How to Learn ANYTHING

Throughout my school years, I was never very interested in the subjects being taught and didn’t put in a lot of effort. But since I’ve been out of school, I’ve learned a lot on my own covering a wide array of subjects helping me get new jobs, make more money, and just have more fun and be creatively fulfilled. In this video, I’ll give you 6 tips on how you can do the same.

intro

I’ve been out of school for about 14 years now and I’ve since learned a lot about:

photography

video editing

videography

motion graphics

personal finance

entrepreneurship

marketing

real estate investing

music licensing

stock trading

and cryptocurrency

I’ve broken down my process into 6 steps to help you learn more.

Identify Your Motivation

First, I’m going to assume you already have something you want to learn… Now, you need to have a clear vision of your WHY. Why do you want to learn this thing – whatever it is? Maybe your goal with learning is to help you get a job. Or get promoted to a better position. Or start a business. Or satisfy a curiosity. Or develop a new hobby.

Next, what will achieving this goal do for you? Will it help you provide for yourself or your family? Will it give you more time to spend with people you care about? Or will it help you achieve a lifelong dream? Beyond your initial goal of jobs or pay raises or hobbies is your bigger why which is your ultimate driver. Getting promoted to a better paying job is fine and dandy, but why do you want more money?

Lately, for me, my big why is my freedom. Time is my most valuable resource, so I want control over as much of it as possible so I can do what I want, when I want.

I think it’s key to keep this in mind when you are learning something new because the process can be really challenging so having that big why be a constant reminder can help you push through it. Write it down, tape it to your computer screen, whatever.

Identify Your Learning Style

Then, it’s really important to understand how you learn best. If everyone recommends you read a specific book to learn a new concept, but you have a hard time understanding and retaining what you read, well that is going to make things hard for you. If instead you know that you are an auditory learner so you learn best by hearing something – well, then you can listen to the audio book instead. Or if you’re like me, and you’re a visual learner, maybe you can watch a video that goes over the same concepts.

If you aren’t sure of your learning style, there are plenty of free online assessments that will tell you which method is best suited for you, but here is a brief overview.

VISUAL LEARNERS

Visual learners prefer seeing and observing things like diagrams, pictures, written directions, and video. If you doodle, make lists, and take notes, you may be a visual learner. I realized I was a visual learner when I would be taking a test and would try and picture the answer when it was written on the whiteboard in class or in my notes.

AUDITORY LEARNERS

Auditory learners learn best by sound. They would rather listen to a lecture than read notes and may read out loud to themselves to reinforce concepts. My wife is an auditory learner and learns best by listening while doing a mindless task. So in college, she would record lectures on her phone and play them back when she went for a jog.

KINESTHETIC LEARNERS

Kinesthetic learners learn by doing. They like learning through tactile experiences. Acting out events or using their hands to touch helps them understand concepts. A lot of pro athletes are kinesthetic learners, which – you know – makes sense.

READING/WRITING LEARNERS

Reading / writing learners prefer learning through written words. And there is some overlap here with visual learners, but they tend to be drawn to writing, reading articles and books, looking up words in the dictionary, etc. Most of the educational system caters to this type of learning.

Those are the traditional 4 learning types, and scientifically, they have been broken down into 9 different types, but this should be a solid place to start. Once you know how you learn best, you can look up tips specific to that learning style.

Find the Right Resources

Now, it’s time to find resources best-suited for your learning style. Luckily, we’re in an age where you can learn so many things online for free. There are plenty of articles, videos, diagrams, e-books, and so on and so forth. Even Ivy League schools have free courses available online. In the paid realm, there are audio books, paid courses and regular, old-fashioned books.

I usually start by finding the communities of people interested in the topic I want to learn and then find what places those people suggest to start learning. I may head to YouTube, see what I can learn there. And as a visual learner, this suits me well.

Dedicate the Time

If you’re serious about learning, you really have to carve out dedicated time in your day to do it. That might mean waking up 30 minutes early, cutting out some evening TV time, or burning the midnight oil. Don’t wait until the weekend to cram your learning in. You’ll be much better off with daily dedication. Think of it like learning a new language. You become fluent by constantly speaking and hearing the language being spoken on a regular basis. Waiting until the weekend is too infrequent to absorb something new. Try to set aside at least 30 minutes – the more, the better.

Set Goals

Another thing that helps me when learning is to set goals for myself. There’s a few reasons why this is useful. For one, this takes the bigger goal of learning something new – which may be a complicated subject – and breaks it down into smaller, achievable steps. So let’s take learning motion graphics for example.

If I don’t know anything about animating something, my first goal is to understand the software layout, main tools, and the very basics of creating a new composition. My next goal would probably be learning the very basics on animating an object to move across the screen. My third goal may be learning how to make the movement look more dynamic and realistic to how objects move in the real world. Those are 3 actionable steps to go from absolute zero to learning baseline fundamentals. And as you continue to learn, you will generate more questions on how to do something which will lead to more actionable steps.

So instead of sitting in front of the computer overwhelmed with how little you know and how much there is to learn, create a list for yourself with bite-sized goals that you can achieve in one sitting. If you have 30 minutes every day to spend learning, make your goal something that can be completed in 30 minutes. It’s important to get momentum built by checking things off because not only will it be clear that you’re making progress toward your bigger goal, but it’s far too easy to stall out as a beginner of something. Think of a snowball rolling down a snow-covered hill. As it rolls, it picks up more snow which creates more mass and surface area allowing it to pick up more snow and gain more momentum as it rolls along. That’s you. You’re the snowball.

When I wanted to get back into making music and learning new production software, I made a goal to create one new track every day for an entire month. I posted the results on social media just to keep me honest. Having a little of that social pressure of announcing a goal – even if it’s just to a couple of people – can just give you that touch of motivation you may need to follow through. So I released these tracks every day. Some were good… some were less good. But that was in March of 2019. Since then, I’ve released 7 albums and finished 2 more, so that was just the kickstart I needed.

Put it in Practice

Rachel and I have made over 250 educational photography videos on our channel Mango Street. You might be an amateur photographer and watch every single one of them and yeah – hopefully you’ll learn a lot – but in order to really get better at photography, you have to apply what you learn. Not only will this help you retain what you learn, but the actual experience you gain from doing it goes a lot farther than simply learning concepts and techniques without application. Plus, when you are actually implementing what you learn, you’ll likely run into scenarios and issues you don’t experience in the confines of an educational course or a tutorial video. This forces you to problem-solve, troubleshoot, and find solutions – which is an invaluable skill.

That’s why when I look for the best platforms to learn on, I gravitate toward project-based education.

Back to my motion graphics example – I watched hundreds of tutorials because by the end of it, you have a finished project that you created from nothing. Now, I almost always tried to follow along when watching these. This took a lot longer since I’d have to keep pausing the video and more effort of actually doing it in the software – but the repetition of tasks and the tactile movements helped me retain quick keys, learn menus, and understand concepts so much faster. I guess there is a reason we got assigned homework in school… and the reason why I didn’t retain the quadratic formula is because I just copied all of my homework off my friends. Still got a B anyways. Suck it, Mr. Penrose.

BONUS TIP - Have Fun With It

Look, learning something new can be difficult, so try to have as much fun with it as possible. When learning motion graphics, sometimes I would skip ahead to an advanced tutorial just to try it because the end result was so good. And maybe it’s not the most linear learning progression that most people would recommend, but it kept things fun. You’re already using your precious free time to try and improve your life in some way, so it’s okay to find the fun in it.

Recap

Let’s recap my key takeaways for learning something new.

Identify your motivation – or your big why for learning.

Figure out the learning style that works best for you. This could be auditory, visual, kinesthetic or reading and writing. Or even a combination of them.

Find high quality resources that resonate with your preferred learning style.

Set aside at least 30 minutes per day to dedicate to learning your subject.

Set bite-sized achievable goals.

Put what you learn into practice.

Final Thoughts

I hope breaking down these steps help you learn better and faster. If you have any advice you want to share – well, don’t hold out! Let me know in the comments section. If you’d like this video that will really help this channel out and consider subscribing if you haven’t already. I’ll see you in the next one.