Educate Yourself: How To Become An Effective Self-Learner
The process of learning never stops. Since you were born and started to recognize your mother, different colors and shapes, and until you end your path on Earth, you constantly learn new things.
However, before you start mastering any skill you want to get during the learning journey, you need to get the fundamental ability, the basis for all: the skill of a self-learner. When remote education is now a mundane thing, and we need to study and explore new things by ourselves to be capable of keeping up with new trends, learning how to study effectively is kind of a survival thing.
So if you ever had a hard time studying by yourself and want to know how you can learn to educate yourself at home, you’ve got to the right place. In this guide, we will show you everything you need to know about the process of self-learning and how to get to the top in this skill.
Let’s get started.
The ground rules of self-educating
This process needs some discipline, and you can find it intimidating to follow the rules at first. But trust us, once you master the ability to learn by yourself, you will see how much faster, easier, and more fruitful it is for you to study at home, in the library, or any other comfortable place.
1. Set a goal. But a realistic one.
If you really want to know how to learn properly, you need to create the right mindset and make room in your busy life for this new hobby, for lack of a better word.
Creating a goal, achieving it, and moving one to the next part of the process will give you a small boost of dopamine when you finish. It will help you to reinforce good patterns of behavior. But don’t be too harsh on yourself: if you can read only two pages a day, do two, but every day. One day you will read three, and soon enough, it will be ten if you are consistent.
2. Create a schedule
Once you have a goal, like reading two pages of a book every day, it is time to create a schedule. For example, you will read these pages every day after you brush your teeth and before you go to bed. Or, if you plan to listen to educational podcasts, you decide to do it every morning while working out. People are creatures of habit, and creating a learning schedule will help you make learning an essential habit at first and later a need.
3. Get a mentor
Some people have a hard time focusing on specific things. That’s why you can enroll in online courses as part of your self-educating journey and get a mentor who will help you with your learning process.
There’s plenty of options today on the market, and you can even find free online courses with pretty good information for every taste: from “how to give your dog a haircut” to “best online video downloaders.” You only need to choose the right one for you!
4. Give yourself a break sometimes.
Despite what we learned in school, educating yourself should be a fun activity, not torture. Your mental health is as important as physical wellbeing.
Working out a couple of times a week and being active every day is good, but extensive training every day can hurt you. The same applies to your brain: learn something daily, but if you need a break, take it!
5. Practice makes perfect
It is just that! If you repeat the process a couple of times, you will eventually get better at doing it. Your positive results will motivate you to learn more, push further and achieve new goals.
Try to review what you learned right after you (or at least the same day) read or watched it and look through your notes. It will help you to absorb the material better and prevent fast forgetting of the information. You can also use exam preparation apps to help you create an excellent review schedule.
6. Combine different studying styles
Different people can consume information at different rates, and, additionally, we all can and should consume the material from various sources.
There’s no need (and it is not very effective) to fixate only on books as the best way to learn stuff. Or videos, or podcasts, etc. The learning process should be as fun as possible, and if you need video content to make the process easier for you: watch it!
7. Get yourself into fitness.
Working out is good for your body: we all know that. But did you know that regular physical activity can help you with learning skills? Working out releases serotonin helps reduce stress and fill up your cells with oxygen, which will help you to learn faster and more effectively.
If you love data, get yourself a sports tracker and add fitness to your learning schedule to get more results for motivation.
8. Get a study buddy
You don’t have to do this on your own. There’s nothing better and healthier for your motivation and keeping up with the goal than having someone around who is going through the same process as you.
As a plus, you will get helpful feedback from the most knowledgeable person because you do it together. They will see all your ups and downs, will give you thumbs up when you’re doing great, or help you fix the issues when you are stuck. Friendship is a superpower indeed!
Final words
The self-educating skill will help you to learn a ton of new information, but also, thanks to that, you will learn how to improve the knowledge you already have.
Don’t give up if you’re failing: get help! You can use focus-improving tricks to get better results in the self-educating journey or get help from a coach for this matter. But in our opinion, the best you can do is create a mindset that wants to learn new information and consistently take steps towards your goal. One step at a time.