How to Learn New Skills Faster: What Works

Learn New Skills Faster at Work for Maximum Impact
The ability to rapidly acquire and apply new skills is a competitive advantage—for both individuals and organizations. Whether mastering business sales techniques to engage executive buyers or developing leadership capabilities to guide a team through uncharted territory, speed and adaptability in learning directly influence performance outcomes. Organizations that cultivate environments where employees can learn, practice, and implement new skills quickly are far more likely to execute strategies effectively and achieve measurable results.

How You Practice Shapes How Fast You Learn
Breaking learning objectives into smaller chunks and using microlearning can accelerate skill acquisition — but research shows that how you practice can make the biggest difference.

Recent memory reconsolidation studies at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine demonstrate that slightly altering the way you practice can cut the time it takes to learn or recall a new skill by nearly 50%. The secret lies in introducing small, deliberate variations in each practice session.

Take improving a tennis serve as an example. Instead of repeating the same motion, you could vary your racket, toss the ball at different heights, or aim for different spots on the court. Josh Waitzkin, chess prodigy, martial arts expert, and author of The Art of Learning, captures this principle perfectly: “The more present we are at practice, the more present we will be in competition, in the boardroom, at the exam, the operating table, the big stage.”

When you engage fully in practice — intentionally varying your approach rather than mindlessly repeating it — you accelerate mastery and ensure that new skills stick under real-world pressure.

Learn New Skills Faster In the Workplace
How can the science of accelerated learning be applied at work? Consider the skill of presenting to executive audiences. Understanding the fundamentals of effective executive presentations is just the first step — true mastery comes from deliberate, varied practice.

At its core, effective presentations start with knowing your audience and organizing your ideas to address what matters most to them. Once your content is structured, the next step is to practice it in multiple ways, each designed to strengthen different aspects of your delivery:

• Record yourself presenting on video, then review and critique your performance.
• Present to a colleague and solicit constructive feedback.
• Reorder your presentation and present it to a colleague in this new sequence. Repeat this multiple times.
• Present to a small group and have them randomly select sections for you to deliver on the spot.

Each of these methods reinforces your executive presentation skills while introducing slight variations, forcing your brain to adapt and encode the skill more deeply. By practicing intentionally and with variation, you accelerate learning, build confidence, and ensure your presentations resonate with real-world audiences.

The Bottom Line
For anyone responsible for talent development, the goal is clear: equip your people to learn and apply new skills as efficiently as possible. By introducing deliberate variation into practice — changing the way skills are rehearsed — you can accelerate learning and help employees reach mastery up to 50% faster. It’s not just faster — it’s smarter.

To learn more about helping people to learn faster, download Top 10 Training Best Practices for Effective Learning