Are you ready for a game changing content about learning? Abraham Lincoln wisely said ”Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
So prepare your oilstones folks, we will sharpen our axes today.
Learning has always been popular but now online learning is becoming the new black! People are relentlessly joining new courses, believing they can change their life. But wait, there is a big catch.
Today’s scope
As a coping mechanism for the uncertainty, the mass deaths and reckless political leaders of the once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, the humanity once again found a short-term solution to her existential crisis. People spared lots of time money. Then they began to invest themselves either to their guilty pleasures such as making their own bread or the fact that they hate their jobs and need to change it. No matter what the reasons were, they all ended up in online learning platforms.
I’m not a baby boomer to disregard the importance of the e-learning sector nor mock the growing enthusiasm of people in such a horrible time period to feel alive. However, I intend to guide their resource management allocation.
Self-awareness period
What accelerated my growth was the self-realization of my learning abilities. If you think that we are going to talk about learning types, you are so wrong. Learning types are another deep and well-known conversation topic. We will not get into that. I personally focus on how I perceive visuals rather than visual learning itself. Again, I pay attention to the outcomes of data rather than the number itself. This notion helps me to realize what I’m capable of rather than convincing myself “I’m an X type learner, I should learn this way”.
You can sort, filter and organize any kind of information you gather so far and delegate it to the other parts of your brain. My math skills guided me to learn English because of the analytical thinking. Also being exposed to foreign culture in every way possible was beneficial. Just don’t give up
We all learned various facts and figures in school but how many of those do we actually remember? We only remember things we’ve been able to connect in our own lives and experiences. Just think about how much random facts are wasted due to your lack of interest. That’s why people who are good at teaching uses lots of analogizes. Keep in mind to associate new inputs with your own connections. As mentioned above, your organizing skills play an important role in your learning process. Therefore, first practice learning. Then you can begin to learn more things.
Curiosity and Feynman Technique
The curiosity and teaching what you know are another two concepts that trigger my learning path. Luckily, we had mentioned them previous blog posts before. Being is just as easy asking a question. When you ask questions a lot, you get better at it day by day. One day you are going to ask greater questions that no has ever asked. This is sort of the definition of creativity.
In the first weeks, we talked about the Feynman Technique. I think there is nothing more self-explanatory. Briefly speaking, explaining what you learn today helps reach an end-to-end comprehension. It does not have to be a classroom. Rather you can just mention your learning path and aim people to understand.
This content is not just about techniques and skillsets, so I’ll mention it in a character perspective. “Beginner’s Mindset” always guides me to fulfill my hunger for knowledge. When we are good or even excellent on something, we rarely want to go back to being not good at other things again. We need to be vulnerable enough to show that we are capable of learning new information as well as sustaining and improving the information we have.
Often when we are new to something, we are so brutal to ourselves like “I can’t do it. I’m such an idiot, this is frustrating“. We need to have a balanced approach “Okay, I am really bad at this in the beginning, but I will grow“. This is possible if we know we are just beginners, but everyone was a beginner at some time.
The ability to acquire new skills and knowledge quickly and continually is crucial to success in a world of rapid change. If you don’t currently have what’s written above, keep asking questions and don’t forget to stay humble and stay hungry.