the bare necessary understanding and tools for it, and then start doing it.

And once you’re doing it, then the real learning can begin.