Learning how to learn

Key to become independent and autonomous is skill. If you have right skills you can apply them on your own and acquire experience and you perform your tasks related to the subject independently. I have seen difficulty with lots of people who are too much dependent on others to perform their job. Companies spend lots of money to get their human resources trained and that helps in many cases but lots of people specially new one need a lot of support. Sometimes this support means one person is required to get the things done by another one. There are others who become independent very quickly and it means there is something different in those people who become independent quickly. Here are few things I have seen working for lots of people:

Study the subject and learn a new skill every year or more frequently

In stone ages there was no formal system of study, no internet, no online courses, no books so it was fine to learn by doing the things and getting experience but that was a slow process (it is a different subject that during those times human brain was developed very fast and after that process of its development is slower in modern times but still getting knowledge through study which is basically getting knowledge from others and experience of others more quickly compared to experiencing everything yourself and getting knowledge of it).

Lots of people have a blockage in their mind that learning on the job is better than learning from the books so don't study the subject. You learn better while on the job doing things but that way you learn at the cost of an assignment and your project but that cost is very high for a company in terms of project failure, delay and poor quality because the project becomes your learning assignment. Make a yearly plan to acquire new skills and follow it. Consider who will work for your future and career, you or some one else?

How to overcome difficulty in studying a subject?

Study may be boring and difficult for some people but that doesn't mean you shouldn't study. There are many subjects which are difficult to learn but the key is to start study of it. Study multiple times through multiple sources and slowly you will start grasping the subject. There are multiple sources to study a new subject:

Blogs and online posts: are often good to start knowing about it at higher level. Online magazines, few blogs and sometimes some platforms are good to have an overview of a subject and this way you start taking interest in it.

Books: are good for thorough knowledge of a subject. Once you have got interest in a field, you should read a good book on the subject to get deeper knowledge of it. This way you come to know different aspect of it.

Short videos: They help in practice. If you try to experiment something based on knowledge of books often you may find you are missing something, some steps and you don't succeed achieving the result. When you see the videos you see and listen and you see all the steps through which a result is achieved. This way you don't miss a step which may be necessary to achieve the end result.

Online courses: There are online video based courses on many platforms. They have benefit of short videos and they provide more coverage of the subject. These courses may be good for practice based learning but deep knowledge of theory and fundamental comes from books where writer spends months and years to craft the book by months and years of study, research and collection of information along with his style of writing and making subject interesting.

Practice makes a learner perfect

Practicing a subject by hands on work is very important without which you can't apply your knowledge in work effectively. Theory is very important but application of theory is a must. For information technology related subjects, there are online platforms where you can have the environment, the problem and you have a placeholder to write the code and test it. Find case studies and do hands on work on them. For subjects other than IT, practice based classes are available and you should join them to practice the subject. If you are practicing something at home (for example cooking after learning from online course) be patient to waste some material and resources initially because you will have to adjust your sugar, salt and other content as well as time to cook a certain quantity but it will pay one day.

Learning through sharing

Collaborate with others who are learning the same subject or interested in similar subject. Share and receive the knowledge. User groups, communities and interest groups are examples of knowledge sharing platforms. Join these groups and share not only wait for getting something from others. Social media and processional networking sites provide you platform to form interest groups or join existing interest groups.

Search for answer of a problem you are facing

If you are facing a problem or you have a query, chances are that some one else had faced it earlier. Go a do a google, don't wait and don't stop if you come across a problem. Stack overflow has become one of the most effective way of finding programming related questions and answers. Quora has lots of quality responses of questions we may often have. If you don't find answer of a question post it in groups related to the subject and in an official forum related to the subject. Initially this may take some time to get and response but over the period of time you will learn how to find the answers.

Learn debugging skills

Often you lose interest if you are stuck in a problem and not able to solve it. Try to find where the problem is, to know it you need to know up to what level or stage it is working fine and from where it stops or creates a problem. Listing possible reasons behind a problem and verifying them if they are the reasons one by one helps elimination of spots which are not causing a problem and you have limited areas which may be the root of the problem. These debugging skills are not only limited to programming but the general principles apply to other fields too.

Problem of universities

Many universities have lots of focus on theory not practice. It may be a problem of associated college or department head or even a teacher who teaches the subject but this is a huge problem which creates gap. Students coming out of colleges are not able to apply the knowledge they acquire in the study. Even grasping of the subject is a challenge because of only text based reading. Things can be interesting if other than a lecture on subject and study of text you use pictures, posters and activity in teaching. At the colleges there are labs to experiment with. In my school days subject of geography was very boring by reading the books and one day a teacher provided us A4 size map and asked us to mark the places on it, then he asked to mark what is found in different countries and the subject became very interesting. If related story is told, you learn more effectively than just memorizing the words. Study of history becomes more interesting if you visit historical places and know the stories about those places. Some people learn how to learn at university and this is the best learning. If you know how to learn, sky is the limit.

Please let me know your experience of learning and share your thoughts in the comments bellow: