Six Tips for Learning New Skills (and Retaining Them)
A large part of achieving your professional goals is learning new skills, new methods, new information. All this is knowledge that you can then apply to your overall growth. I want to share with you what I have learned about training.
This post originally appeared on the Pico blog .
While working on Pico , I not only tried to learn as much as possible to help us make a better product, but I also worked hard to maintain my personal goal of learning French, and continued to teach programming courses about once a year. month. So the topic of effective teaching interested me deeply.
Here are some tips to help you absorb new information faster and keep it longer:
1) Test yourself as you go
This tip comes first because it is very important. During your high school days, you probably thought of the test as the end of the game. But you really need to test yourself throughout the entire learning process. And for now, don’t pat yourself on the back if you think the flash cards will cut it.
The best way to test yourself is to create a quiz after you’ve finished taking notes for that piece of information (chapter, section, etc.). This has two advantages: firstly, it gives you the opportunity to review your notes, and secondly, you get a better understanding of the important topics and topics of the material by waiting for the end. This is what should be the bulk of your self-tests.
The type of questions you form during the self-assessment will depend a lot on how you need to remember the information. But for the most part, open-ended questions that apply in the real world work best.
For example, if you are learning Spanish and are trying to understand the difference between por and para , you have example sentences where you need to choose one of the two, and there is also a question where you need to explain the difference and use cases.
Your self-test timing matters too. Ideally, you should take the test you created within the next day. Then you should revisit it on a regular basis, lengthening the time in between in order to better learn the material.
This concept is based on the forgetting curve pioneered by Hermann Ebbinghaus. The bottom line is that your memory of information degrades over time. By re-examining this information, you not only erase memory decay, but also slow down any decay in the future.
How do you know how often to run a self test? Fortunately, you don’t need to create this schedule yourself. Anki enters. Anki is a spaced repetition program , which means it automatically reveals knowledge when its algorithm thinks you are on the verge of forgetting. It takes a little time to set up, but once you do, it’s magic.
One final note: don’t choose the easy way out. Allow yourself to wrestle a little when faced with a difficult question. Going straight to the sheet music is doomed to fail.
2) Study related topics together
Let’s say you want to become a web developer. You know you need some knowledge of HTML and CSS, you need to be good at server-side and maybe you need to learn a little about how to make your website online. The wrong way to learn these skills is to try to master each one before moving on to the next.
Instead, learn HTML while learning CSS, while learning the server side, and so on. As these skills are intertwined, you will begin to more effectively understand how they relate to each other. Then, when you need information, you can say to yourself, “Oh yes, I remember how to do this because it has to do with a skill that I have used a few times.”
3) Take good notes in whichever tool works best for you
I take notes on every (non-trivial) thing I read. Take as many notes and you will need a good setup for taking notes.
Some people swear when taking notes by hand. And there has even been a study that has shown that handwritten notes are more effective at recovering memory than computer notes. Dig into the details, however, and you will see that the problem is not with the media, but that people on laptops tend to just copy information verbatim. As you will see in one of our tips, this is not very helpful.
Personally, I like to know that I always take my notes with me, so I try to take notes digitally. I love OneNote and can’t recommend it highly enough. OneNote is available on every platform you can imagine, works offline, and gives you incredible flexibility in how you create and organize your notes. You can embed files and media with your notes, mark important things to come back to, and arrange your notes however you like.
What’s more, it comes with powerful tools like the ability to text search images, videos, audio, or handwritten transcriptions. And if you’re already an Office or Microsoft user, it integrates well with them. But even if you’re a Mac or Linux fan, you still have a lot to appreciate.
If OneNote doesn’t do it for you, there are plenty of other tools out there. Evernote is a popular choice , but you shouldn’t discount the less flamboyant options like email (Gmail is very searchable and tag-friendly) or even plain text files .
I create two pages for each section of notes I have. The main page is for the notes I take, while the sub page is for a self-check, which I will use later. You can do the same on paper or inside Evernote with a modified version of Cornell Notes . I prefer to keep my notes separate so I don’t have to look at my notes while I check myself.
4) don’t stuff too much at once
You want to know this information and you want to find out quickly. You probably tend to lock yourself in a room until you’ve collected what you need. Resist this urge as it is counterproductive.
You’ve heard this before, and it’s true: your brain is like a sponge. Try to overload it, and the excess will simply run away. Your brain takes time to process new information and make connections, so trying to squeeze in too much at one time only ensures that you are not using your time to good use.
5) Move around
Another common mistake people make while studying is that they only do it in one place, like their home office. It’s actually not a bad idea if you only ever need this information in your home office, but it probably isn’t.
The brain makes connections between what you are studying and the environment in which you are at the moment. If you have information that you need to remember in different situations (for example, you need to remember the difference between por and para when writing a business email, but you also need to remember this when talking at a party), then change how and where you are. learn.
Also, don’t make the mistake of thinking that there is only one learning curve that works for you. The idea that some people learn by ear and others learn by visual has long been disproved. Learning through many different means allows your brain to make connections in different ways, which helps it remember in different situations.
6) go beyond memorization and ask why
Finally, don’t limit yourself to simple notes. Be critical of what you are learning and question it. If you’re reading a book about creating user experiences that will bring back customers, ask why these guidelines work. Please tell me how you can apply these guidelines to your website. At best, you will leave not only with new knowledge, but also with new ideas that can be applied immediately.
Armed with these tips, you can study more efficiently and remember more information than before.