3 Proven Ways To Get Out Of The Learning Plateau

Learning anything you are interested in is intrinsically quite rewarding. You’ll see yourself improve at high speed at first before getting compounding results as you keep learning.

That is why so many of us start learning all types of things and enjoy it… at first.

There comes a time when results start feeling absent, or at least the return on investment of the time spent doesn’t quite make the cut for us. That place is the learning plateau.

No matter how much time you spend on learning, it just feels like no improvement is made and you feel stuck.

I have argued in the past that accepting this plateau and staying in it is a good option because it actually is the stage where you can obtain the most results from your studies. However, if real progress is done, shouldn’t this mean you got out of the plateau?

After all, this is just the name given to a stage where progress isn’t “really” made. The moment real progress is made, that’s it. You’re out of the plateau. Until you get to another one and then the circle goes round again.

As a result, our goal is to get out of it, even if we’re going to fall back into another one soon enough. Here are 3 undeniably efficient ways to do so.

1. Make a list of your “Shoulds”

The first thing we notice when on a plateau is the absence of knowledge in an aspect we should know. We’ve learned something and thus we feel surprised and disappointed by ourselves for not remembering it at the right time.

But we’ve also learned a whole bunch of other related things to get to that point! Not remembering one at a specific time doesn’t mean your memory is bad. It just means your brain considered this as less crucial to keep.

You should slowly make a list of what you believe you should know — and feel you don’t — so you can dig deeper into those.

• Why do you consider each as “shoulds”?
• If you didn’t study some before, why didn’t you?
• How did you originally learn those? Find the differences of method between what you remember and what you don’t
• What can you take from other — well-remembered — aspects to apply to those “shoulds”?

Now bundle all the answers and tackle what really matters.

2. Challenge yourself

Another problem we face in the plateau is the disappearance of daily true challenges. As we start learning a new skill, we encounter many challenges almost on a daily basis. Those feel hard but the pleasure obtained by overcoming them is also what brings us back to the table the next day.

As we improve, both the amount of challenges and the size of each decrease, thus leaving us with smaller ones and robbing us of that pleasure. This, unfortunately, reduces our motivation.

In order to find motivation again and keep improving, finding new challenges is unavoidable. If you don’t find any, as time passes by, you will just procrastinate more and more before finally completely giving up.

Here are a few ways to find such challenges:

• Start a new related hobby that needs the skill
• Go to meetups with people who already know more than you about it
• Get ideas from those who learned the same skill and already got out of the plateau
• Take one aspect of what you are learning where you are “awful ” at and focus on it for a full week at a time

3. Skip a level

If you are tired of feeling stuck on this learning plateau, then there is always the aggressive solution of forcing yourself outside of it. This means starting to tackle tasks that are way outside of your ability as of right now and simply working towards it.

If you’re learning a language, it could be reading a complicated book, preparing a speech in said language or even just write an essay on whatever topic you don’t know much about right now.

If you’re learning a physical skill, you can take on a large project that requires you to get better quickly with practical efforts.

No matter what you are learning, there will always be a higher level than the one you are at. You could see this as a negative thing if you are a perfectionist but that actually is the best news of the day:

You can improve forever.

Will you take on that challenge then?