Learn new skills faster

As a software developer, I look to learn new skills faster, but this tip will not only work for a software developer out there, this will work for each one of us that try to keep learning every day.

We tend to over think about how to get to know new skills and literally feel overwhelmed about the difficulties that you may find in the way to success. Learning new skills is not going to be easy, but is not that hard as you put it on your head. Some skills may even take you just 10 min everyday for a period of time.

For example, I wasn’t good at touch-typing. I was averaging around 30 words per minute which is quite bad lets me honest no one will think that someone that actually want to be a programmer have that low wpm(words per minute). Well this was till i meet one of my college teacher, she was our IT teacher and the way she pushed us to learn touch-typing was as simple as first 10 min of our class doing touch typing on any related website. This was 3 times at week and just after 2 or 3 weeks my touch typing improve a lot till the point i almost got 50% more words than before.

So the point here is that you don’t have to make yourself learn something straight up. You just have to study, practice this skill for at least some time every day even if is it only 10 min a day.

There are few different tips i found online to help me learn new things easily.

1. Make It More Meaningful for Yourself

One main reason why “learning styles” don’t work is that we learn things in terms of meaning. Finding meaning in our learning is the key.

We all learned various facts and figures in school but how many of those do we actually remember? Only the information that was meaningful to us, that we’ve been able to connect to our own life and experiences.

If you try to force yourself to just memorize random facts, you’re likely to forget them. Remember all those times you tried to memorize formulas without understanding their relevance? In order to make your learning stick, it’s important to make real life connections and see how it fits in the larger scheme of things.

The next time you take a coding class, instead of memorizing the syntax, try to understand what relevance it has in practice and how you can use it to your advantage. You’ll find you’re able to grasp the concepts much more quickly.

2. Learn by Doing

Humans are natural learners — and we learn best when we perform the tasks we’re trying to learn. No matter how good your grades were at college, most of your learning takes place once you enter the workplace and start applying what you’ve learned.

Let’s say you’re trying to learn coding. Don’t invest all your time in learning the theory — Dive in as soon as you can to master the skill through trial and error. At Flatiron School they told me to write a blog about something that i am not sure how it work or not good at so on the process of writing the blog i understand it.Find yourself how works and the best way to use this new skill. The more you do with it, the more you learn.

Better yet, build new habits to enforce your new skills. Start small and reward yourself to start building a pattern of behaviour that will reinforce what you’re learning.

3. Teach What You Learn

One of the more surprising ways you can learn a new skill is to teach it to someone else.

Why is this such an effective way to learn? Because when we learn with the intention to teach, we break the material down into simple, understandable chunks for ourselves. It also forces us to examine the topic more critically and thoroughly, helping us to understand it better.

You don’t have to be an education major to use this trick. Try explaining what you’re learning to friends or coworkers. If you’re learning a new business software or skill, ask your boss if you can make a presentation to your team about it. See if you can field all their questions.

This in my opinion is a magnificent way to learn as you help someone else learn with you, sadly i really don’t use it as much i would like as I find difficult to teach someone else for some reason.

4. Spend More Time Practicing Things You Find Difficult

Practice in itself is great, but if you’re practicing things you know well, you’re doing it wrong. In order to excel at any skill, you need to push yourself out of your comfort zone and practice things you aren’t good at.

So the next time you sit to practice a new skill, step out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself. Concentrate on whatever is most difficult for you, and with time you’ll find you achieve a higher level of overall efficiency.

5. Test Yourself

We all loved to hate tests in college, but do you know just how effective they are in helping you learn? Turns out testing is one of the best ways to boost learning — even if you’re simply practicing on your own, and not taking a high-stakes exam.

Testing even beats out methods such as re-reading and reviewing notes when it comes to making sure your learning sticks.

Why is testing so effective? Because it takes recall a step further. Recall shows how much of the material you remember. Testing shows you how well you can use what you’ve learnt. After all, that is the ultimate goal of learning, isn’t it?

Lets say you are learning how to draw a Pikachu one of the main character in Pokemon saga. At first you look at a reference so you can make it look good and nice, but after few tries you stop looking at a reference and see how good the draw ends. This will show you where you need to practice more and where you are good. This can be done on any skill you are learning.