How To Speed Up Skill Acquisition?

As the analyst/associate recruiting cycle reaches its conclusion for some firms and is about a few months away. For others, the capacity to acquire new skills and learn new concepts and ideas becomes all the more significant. In the context of financial services and particularly IB, IM and PE, the ability to quickly learn new skills becomes even more important due to the fast-paced nature of the industry.

Having the right mindset, maintaining high levels of self-organization, reading a lot to prime your brain, getting the fundamentals right for various skills/concepts is something that one can do. Some of these are obviously easily understood but sometimes harder to practice.

What do you think one can do to that can be helpful in the recruitment cycle to turn the pace up of acquiring multiple skills in a limited frame?