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I'm Cesar Aguirre. Software engineer

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Six Proven Principles to Learn Any Skill Faster and Skip the Lines

27 May 2025 #learning #books

Since 2020, we’re living in a new normal.

Constant layoffs, market volatility, AI stealing our jobs… The best thing to do is to learn new skills and build something we can’t be fired from.

But who has time to spend 10,000 hours becoming an expert to monetize a new skill?

Here’s where “Skip the Line” by James Altucher comes in. A book with strategies to ditch those 10,000 hours and learn a new skill faster, without going back for 4 or 5 years of college or begging to get into the small circle of “experts.”

Here are 6 principles I learned from “Skip The Line” to master any skill faster:

1. Do 10,000 experiments

It takes 10,000 hours to be an “expert.”

That’s about 10 years of part-time practice. But the world is changing so fast. By the time you’ve put in those 10,000 hours, everything will be different.

Instead of tracking hours, track experiments. Small and consistent actions that teach you a skill faster.

A good experiment:

“You know something is a valid experiment when you take out what you normally do, get curious about an idea, as in “What if I try…,” and then, you suddenly feel fear.”

With experiments and real projects, we learn way more and faster than in any classroom. Remember passive learning is just entertainment.

2. Master your microskills

Whatever you’d like to learn, chances are it’s not a single skill, but a range of microskills.

“Break apart a skill into 20 microskills. Figure out how, each day, you can get better at each microskill”

Writing isn’t just one skill. It’s headlines, openings, storytelling, calls to action, editing, formatting… And that’s just non-fiction.

3. Master idea calculus

You can cheat your way through those 10,000 hours by bringing your expertise from other areas.

Add a new idea or concept to an existing idea in the field you’re learning. Or subtract an existing idea from it. Or mix two disparate ideas from another field to create a new one.

4. Find PLUS, EQUAL, and MINUS

To learn anything faster, you need to find your PLUS, EQUAL, and MINUS:

5. Follow the 50/1 rule

The 80/20 rule has a close cousin.

You know the 80/20 rule, right? 80% of wealth is accumulated by 20% of people. 80% of outcomes come from 20% of effort. 80% of views and reads come from 20% of posts.

But what if we apply the 80/20 rule to itself? 80% of 80 is 64, and 20% of 20 is 4.

And if we apply it again? 80% of 64 is 51.2 and 20% of 4 is 0.8. OK, let’s round that up to 50 and 1.

It means that 1% of effort brings 50% of outcomes. That’s a cheat code to get results faster.

If you’re writing, that’s your headline, opening lines, and first paragraphs. Or your titles and thumbnails if you’re doing YouTube.

Whatever you’re doing, find your 1%.

6. Find your wheel and its spokes

One thing is mastering a skill. Another is making money off of it.

Find your wheel, your main subject or skill. Once you’ve found your wheel, look for spokes. Ways to monetize and expand your wheel.

If your wheel is photography, your spokes could be:

OK, I already wrote my 10 bad ideas for today… And you got the point. There’s more than one way to monetize a skill. Don’t marry a single one. I’m talking about ideas here.

The world still needs experts. No doubt. I wouldn’t want guesswork in an operating room. But you don’t need to be an expert to make a living. You don’t need 10,000 hours. You need more experiments, faster feedback loops. This new world is for fast learners, for those who know how to skip the lines.

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