In 2008, Pat Flynn’s world view changed abruptly.
He was cruising along in his job with an architecture firm, recently promoted, and looking forward to a bright future. Then the recession raised its ugly head, and he was laid off. No warning. No parachute. No Plan B.
For a while he floundered. He attended a meeting on how to sell Cutco knives. He attended another meeting that promoted a pyramid scheme selling skincare products. He scrambled. He knew he needed to take control. So, he switched gears and turned to the Internet for ideas.
Fast forward: Today that same Pat Flynn is one of the most trusted voices in digital entrepreneurship. He’s a bestselling author, popular keynote speaker, and the host of multiple top-ranking podcasts including the Smart Passive Income podcast that’s garnered tens of millions of downloads.
Quite the turnaround from exploring a career selling kitchen knives.
Known for making the complex approachable, Flynn offers a treasure trove of immediately usable ideas in Lean Learning: How to Achieve More by Learning Less.
Face it: it’s easy to equate complexity with value. This often leads to the trap of overcomplicating learning. Flynn shows how to avoid information overload with the art of selective curiosity.
“Lean learning is understanding the difference between learning things ‘just in case’ and learning things ‘just in time,’” Flynn says. “In today’s world we’re at a buffet line of information, yet we still treat information like it’s a scarce food.”
A key to success, Flynn says, is “applying the right information at the right time in the right places.”
That’s where selective curiosity can play an important role. Rather than overindulge in information—which can produce a coma-like brain fog like you’d get from too many trips to the dessert table—Flynn recommends the disciplined approach of going to the right resource at the right time for the right need.
He also recommends what he calls micro mastery. Let’s say you’re a band director and the trombone section is struggling. You could have the entire band practice the piece a hundred times, a repetition that may do no more than reinforce the trombone errors. Or you could silence the rest of the band and focus on the trombones so they could get their part right.
Flynn is a huge fan of the Back to the Future movie trilogy, films that featured a DeLorean automobile that was turned into a time machine. He uses that image in running his own businesses as well as in coaching his clients.
“If you have trouble deciding between a few different things in your entrepreneurial journey, step into your metaphorical DeLorean and travel one year into the future,” he says. “Assume that everything worked out perfectly with your business idea. Then examine your life. What’s happening with you at that point? What’s your typical day like? What are your roles? Are your relationships what you truly want them to be?”
When it’s done honestly, Flynn says, this exercise can help you determine what your true north is. As Stephen Covey frequently taught, if your life ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place faster.
As any entrepreneur knows, customer acquisition and loyalty are important keys to success. Flynn’s approach? “If you can define the problem better than your target customers, they will automatically assume you have the solution. So, it’s imperative that you don’t merely understand the problem faced by your target customers. You should literally use your target customers’ words in describing the problem. You can sell and serve at the same time.”
Flynn’s approach in Lean Learning isn’t just theoretical. It’s built from experience. Drawing from his own journey of skill acquisition, failures, and hard-won insights, he lays out a framework anyone can use to accelerate learning without burnout.
Whether you’re launching a side hustle, picking up a new language, or simply trying to keep pace with ever-evolving tech, Flynn believes this lean method can transform how you absorb information—and how fast and productively you apply it.