Your Skills Will Reach New Heights After You Begin Focusing on These 9 Details

“How” you learn isn’t the most important factor

There’s too much fuss about how to learn something nowadays.

I write about it too so I’m part of the problem. But this isn’t what I’m here to tackle today. Learning how to learn a skill is important, but the advice often doesn’t fit well in other categories.

If I tell you to listen to a language while doing something else as passive learning to improve your foreign language, it’s great but it won’t be useful if you’re trying to learn a sign language or how to make origami. I haven’t found good podcasts for those at least.

There are, however, some aspects that fit every learning endeavor. They aren’t about learning X or Y, they’re overall skills to learn better. I’ve turned them into questions as starters but the more you dig into these details, the better.

They’ve served me well and I hope they can serve you just as much.

What’s it For?

It’s impossible to learn anything without a well-established goal. I’ve seen too many people give up learning a language because they started it thinking “it was a good thing to do”. That’s not a goal. That’s an official announcement they’ll give up sooner than later.

I’ve done it as well when I tried to learn how to code. I took an intensive 10-week online class and stopped entirely as soon as it was over. I barely remember bits of what I studied.

Before trying to learn anything, you need to set a goal. And the two most important questions are:

Why do you want to learn it?
Who do you want to learn it for?

If you want to learn it for somebody else, take a moment to consider whether that relationship deserves or requires this effort from you. Sometimes, not learning it at all is the right answer.

What Matters Most?

Whether you’re trying to learn how to play an instrument or how to code, you’ll have to find what matters most. Sure, learning to play a scale is important, but is it more important than being able to read a music score? I doubt it. Making a clear sound while playing the trumpet is important too, but that shouldn’t be the first thing you focus on.

Each skill can be divided into multiple sub-skills. Some matter more than others. As the Pareto Principle explains, mastering only 20% of a skill can help you handle 80% of it all. Find that 20% and focus on them.

When I learn a new language, I know I need to learn to read it to get access to more resources later on. I also know I need to learn basic sentence structures and conjugation tables. It would be useless for me to learn the past perfect tense before learning the present tense, or learn expressions like “a double-edged sword” before the word “travel”.

What Matters Least?

At one point, you’ll be done with the most important 20%. You now have another 80% left to go. Where you focus is now a matter of what your goal is. You could decide to focus your learning journey of skiing on learning to freestyle or increase your speed. These need two widely different focuses.

If you know why you’re learning something, you should have an indication of what to ignore. Find it and write it down. Then put it on the side for way later, when you’ll want to expand your horizons.

Don’t learn extremely polite forms if you only ever plan to hold daily conversations in a new language. Don’t learn how to code in Python if you only want to make a mobile app.

How Often Can You Do it?

Beginning to learn anything is exciting. You discover new things. You feel more intelligent and/or skilled every moment you spend learning. Your motivation is usually so high you struggle to even refrain from spending all your time on it.

That feeling fades away. Soon enough, what you began learning becomes common and the excitement of novelty disappears. That’s where most people give up.

Their problem is that they never took the time to consider specific times to study. They put everything on the side at the beginning and now that life’s reminding them they need to do other things, they give up entirely.

While it isn’t completely negative to spend a lot of time learning at the beginning, it’s pointless if you give up soon after. What matters most is to find one or more times in your schedule to fit that activity.

A schedule you could follow in the long run.

My sessions of learning languages are spread throughout each day so I never have an excuse to spend an entire day not studying. Find yours as well.

What Active and Passive Tasks Are Planned?

Learning doesn’t just happen sitting at a desk. It continues throughout the days as you live your life. You need to combine active and passive tasks as much as possible.

It’s easy to find passive tasks for certain endeavors. If you’re learning a language, you can listen to the language while you’re doing something else. But how can you add passive tasks to learning other things? I’ve found two simple methods.

You can listen to an audio about the skill itself. If you’re learning ASL, you could listen to podcasts about deaf culture or watch a TV show like Deaf U on Netflix. If you’re learning origami, you could listen to the history of origami or even listen to videos explaining how to make certain forms. Will your hands get better that way? No, but origami will feel less foreign when you sit down again.
You can get visual exposure around your home. If you’re learning ASL, you could print the alphabet and hang it on the walls. For origami, you could hang images of not-yet-completed origami figures or leave unfinished origami around your home. They will serve to trigger your brain to try to remember how to complete it.

You could also use what Benedict Carey calls percolation. It refers to our brain’s capacity to connect dots of knowledge we’ve amassed during active study when we’re not actively studying. Combine it with the Zeigarnik effect which refers to our capacity to remember better unfinished tasks and you’re good to go.

For example, you could stop a complicated origami before finishing it. You could stop trying to understand a conversation in ASL before you’re done. You could stop trying to code a program before you complete it.

It’s impossible to notice how much it helps in learning, but I can confirm from experience it does help.

How Much Time Does Each Task Take?

Here’s one very common error I’ve noticed in new language-learners but that also happens in every other area. As mentioned above, it’s important to find what matters most and what matters least. That’s a start but it’s not enough on its own.

If you sit down to make this pentagon rose origami, and expect it to take 30 minutes, you’re bound to feel overwhelmed when you realize it’ll take a lot more, even if the video explaining it is of that length.

If you hope to learn about the basics of machine learning and don’t realize that just learning the core learning algorithms would take you many hours, you’re bound to be disappointed by your results.

Do your research beforehand. Find what others who have already learned the skill say about learning it. Where did they struggle? What do they advise spending more time on? How long should you take on understanding Python’s arrays before moving on to the next step?

If you know someone who’s done it, ask them directly. If you don’t, you can still probably reach out to someone or use a platform like Skill-Up to get some good input.

How Will You Get Feedback?

Learning something is all great but you won’t ever become proficient in anything if you don’t get any feedback. Making errors and fixing them through understanding feedback is what makes learning a skill possible.

For language-learning, I often advise using platforms like Journaly, HiNative, and ask language-exchanges partners on platforms like HelloTalk or Tandem. For programming, you could ask on StackOverflow or some specified forum about the programming language.

If you’re learning to write, you can publish online and get feedback by asking other writers. You could use the Hemingway App and Grammarly to get an overview of simple aspects you could fix.

If you’re learning to sing, use a microphone and get feedback on platforms like Listening Singing Teacher or even get an online tutor.

Whatever happens, you need to find a way to get feedback if you really want to learn or improve a skill.

What’s the Shortest Task You Can Do?

Without talking about the importance of tasks for you, ask yourself what the shortest task you could do and still improve. The goal here is to find something that helps you get closer to your goal at any time.

Got only a minute waiting in line? Great, I can practice my sign language or review flashcards on an app like Anki. Stuck in the bathroom? Nice, you can practice short coding problems on Codinguru. Have 5 minutes available until your next meeting? That’s enough time to practice your origami crane or a specific part of a more difficult one.

If you’re really willing to improve a skill in a short amount of time, then make sure you know a few different ways to improve, no matter how much time you have.

Where Can You Actively Study and Practice?

If you want to be consistent, you don’t just need to know when, what, and how to study and practice, you also need to know where. The more precise you are about these factors, the more chances you have of staying consistent.

Will you study at that desk? Will you practice in a specific room or coffee shop? Will you focus on x aspect in this chair?

I practice writing using a “standing desk” by adding a low table on top of a normal desk. When I take the small table and sit down, I study languages. I practice reading my languages by turning the chair towards the window. I talk to my foreign friends from another chair and practice making origami from another desk.

When I focused on learning the basics of Python, I used a different browser only for that. Yes, you can specify “location” even on your computer.

While it may feel inconvenient at first, if you keep separating locations for specific learning endeavors, you’ll get used to it and it’ll be like second nature.

“Once you stop learning, you start dying.” — Albert Einstein

We should all be constantly trying to learn new things. Discovering new things is what makes our lives exciting and worth living.

Being perfect is boring. Choose being bad and getting better instead. Learn, learn, and learn some more.

Get better at learning by asking you these questions and you’ll be ready to get to the next level.

Enjoy! It’s a fun journey once you make it so.

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