12 Ways on How to Improve Your Learning Process
Many of us want to learn new skills. No matter if it’s a new way of drawing, a new cooking recipe, or a new programming language. We learn during our whole life but still, we keep having problems with some part of our learning process. In this short article below I want to give you just a few ideas that I use personally in my life as a Software Engineer. I’m sure all of them are common for all disciplines, so let’s check them!
- Find your “Why”
Doing anything without a purpose often makes no sense. It seems not necessary at the beginning but for sure we’ll hit you back when hard times will come and believe me — they will come. Find a reason you want to learn something. Maybe you want to change your job, change your occupation, get a raise or just impress your friends. Find it. Write it down and keep it in a visible place. You may also want to use a form like: ‘What will happen if I won’t learn this?”.
2. Learn in the morning
When it comes to personal finance people know the rule: “pay yourself first” which says to firstly put some money from your salary into a saving account. What about when it comes to our daily routines? We wake up, grab a coffee, check emails, one after another, commute to work, and start working. We spend our most productive time working for someone else. Change it! Try to go to bed and wake up 30 mins earlier than you usually do and spend the morning time on things you always wanted to learn.
3. Create a plan and a timeline
“If you’re going nowhere, you’ll get there”. Create some steps you want to achieve and put them on a timeline. You don’t have to know everything that you have to learn at the moment but at least make some research to structure the way you want to stick with.
4. Give up your free time
Working on additional skills or projects might be a struggle sometimes. It’s hard. None says it will not be painful but the reward is worth it. None who spends all time with friends or hanging out makes a progress or becomes a billionaire. Balance is the key.
5. Work less
If you can’t have any free time during your day try to ask your boss to work 10–15% less at your 9 to 5 work. If you don’t want to invest in yourself none will.
6. Improve your efficiency
Spending much time on learning but still can’t notice any progress? If it’s not about underestimating yourself maybe you struggle with your learning productivity? Try to check out some basic pieces of advice on how to do that e.g article you’re reading right now. Also, you might want to change your learning sources or approach. If so, do that!
7. One thing at a time
Don’t focus on too many things at once as it’s proven that changing context will slow down your improvement on the chosen project.
8. Delete distractors
I divide distractors into two categories: life distractors and learning distractors. First of them are things that are happening in your life e.g friends hanging out (who want you to join them!), new Netflix series that everybody is talking about, etc. Try to focus on your goal and reward. You catch up with them later and believe me Netflix will wait. By learning distractors I understand all types of things like smartphone notifications, uncomfortable chairs, and so on. Try to eliminate them and stick to your objective. Most of them can be avoided by waking up early in the morning.
9. Practice your skills
“Learning is the new procrastination”. Always try to use your skills on the battlefield. No matter whether it’s negotiation — try to get a 5% discount on your next coffee at Starbucks or a new programming language — try to make a project with that. For sure give it a try and see where you are.
10. Create habits
If you incorporate those steps as habits you’ll learn better and faster than you used to without even thinking about some patterns but simply by behaving the right way.
11. Pay for your materials
Another motivation for you to learn may be paying for online classes or books. Nobody wants to throw money away soo…
12. Don’t learn alone
If you can engage your friends or try to join some communities. You’ll be able to find people who are trying to do the same things as you, or know how to do things properly as they used to struggle with the same problem in the past. Ask them! By doing this you’ll also find mentors and in the future will become one as “teaching is another way to learn”.
I hope you enjoyed the article. I’m curious what are your ways of improving the learning process or how do you structure it. If you want you can post a comment below or reach me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or mail: marcin.krykowski@gmail.com. I’ll be more than happy to help you!
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