5 October - How To Learn Something New

Our second daughter is a singer, but she is also a professional dancer in a dance company. Tonight, she has been learning eight new routines, and I've been watching her process to learn the steps.

Watching her reminded me of the steps that will help you learn anything and some helpful way to learn.

1.Talk to someone who's already learned what you want to know. There is wisdom in much counsel and learning from others. (Prov 11:14)

"Without counsel, plans fail, but with many advisers, they succeed." (Prov 15:22)

2. Immerse yourself in the learning process – the power of focus and concentration means focused attention and assists in learning and studying. Immersing ourselves focused enables faster comprehension, improves memory, helps focus on a task, job or goal, and enables us to ignore meaningless and irrelevant thoughts.

3. Learn In Short Bursts of Time. You're more attentive and alert at the beginning when learning something new. As your brain assimilates that information for storage, it can become distracted from concentrating on the next wave of information, leading to sag in learning. A key to combat this lag is to work/study in smaller chunks of 25 minutes, where your concentration is at an optimum. Take a 5-minute break between each session of study. Additionally, every 2 hours, take a longer break of 15–30 minutes.

This technique helps you stay focused because you know the entire time you're learning you know that you're never far away from a break.

4. Focus on the important steps and foundations of what you have learnt. Keep the main thing the main thing. (Nehemiah 6:3)

5. Find a way to self-correct - if you make a wrong move or step off the best path, learn from your mistakes, adjust accordingly and change it up where necessary.

"Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning." (Proverbs 9:9)

6. Practice consistently - Consistency is key, no matter what skill you try to learn. Absorbing information is only the first step of the learning process; retaining that knowledge calls for actively using your new skill and revelations regularly. "In consistency lies your power."

"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up." (Galatians 6:9)

7. Share with someone else what you have learnt. Sharing helps break down the steps as you articulate your new skill /knowledge to someone else and also cements the process in your memory.

Take some steps to learn something new this week - In the words of Pablo Picasso - "I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it". By doing things you can't do, you can learn how.

Prayer: Lord thank you that I have immense capacity to grow and learn. Please help me to be bold and to take the necessary steps to learn and grow so that I can become all that you planned for me to be. In Jesus name Amen.