What works for me is to integrate the thing I want to learn into my lifestyle and do it everyday. If I have a day where I am inspired or particularly creative I just funnel that energy into the topic. Along the way I give myself small project goals that emerge from exploring the activity.

The ideal scenario is to become immersed so the topic becomes "part of you".

I also give myself a two year gestation period of incremental learning to see results and build muscle memory. I did this with programming and once you do it with one topic, you will build the confidence that it will come to fruition with anything else you decide to do.

I'm not a fan of peddling the idea that anything worth learning can be learned "fast". It may work for some people, but I think they are the minority. it's been my experience there's usually a fair amount of self deception involved in "fast" learning....or "fast" anything for that matter. This works for some people - I'm not one of them.

If you want to learn a new language then walk around with headphones listening to people speak it. When you talk to people in English in your head ask yourself how to say the same thing in the alternate language. etc....