How do I learn anything? I have always found this a compelling question.
Imagine you were left in the middle of a street. You don’t know where you are; you don’t speak the language that people speak there. Will you be able to survive? Will you be able to build your life from there? It would be great to have that kind of ability, wouldn’t it?
Learning could be a skill in itself. It took me years to find out that learning is not a complicated process after all. If you know how and do it the right way, then learning becomes more manageable and fun at the same time.
It starts with the desire/ necessity to learn. Then comes the process of learning. In this article, we will walk you through 5 steps to help you learn anything efficiently.
- Talk to people who have already been there and done that.
The quickest and most reliable way to learn something could be speaking with people who have been there and done that. Do you have access to those people? If yes, reach out to them. The kind of knowledge they bring to the table is non-codified, meaning you will not find it in documents, websites or books. This is called inferred knowledge, and people with it don’t come by often. People spend years trying to figure out the infinitesimally small details in the field. It’s entirely normal for you not to have access to these kinds of people. So, if you don’t have direct access to these intelligent brains, don’t worry; you can make it too!
2. Learn from the first principles
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret to getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
-Mark Twain
Start from the first principles. First-principles are the fundamental concepts on which a theory, method or system is based. A first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption. If you get the fundamentals right, you will have little difficulty understanding the bigger picture. We often tend to turn to rote learning, but we should avoid this altogether.
If you are curious to know more about the First principles, here is a wonderful article explaining in detail the First principles.
3. Take notes
I can’t stress this enough, taking notes is one of the best ways to understand and learn anything. When you’re learning something and want to collect your thoughts, write it down. Organising your ideas and putting them down on paper is almost like meditating but on paper. And I’m not even exaggerating it. If you forget why something is the way it is, you can always go back and refer to your notes. That way, you don’t have to start from scratch all over again. And especially if you are learning something new as a part of a team, documentation will save hundreds of hours. You don’t have to get on a meeting to explain something if you have documented it properly. If someone has doubts about a topic you researched, you can just send them your notes.
4. Review your process and progress
When you are learning something for the first time, it’s only natural to take your own time. While this is okay when you start, you have to perfect the process to optimise for the long term.
Allowing yourself an open-ended amount of time often results in nothing getting done. It’s far better for you to set a specific amount of time that you’re committed to learning something new. Perfecting the process comes with reviewing your progress regularly and analysing why you are stuck at something. You can learn something in a year or a week; it’s only up to you if you want to take control of your learning process or not.
Since you might be learning something just to satisfy your curiosity, you won’t necessarily get feedback from people around you. You must be self-critical about what you’re doing. Why did you start in the first place? Are you on the right track? Will you reach the target in the decided time? If not, it’s high time to find where you are going wrong.
5. Keep practising
“ I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand.” — Confucius.
Learning is the process of acquiring knowledge or skills through study and practice. When you learn something new, you create neurons within your brain and build upon your existing knowledge by adding further information. This allows you to expand your horizons and explore other possibilities.
If you want to get better at something, then practice is essential. Yet most people are terrible about practising and only want to spend their time learning when they’re good at it. The truth is that the best way to get good at anything is to engage in deliberate practice. Deliberate practice requires you to focus on improvement while practising a skill, rather than just doing something over and over again without any improvement in mind.
Now that you have learnt something new, how do you know if you have learnt something to the dot? Try explaining it to someone. This is the best sanity check out there. If you can explain it in simple words and clear all the person’s doubts, you’ve done a great job! If not, it’s time to revisit those foggy areas.
The challenge of learning is not a strange or unique one. It’s not something you should be scared of or ashamed of. Anyone in the world can learn, and it’s not necessary to follow a specific method to do so. Find what works best for you and make sure that you don’t limit your learning capabilities by being afraid to try new things.
And the thing about learning is that it never stops, and it never should.
We wrote an article explaining why lifelong learning is the path to ultimate success. I highly recommend you check it out.
Take the first plunge, make a hundred mistakes; there’s no better satisfaction than learning organically after all. It’s going to take some time, but at the end of all that effort, you’ll get better at what you want to do!
Varun, Content Writer
