How do you use ChatGPT to learn any skill quickly?

The quickest way I know to learn a skill with ChatGPT is to make it cut the skill down first, then make it test you, instead of asking it to explain everything. So I start by telling it who I am and why I need this, because Anthropic's own prompting guide says to treat the AI like a brilliant but new employee who lacks context, and that's true for ChatGPT too. Then I ask for the 80/20: the small part of the skill that gets most of the results, five things max, in the order I should learn them, and what I can ignore for now.

And then I don't keep reading. I explain it back in my own words and have it tell me where I'm winging it, and then I have it quiz me one question at a time. That's where you find out you don't know it, which is the whole point, because nodding along feels like learning and it isn't. Let's say you're learning SEO for your roofing site: you'd get five things, explain them back, and get ten questions. The exact prompts for all of it are in my six ChatGPT learning prompts guide.