The #1 Most Important Thing to Do While Learning
As aspiring badasses, we all want to become capable. It’s part of the recipe, after all.
And becoming capable means you’re constantly learning and improving. You’re building skills. You’re accumulating knowledge. You’re sharpening your mind and body.
Unfortunately, there’s one huge mistake that I frequently see people making in this learning process.
It’s starting without first establishing their learning goal – the thing they’re going to aim for.
And look… I get it. The starting point for learning something new can be a fun and exciting place. With all the new books in front of you, it can be easy to get carried away and forget to think about what you’re actually hoping to get out of the process.
I’ve often gotten so caught up in this pre-learning phase that I’ve ended up wasting huge amounts of time focusing on the wrong things.
Get Clear on Your Learning Goal
When it comes to learning something new or developing yourself in some way, step 1 should ALWAYS be to define your desired destination.
Who do you want to be once you’ve finished?
What do you want to be capable of?
What do you want to have accomplished?
Answer these questions with as much specificity as possible.
Doing this will guide your learning process and help you avoid the pitfall outlined above. You’ll know what’s important and what isn’t. What to spend your time on, and what to forget about.
For Example…
Several years ago, I started a list of things I want to learn - mostly skills to acquire and topics to research. Since then, I’ve added more and more to that list to the point that it’s gotten very out of hand – many of the items haven’t been touched despite being on my radar for years.
One such item was computer programming. It’s something that I’ve had a cursory interest in for a while but have only recently convinced myself to pick up.
However, it was destined to be a more complicated process than anticipated. After starting my research, I quickly learned that you don’t just ‘write computer code’ in a generic sense.
In reality, computer code or programming are just umbrella terms and include a bunch of different programming languages, all with different writing styles and purposes.
Much like spoken languages, there might be some overlap but each one must be learned separately. For example, learning Spanish might help you learn Italian (they have the same Latin roots and similar word structure) but it won’t allow you to speak Italian fluently – each must be learned on its own.
In the same way, each programming language has its own unique purpose and writing structure. Some are more complicated to learn than others and some are used to create websites while others are used to create mobile apps.
Given each programming language serves a different purpose and must be learned separately, I was forced to think about what my purposes were for this project.
Once I thought it through, the answer was clear. I needed to learn the programming languages that are used for web design, to help me with this site and other web projects I’m working on.
As a result, instead of learning how to write code in the generic sense, I started learning how to write HTML and CSS, two web-focused programming languages.
The Takeaway
I was fortunate in the example above. Due to the nature of the specific skill I’d chosen, I was forced to get clear on my learning goal.
If I hadn’t been, I may have ended up wasting weeks of time researching the skill and bouncing between programming languages, without ever really picking up any usable skills.
And I think this is an important thing to keep in mind during your learning time. Personally, I feel like I need the reminder every 6 months or so. Hopefully you don’t.
Stay badass.