Background
Here at Red Bear we consider ourselves lifelong learners. We believe that everything has a science and everything is worth learning about. Since we’re all such voracious learners and we believe in being as efficient at learning as we can, it only makes sense that one of the topics we like to learn about is… learning. Learning about learning. We don’t really believe there are too many bad ways to learn new things. Generally speaking any method of learning new things regardless of the mechanism, given enough time will eventually lead to positive results. Efficiency is key however, and time is money so being as efficient as possible with our learning will only further help us.
First let us say, learning things can be fun but it can also be really uncomfortable especially in the beginning. Don’t forget that as you go through your journey of learning anything that you will be the newbie again and that your confidence will probably be low as you start cutting your teeth. If you’re trying to pick something up that is incredibly complex then it will probably be demotivating at first when the progression is slower. This is one of the reasons why we endorse this method, because it gives you a quicker feeling of accomplishment, ideally leading to increased motivation.
Think back to a time when you tried to learn something new like playing an instrument, or skateboarding, or underwater basket weaving and it maybe didn’t go the way that you thought it would. Maybe it was because the progression was a lot slower than you thought or maybe the skill was just a lot harder to learn than you anticipated. For whatever reason you may have decided to quit and never pick it back up and you were always left with the thought of what could have been. Most people relate to stories like this because it is a very relatable and very human thing to do. Some of us might be better than others, but for a lot of us our brains are very good at justifying our decisions to quit and dare we say ‘come up with excuses’.
Obviously your brain is a very important component to learning anything effectively but at the same time it can also be your own worst enemy. Our brains are intrinsically wired for survival which at its core sounds straightforward but sometimes that manifests itself in weird ways. If you think about it, being lazy might have negative connotations societally speaking but from a survival standpoint it makes sense that your mind would want to keep you from excessive energy expenditure especially when you have to hunt and gather for food. Today obviously these animalistic instincts don’t really benefit us as much as they once did but they’re still with us and our goal is to basically outsmart those instincts.
The Method
So how do you do it? Well first you need to find yourself a handhold. From this handhold you will be pulling yourself up to a level that otherwise would have taken you longer to get to. By handhold we’re really talking about a project or task that is outside of your current abilities to complete on your own. You’re going to need a good one that hits a few criteria for you and it can be a little tricky to find the right one so here are some tips.
1. Find a good guide
This doesn’t necessarily need to be a person it can be a book or well written article or video but you want to make sure you have some detailed instruction that will hold your hand through most of the project. You want a guide that is easy to understand and will fill in as many of the gaps in the knowledge required to complete the project successfully. For the most part this is pretty easy to find as most people that put a tutorial together anticipate their audience lacking the knowledge necessary to perform the task on their own. However sometimes you do find the occasional guide or tutorial where the instructor is so far removed from what it was like to be a novice that they simply don’t realize how much you don’t know. These are the types of guides you will want to avoid.
2. Find something close and far at the same time
You want to find a project to complete that is both outside of your current skillset but not so far outside that you will go through the entire project and not really learn anything. To be fair you probably want to err on the side of a project that is further outside of your scope than not. If you have incorporated the step above correctly then it won’t really an issue if this is generally well outside your area of expertise. As you’re going through the project you won’t necessarily need to understand every single step of the process, what you’re trying to gain here is exposure to the relationships and different systems that go into what you’re learning.
3. Fill in the gaps later
As you continue your learning journey you will eventually get exposed to a lot of the same concepts that you had been exposed to during your project. Understanding is key here, this is a concept that might be difficult to grasp but early on in your learning you will benefit more from a high level understanding of how systems work as opposed to deep diving the individual components. This will also allow you to prioritize what concepts you need to deep dive first and what concepts you need to deep dive in general.
The Value
What this does for you is a couple of things. One, It keeps you excited and motivated by getting small wins sooner than later which can ultimately keep you from giving up early. Two, it accelerates the pace at which you can then take your new skill and practically apply it in your life. Three, it allows you take control of your learning experience by becoming your own coach and letting you determine what is important to focus your energy on and what is not. Remember that the process of learning something is not linear and treating it as such can actually work against you.
The important thing to note here is the more than likely this isn’t going to be the only technique to live by when learning how to do something new and there might be cases where this method doesn’t even apply at all. Think of this more as another tool in your toolbox of skills that you can apply to unique problems. All things said, this is what we like to call ‘The Backfilling Philosophy’.