THE MOST IMPORTANT LIFE SKILL RIGHT NOW IS PROBABLY THE ABILITY TO LEARN WELL ON YOUR OWN.

In 2013, the economist and blogger Tyler Cowen wrote a book called Average is Over. Cowen’s argument was simple: the economic realities of 21st-century technology are more likely to produce winner-take-all outcomes than in the past.

He covers the usual suspects for why this happens—software’s ability to scale quickly, monopolistic forces in certain markets, the advantages of elite networks, etc. But he also points out an incredibly counterintuitive reason: information.

When there’s limited information, the people who are best at learning that information and processing it well (i.e., the smartest or most hard-working) will have a limited advantage. Everyone has the same information, but some people use it better than others.

But when information becomes virtually infinite, then the advantages of learning and processing information in impactful ways grow exponentially. Not only are you using the same information better, but you’re able to discover, comprehend, and synthesize far more information than others and do it at a far faster rate.

This ability to learn quickly and self-sufficiently has a compounding effect as well, driving an even greater division in results. The more you learn now, the better you will be able to learn and process new experiences in the future. Therefore, if you develop the ability to learn well—that is, if you learn how to learn—you have more opportunities than ever before to accrue huge, compounding results.