Learning, for many people, feels like a burden; like something you would do for school, a job, etc. Despite this deliberate feeling of being forced to learn, learning can actually be quite enjoyable.
Many of the top businessman and businesswoman in the world enjoy learning, and do it willingly outside of work. With the many skills and benefits of learning it also brings a sense of accomplishment and usefulness into your life. In fact, I guarantee that you will be happier the vast majority of the time if you replace half of your social media usage time with learning a new skill.
Why should you continue to learn outside of work and school?
Learning is often fun, and engaging. Additionally, mastering a challenging skill is the most satisfying feeling.
Learning is easier than ever now. A new skill is literally at your fingertips. Practically all skills you can even think about learning have been posted on the internet or better-yet YouTube.
Learning makes you more attentive. When you are learning, and studying your mistakes you become more attentive to details about unknown subjects.
What are the benefits of learning?
Learning is the equivalent to working out for your brain. It pushes your brain outside of its comfort zone. Allowing you to improve the speed and comprehend-ability of certain parts of your brain which aren’t typically used.
Additionally, learning will make life easier. Only 15% of hiring managers say most job-seekers have all the skills the job is requiring. In 10–15 years self-learning will be as legitimate as a college level education. Meaning soon you will be able to acquire a job with a skillset you learned on the internet.
So, how do we learn? And how do we do it efficiently?
A good method for getting comfortable with rapidly picking up new skills is a strategic learning method called the 30/70 method.
The 30/70 method is a strategic learning method which helps you pick up skills significantly faster.
To start, you spend the minority of the learning time (30%) researching. Research any details that aren’t obvious about the given skill. For example, say you’re trying to learn basketball. You wouldn’t research how a point is made in basketball because it is a widely broadcasted sport and most everyone knows that you have to put the basketball through the hoop to get a point. However something about basketball that you would research is “how to make a lay-up?” or “how much time is in each half?”.
After you are done with the research session you move on to the interactive session. The interactive session is where you are actually interacting with the skill at hand. For example, back to the basketball example, you would go and practice making a lay-up. After interacting with your skill you’re probably not going to be that good. So study your mistakes, and look at other examples of experts at your skill.
Eventually, you will increasingly get faster at picking up key details pertaining to the skill at hand and you will begin to learn faster at not only one specific skill but every skill are learning.
At this point, it is time to make changes to your strategic learning method. For learning there is not one learning method fits all. But the 30/70 method, in my opinion, is the best place to start. However, once you feel like you’ve mastered this method and can pick up skills quite quickly, you can start making changes to this method. Like adding a tutoring step, where someone who is an expert at the skill come and teaches you.
Thank you reading, and hopefully you learned something today! If you enjoyed this article please give this article a clap and possibly follow me.
