ch1Two Students, Three Months, One Question
Two students begin studying the same subject at the same time. The first puts in six hours a day. The second puts in three. After three months, the second student is demonstrably ahead. Not marginally. The gap is visible. The first student has more notes, more hours logged, more sessions completed. The second student has more of the subject installed.
The explanation that the second student was more talented misses the point. Both students started from roughly the same position. The difference that opened up over three months was not capacity. It was the state in which study happened. The first student was present in the study session for six hours. The second student was absorbed in the subject for three. When the conscious mind is fully engaged with one thing, the unconscious system processes that thing at a different speed than it can process something in a divided-attention state.
Antano Solar John describes speed and scale as functions of the unconscious. The fastest processing available to a person is not the conscious mind working at full effort. It is the unconscious system engaged with something that has been handed to it properly. When a skill reaches the unconscious, it processes in parallel with everything else running in the system. When a skill is stuck at the conscious level, it takes up the entire available bandwidth. Six hours of conscious-level study occupies the system the way a single application occupied old computers: one process at a time, everything else waiting.
Three hours of study that fully engages the unconscious produces a different result. Not because the student worked harder. Because the processing happened at a level where it could install rather than simply occupy.
ch2What Fractionation Does to a Study Session
Hypnosis research produced an unexpected finding. When a subject was put into a trance, woken, and put back in a trance the same day, the second trance went as deep as a session two days later would have gone. Five cycles of in, out, in, out, in, produced depth that exceeded ten consecutive daily sessions. The same amount of time, structured differently, produced dramatically different depth.
The mechanism behind this is fractionation. Full focus on one thing, followed by a complete shift to something else with full focus, followed by return to the original thing. Each return goes deeper than the last entry. The interval is not a break. The processing continues during the interval. When you return, you are not starting from where you left. You are starting from where the unconscious took it during the interval.
For a student, this changes what an effective study session looks like. Two hours of unbroken study on a single subject, grinding through material with diminishing returns, is not fractionation. One hour of full absorption in one subject, followed by genuine engagement with something completely different, followed by return to the original subject, is fractionation. The second structure installs more in the same amount of time because the return deepens what the interval processed.
Chinese martial arts masters applied this deliberately. When a student reached black belt level and was ready to advance, the master would send them away for a year. No practice. Do something else. Come back. When they returned, they were better than when they left. The unconscious had continued installing the capability during a year in which no conscious practice happened. The break was not a break. It was fractionation at the scale of a year.
ch3Why the Person Working Less Can Outpace the Person Working More
Windows 3.1 was marketed as a multitasking operating system. What it actually did was switch between applications fast enough to create the appearance of simultaneous processing. Each application received a slice of time, stopped, gave the next application its slice, stopped, continued around the cycle. The speed of the switching made it feel like parallel processing. It was not. It was sequential processing with very fast transitions.
Conscious study works the same way. Six hours of study with a phone nearby, background noise, attention splitting between the material and peripheral concerns, produces the appearance of six hours of learning. What actually happens is shorter bursts of attention cycling rapidly between the subject and everything else competing for the same processor. The total installation at the end of six hours is not six hours worth. It is the sum of the actual focused intervals, which may be considerably less.
The student who studies three hours in a state of complete absorption is not splitting the processor. Three hours of full absorption, then rest, then return, produces fractionation. Each cycle deepens. The unconscious processes during intervals. The subject installs at depth rather than remaining at surface level. After three months, the compounding is visible. The first student has accumulated surface-level exposure to many sessions. The second student has accumulated deep installation across fewer sessions, with fractionation compounding each time.
Antano Solar John describes mirroring people as something he does without conscious management, in every setting, automatically. It became unconscious because it was practiced obsessively-compulsively with full focus until it transferred. At that point, it no longer competed for conscious resources. It ran in parallel with everything else. The student who gets one subject fully installed has created the same opening. The next subject can receive full conscious attention because the previous one no longer needs it. This is how learning compounds. Not by covering more subjects simultaneously, but by installing each one deeply enough that it frees up capacity for the next.
ch4Creating the State That Allows Fast Learning
The state that allows fast learning is not a feeling you wait for. It has specific characteristics. Full absorption on one subject. No competition from the background. The conscious mind clear and directed at a single thing. When those conditions exist, the unconscious system can engage at the speed it is capable of. That speed is far beyond what the conscious mind can produce by working harder.
Creating this state intentionally begins with removing what prevents it. A study session with notifications active, music with lyrics, and two other tasks open in background tabs does not produce the conditions for full absorption. The conscious mind will attend to whatever calls for attention, and it will call for the next distraction before the previous one is finished. The background never clears. The unconscious never fully engages with the subject.
A session with a single subject, no competing inputs, and a clear intention about what the session is for creates the conditions. The fractionation structure adds the mechanism. Study with full absorption for a bounded period. Stop completely. Do something that demands a different kind of attention. Return. The return will carry you deeper than you were when you stopped. Each cycle compounds.
Antano Solar John's observation about writing is relevant here. When a child learns to write, each letter requires full conscious attention. After sufficient repetition, letters become automatic and attention shifts to words. Words become automatic and attention shifts to sentences. Each transfer to the unconscious system creates capacity at the next level. Fast learning follows the same pattern. One thing installed fully creates capacity for the next. The student who tries to install ten things simultaneously installs none of them at the depth that produces compounding. The student who installs one thing completely, then the next, then the next, arrives at a different place three months later, regardless of how many hours each approach consumed.
Key terms
FractionationA learning mechanism in which full focus on a skill, followed by complete engagement with something different, followed by return to the original skill, produces deeper installation at each cycle than continuous practice. Named from hypnosis research where the same structure produced trance depth exceeding ten consecutive daily sessions.StateThe internal condition from which study happens. State determines whether the unconscious system engages with incoming material or whether the material stays at the level of conscious processing. The same study session produces different results in different states.Unconscious ProcessingThe processing that happens below conscious awareness, at a speed and scale the conscious mind cannot match. Walking, writing, and mirroring in skilled practitioners are all unconscious processes. When learning transfers to this level, it installs and runs automatically without consuming conscious attention.InstallationLearning that reaches the level of automatic capability. Installed knowledge is available without retrieval. A skill is installed when it can run without conscious management of the individual steps, the way writing words runs without conscious attention to individual letters.Time CompressionThe reduction in time required to reach a given level of capability when fractionation and high-access states are combined. A student in a high-access state using fractionation can reach in three months what another student reaches in six months of longer sessions in lower-access states.Frequently asked questions
How do I study effectively and learn faster?
The primary variable is the state in which study happens, not the number of hours. A high-access state, where the conscious mind is fully directed at one thing and the unconscious can engage with it, installs material faster than a divided-attention state where more hours are logged. Combined with fractionation, where a complete break and return deepens each cycle, this approach produces more installation in fewer hours than extended sessions in a divided-attention state.
How many hours should I study to learn fast?
Hours are not the useful metric. Depth of installation per session is. A two-hour session in a state of full absorption, structured with fractionation, installs more than a six-hour session in a divided-attention state. The question to ask is not how many hours to study but what state to be in when studying and whether the session structure uses fractionation to deepen each cycle.
What is the best way to study and remember everything?
Nothing installs everything. What changes the proportion of what stays is the state at the time of study and the structure of the sessions. Full absorption on one subject at a time, fractionation structure, and deliberate return to material after complete breaks in attention all deepen installation. The unconscious continues processing during intervals, which means what you return to after a break is further along than where you left it.
Why do some people learn so much faster than others?
The difference is in how deeply the unconscious system engages with incoming material. Antano Solar John describes speed and scale as functions of unconscious processing. People who have developed the capacity to enter high-access states for learning, or who naturally do so, install material faster because more of the processing happens at the unconscious level. The conscious mind handles acquisition. The unconscious handles installation at the depth that makes capability automatic.
Does taking breaks while studying actually help?
A break in the fractionation sense is not a passive rest. It is complete engagement with something different. When you stop studying a subject and fully engage with a different activity, the unconscious continues processing the subject during the interval. When you return, your depth on the original subject is greater than when you left. The break is active, not passive, and the return is where the deepening shows. A passive break where attention drifts without engaging anything produces less of this effect than a complete shift to something that demands a different kind of attention.
Full transcript
My question is that can the person multitask? Are you breathing as you talk to me? Yeah, I mean leave apart the unconscious thing. I mean unconscious is very strange. So why don't you leave everything you want to multitask to your unconscious? Because you can't... Why not? So you remember yesterday I spoke to you about something very important. Yesterday I told you speed and scale is the function of your unconscious. So for me when I want to multitask, I would be fully focused on something until it becomes innate. And then I will exactly do what you just said. After that skill becomes innate, I will leave it to my unconscious. So just to give you some quick examples of multitasking. Yesterday you remember I spoke to you about pacing and leading? Okay. Now my stance over here, who do you think I'm pacing? It's not my posture. I don't stand like this. I'm resembling you. But if she's going to continue to move in the way she's moving right now, my hands will automatically start moving like this. So my body posture will match you, but my hands will start matching her. So that when I stop moving my hands, she stops moving her hands. Now do I do that consciously? What do you think? At this point in time, for me, mirroring someone has become an unconscious process. So to me it's just like breathing. Just like you can't stop breathing, I can't stop mirroring. If I want to influence a person. So if I'm in front of you, I won't come in the way of myself mirroring. I'll give you an example. There was a Delhi batch where I was working on someone. And I was telling a story to a particular group. And the story was a sad story. And I don't even know why I said that story, but I was saying the story on the left hand side, back behind. I saw a lady remove her ring and put it on the table. Now until then my attention was not on her. In fact, when I'm talking to you, I get into what is called tunnel vision. I only see you. But then my unconscious mind is watching for cues that I would have consciously been interested in. So as soon as her fingers went there, my attention shifted there. I was looking here, but my peripheral vision shifted there. So I was telling a story here, but my attention was going there. Now if I ever have to try to do these kinds of things consciously, trust me, I will go mad. I cannot. I simply cannot. So the way I do it is I practice pacing and leading. Obsessively, compulsively. Until it becomes innate. Then it becomes like breathing. No matter what I do in life, I am watching. No matter where I am, I am mirroring. Now in addition to that, I do something called as analog marking. Which is, let's say I'm telling you a story. Within the story, I can vocally mark out certain words. And those words that are differently marked out form a command for your unconscious mind. That's a very complex process. So let's say I want to mark out the words, feel comfortable now. I'll say, you know, this morning when I woke up, I had this strange feel that this batch is going to be exciting to me. Now I was having this comfort of lying in the bed, but my mind was always thinking about what's going to happen in the batch. And now that I'm here, now did you hear the marking of those three words? I exaggerated it for you to catch. Feel comfort now. Now it's slightly off, but feel uncomfortable there. Now every time I tell a story, I'm analog marking. So the parallel tasking that I personally do, and you ask about my experience of parallel tasking, the parallel tasking that I personally do involves coming up with a metaphor. Involves inside the metaphor marking out commands. Involves being an unconscious rapport by mirroring. Involves being alert to shift in breathing patterns, changes in skin color, visually. And it also involves being physically alert to any shift in my body. For example, if I start talking to you and I suddenly feel a neck ache, my head would go, where did I get that from? And I would put my attention on whoever is having the headache at that particular moment. Now everything that I'm telling you, it is for me impossible to do it consciously. Just not possible. So my theory on multitasking is, get focused on something, do it obsessively-compulsively until it becomes innate. And then let those things happen parallel in your unconscious. And I think I learned that lesson from John Grindlew, I remember when I was with him in Brighton, there was this long line, and I was just standing next to him, and there was this girl who came and asked him a question. And John answered something, but asked her to stay around, and he was talking to somebody else. And as he was talking, she starts crying. And laughing. And crying. And laughing. And then crying. And laughing. And I said, thank you John so much, you changed my life. So I said, John, did you do that consciously? He said, systematically? Yes. Consciously? No. So I'm bringing a distinction here between conscious and systematic. A lot of times when we use the word unconscious or subconscious, it appears like it's a magic trick, it's something without a structure. I'm proposing the exact opposite. I'm saying you have a system, you have a structure, you repeat it again and again, and then that system, that structure becomes unconscious. So that's my first take on your question. And it's an interesting question, what do you think about multitasking? My first to ask is, there are a lot of things I'm already multitasking, like breathing, like managing the metabolism of my body. And my unconscious mind is doing that, my neurology is doing that, it's making moment by moment decision. If there is a danger outside, I make a moment by moment decision to change everything so that I could run the... So the unconscious is making moment by moment decision. There are a lot of things that are going on parallel. Why not take the things we want to do every day and make that an unconscious process? Do you have examples of this from your own personal life? Yes, you do. Walking is an example of that. When you first learned to walk, it was a conscious process. Writing is an example of that. When you learn to write, when you see that letter as a child, you see yourself holding a pen and a pencil, and you write the letter A and B and C, it's a conscious process. After enough repetition, it becomes unconscious. The beauty of it becoming unconscious is it allows you to scale up. Now you don't have to think in letters, you can think in words. So scale and speed comes as a function of unconscious process. And I'm insisting on the word speed because I think when you're multitasking, speed matters. How many of you remember that Windows 3.1, if you've ever used it? There was this... Long time ago you had this operating system. So before Windows 3.1 came, you had this thing called DOS. It was a black screen, and you can open one application at a time. So when Windows was launched, their marketing line was, hey, it's a multitasking thing. You can play a game, and on the other side you can send a mail, and these two things are happening parallelly. Now what Windows really did, and in Bill Gates' own words, was they were using a CPU that shared time, which means if there are three applications open, they divide a second into thousand milliseconds, and 20 milliseconds for the first application, stop. Next 20 milliseconds to the second application, stop this too. Next 20 milliseconds to the third application, stop that too. Go back to the first application. So all Windows was doing was it was doing one thing at a time, but the transition was so fast that it made us feel that it's a multitasking thing. So when I'm pointing out speed as a function of unconscious process, my intention is to bring to your attention that if you really want to multitask, you want to be able to do it way faster. Like when you write A, B, C, D right now, you don't take as much time as you took when you wrote as a child. So when you're writing a word, it just flows out. The second thing about multitasking is I want to bring your attention to this concept called fractionation. It's a very, very, very important concept for learning, for sales, for everything. Now the fractionation concept started from hypnosis actually. One of the things they found out was early days, when hypnotists would hypnotize people, they had various measurements of how deep someone is in a trance. So the way they did it is they would put someone into a trance and then they would wake them up and then they would ask them to come on day two and they would put them in a trance and they would measure and realize that the person has gone deeper than they went on the first day. Then they would wake them up. Then they would put them in a trance on the third day and then the person would go deeper and when the person wakes up, they're much more deeper in a trance and when they put them on the fourth day, they go way deep. Six days, seven days, eight days, ten days, the process makes the person on the tenth day to go much, much more deeper than they were on the first day. You understand so far. Now comes the interesting thing. What John and Richard did is they took a guy, they put him in a trance, they woke him up, they spoke to him about random things and put him in a trance again and guess what happened? He went just as deep, just as deep as the guy who went in the second day. And when they did this five times, they would put him to sleep, woke him up, put him to sleep, put him to sleep, woke him up, put him to sleep, woke him up, in the fifth time, they went more deeper than someone who went into a trance for ten days. And this concept in hypnosis is called Fractionation. What it really means is that if you do something with full focus, you do anything else with full focus and if you come back to what you were originally doing, your focus would deepen. Your understanding would deepen. So I'll repeat that again. So you do whatever you do with full focus and you do anything else, not that. And then if you come back to what you were doing originally, your focus would go deeper than it was the first time. One of the phenomena that surprises me a lot is that back in those days in China when they used to make martial arts a sport, I mean a serious sport, they had this ritual that when someone would become a don, like black belt and then they become a degree higher, the master would tell the person to take a one-year break and come back. He would say, go do anything else, don't do martial arts and come back. And what surprised me is to know that when these people used to come back, apparently they would be better in shape and form than they were before they took that break.