Accelerated Learning with Polyglot Dominic Zijlstra
Dominic Zijlstra is an edtech entrepreneur and polyglot. He helps professionals learn faster and remember more using science-based learning methods. His obsession with learning better started in 2017, when he’d spent a year studying Mandarin but still couldn’t communicate with his Chinese parents-in-law. He dove deep into the science of learning and developed a learning method that actually worked. He learned Mandarin successfully and then turned this method into an app (Traverse.link). Over 10000 people have used it since to learn things like languages, technical skills, marketing, psychology, and more.
In this conversation, we share proven techniques to accelerate your learning. You will learn how to increase your information retention, speed up the acquisition of new skills, and become the person necessary to achieve ambitious goals.
See above for video, and below for audio, resources mentioned, and conversation transcript.
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Additional Forcing Function links:
Experiment Without Limits (peak performance workbook, free download)
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Topics:
(03:18) The meaning of learning
(15:49) Spaced repetition
(22:55) A tech background, systems, and learning
(28:29) The practice of deliberate practice
(46:42) Create an environment that supports learning
(55:26) Advice to accelerate your learning pace
Conversation Transcript:
Note: transcript slightly edited for clarity.
Chris (00:05): Welcome to Forcing Function Hour, a conversation series exploring the boundaries of peak performance. Join me, Chris Sparks, as I interview elite performers to reveal principles, systems, and strategies for achieving a competitive edge in business. If you are an executive or investor ready to take yourself to the next level, download my workbook at experimentwithoutlimits.com. For all episodes and show notes, go to forcingfunctionhour.com.
Today I'm joined by Dominic Zijlstra. Dominic is the founder of Traverse, an app that has helped over ten thousand professionals learn language and technical skills faster. Dominic is a polyglot and a super learner. He dove deep into the science of learning to develop learning methods that actually work.
Our topic for today is accelerated learning. In this conversation, we prove techniques to boost your information retention, accelerate the acquisition of new skills, and become the person necessary to achieve your ambitious goals.
Dominic, so excited to have you here today. Let's learn how to learn.
Dominic (01:12): Yeah. It's great to be here, Chris, and thanks for that wonderful introduction.
Chris (01:16): So, I'd love to start by learning a little bit more about your background, how you got here. How'd you become interested in learning?
Dominic (01:24): Yeah, so I always had kind of like a learning drive. Even when I was a little kid, I would get books from the library and, yeah, just start reading them and start exploring all kinds of topics. And part of that is like I'm from a small country, Holland, so languages was always like a big thing for me. Like, my grandparents actually lived abroad, they lived in Germany, so we would often go there, I would pick up German as we went there, so that was one thing that really, yeah, stirred my curiosity. Then when I actually finished high school, I actually went abroad as well. I went to Germany too. I studied physics at university, and again I kind of kept this sense of exploration and always learning, so even when I was in Germany I then did my masters in Brazil, for example, so I actually dove into engineering there.
So I am always looking for new topics, and also like picking up languages as I go to those countries. So, like I became fluent in German, and then in Brazil became pretty much fluent in Portuguese, as well. So I've always had this learning drive, and actually, it was like five years ago when I met my current wife, who's Chinese, and then I hit kind of a roadblock, 'cause I was trying to connect with her parents, my parents-in-law. They didn't speak any English. So I wanted to learn Chinese. I thought because I'd learned all this other stuff before, like, well I'm pretty good at learning, right? I can handle this. But then it turned out that Chinese was just too hard. And that's when I really dove into the science and metas behind learning. That's when I realized I had to step back. Like, I can't just do this in the same way that I always did. And that was kind of the point that I, yeah, started exploring all of these meta-learning principles, which eventually led to me also building an app that enables other people to do the same.
Chris (03:18): So let's start by just kinda getting on the same page with definitions. What does learning mean to you?
Dominic (03:25): Yeah. So, to me, learning is a very human thing. I think humans are one of the most curiosity-driven animals, and that means we always explore and want to find out new things, discover how things work. And it's kind of rewarding in itself to do that. But for me when learning becomes really powerful is when you have a goal in mind as well, that brings you further in life. So maybe in your personal relations or in your business, like in currently growing a business, when you can kind of combine those two things, like this natural curiosity with having an actual goal in mind that you want to achieve. That is for me like the most rewarding thing of learning, and that is kind of what learning means for me, and when learning becomes almost a goal in itself.
Chris (04:13): So, it does seem that it's really important to start with this end in mind to direct your curiosity. What advice do you have around selecting a learning goal? Maybe let's start with when you were learning Chinese. It seemed like your learning goal was being able to communicate with your in-laws. How did you work backwards from that?
Dominic (04:36): Sometimes it's tricky to have a learning goal. So early on I was often exploring all kinds of things without really having a goal in mind. So that led to me knowing a little bit of everything in lots of topics, but then there wasn't really any topic that I knew deeply. So once I hit this roadblock of learning Chinese, I discovered, like, actually I have to go way deeper than I used to to be actually able to learn Chinese. And it was this going deep that for me, yeah, became the most rewarding thing, because in going deep I was able to form so much more new connections than I was able to before by just learning very broadly, as I think a lot of people do.
Chris (05:18): So what do you think the advantages are of going deep? I think of particularly today's culture with Twitter, with a lot of things happening in the news, there's this temptation to be able to have something witty to say at a cocktail party about any subject that could come up, when it seems that there's a lot of value in going really deep in a couple of important things that you naturally perform well at. What do you say are the rewards of going deep? How do you encourage that level of depth?
Dominic (05:53): Yeah, that's a great question. So I think, like, by going deep we kind of get to a level where things become almost like subconscious, right? So if I go deep into like learning a language like Chinese, at some level I will start by just memorizing stuff and maybe using memorization tricks to learn those, and it will be like a very conscious and in some ways very energy-consuming and painful process, but once it gets to this level where it's unconscious, it's kind of like, yeah. You call it fluency, obviously. And that's what we mean by things becoming subconscious. And that's when we can make deep connections to other areas as well.
So it was Chinese learning that led me to come up with this system of learning, but then for example a few months ago I talked with like medical students and they said, like, "Oh, what you've built is what I've been imagining for years." So the exact same principles to deeply learning Chinese applied to, like, deeply learning medicine, for example. And I think those deep connections cannot be uncovered if you don't go deeper than, yeah, cocktail/Twitter level of knowledge that, yeah, that a lot of people are stuck at, I think.
Chris (07:02): I'm really interested in this principle of transference. You mentioned that there are principles that seem to be a commonality across everything that you're learning. What principles come to mind?
Dominic (07:14): Yeah. So there's a couple of steps that I've found recur for any kind of skill that I want to learn. So the first one is, I always try to zoom out first and try to find an approach that works for that subject. And I call this drawing a map, almost. So once you set a learning goal, you draw a map of who the people in this space are that I want to learn from. And those will usually be like people just a few steps ahead. Like, if I want to learn marketing I'm not going to start by following, I don't know, Seth Godin or something. Like, he's just too far ahead. So I'll map it out, find the right people, find the recurring themes, and then once I have that I try to make it my own, and I do that by writing. So I just take the main pieces of advice that I get from those people, I rewrite them in a way that makes sense to me, and then if it's like a heavy, memory-intensive skill, like language learning, I will also set up a spaced repetition practice. I'll practice with flashcards, for example.
But a lot of skills, like marketing or like copywriting, you can kind of skip that step. And then I go to like the deliberate practice step. So I will just set up a practice that I can do. And ideally, that practice is already related to the learning goal I set in the beginning. Right? So for example, if I wanna get better at copywriting I might set a practice of sending out an email to my audience every week, and using the techniques I learned to write better headlines, and then I can actually track the open rates, and see if I got better or not. So that creates kind of this feedback loop that makes it possible for me to actually improve.
But often you have to go smaller, 'cause you cannot directly jump to the actual goal that you're learning for. So for copywriting, what I did in the beginning is, I would just take a whole bunch of headlines that I liked and I would just rewrite them, like with pen and paper, sit down, rewrite them. And that process helped me discover a lot of principles of why those headlines work. Because my rewriting is such a slow process. I would have to think about every word, why did they put in that word, why did that get my attention, why did I click that link. And that caused me to think back. So these kinds of deliberate practices really help us uncover the deeper principles. And then yeah, like to those practices of setting up a schedule to those practices. So maybe I practiced copywriting once a week, and then that kind of repetition, yeah, makes me a little bit better every time.
So those are usually the steps I go through for any learning. So I used a lot of examples here in copywriting, some in language learning, and obviously those steps might differ a lot for, yeah, depending on the nature of the skill you want to learn.
Chris (09:57): That's so great. And I think it's worth going deeper into those, because essentially, I think you could apply these to anything that you wanted to learn. So starting with drawing a map, having these examples that you're following, "What is good in this skill?" I think it's useful to have a yardstick to measure against, and so that's usually people, like you said, who are a few steps ahead of you. Something that you could reasonably reach and you can compare and see, "Hey, am I making progress towards this North Star?" As well as what are the—It allows you to work backwards from, "What are the steps necessary to get to this point?" Kind of start to create a plan, of, here are the sub-skills, I think is something that you pointed at, that maybe you can't take on a whole field at once, but you can start to deconstruct it into its component parts and then train those separately.
I think the rewriting the advice, talked about taking headlines and trying to recreate them, there's a lot of power in that, because while we can just copy what someone else is doing, we won't actually understand or internalize what is the thought process behind it, and thus we won't be able to replicate those results. We'll just know something is good without understanding why it works.
So, let's talk about this in improving writing, or copywriting, in this case, can you take the principle and recreate the result by working backwards? So start from, "I know this works, let's figure out some of the reasons why it works. Why does this headline get clicks?" And for example—And finally this turning it into a practice. I think this is something that you talk about, which I think is very wise, is we tend to approach learning like we might have back in school, of we have a test coming up and we need to cram for it, but that this is an ongoing practice that we continue to iterate on, and just like anything in our lives we need to schedule it.
Talk to me a little bit about how when you learn some of the learning is taking place outside of the learning period. I know you're really big on this concept of spaced repetition. Why is it important that we're coming back to something at regular intervals?
Dominic (12:20): Yeah. So like in my experience, a lot of the learning happens not when I actually sit down and focus but rather when you kind of maybe chill out or even sleep on it, and your subconscious keeps processing it, and then the next day you wake up and you have some new insights or it actually seems much simpler than it seemed like at a time when you were actually trying to do it. And I think that's what you're actually giving time for when you do like this spaced repetition, for example. So by spacing it out over time, you've given your brain much more time to subconsciously process it and form those new connections.
And then the good thing is when you actually consciously repeat that again, you formalize those connections and you, I don't know, you maybe write it down, and that allows you to build on top of them. Right? 'Cause even if I didn't do those repetitions, my subconscious might still process that, but I wouldn't be able to—I might actually lose those results because I don't reflect on them, and my subconscious does the work, but I can't build on that because I never actually use it, and I've already jumped and moved on to the next thing. Right? Whereas by periodically reflecting on that I can build on what I've done in the meantime.
Chris (13:37): How do you manage to stick to a learning schedule? It seems like learning anything is the classic important but certainly not urgent, and something that it's very easy to punt on to when it's most convenient. I know when it comes to learning something like Spanish, I don't touch it until the week before I'm about to go to a Spanish speaking country, and just, you know, hope and pray that I can remember all the things that I haven't thought about in a couple of years. How do you stay consistent with something that might not have a near-term deadline?
Dominic (14:13): There's two ways I can do that. So first for memory-intensive things, like learning language vocab, I use spaced repetition software, like my app which I created, and it just schedules what I should review at any day, right? So any day I might have like fifty flashcards to review, and I just review those, and it will be scheduled out at the actual optimal time for me to review it at. So that's easy, and it takes me like maybe ten minutes a day, which I can basically do any day, right? And if I can't, then the next day I do twenty minutes, I don't know. So that kind of does the work for me. But then there's obviously skills like, yeah, writing, copywriting that are not primarily reliant on memory. So for those, like, my process is a bit more manual. I actually have like to-do lists where I—Well, I use Notion, so you kind of have your to-dos, but at the same time they are like notes where you can write down my progress and what I did.
So I have a date for every note. So it's not like a due date, but it's like a do date, a date to actually do it. So on that date, I will do something. So I have a do date (for example) for writing headlines. So I'll write some headlines and I will reflect on them. And then once I've done that I will move that date to whatever period I want to. I want to do that periodically, right? So for example, I move it like one week ahead so that it's in my to-do list exactly one week from now. So it's just like one of the items on my to-do list, and it is there, it's visible, so I have to do it.
Chris (15:49): I'd like to talk about each of these. So let's start with spaced repetition. What is it, and why does it work so well?
Dominic (15:55): Yeah. So, spaced repetition is based on the forgetting curve, which was discovered over a hundred years ago by a scientist called Ebonhaus, or Ebbinghaus, I think, and he basically discovered that when we try to remember something, basically our recall decays exponentially. Right? So maybe after one day you will have a ninety percent chance of—Or let's say after one day you have like a fifty percent chance of remembering it, after two days you have like twenty-five percent chance of remembering, after three days like twelve and a half percent chance of remembering it. So it decays exponentially. But if you reinforce your memory by repeating that information on the second day, you actually reset the forgetting curve. So you reset it to like from fifty percent recall to one hundred percent recall, but you also decrease the decay factor. So rather than losing half the information the next day, at that point maybe you just lose thirty-three percent. So after that first repetition, the day after that you have a sixty-six percent chance of still remembering that.
So then it follows from that, if you do the math, then it follows from that that the best reviewing intervals to remember any piece of information is like increasing intervals over time. So say I learn a new piece and a new Spanish vocab word on day one. Then I repeat it on day two. But I don't repeat it on day three. Instead, I increase that interval, and maybe I repeat it on day four. And like the next interval, be even further ahead. So maybe I repeat it again on day ten, then on day twenty-five, and then on day sixty or something. And if you do the math, it's really interesting. If you do seven repetitions and you remember it at every repetition, then that's basically enough to remember it for life. At that point the interval will be so large that it actually, it's like your lifetime. So if you do it well, like, seven repetitions are enough to remember it for life. And that's really the powerful thing about spaced repetition.
Chris (17:55): Yeah. I think that applies to a lot of things in life, in that it's very iterative, and that it becomes very dialed in every time that you return to something. Now the second thing, I love this concept of a do list. Like, D-O list. This reminds me a little bit of the concept of active recall, where you're regularly testing yourself to see how far you've come. Maybe talk to me a little bit about this concept and how you apply it.
Dominic (18:20): Yeah, yeah. So I usually combine spaced repetition and active recall. So rather than just repeating a piece of information, I will actually formulate a question or practice that prompts me to retrieve that information. So in the case of language learning, it's very easy. Right? Rather than having a work pair, "To talk, hablar," I will just put it like, "hablar," and then I will prompt my brain to come up with, oh, the correct translation is "to talk." So that's kind of how active recall works for memory-intensive tasks, like language learning. And then obviously for something like copywriting, it won't be a simple memorization, but I will have a deliberate practice item. For example, like, look back at your browser history and look for ten headlines that caught your attention, for example, and I will write those down. And that will be kind of the prompt to do that action item.
Chris (19:15): One common piece of advice that I know we share is, you know, I think Feynman originally talked about this, where you don't realize what you know until you need to explain it to someone else. And so this testing yourself is very important to iteratively converge on success in a skill or in a learning outcome. So I talked often to clients who are giving a really important presentation, and encouraged them to schedule a demo presentation to peers maybe a week ahead of time where they try to give the presentation, and by doing so reveal what are the weak points in the presentation, where are the points they need to flesh out more? Obviously, they can get some feedback in terms of "this resonated a lot, I didn't understand what you were saying here," that the final product becomes even better, even more dialed-in the more times that someone returns to it. So, creating opportunities to see, "Here's where I stand based on my performance in a realistic training environment, and based on that I can focus my learning much more closely, because I realize the things that I already have competency in, and here are the areas where I need to specialize."
A concept that's really near and dear to us at Forcing Function is feedback loops. So thinking systematically, I like to say that the speed of improvement in anything is proportional to the tightness of our feedback loops. Where we receive feedback on how we are doing and we make an adjustment to our approach based on that feedback. What recommendations do you have for someone to create sources of feedback, ways to see how they're performing and be able to adjust their approach?
Dominic (21:12): Yeah. Yeah, so I think that's very interesting. You mentioned Feynman technique, and then feedback loops. They're very deeply created. Basically, the Feynman technique, it's kind of a trick to create a tighter feedback loop, 'cause obviously there are things where we have tight feedback loops. For example, if I write those email headlines I can one or two days later, I can see what the open rate is. Right? And I have that feedback. For a lot of things, the feedback loop is much more fuzzy and longer. So for example, I create a new marketing campaign or I send out emails for a few months, and I don't know, people at some point they respond, but I don't know which touchpoint was actually prompting them to respond, and I get much more fuzzy feedback. And that's where the Feynman technique can be incredibly helpful, because it's basically learning by teaching. So I can basically share my understanding of a certain subject with other people, and get feedback on it, and then they will identify, "Oh, well, that doesn't really make sense," or like, "I didn't quite get that." And that kind of allows me to identify knowledge gaps.
And I think one thing that builds on top of this, is on Twitter you have this trend of building in public, and it's basically when you're building your business or your course or whatever, you share things you do, decisions you make, et cetera, on the way. And yeah, the great thing about that is that you get this feedback from other people who are in the same area and who are facing the same problems, and they might be just ahead of you, and they might already know what comes next, so you don't have to wait for that feedback loop, but you get that feedback immediately. So Feynman technique is a great way to kind of tighten those feedback loops that would otherwise be very fuzzy and long.
Chris (22:55): So you come from a very technical background. You studied physics, you learned math, you learned data science. How do you think this background influences the way that you approach learning?
Dominic (23:05): Yeah, I think like this background was probably one of the reasons I started building an app in the first place, because I like to systemize things, and obviously once I had figured out this process that really worked for me to learn Chinese, initially it was like living in a spreadsheet and I was keeping track of things in my calendar, and it was very messy, so I thought, "Well, there must be something out there that can allow me to do this better." But there wasn't really anything. Like, there were apps like Anki, but it only did like one part of the equation, and there were note-taking apps, but yeah, they only did like another part of the equation, so I kind of thought, like, you have to build a system that can do all of it. So definitely coming from this background of physics and math let me think deeply about systems and how we can—Even if you have conflicting information. So we have all these different techniques, right? And some of them are even—Like, one technique might advise something, and another thing might advise something that seems to be almost contrasting with it. And kind of blending those together and making sense of them in a way that can actually be systemized.
I think that's, yeah, that was heavily influenced by my background in math and physics.
Chris (24:23): So in our corner of the internet, knowledge management and note-taking apps are blowing up. There's a lot of excitement around creating an external source of all the things that we know, where we can have this repository, documentation of all of the things that we've found that are interesting, all of our learning. Where do you find that note-taking, these apps fall short?
Dominic (24:49): So, like, the trap a lot of people fall into, it's like they have this note-taking app and they just put everything they come across into it, right, almost without filter, of what we—All the links, or you just copy and paste stuff, and it fills up to the point where, yeah, it doesn't really make sense anymore, right? Like, you cannot find anything, or when you find anything it's almost like Google. You have a hundred results, and you don't know which one to pick. So a lot of people use it as almost like, I don't know, just a storage of information. But I think where they fall short is what we actually want is we want these things that actually matter to us, that actually help us further to live in our actual brain and not just in a note-taking app. And the process of actually getting information from the app into your head, in the case of most note-taking apps, it just doesn't exist. Right?
So yeah, you have this collection of ideas, but you cannot act on it, because to act on it it needs to be in your head and it needs to be almost to the point where you can make it, like instinctive. And that just doesn't happen just by writing more things. What we can do, even with existing note-taking apps, is if you just focus on a couple of things and heavily filter what you put in there, and come back to the same things again, rewrite them, that can actually help you learn much deeper. 'Cause writing is an incredibly useful process. So let's be clear about that. So that's the good thing about note-taking apps. Like, they make writing easier, and yeah. We can rewrite and form new connections as we think. So that's incredibly good, it's just that the way people are using them is by making highlights, which is a useless technique, or by copying links or like verbatim quotes. And that just doesn't bring us any further if there's no process to actually transfer that back into our first—I'm saying our first brain, but into our actual brain.
Chris (26:47): Something that you pointed at there, I think, is really interesting, especially from someone who spends a lot of time on the computer, on devices, is the power of physical feedback from our senses. Talking about making your map earlier using pen and paper, even when you're creating a note, the active experience of typing something rather than the little bit more passive experience of highlighting something or copy and pasting. What role do you think that this active motor movement plays in recall?
Dominic (27:28): Hmm. That's a very interesting question. So I mean, I don't know about the actual neuroscience behind it, but I do know like, yeah, like passive techniques like highlighting or copy and pasting text just won't work, 'cause it's like too easy. It's almost like you want this desirable difficulty. Right? So if it's too easy, like, your brain doesn't learn anything, because it's always like automatic. So you have to make it a bit harder, so instead of just copy and pasting text or just highlighting it, like, I actually have to give it some thought myself and process it a bit and write it in my own words, even if it's terrible, because just that little bit of effort will probably activate something again in my subconscious which then allows me to come back to it at some later time and then I can probably write much better than what I wrote initially.
So it starts off something that does work in the background which wouldn't happen if I just copy or pasted, or if I highlighted it. So I think that's the important difference between passive and active learning.
Chris (28:29): This brings to mind deliberate practice. I think this is one of those teacher's answers that we're really good at saying, where someone asks, "Hey, how do you learn this skill?" But we don't actually know how to do it. So how does deliberate practice work in practice? It feels like it's this balance of playful but also very active. Do you maybe have a recent example of how you've applied it?
Dominic (28:54): Yeah. I think that's a great question. So it's always best if you can practice the whole skill. So for example, recently I've been trying to build a community around some of the medical students who are using the app. And I don't know much about community building, so obviously I was going through this process of mapping that out and kind of finding people in the space. And then I kind of struggled to find deliberate practice, 'cause I'm not at a stage where I can say, like, "Well, every week I'm going to spend one hour building community," 'cause I just wouldn't know what to do. Right? So the way I broke that particular thing down is, yeah, using some of the sources I discovered along the way, is by finding existing communities that are related, and kind of start mapping those out first. So what I will do as a deliberate practice is I will spend like half an hour in like Discord or Slack community that is relevant, and—Well, first just identify the people who are like leaders of that community, what they are saying, what gets a lot of response, what gets a lot of likes, and kind of creating a map of those communities.
So that's just an example of how even if deliberate practice for a particular skill seems very vague, we can probably still find ways of breaking it down into very concrete actions that we can actually take periodically. And I think that's often a challenging thing in itself, but once that's done it's very powerful, because then we have actual actions that we can take. And it's called "practice," but it's not just practice, right? 'Cause by actually doing this, I learn a lot about building those communities, and because they apply to the communities that are already relevant, I get to know the people that I actually want to reach out to at some later point. And by that point I've already learned a lot about them, so I will be much more effective.
Chris (30:42): Yeah. Speaking of effectiveness, it's something that I've seen that is unique to us as humans, as we're really good at justifying our behavior, and thus if we aren't careful around being specific around what counts as practice, there's a lot of things that we can justify later as practicing. So you talk about doing something like building a community, there's lots of different actions that you could have taken to say, "Hey, I'm learning how to build a community." But being really specific in how you were using your learning time, you thought the most effective way to acquire that skill and find things that you could directly apply to building your own community, and obviously being able to circle back on a regular basis and saying, "Hey, is this time being well-spent?"
Another example that comes to mind, a few years ago I wanted to learn standup comedy. So there's lots of things that I could have justified as learning standup comedy. Okay, maybe I'm gonna watch every season of Seinfeld, and really learn about, okay, how Seinfeld—Really funny. But that would have been a very passive experience, and I decided the most active way to deliberately practice this skill is to tell a lot of jokes and to see where people laugh and what are the parts that people laugh at.
So I think this is something that you hinted at that I think is really worth underlining, in when you're trying to practice something, there's always a more direct path. So being very specific about what actions count as learning, and regularly reflecting. "Are the things that I'm doing leading me towards my goal?"
Dominic (32:29): Yeah. I love that. Yeah, so I actually had a stint at learning standup comedy, but that was in my pre-learning phase, that was when I was still trying to do a lot of things at the same time, so I did like this standup comedy course for like a month, but then actually after that I didn't really pursue, because I had gotten to a point where I was kind of okay with it but I didn't have any goal with it, so then I probably don't remember much from it now. So that kind of goes to show that you have to learn it deep, because else it just gets lost.
Chris (32:57): Yeah, it's another common phenomenon, is thinking about what is the outcome that you're going for? I think the classic example, this one's very top of mind for me, is I'm running a race on Saturday. So all of a sudden I'm getting very excited about running technique and increasing my cardio, but the common phenomenon is after the race there's no reason to run anymore, so the skill falls off and we get out of shape or we forget how to do the thing. Right? This is a classic extrinsic reward that when the reward is removed, so goes the motivation. So if we're looking to build something for the long term, in addition to creating a test, something to see, hey, how far we've come, thinking about what is the payoff of continuing to invest in this skill, continuing to make it part of our identity. Otherwise we run the danger of ramping up and then having to start off near from scratch the next time that we want to discover how to become funny.
Dominic (34:01): Yeah. I think there's also a fine balance there, 'cause there's people who say, like, "Well, you don't need goals, you just need processes." When I build the right processes then I can actually stick to them, because as you said, when I achieve the goal, after that I don't know what to do and I will just forget about it again. But I think there's a fine balance there, because we cannot just rely on processes, without having a goal in mind. We just need to make sure that the goal that we have is long-term enough to keep us motivated for, well, for basically like a lifetime almost. While at the same time having those smaller measurables that we can actually measure our progress against.
Chris (34:39): Absolutely. Yeah. I like to think about working backwards from a long-term vision, and the more concrete that vision, we start to get a picture of who do I need to become in order to accomplish this? What is different about Dominic in the future who has accomplished this goal, versus Dominic in the present? And we start to identify the subskills, the things that we need to build in order to become this person. So we both have the long-term, "All right, this is something that I need to stick to for a while." So pace myself, continue to reflect on it over the long-term, but also have these short-term milestones where we can test ourselves, and there's a little bit of incentive to perform in the short-term rather than the convenience of just continuing to put it off for that final exam.
Dominic (35:29): Yeah. I love that. Like it's almost like you have this delta between where you want to be and where you are now, and you have to focus on the items that narrow that gap as much as possible. I think one thing that helps there as well is rather than—Because I often, when I go on Twitter, for example, I see all kinds of people who are, well, they are way ahead, they are more successful, right? So it's kind of, it's inspiring, but at the same time it's demotivating, right? 'Cause, you know, "I'm not there yet." But if you look backwards, maybe like one or two years ago and look at where you were, where you are now, and look at that delta, I can see how much smaller that has become, and then extrapolate that into the future, like two or five years ahead. That becomes much more encouraging and motivating to stay on track for those long-time goals and visions.
Chris (36:20): You have to stay in the game. Anything that is worth learning, any skill that is worth learning requires long-term dedication, and naturally there's going to be times where motivation wanes, where something gets put down. But needing a reason to stay in the game. And like you said, I think there's the double-edged sword to the world that we live in where expertise is so accessible, where on the one hand we're always seeing examples of how we could do better, and that's very inspiring, but at the same time we're painfully aware of how other people are doing better, and we can fall into this comparison trap, where we see the results that someone else is having, but we haven't paid the cost in terms of times and effort to reach that. And we get demotivated because, "Well, I'm never going to be as good at copywriting as this person," or for me, you know, "I'm never gonna become as good as my favorite drummer, so why even start?" And thus coming back to this learning outcome, what is something that is reasonable to be accomplished, and are we committed to putting in the time and effort necessary to get there?
I'm curious, for you, someone who is a superlearner who makes learning very central in your life, how is your life different from learning at the center point? What changes outside of just learning this particular skill when you're engaged in this process?
Dominic (37:53): Right. So, yeah. I think by setting those goals and actually working towards them—So, like, I've achieved a couple of things by setting those goals. So first, for example, being self-employed, right? Like now no longer being a company employee but actually having achieved financial independence to some degree, and being able to work on that. And that is something which I think comes together with entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is like a super learning challenge. Right? You have to learn a lot of skills at the same time, and you also have to be really careful about like which skills can I actually become good at, and what do I want to focus on and which ones do I have to just outsource and leave to someone else to, again, avoid being able to do a little bit of everything but not achieving much on the whole.
So, once you figure it out it gets much more—It has given me much more focus, and like I know what I have achieved in the past years, and if I extrapolate that it will be more freedom, I will have more freedom to basically dive into the stuff that I'm really interested in. Right? Like it's not freedom to just do nothing, it's like the freedom to grind away on what you actually love to do. And I think that's what learning can give you. Like, if you learn with the right goals in mind, you will be rewarded for that, also monetary, to enough degree where you can actually spend more time on the stuff you actually like to learn and go deeper into that and continue being rewarded and recognized for that. So I think that's a very tangible outcome of being super focused on learning.
Chris (39:37): I like to think of it as I'm calibrating my intuition. In this case, my intuition on what is important. I think a good rule of thumb is to just optimize for interest. Where it naturally resonates with you, what do you gravitate towards, what is something that's like your guilty pleasure or the tinkering in your garage? And there's a trust that you know what to do. And the nice thing is that the more things that you learn and the more opportunities that you have to not only put this learning into practice but to see what learning activities lead you towards your goals, you start to accumulate evidence that, yes, I know what to do, and I'm confident that the way that I'm investing my time and my energy is going to lead me towards my goals. Allows you to stick to a process, and generally to move much faster with a sense of trust.
So it's a very interesting takeaway that you describe, that this systematic process that I think people from the outside might feel is restrictive, that, hey, I have to stick to this regiment, I have to do these things on a regular basis, that this creates this sense of freedom. Remembering that, hey, we have the choice, we can learn anything, so let's learn the things that are going to lead us towards our goals that we naturally are curious about, that we enjoy, and becoming this type of person. Knowing that, "Hey, I can do anything, it's just a matter of learning that skill." That gives us a lot of freedom to choose what we want to do.
Dominic (41:20): Yeah, yeah, I love that. And it's like, yeah, it's like really assuming that growth mindset of, "I can learn anything, so I can be deliberate about what I want to learn." And a lot of your idea of optimizing for interesting, that as well, because that kind of assures that you can stay in it for the long game, right? 'Cause I could have built a marketing business instead. Like if you go on Twitter, you see tons of people who build very successful marketing or, I don't know, like outreach businesses, and it all seems like they achieve monetary success much faster. But if I did that, I'm not deeply interested in those subjects, so I probably would have given up before I had achieved success in those businesses, so I couldn't have replicated those outcomes, even though they seem simpler to achieve. So I need to do what I'm really interested in, which is like, yeah, learning how to learn and all the stuff we are talking about now, and build a business around that, and that will allow me to stay in it for the long term, and be rewarded and gain that freedom to keep grinding away on that, which is like the thing I love to do.
Chris (42:24): I think it's an interesting meta point. Past Forcing Function Hour episode we had on Sasha Chapin, we were talking about the mental game of writing, and he—I essentially asked him, it was like, "Man, writing is so hard for me sometimes." And his point was, "If it feels like a ridiculous slog, you're probably doing it wrong." And to go back into, hey, what parts feel hard? Is there a way to work around them or to make them easier or more enjoyable?
This is something when I talk about motivation or procrastination I touch on often, is how can you make the thing that you want to do feel easier to do? This kind of downside of mimesis, where we see someone else's success and try to replicate that without their natural interests and skills, why it can be so dangerous is, it's like, "Why is this so hard for me? Why am I having difficulty?" When all the time, like, what are the things that you're naturally leaning in towards, how can you capitalize on that? What if you really doubled down there? It's something that I think is kind of surprising around productivity. I like to think, "Hey, what's a thing you're good at? Can you just do more of that?" I think it's a really interesting flip, versus like, "How do I get all of these things that I feel inadequate up to this natural level," versus like, "You're already doing things that you enjoy, you already do some things well. How can you really lean in and double down on that?"
It kind of brings up an interesting question for me. Like, what do you lean in on? What do you think is your natural gravitation, and how have you capitalized on that?
Dominic (44:03): Yeah, I love that perspective, 'cause I think it's like a very delicate balance. 'Cause yeah, you definitely have like this eighty/twenty principle of like focus on what you're good at and make that go from good to super good and capitalize on that, versus like being an entrepreneur and doing everything yourself and learning all those skills, maybe moving much slower. So there's definitely a balance there, and I've discovered there's a few things I really like, and I discovered one of them is writing and breaking things down in ways that they make sense, actually have become more enjoyable for me now than doing a technical activity like programming, for example. So I try to outsource programming as much as I can, which I was—Initially I was doing a lot of programming and much less writing. So I think it kind of evolves, as well, what your interests are. But something like skill that I need to write well, it's still the same. It's like being able to zoom out, to see how things fit together, how I can map them out in a way that makes sense.
So the underlying skill set I have to learn in order to become good at that skill, it's still the same, and that's what I have gotten better at over time, and that's why I'm being able to just transfer learning from being able to program well to being able to maybe explain a concept well in writing. And like, the act of writing is something that you mentioned as well that can be very challenging and struggling with and there I actually found it helpful to break that down into much smaller tasks. And one big thing that helped me to write better is by allowing myself to make the first draft, like, really, really bad. Just put all the words on there, mention stuff that you want to say there. It doesn't matter if it makes sense or not, if the English is not good. Just get it out there. And that's actually easy, and enjoyable, and then you just need to do a few rounds of editing. And editing is for me less enjoyable, but it's just editing, right? It's just like polishing stuff that's already there. So it's also like a much smaller step for me to do.
And I think that, yeah, that kind of—I probably apply the same principles to do a big task, like creating an app, for example, and breaking that down into small programming tasks which were actually manageable and doable, and now kind of just transferring those same principles to, yeah, learning something like writing, which is essentially the same systematization that is probably like just an innately very enjoyable activity for me.
Chris (46:42): It brings to mind something that I believe Ira Glass popularized. Ira Glass is the host of "This American Life." And he talked about the peril in doing anything creative, where you're taking something that doesn't exist and putting it out into the world, is that particularly in the early going but really forever, your tastes will always surpass your ability. And so the peril, particularly in the beginning, is to judge yourself and to compare what is coming onto the page with the things that you are consuming. And start to fall into this narrative trap of, "I'll just never reach the point of being good enough." So, yeah, trying to find ways to practice a gentle touch with yourself, avoiding this judgment, but instead being curious—What is, as you said, this delta between where I am and where I'd like to be and the things that I seem to enjoy, the things that resonate with me, the work that I think is good. Let's deconstruct that. What are sub skills that I could use to start to train, to start to close that gap. And whenever possible, to find ways to enjoy that process.
I think on this theme of sticking to a learning plan and making learning fun and easier, I think it's important to talk about environment. So, a core belief at Forcing Function is that a lot of our behavior is contextual. So, it's really important to create a contextual container that supports progress towards our goals. I'd love to hear about your environment. This could be physical, it could be digital. What things have you done to create an environment that's supportive of your learning?
Dominic (48:34): Yeah, I think that's a great point, because we are always much more reactive in our actions, like actually responding to our environment than we think. Like when I was employed, like, I worked as an aerospace engineer, I worked as a data scientist, and I thought I was learning a lot because I was advancing in my job at a good pace and getting better at it, but if I compare that to the way and to the pace of learning now that I'm like an entrepreneur, it seems like back then I was just actually like slacking, right? So I think environment is a very important factor, and I think we can improve it by being conscious about mainly the people that we surround ourselves with.
And the great power of Twitter and the internet is that we can actually identify those people and talk with them directly, right? So I did—I joined the On Deck Course Creator fellowship last year, and I met a lot of amazing people there who were like ahead of me, they were, like, had a big following on the internet, they knew how to write really well, how to make really good content. And by being in that environment, I just, I think a big thing of that was actually having this mindset of, "Well, a few years ago, they were struggling with the exact same things I'm struggling with now," and being able to actually see those people and being able to talk with them and being in that environment just was so encouraging and inspiring, and it allowed me to stay on track and basically build what I needed to build, which would have been much harder if I hadn't had that environment. Then I might have given up before, like just before achieving the success. Right?
So I think the biggest thing you can do about your environment is surround yourself with the people who are where you want to be, maybe in six months or one year.
Chris (50:27): How do you identify those people? How do you choose who those examples are?
Dominic (50:33): Yeah. So a lot it's just exploration on Twitter, or you can start from Google as well. But even better, if I know someone in my personal circle, even if they might not be perfect, but if they can point me in the right direction, I will always prefer that over a random internet search, 'cause it's like a trusted source, right? It's like if I go on the internet, there will be so much noise. And yes, the best people are there, but I might not be able to find them, or I might find somebody else first, and then you're stuck with them even though they're not exactly the right person. So if I have a trusted source that can point me in the right direction, I would always go to that first to find the people that can help me.
And that's another thing that was so great about being in the right environment, is that in most of the things that I want to learn, I know at least one person personally that I can ask to actually point me to further persons who know more specific things that I want to learn as well that I can learn from. So once you start building this network and creating that environment of people who are just ahead of you but on the same track, it becomes much easier to find the right people to follow and to interact with to learn any skill, basically.
Chris (51:48): I think anyone listening to this could share frustration, perhaps, about how our education system has been formulated the way that we try to impart knowledge to the young, and obviously this misconception that learning stops as soon as we graduate. If you could change one thing about the way that our education system works, or how classes are taught, what's one thing that comes to mind for you?
Dominic (52:21): Ooph. That's a very interesting question. If I could change one thing about the education system. So, I think the biggest thing would be about mindset. And I don't know what the exact thing that you would change to change this, but what you have to get is like you pass exams and you get bad grades or you get good grades, so maybe I get good grades in biology but I get bad grades in math, so that means I'm good at biology and I'm bad at math. Right? And once I have that perception, teachers and parents will often reinforce that, and kind of create this fixed mindset, "Well, I'm bad at math and I will never become good at it," so maybe not pursue anything that has to do with math. Right?
So I think the biggest thing would be, yeah, like allowing children and parents to have a growth mindset instead, and basically, yeah, showing them they can learn anything. They can learn math if they really want to. And if it—There was this one guy, I forgot his name, but he basically created a video game or something where kids could play around with mathematical concepts and kind of learn about geometry and shapes like that, and in a way that was very playful, but not dumbed down. Like they would actually learn very deep mathematical principles by doing those activities, and even children who perceived themselves as bad at math, they would be able to do that effortlessly, just as good as like the math nerds. Right?
So I think that kind of thing—It was Seymour Papert who did this, by the way. So I think those kinds of learning methods are very empowering. If you could have more of that in a classroom, I think that would bring about a huge change in education.
Chris (54:10): What do you think made that approach so effective? That it was playful, that it was hands on? How does it differ from the typical approach?
Dominic (54:17): So, it was very much focused on actually bringing stuff into practice. Right? When you learn math in school, you learn it to pass a test and you learn about, I don't know, Pythagoras Equation and yeah, just the equation, and you have to know which letter goes where and then you can fill it out and get the outcome. Right? But what those children were doing is they were actually learning, like, well, if I adjust this parameter then this universe or playground that I'm building will create, like, this kind of shapes, or the ball will roll there instead of there, and it won't go into the hole. So it was much more focused on having an actual goal that I wanted to achieve and bringing that into practice. And they could see how the principles that they learned actually mattered for what they wanted to achieve. Right? After they had learned those principles, they could then achieve something which they couldn't before, which was, like, I don't know, create a new universe or things worked differently, for example.
So I think this focus on having a goal and working towards that rather than just passing a test and to be done with it is what made it so successful.
Chris (55:26): So if you were talking to someone younger, someone earlier in their career who wanted to accelerate their pace of learning, become someone who acquired skills more effectively, or was able to recall information, put it into practice, what's the most common piece of advice that you would give to this person?
Dominic (55:52): Yeah, so I would advise to be very clear on their goal first. As we talked a lot. So starting with the end in mind, and yeah, really defining what it is they want to learn and why they want to learn it and how this is gonna make their life better. So that you can actually stick to it in the long term. And then once you set that, I would then, yeah, advice to start building on what they already know, right? If you just go out and do an internet search, it might soon become overwhelming, but if you start with what you already know with the people you already know, explore from there and map out the space but associate it with what you're already familiar with, then it becomes much more tangible, and then obviously we can apply all those other techniques, like drawing out this map, writing a lot, rewriting and making it your own.
I think that's a very important tip as well. People tend to be too passive, and, yeah. Copy and paste, and thinking that it's saved in the app so it's saved in my brain as well. So create those active practices of writing, and then come back to it repeatedly. Set up a practice, find something that you can practice and set up a schedule so that you can actually practice and stick to that, and then also reflect on how far you've come, and like how far you still need to go to achieve your goals, so that you can get this sense of progress and stay motivated.
Chris (57:17): So, Dominic, let's say that I want to learn a language or build my technical skills. Tell me what you're building at Traverse and how I can use this app to accelerate my learning and put these principles into practice.
Dominic (57:30): Yeah. So, Traverse incorporates some of the techniques we talked about. So we talked about this mind mapping space, almost, where we can create this initial map of a particular topic, and then within the map you can zoom into each of those topics and start taking notes. So it is a note taking app in that sense, but then we've also added flash cards with spaced repetition to it, that you can actually like take the most important things from those notes and have them scheduled for them to review them at the optimal time and create those active prompts that prompt you to really think about it and really get better at it, rather than just passively rereading it.
And then another thing which we've done is to make it really easy to share with other people, so that other people can give you feedback and it kind of makes it easier to apply the Feynman technique in real life, because you can map something out, you can write it all in your own words, and then have somebody else review it, and they can say, "Oh, well, that doesn't really make sense, maybe you should rewrite that." And then allows you to identify those knowledge gaps. So, yeah, it has things like the concept mapping, the spaced repetition, active recall, Feynman technique, and then obviously you can schedule those prompts also to set up a deliberate practice. So that kind of makes it different from a note taking app like Notion, which is great for task management, for example, but it doesn't have those techniques in place to actually transfer what's in the app into your actual brain so you can master what you wanna learn.
Chris (59:07): And that's why we're here. Thank you so much for coming and sharing these principles and how to put them into action. I think that that's a good place to wrap, as far as a takeaway. Like, you can achieve whatever you want if you become the person capable of that skill, or you acquire that knowledge. So this learning how to learn is the skill, it's the meta skill that allows the acquisition of all the others. So you know, finding opportunities to practice, being very clear on your learning outcome, regularly testing yourself, seeing what you're doing is working, and through this regular iteration you will converge on the person you need to become to achieve whatever you want to achieve.
So, Dominic, I thank you so much for coming on the show today, for sharing what you do and giving us this sense of what is possible if we adopt this mindset, if we put these principles into practice.
Anywhere you'd want to send people who are listening today?
Dominic (01:00:13): I'll actually create a bonus, Forcing Function listeners, on traverse.link/forcingfunction, so yeah. You can go there, I will create a nice little bonus for you, just a four-step process to help you learn quicker and retain more. So I will set that up, and then you can go there if you want to learn more about Traverse. And yeah, you'll get a nice personal introduction from me.
Chris (01:00:35): Awesome. That's traverse.link/forcingfunction, check it out. Dominic, I believe you're on Twitter as well?
Dominic (01:00:42): I am, yeah. My handle is @DominicZijlstra, so first name, last name. So if my name is somewhere in the podcast description people can probably figure that out as well.
Chris (01:00:53): We'll do that for sure. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Dominic.
Dominic (01:00:58): Thanks, Chris. It's great to be here.
Tasha (01:01:00): Thank you for listening to Forcing Function Hour. At Forcing Function, we teach performance architecture. We work with a select group of twelve executives and investors to teach them how to multiply their output, perform at their peak, and design a life of freedom and purpose. Make sure to subscribe to Forcing Function Hour for more great episodes, or go to forcingfunctionhour.com to sign up for our newsletter so you can join us live.