How To Learn Anything

OK, hands up, that title is slightly misleading.?What I’m really talking about is how we go about learning anything.?The process we go through when we learn a new skill or subject.?I’ll start by walking you through the model and then I’ll make a couple of points that I think are really important.

So, with any new skill or subject we start at square one.?We don’t know what we don’t know, or in the technical terms of the model, we are Unconsciously Incompetent.?We might have an aptitude and find the skill or topic straightforward, or we might find it an uphill struggle.?We simply don’t know at this stage.?Think about learning to drive.?Before you sit behind the wheel for the first time you have no idea how you’re going to do.

Once we’ve made a start we move into Conscious Incompetence.?This means we now know what we don’t know, or at least we starting to understand how tough this is likely to be for us.?We have a sense of our aptitude and our skill level and we can appreciate the scale of the task we are taking on.?Staying with our driving example we might think we can take our test in a few weeks, or we might be thinking a few months is more realistic!

As we keep going and keep working we get to a point of Conscious Competence.?Here we can perform well as long as we concentrate.?This is where you can produce a decent piece of work for the new subject but you really need to put in the effort.?With driving it’s where you can drive safely (and even pass your test) as long as you concentrate and stay focussed.?For many of our academic disciplines we remain in this state for a long time (possibly permanently) as there’s always more to learn and understand.

The ultimate stage is Unconscious Competence.?This is where we have achieved mastery in this subject or skill.?For academic subjects you might feel you’ve reached this when you have your degree, or maybe your masters, or your PhD, or published your first book??For a technical skill it’s when you can do it without thinking and muscle memory and well-trodden neural pathways take over.?It’s when you drive to work and can’t remember doing it, almost as if you’ve been on auto pilot.

So, that’s the model, and these are the two points I want to make

Give Yourself a Break

Many of us have a tendency to put unrealistic pressure on ourselves.?We think we should be able to do some thing and get frustrated when it takes us a while to get to grips with a new subject or skill.?Give yourself a break.?Remember and appreciate that almost everything we can do, and almost everything we know, was a result of this process.?We have very little innate knowledge.?We know things and we have developed skills by working through this process.?If you feel frustrated just come back to the model, plot where you are, and reflect on what will help you move towards the next step.

Search for the Feedback

It might be a cliché but feedback is fuel.?We can see from the model that we need to put in time, effort and practice if we want to develop and progress.?But the fuel that drives us forward is feedback.?Without this we have no idea how effective we are being and how far we are developing.?Don’t shy away from feedback, no matter how uncomfortable you might find it.?There is no progress without is so seek it out, value it and use it.

Article written by Dave Jarrold, Skills Development Consultant at Edinburgh Napier Student Futures.