When You Learn New Skills, Challenge Yourself Too
How I make learning a new skill more enjoyable
My son has the summer of his dreams lined up.
As a working parent, I’m opting to take full advantage of all the amazing clubs and activities that my local area has on offer for the school summer holidays. We’re talking arts, crafts, every sport you can think of, drama, etc. You name it, they’ve got it.
But whilst it’s great that he’s going to be able to experiment with lots of new activities, he’s unlikely to really get the most out of them if the task is solely to just try them out.
Something’s missing.
This got me thinking about rock climbing for some reason.
Just because you learn how to tie the rope and where to put your hands and feet doesn’t mean that you’ll enjoy it fully or get the most out of the experience.
Now, I’m not talking about scaling Yosemite’s El Capitano without a rope like Alex Honnold. But, I am talking about creating a burning platform for that skill.
In my son’s case, it might be something as simple as learning the basics of holding a tennis racket, so that he can play tennis at the end of the summer with his friends for longer than 5 minutes.
This would be far more enjoyable than playing tennis against the wall, as in my youth. Cue sad violin playing.
Challenge yourself to do something aspirational with your new skills.
Let’s take experimenting with AI as an example.
You read a few articles, even a book (one with some click-bait title that promises to show you how to get rich quick with ChatGPT, no? Just me?). I digress.
You learn the basics of prompting and you give it a go.
What have you really learnt from this?
Not a lot, except how to write questions into a prompt box on a screen.
The real learning comes when you set yourself a challenge from which to test out your new skills. Invite AI to the table for everything you do and see what happens.
On my journey of experimenting with AI, I have created a GPT that can design collaborative workshops.
This was a challenge to myself, to prove that it’s possible. Whilst the GPT is still in draft mode and requires a few tweaks here and there, it does the job it was intended for and has been acting as my facilitation partner for the last few months, as I test out various event designs and modules.
It’s enough to get me geeking out about it.
Here are my takeaways for using the opportunity to learn a new skill, more enjoyable and more effective:
Learn the basics as quickly as possible.
Find a reason to use the thing you’re learning, in your day-to-day life.
Set yourself a mini challenge – nothing too much of a stretch, but enough to feel like you’re energized trying to solve for it.
Reflect on your learnings – how did it go? What did you learn? What would you do differently next time you want to learn something new? (I cover this in more depth on my course ‘Supercharge Your Productivity in 7 days’, free for paid subscribers)
Would you see value in thinking about new skills and experiences this way?
Let me know in the comments.
-Selda
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That is really helpful. By challenging yourself, you're actually improving yourself, and there's no one to envy other than yourself.
It's so easy to read or watch a lot about a topic, but in the end, you have to actually implement it. That's where most people fail. I see it in myself. I watched a 4-hour copywriting course but haven't yet applied copywriting effectively in an email or tried to get my first clients. Taking action is key!