How I learned to learn - 3 easy steps that really work

For many of us, the beginning of the year is an opportunity to set goals for new things we want to learn. These goals can span our personal or professional lives or both. 

Many of us are also challenged in our ability to stick to our goals and achieve them in a measurable way. 

There can be many reasons for this. More often than not, life or work gets in the way. 

At some point later in the year, we realize we haven’t achieved our goals. Some of us feel embarrassed and beat ourselves up, while others come up with a reasonable explanation of the obstacles that got in the way. I’ve done both myself.

Over the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between the years when I’ve been more effective at learning new skills or knowledge and those when I haven’t grown as much. With help from several very smart people in the field of learning, like Dr. Theo Dawson, I’ve put together 3 steps for learning that really worked for me. For each step, I will share with you a specific example from my own learning. 

But first here’s a bit of background on my personal scenario.

I have wanted to write a book for a long time. I find the idea a bit intimidating and overwhelming. One January, almost 10 years ago, I wrote down this goal: Write a book. I had a training business at the time, and I thought writing a book would be an effective way to share my ideas with current and prospective clients. 

At the end of that year, there was no book. Even worse, I had no idea how to even begin the process. I was disappointed with myself and then I made the excuse that I was too busy. Since my training business was growing through word of mouth, I rationalized that I didn’t seem to need a book. But it remained something that I wanted to accomplish. While there is still no book 10 years later, over the course of 90 days in 2019, I have moved along a path which I am confident will lead to one in the not too distant future. I will share with you the simple 3 step process, which helped me accomplish this forward momentum. I am confident that anyone can apply it to achieve any learning goal.

Step 1: Write down a specific learning goal that includes a demonstrated change within 90 days or less

Having coached and trained several hundred people over the past 25 years, I know that many people set broad, unspecific learning goals with indefinite time frames. Something like: “Improve my writing” or “learn how to speak French”. Others set goals that seems action-oriented with a timeframe but don’t have a defined, demonstrated change. Something like: “Take a writing (or French) course this year”. These structures do not set us up for success.

My original goal of writing a book was too broad and did not have a specific, demonstrated change in a reasonable timeframe. I did do some writing over the last several years. I wrote stories of my observations about the people impacted by international development and the volunteers that supported that work. I put those stories out in the world through emails, speeches and social media posts. I read others’ blogs and thought perhaps that might be the answer. Instead of writing a book, I could write a blog. That might be more realistic. But as I wrote the words “Write a blog,” I knew I was once again setting myself up for failure with an unspecific goal. On July 15, 2019, I set a more specific and time-defined goal: “Learn how to create and publish a blog in the next 90 days.”

Step 2: Seek knowledge and insights from multiple sources and write down or draw a picture of your key learnings

Traditionally, the most common ways people obtain new knowledge have been books and classroom courses. In the last 10 years, we have seen the growth of online courses and webinars, YouTube videos, podcasts, audio books and, of course, Internet searches that often lead to Wikipedia and blogs.

One of the best things about the rise of the Internet has been the platform it has provided for millions of people to share their knowledge with the rest of us. There are lots of smart people out there.

Of course not all the content is good. And there is so much content, it can be overwhelming.

I have a few tips to focus and prioritize your knowledge-seeking time. Before looking for a book or course, start with an Internet search for articles, blogs and videos on your topic. To limit the number of irrelevant search results, use your specific learning goal from Step 1. For my goal, I did the following search: “How to create a blog.”

At the top of your search, there will be a number of ads that you may find relevant, but, usually, I find it helpful to scroll down to the natural search results. I click and scan through 3 or 4 blog posts or articles, spending about 1 minute on each. If they are well-written, easy-to-understand and reference other articles or books, I save them for a deeper review. 

Then I watch a couple of videos that have come up through my search results. Typically, the first minute or less will give you a sense of whether something is worth your time. You can also tell by the number of views; the more views, likely the more useful the content.

The next thing I recommend is searching for podcasts on your topic. You can add the words “podcast on” to your internet search (as in “podcasts on how to create a blog”) or go to an audio platform, such as Spotify or Apple Podcast.

After you have narrowed down your resources, schedule the time - 1 to 3 hours over the course of a couple of weeks - to go through your shortlisted articles, blogs, videos and podcasts. I find listening to the podcasts while exercising is a great way to get the brain and body working together to make mental and physical connections.

As you go through the content, take breaks and make notes or draw pictures of your key insights. The process of making notes or drawings is an important part of learning because it starts to integrate the knowledge into your brain’s neural connections.

Through my research, I landed on 2 key resources. The first is a blog, newsletter and course offered by David Perell called Write of Passage. I have not taken the course yet, but I have already been able to get lots of great insights from his published content. The second is a podcast called Problogger. I started with its beginner series called “30 days to build a better blog,” which offers short podcasts on various aspects of blogging.

Using this research approach, you will come across references to books and live/online courses on your topic. Make a note of them, and get the books or sign up for the courses that spark your interest, but don't wait to move to Step 3. Your notes should be enough to move forward.

Step 3: Pick an insight, take action, reflect and repeat.

As soon as you have even 1 insight, put it into action. Create a scenario where you can take 1 small step to experiment with a piece of new knowledge you have gained. What you want to do is take the knowledge and turn it into a skill. Don’t worry about being perfect and count on making mistakes or even failing. Mistakes or failures are where all the learning is. If possible, test out your learning in a way that involves others and enables you to get reactions and feedback quickly.

My advice is to keep your experiment simple and implement it soon. If you can, design 2 or 3 experiments and run them in parallel or in sequence.

For my experiment, I wrote 3 blog posts in a Google Docs format and sent the link to a handful of friends and family members that I trust and know would be honest. They gave me some great advice. I also crafted a related LinkedIn and Facebook post. From this second experiment, I got some data on the number of likes and comments.

Something interesting happened physiologically. As I applied the learnings and experienced reactions (both positive and constructive), I felt euphoric. As I learned from 1 of the articles I had read by Dr. Theo Dawson, when you succeed in applying a learning, the brain triggers the release of natural opioids and dopamine, creating a pleasurable, happy feeling. That dynamic is built into our physiology to aid in continuous learning.

I took these comments and insights, along with the general state of happiness they provided, and repeated the process a second and third time.

While conducting these experiments, I also took on other small, learning goals needed to help me with the bigger goal of launching my blog. I learned how to design a website and how to start a mailing list, things that I was too intimidated and busy to do before.

I set my learning goal on July 15, 2019. I launched my weekly blog on my new website on October 6, 2019 - less than 90 days later. Each week since then has been a new experiment. I have 12 blog posts published so far and am learning to be a better writer with each one.

These steps can be applied to any learning goal. If you have a large goal, you can break it into component parts. For example, “learning how to be a better coach” can be broken down into component skills like “learning how to be a better listener” and “learning how to ask better questions”.

You can modify the timeframe, but I recommend you don’t extend it too far beyond 90 days and even try setting a goal for a shorter timeframe. The quick success will encourage you to keep going. 

Is there something you’ve been wanting to learn but haven’t yet? Do you plan to give my 3 steps a go? Let me know by commenting below or sending me an email at shakeel@oceanbluestrategic.com.