The Time principle

The time principle is simple and just requires … time. It doesn’t work if you train something without downtime. It’s also impossible to get deep and intuitive knowledge on anything within a very short time window.

For optimal learning, do something regularly, for years, with enough breaks.

Why? And how? Here we touch on some of the elements I mentioned in the introduction.

Brain capacity

You have a limited attention span and memory. At some point, you are just full. You can’t cram more in there. Studies show that students cramming just before tests learn no better than those who don’t.

That’s why you need to learn in short sprints with enough breaks.

Most of our learning happens when we sleep. That’s when our brain goes into overdrive to place all its experiences from the day. Unless you can nap on command, sleeping only happens at night. Literally doing nothing and waiting a day—“sleeping a night on it”—will be more effective than lengthening your study session.

This also helps in some other ways.

Association

Our brain works through association. All day, as you get input from the environment, networks of neurons fire. You learn new things by associating it with earlier things you learned. This strengthens these connections.

That’s why you get better at something over time … by not doing it.

Maybe you practiced the piano this morning. Later in the day, you hear a song on the radio. Because you practiced the piano, there is now a part of your brain actively looking for things to associate with it. You pick up on some of the chords in the song. You learn something new, strengthening that network.

By regularly engaging with a skill, it keeps looking for these opportunities to associate. Any other experiences in your life will help build that skill.

This doesn’t happen if you do the thing too infrequently. It also can’t happen without downtime.

Recall

The other principle I mentioned: challenge. Like a muscle, only sufficient challenge will cause our brain to grow and reconnect neurons.

If you just studied something … recalling it is easy. If you studied something a few days ago … recalling is harder.

And that’s what you want. The fact that it’s hard to recall, means your brain works harder and learns more. Again, this can only happen if you take breaks.

Conversely, if you don’t do something regularly enough, recall isn’t hard—it’s impossible. So learning has to start over from scratch.

I talk more about this in the chapter about “desirable difficulty”.

Example: coming back to a game

A fun, quick first example. There are only a few games that I have stuck with for years, such as Rocket League. (I barely play games. If you’ve spent all day developing a game, you really don’t want to play one anymore.)

This pattern repeats itself:

• Hey, I am getting better at this game! It’s fun!
• I play it a lot, maybe every day.
• Until I stop getting better and just feel static.
• I stop …
• … but when I boot it again a month later, I have suddenly improved significantly

I’ve read many posts from other gamers stating the same thing. Do something too often and you don’t grow anymore. Take some time away, get some new experiences, and you will have secretly improved.

Example: raising the ceiling

With every skill I wanted to learn, I’ve had countless moments when I thought: “yeah, now I am a professional!”

Obviously, I was wrong every time. When I thought I was done learning, or good enough to make money, there was still a long way to go. But I couldn’t see that path until I reached it.

You don’t know how bad your writing is, until you’ve written a book. You don’t know how terrible your character development is, until you read ten books that do it way better.

Your ceiling constantly moves up. And this takes time. You will not go from 0% to 100% on any skill within a few months. You’ll think you can do it. Because when you’re at 0%, you think you know what 100% is … but it’s actually 10%.

It’s that paradox where dumb people think they’re super smart, yet smart people think they’re super dumb. As you learn something, you also learn all the things you don’t know yet.

I can’t give any solid numbers, of course, like “after 9 months and 3 days, you should be a professional!”

I have listened to many creatives in my areas of expertise, and they’re all quite close to each other. They say,

Finish 15–20 projects with that skill, then we can talk about success

Don’t expect to write a bestseller with your first 10 books. Don’t expect to conquer a skill like carpentry or welding metal within your first twenty projects you attempt.

As a consequence, this takes at least a couple of years. I mean, even Brandon Sanderson doesn’t write 10 books a year :p

Warning: the temptation to redo

The issue with time, of course, is that you are better at something once you’ve done it. Once it’s in the past. This means that you look back at your action or project and think “meh, that’s not great, let’s redo it”.

Writers often get stuck in “revision hell”, usually revising their first novel. By the end of a revision, they have grown as a writer! So they see more issues with the book and want to revise again.

Don’t fall for this.

Use this to measure your growth. But accept that this action is in the past and move on to something new, with your better skill or knowledge.

In a similar vein, authors always recommend that you take a few months off after the first draft of a book. If you start to revise immediately, you haven’t had time to reflect on that first draft. You’re still too close to the project. You’re not that much better, as a writer, than you were a few days ago. So revising is pointless at that moment in time.

I agree with this and do it as well.

Example: tiny steps each day

This is a common example. (One I also cover in my Productivity course.) If you improve 1% each day, you see massive improvement after a year.

More than 10% jumps every few weeks, if that is even possible. Certainly more than 50% jumps, but only twice a year.

You don’t need to see the end goal. You don’t even have to believe in yourself or see immediate progress. Trust that time will do its thing.

I’ve been uncertain about every project I ever made. Certainly novels can get to your head. (Is this even interesting? Won’t readers just stop reading at chapter 5? And what if the climax isn’t satisfying? Darn, this book is boring, I need to rewrite from the start.)

But I set my tiny step: at least 2,000 words a day, at most 5,000. And I do that, even if I don’t believe in it, even if the final product (a novel ~= 80,000 words) is miles away.

Sometimes, this means writing the novel is just a byproduct. The rest of the day, I do something else, invent some other main project. Then I only write thirty minutes in the evening. But that’s fine! Because one or two months later … you surprise yourself by writing the last sentence of that book.