Welcome to episode number 84 of The Growth Booth. This is a follow-up episode. We are three months on from when I first introduced a few ideas around explosive growth hacks, that was way back in episode number 72. And in episode number 72, I discussed different things that we can do to rapidly learn new skills. I talked about how we could use the 80/20 Pareto Principle by focusing in and learning the most essential concepts of something new and how that could give you a big impact and allow you to make breakthroughs in a very short space of time. 

We spoke about using spaced repetition, and this is repeatedly coming back to an idea to really cement it into your mind. We also spoke about the Feynman Technique, which is basically where when you learn something and then can explain it to someone else in your own words, again, a technique that you can use to cement new ideas into your learning. 

I also explained an eight-week objective that I had at the time. This was to reach a level of spoken Italian where I could hold a decent conversation. My objective and the reason I set this eight-week timeline around it was because I was traveling to Italy. We're right now about three months on from when I set that objective, and I'm happy to report back and say that I was able to go to Italy and have a great conversation with a lot of different people. In fact, in the past twelve weeks, I've reached an intermediate level of fluency in Italian. 

So what I wanted to do in this episode was to share what worked, what didn't work from the original plan, and to give you some more ideas to leverage for when you want to learn something new in a very short space of time. Before talking a little bit about what worked with my approach, my original plan was broken down into four parts, and I didn't actually end up using or following that framework. 

The four parts that I had sort of identified were, from week 1 to 2, to have an introduction to Italian. Part two was week 3 and 4, where I'd be focusing on the basics and conversation. Week 5 and 6 was about becoming intermediate in my sort of Italian fluency, and then weeks 7 and 8, which was part four, about becoming fluent. I also had the plan of doing 2 hours per week in one-on-one classes with a tutor online, 3 hours of listening and 3 hours of learning different vocabulary. 

Like I say, I ended up not dividing the study out into four parts, but I did roughly stick to the division of time spent on each type of practice. So instead of doing 2 hours with a tutor, I probably did 3 to 4 hours per week with a one-on-one tutor. I still did 3 hours of listening, I still did 3 hours of learning vocabulary, so those parts more or less stayed the same. I want to talk about how I was able to achieve the 3 hours of listening and the 3 hours of learning vocabulary, some of the tools that I used and also share some more information around the effectiveness and my experiences in working with a coach, in this case a tutor. 

For vocabulary and for learning new words, I used an app called Duolingo. Duolingo has me now at 716 words that I've learned in the last 12 weeks, which is quite phenomenal. That's 716 words that I've used, that I've incorporated into the exercises that I've been doing on the app. If you think about the number of different words, the number of unique words that you use on a daily basis or regularly, it's not much more than that, honestly. It's not a very high number of words that we've regularly use. It's not like you're using thousands and thousands of different words each day for the most part. So for me to be at over 700 words in 12 weeks, it's plenty of vocabulary to go out there and be able to hold a conversation. 

A lot of this was thanks to using the Duolingo app, which is free. The Duolingo app was also good for repetition. Every day logging in and just doing a little bit, it might have been 10 minutes per day kind of a thing, or 20 minutes per day, and also having to speak and write, the repetition and speaking, writing, reading, approaching it in different ways really cemented a lot of that vocabulary into my mind. But this alone, and this is one of the big findings I've had, is using the app alone is not enough. I think a lot of people attempt to learn new languages just using the app, but I think you can go a lot better and get much better results when you combine that with something else. So that was one of the tools in my toolbox was Duolingo. 

The second tool in the toolbox, which was also free, was listening to podcasts. In podcasts, I would be able to cement a lot of this new vocabulary, these new words into my mind, and also pick up new understanding of new words in different contexts. That was really, really useful for me, repetition and also being exposed to different accents because I was listening to five or six different podcasts. There were also some podcast shows that would allow me to practice my pronunciation by introducing me to a phrase of some kind and then showing me how to pronounce it, and there were pauses of five to 10 seconds in the podcast where it was designed that I would talk back and practice the pronunciation. 

The way that I started with the podcasts was I started with very basic shows. And these were shows that were designed for beginners. They were so basic, in fact, that it would be as if I was speaking very, very slowly on this podcast. On these Italian podcasts, the hosts would be speaking at probably 70% of their normal speed and deliberately trying to avoid using complex words that a beginner might not know. But that was great for me because it was designed for beginners. I was able to feel like I was understanding and again pick up new vocabulary and just immerse myself in it. 

As the weeks went by, I would say probably around about week 6, I transitioned from listening to these podcasts, which were about learning Italian, to podcasts that were in Italian, about topics that I would more normally sort of listen to in English. There was one that I was listening to about psychology and self-development, and this was not a podcast that was designed for people who wanted to learn Italian. This was designed for Italians who wanted to learn about psychology and self-development. So that was quite cool. This is something that is related to interest-based learning, where if you focus and if you're trying to learn about things that you're already interested in, then it comes much more naturally and is easier to absorb and to get immersed in. 

Those same podcasts also often had YouTube videos with subtitles. For me, this was another great discovery because I could listen and read at the same time and I could pause and I could identify new words or phrases that I wasn't familiar with, look them up, and then take them back to my tutor or just learn about them on my own. So that was really, really useful as well. 

But just like Duolingo, the podcasts on their own wouldn't be enough for me to be able to learn a language. And that leads me on to the third part of my learning strategy here. And that was one on one coaching or working with a tutor. I've spoken in the past about how valuable coaching can be and this was again just shown over and over again because this was without doubt the most effective and valuable part of my learning. 

Now, when I was working with my language coaches and I had two that I was using, about 90% of the time, I was just talking it was just back and forth conversation. We were talking about things that were interesting to us, that made it more interesting for me as well. I felt like I was jumping on a Zoom call with a friend and could be talking about different bits and pieces that were interesting to me. I would say probably 10% of the one-on-one calls were specifically focused on learning a new thing. Most of it was just conversational, and that was very much aligned with my objective of getting to a level of fluency in Italian where I could sort of hold my own when I was in Italy. 

That was really put to the test when I landed in Italy. We flew into Turin, which is relatively close to Milan in the north of Italy, and the very first conversation I had was with the border security guard who had a machine gun, and he said to me, how much money am I carrying? All in Italian. So that was definitely being put in a pressure situation, having to think on my feet, because that was not the kind of phrase that I'd been practicing with the tutoring. 

It was simple though, and it was an easy one to pass, and then we were able to get into the types of conversations that I really wanted to have having passed through that episode, which was renting a car, arriving at a hotel, buying dinner, shopping for something in the supermarket, looking for something. I had an amazing conversation with the owner of a cafe, and this was like a 500-year-old cafe, and he was showing me photos on the wall of what it used to be like and some of the history of the place, and these were the conversations that I really cherished. And it was incredibly fulfilling to be able to go from not speaking a word, really, of Italian other than a few cliches, to being able to hold an impromptu conversation about a diverse range of topics. 

It really came in handy in lots of different ways beyond just going out to restaurants and so on and so forth. While we were there, my daughter got an ear infection, so we were in at the local hospital, and being able to navigate all of that situation as well, it was really, really helpful. Now, thankfully, my wife speaks fluent Italian, but in the past, I've relied on her, and this opened up a world of independence for me on this trip because I didn't have to rely on her. In fact, I feel like I'm catching up to her level of fluency. We were very much able to sort of tag team different situations, which was awesome. 

A couple of other things that worked for me were my tracking sheet, where I monitored how much time I spent studying Italian on a daily basis, and where I was spending that time. I wasn't sort of guessing, saying, "Oh, I think I've done nine or 10 hours this week." I was knowing that I'd done ten and a half hours or 11 hours or 9.2 hours kind of a thing, right down to that level. 

Another thing that worked really well for me was having a notebook. So throughout the different methods of study, I had a little notebook, and I would use it to write down new things that I was picking up. Now, most of this was for doing activities, learning activities on my own, but also it was for noting down new words that I would pick up along the way. 

When working with a coach online and Italian tutor, I had a Google Doc as well, where we would write down different things that we were talking about, different learning experiences in context. So instead of just trying to learn one word as an isolated word, we would put it in context, and I'd record that down in a Google Doc, so that was another of the tools that I used. 

The thing that worked most though, and I think this is the thing that you can apply to any kind of a learning project, is full-on immersion. If you think about doing 10+ hours per week, that's pushing towards a couple of hours per day, and it's absorbing new information in lots of different ways, absorbing it through my eyes, reading it, absorbing it through my ears on a podcast, listening to it, using apps, the tutor's exercises, and so on and so forth. There was really no escaping it. 

Anytime I had the chance, I also spoke to my wife's grandmother who's 91 years old, and she lives in Argentina and came out from Italy when she was about 20, so she's obviously fluent in Italian, and I'd take any opportunity I could to jump on a FaceTime call with her and practice my Italian. I was immersing myself in it from every possible way, every angle, and I think that really helped. I've seen this in the past as well when I've learned other things, when I've really dived into it, wholeheartedly. I've been able to very quickly learn how something works. 

This podcast is another example. When I started this podcast a couple of years ago, I really had to dive all in on it to learn about the technology, what I needed, how to structure a podcast episode, and so much more. When you do that, you have this spike of learning initially, but you can actually maintain that level of learning if you maintain the immersion and keep pushing yourself into new barriers. 

I think that's another thing that I learned with the Italian was not really settling into a comfort zone, but constantly trying to push myself to be better and learn more. The plan from here, I think, moving forward is to scale back from 10 hours per week and focus on learning Italian 5 hours per week, which is basically just chipping away at it and continuing to learn little by little. I think when you compound those 5 hours per week over a good period of time, like six months or something, you realize or you see at the end of those six months, "Oh wow, I was able to really improve just by slowly but surely chipping away." 

I think one of the other things I'm going to do is book another holiday to Italy because I think that's a great way to stay motivated. I think it really helped that I had the sprint goal and I had an objective. I think one of the biggest challenges now that I've got back from Italy is that I don't have a really strong, firm objective anymore. I don't have a deadline by which I need to reach a certain barrier. If I was studying to pass fluency exam or something in Italian, then I would have that. Maybe I'll do that to again increase the pressure a little bit. 

Interest based learning is something that is another thing that I've really taken away from this, and I mentioned this earlier. This is the idea of learning based or when you're learning, focusing on things that are interesting to you as a way of learning that topic. So for example, when I was listening to podcasts, I would often be listening to things that are culturally important in Italy, like the food, the coffee, and so on and so forth. That kind of cuisine angle was quite important to me, but I was also listening to podcasts about famous and very successful Italian brands such as Ferrari, and a range of different fashion brands, coffee brands, and so on and so forth. 

These were things that would really capture my attention because I'm interested in entrepreneurship, I'm interested in marketing, I'm interested in branding. This is really tapping into interest-based learning. This, by the way, is something that I'm now using with my kids. So this has been another great thing that I've learned from this project, is about interest-based learning. I've got a six-year-old son, four-year-old daughter, and each morning while they're having breakfast, we spend some time to work on whatever it is that they're learning at the moment. 

For my son, it's all about reading English. He's fluent in English and Spanish, but all day at school, half a day at school, he's working in Spanish and the other half is in English, but his life around him in Argentina is in Spanish. So what I try to do is compensate that a little bit. He practices reading in English in the morning. It used to be a bit of a challenge to get him to do this because it was always sort of brute force. It was like, "Okay, we're going to learn these words," and so on and so forth, but now with interest-based learning, we're focusing on topics that are interesting to him. These include things like Formula One. He's seen me watching Formula One, and he's got pretty interested in that. The Rugby World Cup, which is happening very soon, football here in Argentina, and then, of course, some of the different toys and shows that he watches on TV. With my daughter, it's about words and quotes from her favorite cartoon characters, but getting her to write them out. She's four years old, so it's more about right now, we're focusing on writing, and then also coupling this with a weekly reward. 

The reason I'm sharing all this with you in this particular example is because I think this is a way that you can also do it yourself. You can give yourself a weekly reward if you're working hard to achieve something new. You can focus on this interest-based learning to really double down on what you're learning. With Italian for me, like reading the newspaper or reading an Internet article or something, I can jump to a section that interests me, and it's so much easier to sort of work through that than if I was reading something which is classic textbook as an example. 

I think these are great ideas that we can take away and use for other types of learning. If you're interested to learn more and dive deeper into some of these strategies, then make sure you check out episode number 72, which is where I really kicked this thing off and explained more about the strategies behind explosive learning. I touched on my Italian learning experiment, but the focus of that was really to talk about the strategies that you can use to your advantage to learn more quickly. 

You can then learn how to use them to advance yourself with maybe your online business, like building a niche site. How could you build a niche site and really dominate that as quickly as possible? How could you start making money online as quickly as possible? What about building an e-commerce store? Maybe there's a hobby that you want to master or you want to use this focus on fitness to really shock your body or improve your relationships, or become a master chef or learn about personal finances or so much more. There are lots of different ways that you can apply these learning strategies, and we dive into them some more in The Growth Booth episode number 72, so check that out. 

Now, as always, the transcript for this episode, the video, everything else is available at thegrowthbooth.com. Head over there, navigate to number 84, and you can also see the video version of this on YouTube. Just go to YouTube, type in The Growth Booth, and you will find the video version of this episode there as well. So you can tune in and watch that or wherever it is that you like to consume podcast content. 

That's a wrap for this episode. Hopefully you found my experiment here useful and taken a few things away from it that you can potentially use in your own life. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of The Growth Booth.