Ten Steps to Learn Anything Quickly Review

10 Steps to Learn Anything Quickly is an online course created by John Sonmez, the man behind Simple Programmer and Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual. The author is famous for being a prolific pluralsight author, having released over 50 courses across multiple disparate technologies. The learning techniques used for creating these courses were alluded to in Soft Skills, however it is only in this video course that they have been fully documented with supporting examples.

Content

The course consists of:

• 10 Steps to Learn Anything Quickly Video Course
• Video Course Transcript
• 10 Steps to Learn Anything Quickly Workbook
• 10 Steps to Learn Anything Quickly Example Completed Workbook
• How To Build A Blog That Boosts Your Career PDF (taken from the email course)
• Recording of 10 Steps to Learn Anything Quickly Q&A Session

The video content itself comes in at just over an hour, in true John Sonmez style each key point he has to make (in this case each step) is kept in its own, concise chapter. The chapters are always short but are targeted solely at making a single point, backed up every time with a real life example (in this case the author learning the basics of pixel art).

The content of this course also fits nicely with the other products available from John Sonmez, namely Soft Skills and How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer, with a heavy focus on learning in order to teach, which is a tried and true technique for ensuring that you yourself learn something and that it sticks.

Obviously I can’t give away too much about the course’s content, or else I would devalue the author's product, however I can tell you this is not a magic solution for learning without putting the work in. Instead, this course teaches you how to structure your learning with maximum efficiency for both time taken and knowledge retained. You might have your own ideas as to how to do this already, but taking this structured approach and not straying from the steps or your initial scope will maximise your productivity and remove the need to use your own self control/willpower to stay on topic. Just follow the spec!

I don’t fully agree with the author recommending you to learn as many languages and technologies as possible in order not to be left behind, as whilst you should have a basic understanding and appreciation for other technologies, there is a point where the old phrase ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ starts to become true. Personally, when I see a CV come through the door listing competency in over 10 programming languages I start to get suspicious. Disregard that if you are a JavaScript developer, you guys have got it tough!

The techniques in this course can be applied to any subject, no matter how narrow or wide the scope, allowing you to effectively learn a whole new programming language or the intricacies of a single class library method.

The video content can be listened to without visual, however you might want to skip some of the pixel art use case demonstrations...

Price

Don’t let the sales page put you off. It’s a little heavy on the sales spiel (including the old telemarketing style ‘should be $999 but only $29!’…) but we’re talking about professional, concise advice that you’ll be hard pushed to find anywhere else. Well worth the current price of $97.

Whilst the video content is a bit short, it’s the supporting materials that make up for the price, especially the 10 Steps to Learn Anything Quickly Workbook, allowing you to write up your own learning project spec every time you start the process anew. Recurring value!

Recommendation

Yes, I would recommend 10 Steps to Learn Anything Quickly. Even if you already have your own learning pattern/process, why do it yourself? It’s hard exercising the willpower to stay on track and ignoring the chaff, so use this course and do it properly.

This is not a shortcut to Mastery; that requires in-depth, far reaching knowledge on a particular subject and a lifetime of accumulated experience. It will, however, help you make a start.

Watch the videos, choose a project and start the process.