A triple strategy to turn your desire to learn new skills into reality!

As June comes to an end, it's a good checkpoint to show how we want to end December!

Yes! The last six months have flown by already and the next six will too. Unless we put in focus and effort to make this a good year for ourselves. Didn't bother about those new year resolutions after Jan? Keep calm!?Six months is enough to make this your best year yet!

When I face inertia in my life, I look up to the poster next to my table for inspiration. It reads,?'It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you are not.'?What can stop us from pursuing our dreams or becoming who we want to be but our own self-limiting beliefs!?

You will need to come to terms that you can do more and this has the potential to open up a whole new world for you, leading to a richer and more fulfilling life journey. Whether you are looking to advance in your career or learn scuba diving, having a growth mindset is crucial. Yet, even more critical is taking a planned approach to learning new skills!

The 3 Part Strategy?that I'm sharing here will ease you on a planned approach to learning any new skill, irrespective of the field you are in. The peculiar nature of this strategy is that you will experience results and can unlock the key to your dreams and goals. Want to push your career to the next level? Or are you shifting gears and embracing entrepreneurship? This works!??

Part #1: Be the Architect of your 'Learning Journey'

With a plethora of online courses available, you can be tempted to jump straight into the action, picking up the first trending online course.?Don't!?Take a minute to reflect on how an online course feeds into your long-term strategy of career goals or life goals.

Wouldn't it make sense to have a list of skills that feed into your long-term career growth strategy? Let's call this list your?'Learning List'!?Include all the topics and skills you want to learn in this list first. Look around and list. Check within your network what courses they are pursuing and list! Anything that seems to fit into your long-term goals, list!?

List, List and List!! At this stage, you may end up with a long Learning List. That's absolutely fine!

Start?prioritizing your list now, based upon the limits important to you over the next 3-6 months. Once prioritized, you are now ready to begin your work with the top 10 'prioritized items'! Note that these Top 10 items may become the sub-skills of a particular skill you want to learn in the next 6 months.

First, assign the skill level against each sub-skill you can realistically achieve over the next 6 months. I use a scale of 1-5, but feel free to use a different scale. E.g. I am at a 2 / 5 in skill 1. I want to reach a level of 4 / 5 by Dec.

Next, start identifying the actions you will need to make your desired skill level and list them. List the online courses, podcasts, videos, or seminars you intend to attend. Create a learning sequence or your own learning journey.?

What you are doing here is channeling your energy efficiency by designing your learning journey. This is the best thing you can do towards taking a structured approach to learning. Indeed,?well-begun is half done!

If you are using paper to craft your learning journey, please choose a journal. This will also allow you to track your progress on these skills. I use checkboxes to track my progress. Once I feel I have achieved the desired skill level against a sub-skill, I check the box against it.?

And please keep your learning journals within your sight and not stashed away neatly in your bottom drawer. :)

With your learning journey decided, let's move to Part # 2 of our strategies.

Part #2: Creating time for your learning

When it comes to doing something transformational like learning a new skill, demands placed on our daily lives seem to take precedence. That's why you need to create space for transformation by taking intense measures like intentionally blocking. It means intentionally blocking your time to pursue your learning plan, allowing little room for distractions.??

I would even go to the extent, saying that choose a corner in your house where distractions are least and tell your family that this is your time and you shouldn't be disturbed.?

How much time should you block? 40 minutes? 60 minutes? Speaking from experience, 30 minutes every day at the same time really works very well. It's neither too long nor too short! And doing it daily, at the same time, conditions your brain to look forward to the learning. Don't break the momentum of doing 30 minutes, even on weekends. Why? Because it becomes difficult to get your groove back after the weekend. If you commit to doing 30 minutes every day, you can complete up to 15 learning sequences in less than six months.

But some people I spoke with suggested that committing 30 minutes every day seems daunting in the face of tons of responsibilities. My advice to them: choose a smaller time window that's convenient, even if just for 5 minutes. Because consistently covering some distance every day trains your brain to get accustomed to learning. You are putting neuroscience at work!

Need the impulse to schedule time for learning??Picture what it would feel like to have turned your aspirations into reality.

Skills you had postponed learning are almost in your arsenal. It's more thrilling as we move to part #3 of our strategy.

Part #3: Making it easy to learn

There are clever ideas that you can use to make it easier for you to learn.

To start, I highly recommend this course on the learning platform. 'Learning how to learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects.' by Dr. Barbara Oakley.?You can do the entire course for free!?(certificate is chargeable if you need it).?

Flashcards, Spaced repetition are some of the other tools you can take advantage of and make learning enjoyable. I will be comprehensively covering more about these tools in my next article. There are incredible ways to make learning fast and make it stick.

But for now, I leave you with a video by Josh Kaufman on how to learn anything... fast!

Forming a learning habit is hard. It doesn't obviously start with a yearly calendar properly on January 1st.?We must understand that a new beginning can happen any day we choose in the year!

We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” - Greek poet Archilochus

Let's start learning to?#bebettereveryday?and make this a year of learning!

Cheers!