Plus, Minus, Equal
To learn anything fast, surround yourself with a coach, a student, and peers.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 97%
Plus, Minus, Equal is a three-part learning structure Altucher learned from MMA champion Frank Shamrock. Whenever you want to learn something, you assemble three relationships: a plus (a coach who teaches and corrects you), a minus (someone you teach, because you don't truly understand something unless you can explain it simply), and equals (peers climbing the same path with whom you exchange notes and camaraderie). Together they give you correction, reinforcement, and a way to measure progress. It's how Shamrock rapidly learned new martial arts.
Origin
The framework was given to Altucher by Frank Shamrock, the MMA world champion of the late 1990s and early 2000s, who had to learn new martial arts quickly and used plus-minus-equal to do it. Altucher adopted it as his own method for learning languages, comedy, and more.
Core principles
- 01A 'plus' (coach) corrects you and shows you what you're doing wrong.
- 02A 'minus' (someone you teach) forces true understanding — you can't teach what you don't grasp.
- 03'Equals' (peers on the same path) give feedback, camaraderie, and proof you're not alone.
- 04Teaching deepens and reminds you of the basics that experts forget.
How to run it
- 1
Recruit a plus (coach)
Find someone more skilled than you who can teach you and, crucially, tell you what you're doing wrong so you can correct course.
Pro tip A plus keeps you from reinforcing bad habits invisibly.
- 2
Recruit a minus (student)
Find someone you can teach. Explaining the skill simply to a beginner exposes the gaps in your own understanding and cements the basics.
Pro tip Running a course or mentoring a junior counts — teaching LinkedIn or podcasting makes you better at it.
- 3
Recruit equals (peers)
Find people moving up the same path so you can exchange notes, swap feedback, and share the adventure of learning.
- 4
Use the trio to measure progress
Let your plus correct you, your minus reveal your blind spots, and your equals benchmark you — together they track whether you're actually improving.
In the wild
MMA champion Frank Shamrock repeatedly had to master a new martial art very quickly and did it by assembling a plus, a minus, and equals for each discipline.
→ He became a many-times world champion through the late 90s and early 2000s using this method to learn fast.
The host realized she already ran plus-minus-equal: teaching a LinkedIn course made her better at LinkedIn, and teaching about podcasting made her better at podcasting.
→ Teaching peers and students actively deepened her own mastery of skills she was still building.
Common mistakes
Only seeking a coach
Skipping the minus and equals means you lose the understanding that comes from teaching and the benchmarking that comes from peers.
Assuming you're too advanced to teach
On the path to mastery you forget the basics; a minus keeps you grounded in fundamentals the best and worst in the world both rely on.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone deliberately trying to acquire a new skill quickly across any domain.
Not ideal for
Purely solo, introspective pursuits where no coach, peer, or student is available or relevant.
From the transcript
“whenever you want to learn something the first thing you should do is get a plus which is like a coach to teach you get…”
“that approach actually was told to me by this guy Frank Shamrock... he had to often learn a different martial art very quickly and that's…”
From the episode
James Altucher: Debunking the 10,000-Hour Myth, How to Master Any Skill
James Altucher