Note: This article is by blogger Dustin Wax, in which he shares his experience with self-learning.
Most of the skills I use to earn a living are skills I acquired through self-learning. These skills include web design, desktop publishing, marketing, personal productivity, and teaching.
Also, I learned most of what I know about world history, science, politics, computers, art, music, and a dozen other subjects outside of formal education.
The Keys to Learning Anything Easily
Learning is a continuous process that people who have developed the following three skills can apply:
1. Curiosity
Curiosity means that you look forward to learning new things and are troubled by gaps in your understanding of the world. Also, you approach new ideas and concepts as challenges and try to understand them.
Those who lack curiosity are likely to avoid self-learning because they view it as a tedious task or, worse, something that is beyond their capabilities.
2. Patience
Learning something new can take a while, depending on how complicated the topic is. You can never escape being frustrated when you struggle to grasp new concepts, models, or information beyond your understanding level.
When you learn something alone, nobody controls the information flow to ensure you move from basic knowledge to intermediate and advanced concepts.
Therefore, you must be patient with yourself and the knowledge you acquire. Nobody has ever been unable to learn something in any field by starting from exactly where they are.
3. Understanding How Things Are Interconnected
This skill is one of the hardest to cultivate and is why most people struggle to start learning a new topic.
Finding connections between new information and what you already know makes learning new information easier every time. Calculus has become much easier for me since a chemistry professor showed me how to use integrals to perform half-life calculations.
I always had trouble understanding higher mathematics, but after learning this, I could connect the dots between a topic I understood well—half-life chemistry—and calculus, which I had struggled with for years.
The more you look for and consider connections between various fields, the more adept your mind becomes at taking in new ideas.
How to Become Self-Taught Effectively?
When you desire and intend to learn, mastering a new topic is simply a matter of research, practice, networking, and scheduling.
1. Research
The most crucial part of learning a new topic is learning about it. When I learn something new on my own, I go through three phases:
1.1. Learning the Basics
Start your learning journey as most people do today: Google it. People managed to learn in some way before Google was created (I learned HTML when Altavista was the best way available.). However, these days, a quick search on Google or any other online source can yield a ton of information about almost any topic in a matter of seconds.
1.2. Book Searching
Once I have a solid understanding of the topic matter I will be studying, I go to the library to continue my self-learning journey. There, I look up the names and main titles of the books I have come across online and then peruse the shelves for other significant books that also contain those titles.
1.3. Long-Term Reference
As I read through a stack of books I checked out from the library, I keep looking for more books to add to my own collection. I search traditional and electronic libraries, used and discounted bookstores, and any place I come across books.
I aspire to amass a library of important books and references that I can quickly and affordably consult when faced with challenging questions or to jog my memory when applying newly acquired skills.
Next, I search for the same references in the library's children's section, as many books meant for adults may not have an overview that is as clear, concise, and easy to understand for young readers as it does for them.
2. Practice
Applying your newly acquired knowledge helps you develop a better understanding of what you are learning and remember it better later on. While many books include exercises and self-tests, I would rather go straight to real-world applications like building a website, writing an article, creating a table, etc.
Starting a blog about it and asking people to comment on it is a great way to put any new knowledge into practice.
However, don't keep your newfound knowledge to yourself. No one will see how much you know about a field, and you will never realize how much you still don't know.
3. Network
Social networks are one of the most powerful sources of knowledge and understanding, and they have become an integral part of my life over the years. This includes the websites I write on, the online communities I joined, the people I talk to and attend conferences with, my professors' colleagues in the department I studied in, and more. They have all supported me in my quest to become self-taught.
These networks are crucial for helping me learn more about the fields I am genuinely interested in and connecting me with specialists and other resources in areas I lack prior experience. A few helpful ways to get started in a new field are joining a mailing list, emailing someone in the field, and asking your colleagues for recommendations.
These networks allow you to grow and develop further by testing your newly acquired information and comparing it with others' understanding.
4. Schedule
You must schedule time and commit to learning if you want to become an expert in the topic you are studying. Having books arranged on your bookshelves, important websites bookmarked, and a network of contacts won't help you unless you make time to read, comprehend, and apply what you have learned to get to the self-learning stage.
Even if you are not required to complete anything by a certain time, set a deadline for yourself and plan your schedule to help you meet it.
In Conclusion
Formal training and education are forms of self-learning to some extent. Ultimately, you must learn how to teach yourself because a teacher can only offer advice and lead you along a path you must ultimately follow. At most, they can spare you some trouble locating trustworthy sources from which to gain knowledge.
Formal education might not be appropriate or affordable for you if you are already employed or have interests outside of academics. However, this does not mean you should give up on learning. History is full of examples of people who have succeeded through self-learning.
At its best, even formal education prepares you for a life based on self-learning. With the internet and media at our disposal, there is no reason why you should be prevented from pursuing your passion wherever it may lead.
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