We all have those “want to …” items on our list that we never seem to complete. “I want to learn Photoshop.” “I want to learn to play the guitar.” “I want to become a motivational speaker.”

If these goals seem lofty to you—given your busy work schedule and life demands—then follow these five steps from blogger Sean Kim in today’s issue of Promotional Consultant Today. You’ll learn how to do anything faster.

1. Method beats hours. When it comes to learning something new, the method will always beat the number of hours you put into something. This isn’t to say that the number of hours isn’t important but you should choose which method will give you the best results.

For example, let’s say two people were driving from Boston to New York City. It doesn’t matter how skilled or committed the first driver is. If he’s driving a beat-up pickup truck and the second driver has a Ferrari, the first driver will lose.

Your method is the vehicle that will become the engine of where you want to go. With anything you want to learn, there will be dozens of available methods to follow, and “experts” to learn from. This means that you want to spend a lot of time understanding who you’re learning from, what credibility they have and how it fits with your learning style.

2. Apply the 80/20 rule. Pareto’s Law states that 80 percent of your desired outputs will come from only 20 percent of your inputs. Twenty percent of your customers will drive 80 percent of your sales. Twenty percent of your learning methods will lead to 80 percent of your results

Stay focused on the one or two things that will drive the needle for what you want to achieve, and double down on them. For example, if you’re learning Spanish to travel to Spain this summer, instead of learning how to write or read Spanish, you should focus first on learning how to speak it. Or, instead of trying to please a dissatisfied customer that’s only paying you $37 a month, you should add 10 times more value to a customer that’s paying you $1,000 a month.

3. Learn by doing. Immersion is by far the best way to learn anything. Think back to how you learned to play basketball, ride a bicycle or swim. Instead of watching tutorial videos or reading a textbook on how to do something, the way to learn faster is to get into the trenches and gain experience through making mistakes.

4. Find a coach. From business titans to professional athletes, the people performing at the highest levels all have one thing in common: they have a coach. A coach allows you to see the blind spots that you couldn’t see before, and guide you through the tough times that inevitably come when you’re learning anything new.

A coach doesn’t have to cost $1 million a year, like what Tony Robbins charges, or even $1,000. If you’re trying to learn a language, you could have a language coach you work with. If you’re trying to learn an instrument, it could be finding a private teacher to help you. The point is you’re not going at it alone. And having someone that’s keeping you accountable can take you miles further than doing everything yourself.

5. Process over performance. Doing the work is often the hardest thing for most people. A common mistake people make when they’re learning something new is to focus on performance over process. It’s hard to see any consistent results until you’ve put in a significant amount of work upfront.

For writers, this is sitting down and writing 500 words a day—no matter how bad it may turn out. For athletes, this is waking up every morning and training—no matter how groggy and sore you feel. Taking small steps may not sound sexy, but it has been the proven path to follow for anything you’ll want to achieve in your life and business.

Source: Sean Kim is the founder of rypeapp.com, a language-learning platform helping people to speak fluently in any language faster. He’s also a blogger at http://thegrowthlist.com and a frequent contributor to Entrepreneur magazine, Huffington Post, The Next Web, TIME and more.