How to Learn New Things on Your Own

by Fitz Villafuerte

Learning should be a lifelong habit.

There are many things we don’t get to learn in school, and it’s usually up to us to learn those things on our own – cooking is one of them, balancing a monthly budget is another, smart personal investing is also one, and lot others.


So if you can’t enroll in a culinary school, or attend a money seminar, or get a financial investment degree, or find a mentor for whatever it is you want to learn – then it’s really up to your own resources and efforts that you will acquire the knowledge and skills that you need.
Which now brings us to the topic of this article… how do you learn new things on your own?
Now here’s a strategy I’ve found very effective. A step-by-step plan which I’ve used to build up my knowledge of subjects like business economics, stock market investing, blog writing and even web development and programming.


It works most of the time and my friends have always shown surprise at how fast I can learn these kinds of subjects. I was able to not because my I.Q. is high, but because I had a system, which I think anyone can do.


First, I immerse myself in the subject – I bombard myself with information up to the point of overload. It seems counterproductive but drowning yourself with materials, both offline and online, prepares your brain for the possible work ahead.


Second, I stop looking for information and identify the key concepts that are present in most, if not all of the materials I have.


For example, if you read personal finance blogs and browse budgeting books – you’ll notice that every single one of them advocates paying yourself first – a sign that it is a key concept you must remember.


Third, learn and understand the key concepts first and disregard the supplementary details. When I was trying to learn about budgeting using the envelope method, I just focused on being able to distribute my income into the envelopes first and didn’t fret so much over the details of how much is the right allocation for each envelope.


Fourth, test your understanding. Take a comprehensive exam on the subject, or practice the skill. Expect that you will do poorly or fail – that is because you only know the key concepts. The important thing is to learn and see what you missed. This is where learning the supplementary details come in.


Look for the additional information you should learn to prevent those mistakes or improve your skill. You’ll see that since you already know the key concepts – you’re now ready to learn more details on the subject.


Last and final step, bombard yourself with more information from new sources, now focusing on the supplementary details that you need to learn – which now becomes your “new key concepts”.


In our example on budgeting using the envelope method, once you know how it works, the supplementary detail you might need to learn is how to properly allocate your income into each envelope – this is now the main lesson you need to learn.


So immerse yourself with materials, again both offline and online, on how to effectively balance and distribute your budget to your monthly needs; and pick out the key concepts in learning that skill.


And as you might have noticed, you’re now back at the first step.


Short to say, all you need to do now is to repeat these five steps over and over again and soon enough, you’ll realize that your comprehension about the subject has gone from zero to above average.


Congratulate yourself because you have learned something new on your own – new knowledge and new skills that will certainly help you improve your life.


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Fitz Villafuerte is the author behind Ready to be Rich, a renowned personal finance blog in the Philippines, and a speaker at one of Lenddo’s previous meet-ups. This his fourth guest post for Lenddo.


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