Learning new things is not only what makes life interesting, it what makes you a more complete man. Everyone wants to be that high-value man who is a jack of all trades and luckily, in this internet era we find ourselves living in today, it is now easier than ever to learn new things. Unfortunately, with the presence of social media, people are also more afraid of failure than ever before. In this article I will explain the four easy steps you must take in order to learn something new.
1. Pick What You Want to Learn and BE SPECIFIC
This could be anything. It could be a new sport or a new activity. It could be learning something new such as learning about the economy, the stock market, coding, etc. You must ask yourself, what do you want to get better at? Once you’ve picked something you must then narrow that down to a more specific goal. For example, if you want to get better at football (soccer), instead of your goal being ‘get good at football’, you could make it ‘do 100 keepy uppies to improve ball control’. If your goal is to learn more about the food you put in your body it could be read and take notes on ‘Complete Food and Nutrition Guide’ by Robert Duyff. Whatever your goal is pick something and be specific.
2. Give Yourself Permission to be a Fool
No one is born great at things. Yes some people may be more genetically inclined to be great at things like sports, maths or singing but no one woke up with that ability. Do you think Michael Jordan came out of the womb dunking from the free throw line? It takes hours and hours of beating on your craft to become an expert. It has been said that to become an expert in something you must do that thing for 10,000 hours. So, what you must come to terms with is that you will feel dumb and useless at first. This is completely normal. Allow yourself to fail and allow your ego to take a hit. Always remember that every time you fail at something you are one step closer to where you want to be.
3. Take Action and Set a Time-Frame
Step three is where you must now take action. You have your specific goal in mind and you have given yourself permission to fail, now you just have to just get out there and do it. Set aside a certain amount of time to work at this goal and don’t stop until that timer goes off. This could be as little as 10 minutes or as much as an hour. Anything over an hour and you are risking burning yourself out too quickly. Once you have completed that session you should now create a REALISTIC day-to-day-plan that you can meet that includes an end date. The end date to this new skill you are learning will be the day you reach your specific goal chosen in step one. If you achieve this goal before the end date, great! But make sure you don’t finish any later. Make a promise to yourself that you will reach that goal. This is why picking a realistic final date is key. If you don’t reach your goal that means the time frame you gave yourself was too little. You will then use this failure as justification to allow yourself to be lazy in the future even though you just set an unattainable goal in an unrealistic timeframe. Don’t let this happen.
4. Stick to That Plan
This is the hardest step. This is where your self-discipline will need to take over. Your motivation will slowly fade and your ego will be kicking at you to stop trying at something you just aren’t good at. Remember, everyone who is great at something has gone through the exact same process as you are going through. If you need one final quote to get you through this challenging part of the learning process here it is: The winner is just the loser who never gave up.
Now that you know step-by-step how to start something new, why don’t you check out my article on the benefits I have seen since learning how to weight lift.
