Technology enables technology. The faster our hardware gets, and the more efficient our runtimes and processing engines get, the more demands there are on you, the developer.

New languages and platforms to build multi-threaded apps. New standards and specifications. New frameworks that promise to hide all the hideous complexity—but turn out to be yet another leaky abstraction.

Most developers I know are responding to this by hoarding information.

They’re driving themselves to the brink of burnout to cram every scrap of knowledge possible into their brains.

They’ve been fed a lie—that their knowledge of the latest and greatest languages, tools and platforms is what determines their value.

I used to believe this lie too. For years I dedicated every moment I could spare to consuming books and pounding through video courses.

But as I gained experience, I realized that this was a game I could never win.

Because 5 years from now 50% (or more) of what you “know” will be obsolete.

And I came to see that it wasn’t my knowledge of C# or SQL that was the key to advancing in my career.

The Most Important Skill Any Software Developer Can Have Is…
Knowing How to LEARN

And I’m not talking about just squirreling away knowledge for “someday.”

Today’s successful developer is a master at diving deep into a new piece of tech, slicing it into bite-sized chunks and absorbing the critical 20% that lets him work productively while other developers are still scratching their heads and searching Stack Overflow.

I have this ability today—but I didn’t always.

A few years ago, learning any new technology felt like embarking on an endless trek to Mordor.

Here’s what I’d do:

This whole process was REALLY time consuming. I’d spend weeks or even months to get my arms around a new programming language.

And every time I thought I had a good handle on the topic, I’d stumble across some new rabbit trail that I hadn’t explored yet.

The goal posts were always moving. The longer and harder I studied, the more the topic seemed to expand in all directions.

I never got that satisfaction of “done”—and eventually I’d just get overwhelmed and move on to something that seemed more interesting or urgent.

Worst of all…

Get John Sonmez – 10 Steps To Learn Anything at the Utralist

When I Tried To Apply What I’d “Learned”
I Couldn’t Remember Half Of It!

As frustrating as all this was, I just assumed it was part of the process.

That is until I made a discovery that changed the way I learn forever.

Several years ago, I took a side job creating online training course.

At first I was in heaven—I was getting paid teach what I knew about software development.

Pretty soon, though, I hit a little snag… I ran out of things to teach.

Google had just released Go, so I thought, “What the heck, I’ll do a course on that.”

After cruising through my courses on Java, Android, iOS and several other languages and platforms I knew well, this Go course felt like slamming into a brick wall.

Suddenly I realized how horribly inefficient and painful my way of learning really was. I was spending weeks and weeks to create a single course.

My old approach to learning wasn’t going to cut it. I had to adapt, and FAST.

So I Threw Out Everything I “Knew” About Learning

I stopped trying to brute-force the information into my brain until my eyes bled and my brain begged for mercy.

I took charge of my own learning, rather than letting book authors and other “experts” push their preconceived ideas on me.

I found a way to get down to the bare essentials that would give me a productive, working knowledge of the topic in the shortest time possible.

That Go course took four long weeks to create.

But with the discoveries I made about learning efficiently, I was soon producing courses in three weeks… Then two weeks…

Until I was cranking out a new course every 8-9 days.

I’d cut my study time down to barely a third of what it was. And what really surprised me was this:

The Faster I Learned, The More I Retained

This really caught me off guard.

My motto in life is that nothing is free—there’s always a tradeoff. So I expected that the tradeoff for rapid learning is a shallower understanding and less ability to apply what you’ve learned.

Turns out, it’s the opposite.

As I improved my learning efficiency, my ability to retain and apply the information went through the roof.

That’s because I wasn’t cluttering my brain with trivial details. Instead I zeroed in on the key concepts—then applied the knowledge as I learned, locking it into my long-term memory.

Not only was I learning 3X faster, now I didn’t need to constantly circle back and relearn the basics over and over.

I realized that…

Most People Approach Learning Like A Noob Writes SQL

What happens when you use 10 different queries to build up a dataset? It works, sure, but it is SLOOOOOOOW.

Any programmer with a rudimentary knowledge of SQL can throw in a handful of JOIN statements, and BOOM, that 60-second operation finishes in 3.

Learning is the same way.

There’s no advantage to spending 4 weeks to learn something you could master in 1.

All you’ve done is burn time and brain cycles.

I ran with this mind-bending insight and continued to refine my new way of learning while creating course after course.

Over the next 18 months, I tackled more than 30 topics, including Dart, Lua, HTML5 game development, MeteorJS and Redis.

I knew I was on to something when other developers kept commenting on how “sticky” my trainings were. Because I was embedding my learning approach into my courses, my students were retaining more too.

Without trying, I had stumbled on…

A Flexible Framework For Breaking Down Literally ANYTHING You Want To Master And Downloading The Information Right Into Your Brain With Maximum Efficiency

And I had to share what I’d learned with my fellow software developers.

So I set out to reverse-engineer and systematize what I’d been doing by instinct.

I spent weeks observing myself as I learned, looking for patterns I could extract.

And when I finally boiled it all down, I came up with a sequence of steps that anyone could follow.

I call them the…

10 Steps To Learn Anything Quickly

Discovering these techniques for yourself will change your entire outlook on software development—just like it did for me.

Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the flood of “must-know” new technologies, frameworks and tools that you’re bombarded with every day, you’ll adopt a Zen-like attitude toward the churn.

You’ll relax in the knowledge that you DON’T have to jump on every new trend (or risk getting left behind).

You’ll have the confidence that you can pick up a new technology and know it back to front in a few days or a couple of weeks.

Instead of feeling scattered and distracted, your learning time will have laser-like focus and structure.

And you’ll finally experience the satisfaction of actually FINISHING. You’ll know when you’ve learned enough and you’re ready to move on.

This 10-step system will show you: