Many think when they hear the word learning, they have to be a genius with outstanding memory. And to be willing to bury their heads in the books.
But that is not the case; everyone can become an efficient learner. It all depends on wherever you know how to learn effectively and what strategies you need to use. So you get the benefits that learning has to offer.
Why learning something new will help you?
In your life, you´ve probably discovered many new interests, and perhaps you have regretted not pursuing some of them. Maybe you wish you had started learning the guitar ten years ago when you had more time to master a new language when you were younger.
But what if you focus on missed opportunities simply to start working and learn the skill today?
Learning something new can have many benefits:
- You can grow as a person and gain new knowledge and improve yourself for the better.
- It gives you access to new and different opportunities, and you can create new amazing experiences that can influence your life forever.
- If you learn work-related skills, you can potentially earn more money and get much more out of your work life.
- Studying a new skill can impact your everyday situations because you can do things quicker and easier, which can save you time, energy, and stress.
Your Brain chemistry called myelin changes so that you can improve your performance on many tasks. The more you learn, the more growth of myelin it causes, which helps you to learn better.- By acquiring new knowledge, you can learn things faster over time. It stimulates the neurons in your brain, which form new neural pathways. And it helps electrical impulses travel faster across them when they process the new information.
- Increasing your know-how reduces the changes drastically to develop dementia because the neural pathways are ready to receive new impulses.
- It can help you increase your physiological well-being, and you build up more confidence and self-efficacy.
- Learning is good for your creativity to make connections between seemingly unrelated things to develop new ideas.
- Using your knowledge can make yourself and others happier and increase your overall being, especially if it is a newly founded passion.
There you have it learning new skills is the best you can do, don´t stand still and settle with your situation at the moment.
How to learn effectively?
There are many Learning strategies and course materials you can use to master a skill. Like a learning tool called self-quizzing, you repeatedly recall and test yourself on what has been taught. So new ideas stick in your long-term memory. But the best is to focus on the following ten steps of learning to learn better and faster:
- Make sure the skills and knowledge you study are valuable and meaningful to you. It helps you much more to take the initiative and to keep going. However, meaning doesn´t appear out of nowhere; it takes time and hard work to find it. What you can do is write a paper on how the information you want to learn can benefit you and enhance your interest.
- Set larger goals you want to reach and break them into smaller goals where you can focus one at a time. It is also important to gain some background knowledge and basics before you begin to master a skill.
- No matter what you choose, you need to have the tools to pursue it. So make a list to purchase the thing you need.
- It is often the case that barriers and emotional roadblocks like fear or self-doubt can prevent you from getting started to acquire the desired craft. A good idea is to identify your fears to become familiar with them and work on them. This helps you to make the first steps. To eliminate distractions, create a peaceful environment, and use earplugs to block out external noise when you want to gain new knowledge.
- Ensure to free up time so you can dedicate around 60-90 minutes to work on your desired skill. Set yourself 20-minute time frames to know how long you´ve spent practicing and to motivate yourself to do your best in the period of time. You can aim for 20-minute blocks throughout the day to make quick progress.
- Focus on practicing a lot and quickly and not attaining perfection. Because when your priority is on quantity and speed, you are less likely to become irritated and demotivated due to the setbacks you encounter.
- You need to get feedback from someone else; it can help to know in what areas you can improve yourself. Try to decrease your error rate by monitoring and recording mistakes. It makes you aware of your performance when you are going wrong, so you´ll stop repeating mistakes.
- Constantly extend your know-how on a given topic to improve your understanding of the skill. Visualize how you get better and master the craft; this can benefit you to learn the concepts and facts you need.
- Understand the connections between different concepts. For example, when you want to master a new language, you need to learn both the grammar of the language and the meaning of the words. Vary how you practice by not only learning new words but also building a sentence in the new language.
- Review your knowledge to not overestimate yourself. So you don´t think you learned more than you really have, which makes you expect to perform well in the future. However, overconfidence can lead to mistakes on a regular basis.
Of course, it takes time and effort to learn a new skill. But with these ten strategies, some of the most effective learning techniques: value, target, tools, barriers, time, focus, feedback, extending, concepts, and review, you can become an expert in almost any field.
What can you learn?
When you know how you can learn, you have to think about what skill you want to gain. Do you want to improve your personal or professional development? Found a new hobby you want to study or learn a new language? Or maybe even something out of your comfort zone?
It’s up to you what new skill you want to master. But remember to use the ten learning strategies so you can have all the benefits when you gain new knowledge. There are a lot of different courses, ebooks, and classes online that help you to receive the know-how you seek.
Share in the comments section what you want to learn and what is your first step.
Infographic:
I am a person who loves to learn new things. I have a saying: ”The day that I stop learning is the day that I will be dead”!
I have a background in science, so by nature, I’m curious.
I like the way you broke it down into a 10 steps list to learn a new skill more effectively. The point that I always have to work on from your list, that I have difficulty with is the emotional roadblock, fear, and self-doubt. Often, before doing something new, I question myself I am going to be able to do this? And it did, at times, prevented me from learning a new skill, unfortunately.
I have bookmarked your site and will come back to get a refresher before learning something new.
I am happy to hear that you are curious and like to learn new things and don´t want to stop learning.
It is true fear and self-doubt can prevent us from trying out new things and learning new skills. But I think getting out of your comfort zone can help you overcome this fear and self-doubt.
I also overthink and question myself if I am able to do this. However, what helps me is to make the first step and try it. Then I can see if it is something I like doing and if it benefits myself.
And even if you make mistakes at first you learn from it and you can become better. This is when you know it if it was worth trying.
Thank you for bookmarking my article.
I love the set up to your website.
The information section regarding learning something new or refresh is always within my nursing career so this helps a lot.
The idea about offering a course online is a good one a beneficial way to start up a business plan/program.
Thats sometimes where i have weakness for sure. All the ideas and formatting it in a nice balance business plan.
Do you recommend a business plan? Do you have any advice on what that can begin to look like?
I love your investment section very helpful. Definitely saving your website for further reading and knowledge.
In good health,
Patricia
Thank you for your kind words.
A Business plan is for sure, not a bad idea; however, a full business plan may seem a bit too much if you are only want to build an online course.
Nevertheless, it is a good idea to make a plan on the topics you want to include in your online course and what budget you need. That you can use for marketing and setting up the online course as well for filming and creating your tutorials.
If you can afford, I recommend Course creator Pro it walks you through every process from planning to creating your online course and how to successfully market your course.
I think Online Courses are definitely in demand right now more than ever, which makes it a good investment idea.
Nice article and also helpful too. Learning is a life time thing. As long as you are alive you keep learming everyday. One thing i do before venturing into learning a thing is i check my interest level. If i have enough interest for the thing i go ahead but if i dont i just back off. I actaually learnt new tips on how to learn better from this. Thank you.
Thank you for your nice words.
Yes, it is important to find something you are interested enough so you can stay motivated to keep going. For me, if I care about a topic enough, I can learn not only more effectively and but also faster.
Hello there! thanks a lot for sharing this interesting article with us today. I really enjoyed ever bit of it. I just love learning new things it makes me happy. From experience, learners are earners. People who continually learn will earn more money than those who rely on a narrow set of skills. Tom Clancy said it best; “life is about learning; when you stop learning, you die.”
And remember there are no bad learning styles, every style of learning has its distinct advantages.
Thank you for your comment. Yes, I also think learning and improving yourself can make you happier in life, especially if you found a passion where you also can earn money from.
I like this quote because it shows that it is important to never stop learning new things and seeking new experiences.
True, every person is different, and one leaning style can work for someone, and for another one, it doesn´t. It is all about finding out what works for you the best and where you are most motivated to keep going.