Want to Learn ‘Anything You Want’? Neuroscience Says 7 Sessions Is All It Takes

Maybe you think you don’t possess the talent for finance. For design. For programming. For learning any skill you want to possess.

That may be because you confuse talent with skill. According to HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah:

• Talent is the rate at which you can acquire a particular skill, while
• Skill is something that’s learnable

Here’s an example. Compared to my wife, to whom any computation seems to come intuitively, I have zero talent for math. One day I was struggling to determine the correct angle to set a miter saw for cutting baseboards with unusual angles. She thought for a second, worked it out, and came up with the equation: 180 minus measured angle divided by 2. Boom: perfect cuts.

She’s always been better at math than most people. She acquired her math skills more easily than people like me. That doesn’t mean I can’t get there, though; it just seems to take me longer.

Why “seems”? The difference lies in our starting points.

According to a study titled “An Astonishing Regularity in Student Learning Rate” published by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, students improve in academic performance at the same rate with each study/practice session.

“Whereas initial knowledge varies substantially across students,” the researchers write, “we found learning rate to be astonishingly similar across students.” The real difference tends to lie in initial knowledge, or talent: with practice, any student can reach “mastery” level.

How long does it take to master a particular knowledge component? On average, about seven sessions. 

Stay the course, and as the researchers write:

Our evidence suggests that given favorable learning conditions for deliberate practice, and given the learner invests effort in sufficient learning opportunities, anyone can learn anything they want (my bold.)

Granted, our ceilings may vary. My initial talent for math is probably lower than yours. Since I’m decidedly average, so is your talent for, well, probably anything. So while we both may learn at the same rate, my math skills will likely never match yours.

Unless you stop trying to learn. That’s where perseverance kicks in, because in many pursuits the person who “wins” is the last person to give up.

But still: as Shah says, most of the things you may want to achieve require skill, not talent. Take software engineering, something he knows juuust a little about. While a highly complex skill, at a fundamental level software engineering involves functional decomposition: taking a problem, determining the highest order of function required, then breaking it down into smaller supporting functions until, as Shah says, “individual functions at the atomic level are so simple they’re trivial.”

Like determining a cut angle.

The good news? Most pursuits, no matter how complex, can be broken down the same way.

Say you want to start a business. At its highest order of function — creating a thriving company with dozens or even hundreds of employees — the skills challenge might seem overwhelming, especially if you don’t feel you have a “talent” for business.

The key is to break it down into lower-level functions. Accounting. Sales. Marketing. Management. Customer Service. Operations. Fulfillment. 

Still sound daunting? Keep breaking each into smaller and smaller functions. Take accounting; at the simplest level, you just need a way — a notebook or a spreadsheet works fine — to track your expenses and revenue. My wife and I run our rental property and property development business off a couple of spreadsheets.

It doesn’t take seven practice sessions to learn how to track expenses and revenue.

Later, it might take few more sessions to get a handle on the ins and outs of cash flow forecasting. But that’s okay, because accounting — at least to the degree required to run a small business — is, to paraphrase Shah, just a bunch of individual functions that at an atomic level are really simple. Regardless of the math or financial talent level you bring to the table, as long as you you invest in sufficient learning opportunities, you’ll get there. 

I still have to ask my wife how to calculate certain percentages, but I’ve gained enough accounting skills to run my business, and to make decisions regarding the financial and tax complexities involved in our property businesses. Given my wife’s talent, her initial knowledge, she got there faster, and she will always be ahead of me… but I learned what I needed to know, and am still building on that knowledge.

That’s the really, really good news: you can learn anything you want to learn. As the researchers write:

Some readers may object that near-constant student-learning rate unrealistically implies that everyone can master advanced level calculus or interpret abstract data. Indeed, not everyone has favorable learning conditions nor will everyone choose to engage in the substantial number of practice opportunities required.

However, our results suggest that if a learner has access to favorable learning conditions and engages in the many needed opportunities, they will master advanced level calculus.

Even so, you don’t have to become an expert in your pursuit. Take business; you don’t have to be the Sara Blakely of sales, and the Mark Cuban of venture capital, and the Jensen Huang of computer processing.

You need to be good at a number of things, and great at one or two. 

So don’t let the feeling that you’re not talented at a certain pursuit hold you back. Break it down into lower-level functions. Then commit to studying, practicing, and getting feedback on your performance. (A simple way is to test yourself, because testing yourself significantly increases long-term retention.) 

As Shah says, regarding starting a business:

Figure out what set of skills you need to acquire. Some you’ll be good at acquiring, because you have the talent. Others you’ll have to grind it out more than other people may… but it’s doable. It’s a doable thing.

If I can do it, anyone can do it.

The last line from Shah is clearly self-deprecating — building a $19 billion company stretches my definition of “doable” — but as research shows, also accurate. Depending on your initial knowledge, your level of talent, it may take a while. It may take five, six, or even seven sessions to gain a firm grasp on a particular skill.  

And that’s okay. Because you may not have the talent, but if you keep workign at it, you can always acquire the skill.

Any skill.

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