The Basics of Teaching Yourself Things
I’ve taught myself a lot of things. From book learning, such as history, religion and philosophy, to practical skills, like playing the guitar or piano, or building a website. The most important aspect to teaching yourself anything is simply dedication.
In order to learn something, you have to be willing to suffer through the process of not getting it. For a while, you’ll want to quit simply because something doesn’t make sense, and it’s frustrating.
For me, the best way to teach myself how to do things is baby-steps. When you want to learn the guitar, learn it one note, then one chord at a time. After I learned the guitar, I applied the same techniques to the piano.
If you expect to teach yourself advanced skills overnight, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. With physical things, like instruments, you have to give your body a chance to develop muscle memory, and condition your hands to play in the most efficient manner. Be patient, and create a gameplan, and you can teach yourself many things you never thought you could.
In order to build a gameplan, research what you want to learn about and try to outline what order you should learn things in. Don’t try to start with advanced topics, because you’ll find yourself constantly going back to the beginning to fill in the blanks you’ll inevitably have. Figure out what you need to learn to satisfy your goals, then map out the best way to get there.
My basic outline for teaching yourself things is this:
- Pick what you want to learn
- Research the general field of that topic, even if it doesn’t make sense. This will help you with some of the basic terminology and ideas you’re going to come across
- Pick a narrow field within the broader topic to start with
- Build upon each topic one-by-one, simply adding on with each new step
- After each two or three steps, go back a few steps and make sure that it “stuck” with you
Of course, this may not work for some things. If you want to learn to fly an airplane, teaching yourself using these methods is probably not a good idea. But if it is something that can realistically be learned on your own, I recommend this style.
There are personal step-by-steps for individual topics elsewhere on this site.
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