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One year, one Guru, one system

Written by Jose Gonzalez on March 10, 2010 - View Comments
Categories: Learning Curves, Performance & Efficiency, Posts & Articles, Time Management

Are you dealing with new and changing information constantly to keep abreast of your industry?

Are you trying to replicate somebody else’s system, or various systems, and tweak them until the work for you?

If this is you, then you’ve probably hit the information overload wall several times before today.

I’m talking about that feeling of total overwhelm that grinds your thoughts to a halt; that feeling you get just when you thought you were getting the hang of things and then a new piece of information pops up and suddenly you convince yourself that you know very little about what you do, about where you’re going, and about the things you need to know.

That’s information overload: the affliction of knowledge workers. The two steps forward one step back syndrome.

How to cope with – and manage – your learning curve

I heard something really clever in a pddcast recently.

Clever and beautifully simple.

Unfortunately, the speaker couldn’t recall the name of whoever came up with this idea, or at least whoever told it to him, but here it is nonetheless:

One year, one Guru, one system

What this means, simply put, is that you choose one mentor and focus on their system entirely, ignoring everybody else.

Work on that system onto the master it (and profit from it) and then move on to the next system (and guru).

I like this concept very much because it deals with the root of the problem from which information overload springs: multiple threads.

It’s when you’re trying to follow too many systems at once, too many ideas, too many gurus, that you get thought seizure, followed by self-doubt.

The approach removes this mechanism from the equation: you focus solely on learning how to use one system, one step at a time, until you master it.

But one year is a long time… so let me make a few suggestions…

They say that a task will take as long as you give it. If you give yourself half a day to do something, it will take you have a day (or there abouts).

If you give yourself a week to do something, it will take you week.

On the other hand, if you give yourself a week to do something and then you’re offered £1000 for every hour you can save on the project… do you think it will still take your week?

You may even finish it that same day.

What this proves is that the amount of time a job takes to complete is not necessarily related to how long you think it takes, but has more to do with how much you want to do it.

One year to learn a system is far too much time in my opinion. You simply don’t have that kind of time.

If you think it takes a year to do a university degree, then think again.

You can do it in one year. You just had to do more and learn faster.

One month, one Guru, one system

If you are an excellent time manager and you have the discipline to motivate yourself to work and stay focused on what’s important, then my one month approach will work fine for you.

Break down the whole study course into a month, and then break it down into weeks, and then days.

You need to know what you will be doing each day for this to work. You need to have clear objectives for each day, so that you know when to stop and when to start a new thing.

If you go at it in a linear fashion with no goals (landmarks) you’ll burn out like a candle. Feeling low will rob you of your mental resources, so you won’t be learning as effectively.

In other words, go at it like a bull and that you will cheat yourself.

One week, one Guru, one system

If you’re not a great time manager, but you have enough discipline, this system may work for you.

Here what you do is choose a handful of mentors (lets say 4) and allocate one week to each.

That’s it.

Immerse yourself in that system during the entire week, and ignore the rest. The following week, switch systems and work on your second guru’s system.

One slight problem with this approach is that you’re not likely to master a system in a single week. This means that you will likely follow this path for maybe six months, switching weekly between systems.

Depending on your own memory retention, note keeping, tracking and how intensive each learning is, you may struggle to keep up with each system if you’re following more than two gurus. For instance, if you’re following four gurus, then you’ll be working on a particular system every four weeks.

Tip: this system should work well for you if you’re only following two gurus.

One day, one Guru, one system

If you’re following four gurus (and I really don’t recommend learning more than four systems at any one time) this approach should work well.

Here you immerse yourself completely in one learning each day.

One thing you always need to do, no matter what strategy you’re following
Regardless of your approach, you need to learn to blot out everybody else. Remember that it’s trying to follow too many threads at once that causes information overload.

Choose up to four gurus and then set out to learn their systems. Choose whatever strategy works best for you and become proactive in ignoring everything else.

Everybody has information to give you, and to sell you. When you’re trying to stay focused on your own learning, all these offerings can easily turn into noise and disruption.

How I do it: my own approach

Personally, I choose one of the three approaches depending on what it is that I decide to learn. If it’s something very intensive and tend to choose the 1 month 1 system approach so I can even immerse myself and come out at ‘the other end’ with the competent degree of understanding and being able to apply at least some of the learnings.

I also switch approaches midway. For instance, at the start of something completely new and may choose the 1 month approach and learn as much as I can in that time.

Then I move onto the next system, and then the next.

Eventually, I become semi-competent in all three or four systems.

At this point I switch my strategy. I either take the weekly approach, or the daily approach. Both of these allow me to track and manage my progress much better once I’m in the driving seat for each project.