How To-79: "How to Become an Adult Self Learner"

How to Become an Adult Self Learner

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

People who are truly effective generally did not get that way by sitting still, and learning doesn’t stop just because school does. Make a commitment to yourself to learn something new every day. Then, keep at it and enjoy what you discover.

Steps

1. Learn how you learn. Determine your own preferred learning style or styles. Notice what learning techniques are most effective for you and use them as much as is practical.
   • Most people learn through multiple methods but favor one or two. Use your preferences to your advantage.
2. Learn where your talents and interests lie. Try many different things.
3. Look at learning as an exploration and opportunity, not a chore. Don’t force yourself to learn things just because they’re important. Instead, learn things that you need to learn alongside things you love to learn. Follow your heart, as well as your sense of duty.
4. Read, read, read. Make friends with your local library and new and used book sellers.
   • Read all sorts of books. Just because you’re usually a mystery fan doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try nonfiction now and then. Don’t limit yourself.
   • Recognize the educational value in whatever you read. Nonfiction, of course, teaches about its subject. Fiction teaches writing, storytelling, vocabulary, and various things about human nature.
   • Newspapers, magazines, manuals, and comic books are all reading.
5. Broaden your definition of learning. Take a look at the theory of multiple intelligences if you don’t know it yet. Consider how you might fit in, and where you can improve.
   • Refine your existing skills. Are you already good at fly fishing? Computers? Teaching? Playing saxophone? Hone these skills and take them to the next level.
   • Try new things, both inside and outside your preferred skill areas.
6. Do things. As an adult, your experience may be your best teacher. Whether you work for pay or volunteer your time, focus on a project or tinker with whatever grabs your attention, try lots of things and notice the results.
7. Create. Not all learning comes from outside you. In fact, some of the most powerful learning happens when you are creating or formulating something for yourself. Try different media and methods and refine the ones you like. Creation, like intelligence, can be artistic or scientific; physical or intellectual; social or solitary.
8. Observe. Look more closely at your world, and examine both the usual and the unusual. Also, look at the world from different levels. Chances are you already respond differently to the news of a friend than to the news of a country, for example.
9. Respond to what you observe, and notice and examine your own response.
10. Take classes, both formal and informal. No matter how dedicated an autodidact you are, some subjects are best learned with the aid of a teacher. Remember that a teacher may be found in a classroom, but also in an office, a neighbor’s garage, a store, a restaurant, or a taxi cab.
11. Ask questions. Asking the right questions can be more important than having the answers. It can also turn just about anybody into a teacher. Be sure to listen closely and understand the response.
12. Evaluate and reflect on what you learn. Does it make sense? Is it true? Who said so? How was it determined? Can it be verified? Is an argument or piece of advice logical, valuable, applicable?
13. Keep a journal or notebook to record what you learn and what questions you still have. Questions can teach as much as or more than answers. A journal or notebook can also record your progress.
14. Apply what you learn. This is the best way to test it and it will help you learn it more completely and retain it longer.
15. Teach others. Teaching is a wonderful way to learn a subject better and improve your own understanding of it. If you’re not a teacher or tutor, you can write about your knowledge in a wiki or forum or simply volunteer an answer when somebody asks.

Tips

• Keep an open mind. Some of the greatest scientific, mathematical, artistic, and other advances came from questioning conventional wisdom and being open to unusual results and new, different ways of doing things.
• Leave your perfectionism behind. Experiment, make mistakes, and ask silly questions. If you wait until you know it all, you’ll be waiting a long time.
• Have fun. Fun is a very important part of learning, especially as an adult. It is a big part of your motivation to continue.
• Sleep, exercise, and eat properly. Your overall health will influence how much you can effectively learn.
• Do what works best for you.

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Become an Adult Self Learner. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

How to Be Self Learning

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

These days, if you want to learn something, get a teacher. But you have to pay a cost and these costs are expensive. To be self learning is just great!!!

Steps

1. In order to be motivated, make sure you really want to learn something. If you do not want to learn for learning’s sake, become clear about the reason why you want to learn something and try to imagine how it is, when your learning was successful. Maybe you’ll find out, that you don’t want to learn that thing, so at least you can save some time. If you don’t really want to learn it, the time spent on trying to learn it will be mostly wasted.
2. Take a look at the information you have at the moment: does it provide you enough stuff to learn? If so, start learning, else gather at least as much information as you need to begin learning. Some people may like it more if they have all the information they want to learn, but it is also possible, that you become discouraged by too much information, so find out how you feel most comfortable.
3. As said above, start learning. If possible, do experimental stuff first, because it helps you to get into the topic. Physicists for example often try to explain why something works like they’ve seen in the experiment, so it would be good if you can do the experiment on your own, make a thought-experiment or get a video of that experiment. Although in some fields like mathematics concrete examples may lead off-road, in most cases it will help you to understand what’s that stuff all about. It’s not beneficial to learn some formulae, statistics or dates if you can not imagine what they describe.
4. If there is anything you can practice, maybe if you try to learn dancing some steps or in school exercises just do them. Albeit it may be tempting to rush through them, for somebody inexperienced it is better to do the exercises in a moderate pace and careful. This prevents sloppy technique or bad habits, which are much harder to correct than small mistakes at the beginning.
5. Get more experienced people to judge you. Beside they can correct your mistakes, they – maybe even more important – can tell you when you are already doing something well, which can be very motivating.
6. Gather knowledge. One of the most common mistakes is that people concentrate either on the practical or on the theoretical aspects of something. This only leads to stereotypes like the stupid sportsman or the nonathletic nerd. However, it is also very ineffective, because you probably don’t use your whole brain, but only the left side or the motoric part. Having an open mind also helps to see connections to things you already like, thus increasing comprehension and motivation.
7. Throw time at it. The best learning strategy doesn’t help, if you don’t spend a decent amount of time in it. According to the topic it even may be enough just to spend everyday half an hour on some exercises or texts. Special learning techniques can make learning easier, but they still require work done by you.
8. Organize your learning. At the end of a session look what you accomplished and prepare the next session with some questions or tasks, so the next time you only need to start working on the topic, which decreases the risk of procrastination.

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Be Self Learning. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.