If you want to become a self-taught programmer and would like to make the best out of your time when learning, you have to learn how to learn effectively.
By the way, you can check out my first post about how I started a program which I call Be A Programmer Challenge and perhaps – if possible, join me with this adventure further.
Learning tip: Enroll now for The Web Developer Bootcamp online course on Udemy (On-Going Sale up to 60-90%)
One of the problems I encountered when I started this challenge of learning how to be a programmer is procrastination.
Today, I am sharing some tips for learning effectively on your own to prevent you from wasting another huge amount of your time by procrastinating.
These tips came from a realization of my personal experience when I started learning to code.
Curious about the Author? Read about Mauwiks here.
Expect The Unexpected Towards Your Success
Using the Internet and being able to get the right resources, as well as having the time to learn is not enough to be able to fast-track the learning process which is what I am trying to achieve.
When I started my challenge, Be A Programmer Challenge, there are these cases that I anticipated to encounter like future problems that may block the way throughout my journey, especially when it comes to the commitment in learning.
Although I already have a plan served on hand, I thought it would still be difficult to commit to that plan and to any learning path because in my case, it’s human nature. I believe the majority have gone through the same stage as this. People are lazy because it’s easy to become one. And I personally think that it needs the practice to build a habit of dealing with it.
But because I’m serious about what I am trying to achieve, I prepared myself not only to the fundamentals of course but also to survive against the future problems to push further to success.
I believe preparing for these possibilities probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to encourage your success ahead.
Self-Explaining Will Nurture Your Understanding When Learning
When trying to learn a certain subject or a lesson, explaining to yourself what you understood about the thought enable a much better understanding at your end. I always do this trick whenever I encounter this kind of idea. Maybe because it helps me know where I stand about my knowledge on the subject matter which will allow me to furnish ideas whether I would stay right on hand with my current resources or will I need to extend to another piece in order to maximize the learning process.
Get Started with a Sustainable Study Habit in a Short Term Period
Reading Tip: The Superhuman Habit by Tynan
When starting out learning new things, it will be kind of a tricky sticking to a certain plan of studying.
To prevent you from procrastinating, immediately pick up a sustainable schedule for you to study and just follow through it for a week (or in a short-term period) to surely be able to achieve it, and unconsciously build a habit out of the trick without beating yourself up to push through your success.
By doing that, chances are you will feel encouraged and motivated along the way because of the small accomplishments you will earn given that you’ve chosen a flexible and sustainable goal of schedule for you to achieve. Trust me. That motivation will not only get you so far, but it will stick and give an urge to ask for more in the long run, which will make you addicted to better accomplishments from time to time.
After achieving of following your schedule, eventually pursue the duration further, but avoid doing mistake such as picking a schedule that will pressure you in the long run.
For instance, instead of committing to a schedule of eight to ten hours a day, or you can start from either three to five hours (or minimize it down from two), but be sure to exactly do it within the specific time of your schedule to let yourself build a habit unconsciously just like the trick above.
Have the Time to Relax, and Don’t Complicate Things
Whenever you feel pressured, or perhaps on your way to that rolling trap down, think about this idea:
“Life doesn’t have to be that complicated.”
It’s time to drink a glass of cold water then have a break. Don’t worry and get guilty about how often times you took a break. Just relax or you can nap or meditate and whatsoever, or talk to yourself. Find ways to convince yourself about the thought mentioned above because life really doesn’t have to be that complicated.
Say it the following with me, twice.
“A quitter never wins-and-a winner never quits.” Said, Napoleon Hill.
The Author of the Best Selling All-Time Personal Development book and my favorite, the Think And Grow Rich. Read it for an awesome valuable and mind-blowing thought of wisdom.
One of the common mistakes that people do in order to completely ruin themselves is believing that failure is the end of the race.
Have you ever find yourself that when you commit to something but when you fail on it for the first time or second, you suddenly just give up?
Whenever you fail to achieve that certain commitment, you conclude right away that there is nothing right about what you’re doing and tend to stop without even achieving half of the process of your commitment because you are consumed with your guilt and pressured about having to miss on what you have committed.
I did multiple times, in the past.
You feel messed up until you come to a point or a decision on making the worse, worst, to cover the guilt of committing into something that you did not win.
Self-Control: The Great Idea, This Is It
I remember this passage of Napoleon Hill’s book, the Think and Grow Rich:
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” ― Napoleon Hill
Except if you’re proven sick physically, whenever you feel like losing, know that it’s just in your state of mind.
Your state of mind which you can definitely control.
It’s not really that difficult but most of the people having huge trouble in doing, because they have completely accepted in their thoughts the wrong idea that it is hard to do so, and that’s why it’s hard for them.
Why do you think so? You’re right. Because they believed they couldn’t do it.
“If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.” ― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
When I first practiced controlling my mind way back years ago, it’s not really that easy, especially when you’ve been raised up with false beliefs about conquering your mind is not possible, as well as a mindset that is totally the opposite of the world I have chosen to believe in the present day.
How do you really conquer your mind?
I did by frequently meditating. In fact, I speak to myself often times, eliminating the fear of being impractical and dealing with my skeptical mind helped my way out to success in conquering my mind.
I just let myself believe the possible things that I once believed that are impossible, and if you’re wondering how yourself could do such BS, I’m telling you, there is no doubt that it will be applicable as well unto you.
An effective way to practice it as I’ve mentioned, especially for beginners, is by speaking or talking to yourself like an idiot for an instance. And there’s more from that. It’s basically talking to yourself like a coach or assuming that you’re a different person whose coaching yourself.
By doing so, you will find that your subconscious mind feds up by your dominant self which is the one who’s coaching and leads you to a habit of having in control over your thoughts which is totally great and that will benefit you a lot towards your self-development.
Use Quality Techniques To Learn
It is best to use techniques when learning to potentially benefit from these both possibilities of learning quickly and learning indefinitely.
Your techniques define your learning destiny. But make it sure to practice the techniques that you decided to try on prior placing it on the race track.
The most important thing you should keep in mind is that when following a technique, it must be beneficial to your learning ability. Because if it doesn’t then there’s no use about making an effort.
Let me cite some ideas that I often use for a series of cases about learning or understanding.
Connect One Subject To Another
To truly understand a certain subject that you would want to be proficient about, the majority find it easier to do by teaching or explaining it whether to either yourself or to other people.
But in my case, I often use an analogy to clear things up. Whenever I want to learn something that’s fuzzy at the start, I’m making up a pattern from a certain subject to connect with different things such as a matter of situation or concept.
Most frequently, I use examples like (for example) to better well understand anything right away.
Using this technique maximizes my ability of understanding because it generates perspective from a certain matter of idea to another that I’ve already understood or can define.
For example, (just like this) stating an example.
What I mean by this is when you’re explaining about a word “fly” to a kid. You will want to say – “A fly is a word that means when your body is on the air, floating. Just like what Butterflies do, or Airplanes. That’s how flying is.”
Visualize An Understanding In The Simplest Manner
One of the best ways to understand uncertain things is through relating it to another situation, and imagining in your mind that you’re explaining something with a kid and be able to furnish a thought as simple as possible, which may be easier for you to understand in the long run when needed.
Understand Rather Than Memorizing The Subject
The best way you can do to worsen your effectivity of learning is memorizing which is not really I recommend, especially when you’re in line with the development industry of technology.
Skills are measured on how well you understand and not by your knowledge about it. What I mean by this is that knowledge may have a role in developing a skill such as programmers for instance. When you don’t understand your knowledge about a certain technology, it may really hit your capability to furnish a program of your own and that’s not ideally a good practice when getting started.
In this post, you gained knowledge of simple ways to effectively learn on your own starting out in becoming a programmer. I believe learning in these simple ideas can be a huge benefit in getting through the complex things further so I decided to share the thought on the blog. Having the knowledge won’t mainly help in achieving your goal, but it’s the starting point. Getting it to work and taking the necessary action is the most important part of the process.
Learn by doing. If you think it’s difficult, figure out to make it simple. Just do it.
Check out my post of Making It Happen in regards to this idea.
Take all the risks for your number one goal in life. In my case, it’s becoming a programmer.
I remember what I always used of watching at TEDx Talks Channel on YouTube with Justin Richards talk. He stated that someone once said, that…
“The greatest risk is not taking any risk at all.”
That was Mark Zuckerberg when he was 17 years old, and he created Facebook.
P.S. The photo is my “study-in-action” view at a certain unit for this week’s staycation trip.
