Generally speaking, throughout your schooling, the vast majority of the time, nobody teaches you how to learn. Instead, they throw material at you to learn. However, nobody says this is how you learn.
There are some basic principles, if applied, that will significantly increase your success as a life-long learner.
The first principle is grit. Angela Duckworth, founder and CEO of Character Lab, has done some fantastic research and work to understand what makes learners successful. The number one thing is not their socioeconomic background, nor whether or not their parents graduated with degrees. It is not whether they had a high or low IQ. The number one factor that makes people successful is grit.
This means sticking with something because you will get better if you do that something for long enough. So many people give up because they become frustrated. They cannot overcome the obstacles or the challenges, and they quit. So if you want to succeed at learning, what the research shows us is that you have to keep learning. As you learn, do not quit. Just keep doing it.
The next thing to know is drip learning. Drip learning is what you want to do a little bit every day. Foster a high level of commitment by making it a number one priority. Ensure that you take a little step every day and add a tiny drop to the bucket. Furthermore, if you keep adding those drops to the bucket over time, that bucket will get full. It is going to fill up. You are going to get better. Thus, drip learning a little bit daily, having time on task, frequent small engagements at least one engagement a day.
This leads us to another technique to learn more effectively and efficiently. To succeed as a learner is to have direct learning a little bit every day. So, again, it is getting that time on task. So along with frequent small engagements, you also want multiple perspectives and engagements. So, when you are learning something, talk to people about it. Then, as you engage with multiple engagements, you actually engage with the material differently and gain multiple perspectives.
Another perspective is talking to other people and then hearing their thoughts. This deepens the neural pathways in your head and helps you learn more effectively. So, we are learning how to learn. So those frequent small engagements, multiple perspectives, and multiple engagements get a little bit every day, which is called direct learning. That is how you learn.
Thus, drop by drop, the bucket gets filled. So you might be adding drops every day; you add a drop, and after three months, you might look in the bucket and say that there is not much water in there. However, nevertheless, after a while, those drops are going to fill the bucket. Thus, drop by drop, the bucket gets filled.
That is how you succeed as a learner. That is how you succeed in life. You just keep working at it.
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