The Best Advice For Learning Something New
Before you dive in too deep, this blog post is just a quick tip that I’ve come to realize has helped me most with learning something new. It’s really quite simple, stop overthinking and stop putting too much pressure on it.
I’ve always been someone that loves to learn new things…you know the saying, right? Jack of all trades, master of none, except I have chosen a couple skills that I would like to become a master in or at least close to it. As I look back on things I’ve attempted to learn and the things that I have learned, there has been one key factor that has been either the kryptonite or the saving grace.
Here’s a few examples of skills that I have attempted to teach myself:
Guitar
Spanish
French
JavaScript
While none of these skills are complete failures or loses for me, I wasn’t able to achieve the goals I had set for myself and that’s because they weren’t reasonable.
To become a master of something, studies show that you need to put 10,000 hours into it. Maybe to some of you, that seems easy enough, but it’s really and truly not. For example, if you were to put an hour a day for 5 days per week into learning guitar, that would only be 260 hours per year and it would take 38 years to hit that 10,000 hour mark.
I kept putting too much pressure on myself to learn guitar and learn it fast…or at least well enough to play a song or even produce a couple songs. I just simply made it a chore and not something that I even wanted to do anymore after a little while.
I guess another way of looking at this advice would be to make the skill and learning that skill as enjoyable as possible. Learning a new language was something that I had effectively given up on until recently because I had struggled so much in the past. Spanish really didn’t go well for me, but that’s because I didn’t have much interest in learning while I was in high school, it was just a requirement. Then a few years ago, Bailey and I decided to try to learn French so that we could communicate with locals when we visited Quebec. Similar to Spanish, I didn’t necessarily want to learn the language, I just thought it might be good to know when visiting Quebec.
Recently, I decided that I wanted to learn German. I have a lot of German heritage in my DNA, so I’ve been wanting to learn the language. I haven’t been putting any pressure on it or any sort of deadline, it’s just something I want to do. Well, to my surprise, it’s been very easy thus far and I’m having a ton of fun with it.
Another skill that I have become really good at is photography. This is one of those skills I’ve chosen that I would like to become a master of. I found a love for photography back in 2013 when I began the Graphic Design program for college. From that point to about 2020, I had gone on and off with the hobby. When I was on, I went hard and spent a lot of time capturing images and getting better with my post editing skills. In 2020, I really decided to start taking things more seriously and trying to figure out how to make money off my photography. By this point, I feel pretty confident with my skills and it’s one of the few things in my life that I am quite proud of.
I really hope that this post helps, I know that the advice seems so simple and you’re even probably saying, “well duh, stress kind of ruins most goals.” This advice can also be something that’s easier said than done, but if you can figure out what works best for you to keep your goal or challenge as enjoyable and desirable as possible, you’ll see excellent results.
What are some of the tricks you’ve found to keep your stress levels down? What have you noticed works for you learning a new trait? What do you want to learn?
