5 Proven Techniques I Use in Learning Any Skill

When it comes to learning a new skill, it is not as hard as it appears; the problem lies within our brain. If you are like me and have a short attention span or a stress-free life, gather here; the major issue is that you are trying to learn a new skill, and you unconsciously think that your brain is magic. Often, you go at a faster pace than your brain can handle, causing most things to be saved only in short-term memory or forgotten entirely. I had the privilege of speaking to a friend who decided to learn a new skill to increase his income, and that got me thinking: there are various reasons why we fail at learning a new skill. I'll share two of my experiences and observations with you.

· Habit

The brain functions in a particular way. Things our brain has worked with and practiced for a long time become habits. Some of these become subconscious actions, like writing, driving, and typing. When I look back at some of these activities, I realize that, at the start, they were neither easy nor enjoyable, but looking at them today, they are either stress-free or require minimal effort. For instance, I am typing this article without actually looking at the keyboard because my brain has been trained over time. In other cases, when I started learning guitar, I used to sit in the dark for hours, learning hymns, practicing chords and melodies, and scoring songs - all of which were hard and time-consuming. Over time, I can now conveniently play the guitar without looking at the strings or my hands. This habit took years of practice: rinse and repeat. The idea is to embed it in my subconscious, allowing my brain to guide my hands whenever I place them on the guitar. The same goes for typing; I learned typing using software called Mavis Beacon. The drive then came from my mom; she used to type documents for hours without looking at the keyboard. She would only look at the document and the screen, and her hands could go to the exact keys she wanted to type, including numbers and special characters. So when I got a personal computer, I made it a goal to follow in her footsteps. I would learn Mavis Beacon for hours, play the games, and do the word quizzes. It was painful; sometimes my hands were sore from typing. After a while, I moved to using some online tools. By and large, here I am today - I can type code, articles, and letters, even while typing on my phone (since it has the same QWERTY keyboard). I can type without looking at the keys; my brain knows exactly where they are, which has tremendously increased my speed and pace when typing. The point here is that it took my brain a while, but finally, it is used to it, and it is now in the subconscious, where I use little or no effort to perform the task. As you can see, this is the case for learning a new skill. One of the major problems is that the brain needs to form a habit around it and get it into the subconscious before it becomes part of you. Most of the time, we quit while learning because we don't understand that it is like training a newborn baby; we bombard our brain with so much information, and then it starts rejecting what we are doing, leading to boredom and quitting. Understanding that your brain needs time to get used to the new skill gives you a whole new perspective on one of the challenges of learning a new skill. In this article, I will show you five proven steps I have used to help me learn new skills and guide my brain through this process.

· An Easy Way Out

More often than not, most of us who decide to learn a new skill - whether this skill is to earn money or to increase our income - fall into the trap of taking the easy way out. Once we get bored or tired, or face something particularly difficult, we hear that little whisper in our ear: "We still have a paying job; while stressed on this now, you can learn it later." Let me know in the comment section if this happens to you. When your job becomes a safety net, your brain suggests it every time learning the skill becomes hard. You are not alone; I faced this a lot in my earlier years as a mobile developer. It was hard for me to learn a new programming language or move to the backend because I had many mobile application projects on my hands, and I was so comfortable with Flutter and Dart. Rather than learning any backend language or other frameworks, I ensured all my projects fit into Flutter. This came to an end when I had no choice but to learn Laravel, a PHP framework (which became my first backend language). I had to move away from the safety net since my job was at risk. But now, years later, I have learned over six new frameworks and can write in up to six backend languages, all thanks to the five steps I am about to walk you through.

For a disclaimer, this is a personal technique I use; feel free to adjust any of the steps to ensure they work well for you. Looking back, these are the five steps that have helped me learn new skills promptly and efficiently.

1. Good Roadmap

When I was trying to learn guitar at first, I had no roadmap. I was just listening to songs, learning melodies, and practicing rhythms, scales, and everything I could find. While this later contributed to many things I play now on the guitar, it would have helped a lot to know what to learn first, followed by what. Creating a roadmap can also help you measure improvement and achievements over time. For your brain, this creates a rush of dopamine, motivating you to rise to the next challenge. This is a start, but it's not all. If all you have is a roadmap and you walk away from this write-up, you will still be where you started. Despite having a roadmap, which is a good indicator of focus, direction, and goals, we still have the brain to deal with. That leads us to the next point.

2. Help My Brain Love the Skill

When I was learning guitar, I was not very acquainted with YouTube. I learned with Nigerian music, where you don't need sheet music; you hear what is played and can repeat it based on having a good ear for notes. However, when I started learning programming languages, it was different. First, I had to get my brain acquainted with what I wanted to learn; I had to help my brain fall in love with the programming language and become familiar with it.

So, I devised this method: the first step is to find where the skill is most taught. For most skills nowadays, that will be YouTube. The first step is to watch as many short videos or YouTube Shorts for around 1 to 2 minutes maximum on the skill. For example, if you are learning a new programming language or data science, keep searching for short videos on data science and watch them for 1 to 3 weeks every day. By the end of one or two weeks, your brain will be familiar with the terms, words, expressions, tools, and even techniques used in data science. You may not necessarily know what they mean or do, but when they are mentioned, your brain can resonate with them because it has heard or seen them repeatedly. This step is about helping your brain love the skill.

Note that, like me, you might get distracted by other Shorts unrelated to the skill you want to learn. The best advice is to avoid those distractions, at least for the time you set aside each day to watch the Shorts. I remember when learning Flutter; I watched up to 30 videos in a single day - again, short videos, not long ones. You can decide what time of day to watch and for how long, but I would advise dedicating at least 1 hour every day for 1 to 2 weeks to this activity. Don't write anything down; just ensure you feed your brain and get it acquainted with the skill. I used videos because they are easy for the brain to process. If you prefer reading short transcripts or newsletters, you can use those too, but I personally used YouTube Shorts. Another option is Facebook Shorts, although there are often many distractions there. This process can be done anywhere: coming back from work, going to work, taking a break, or resting - it's like watching a movie and getting acquainted with the storyline. So, the first step is to help your brain create recognition and love for the skills you want to learn. The duration should be around 1 to 2 weeks for daily watching; otherwise, 3 to 4 weeks should suffice.

3. Taking Baby Steps

At this point, your brain is acquainted with the skill and does not see it as new. It has developed a better interest after much exposure. We are moving toward creating a habit so your brain can fall in love with what you are learning. Before you reach this step, ensure you have gone through the first step to a point where you can at least speak for 2 to 5 minutes about the skill you are learning. This is based on all the short videos you have watched or the short articles you have read. All you have now is just basic knowledge, and you can recognize the tools, terms, or keywords used in the skill. For example, when I learned Golang, I watched so many Shorts that I knew about goroutines, pointers, and structs even before writing a single line of code. I understood the concepts on a surface level.

For this next step, we move from 1 to 2 minutes of content into 5 to 10 minutes of videos. The goal is to slowly introduce your brain to longer videos and longer content. At this point, you can bring out your pen and paper or laptop to start working. When you start the videos or content, ensure they are no longer than 10 minutes, and avoid playlists for now - just focus on 10-minute videos. In the context of data analytics, this is where you begin watching and learning the concepts you saw in the Shorts. If the next video is on Power BI or data cleaning, watch it. The goal here is to establish a strong habit and imprint a love of data analytics into your subconscious, so your brain does not feel alienated when it comes to data analytics.

In these 5 to 10-minute videos, you don't necessarily need to write, but I introduced writing because it works best for some people. The goal of this step is to gain a deeper understanding of the concepts, terms, tools, and techniques of data analytics. Spending 3 to 4 weeks on this is a good guideline, with a maximum of 6 weeks; you want your brain to get used to it. The more it sees data analytics concepts and principles, the more it can relate to them. As I mentioned earlier, learning a new skill is like teaching a new child to walk; the first step is not to run a marathon. The first step is to start with small walks, then progress to longer walks, and eventually to running. So, at this stage, we are taking our brains on a walk through the new skill.

4. Practice and Learn

If you can get to this point, it means your brain is forming a new habit and is ready to take on more challenges. This is the point where we start using the roadmap. You can now start that course you purchased or follow a playlist or download some videos for the first roadmap. These should not be 3 or 4-hour videos; we move to 30-minute to 1-hour videos and increase the length gradually. For instance, in our data analytics example, you might start with understanding Excel. Now we can begin learning the new skill. Two things will become clear:

a. If you have followed the first two steps well, once you start a course or playlist or long video, your brain will be able to relate to what is being said because you have either seen or watched it before. This means that when you try to practice, it will come from a place of understanding and not from cramming or following a tutorial blindly.

b. If you have not followed the previous steps well, you will struggle, and your brain will start getting bored at the sight of the course or tutorials.

The goal of this step is not to get lost in a tutorial. After finishing the course or the first five YouTube videos, stop the tutorial and try to do a project. If it's like playing a musical instrument, listen to a song and try to play it. For our data analytics example, check online or use the course you are learning from, or prompt an AI tool to give you a data analytics task. Once you get this task, the goal is to use all the knowledge and understanding you have gathered to solve it. If you find a term or concept you do not know from the project, quickly research it, learn it, and then return to the project to work on it. Ensure you finish the project. After the first project, work on 2 to 4 more. At this point, you can easily gauge how much you have learned. If you notice you are still lacking in some areas, repeat steps 3 and 4. After completing 4 to 5 projects, you will already have a portfolio to showcase.

At this stage, we want to take on more projects and practice more. As you get more projects, you will see there is always more to learn; hence, you will learn to keep coming back to practice. This is the rinse-and-repeat step. This approach will lead to learning more advanced topics and moving up the roadmap, but with each step, ensure you learn and practice by working on multiple projects outside of what is in the course or tutorial. This way, you can evaluate how well your brain understands the concepts you are learning. If anything is lacking, you can always go back to learn it; you can also repeat any step you feel is necessary. The goal is understanding because your brain only retains things it understands or things that have become habits through repeated action in long-term memory.

5. Keep Growing

At this point, you can tackle a marathon, take on a bigger and more challenging project, and even charge others for your skill. But remember, you must keep growing. I make it a habit to always watch YouTube short tutorial videos related to the skills I have learned and am proficient in. The goal is to stay updated on new developments, find better ways to do what you are doing, or even correct your mistakes. When something stops growing, it usually withers away. The aim is to keep your brain and mind fresh on the skill, even as you do it professionally or charge people. Ensure you still set aside time each week to watch videos or tutorials and take on advanced challenges or learn a new tool.

This five-step process has helped me and continues to do so to this day. For example, when I decided to return to writing on Medium some weeks ago, I watched no less than 30 videos on YouTube about Medium in general, which really helped me gather all the necessary information I needed. Still, I will keep learning and watching more and more.

If this helped you, please leave a comment. You can also share some of your experiences while learning a new skill.