A 4-step learning model for self-learning

Quan Nguyen
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read

I’ve been a coach for 3 years and have had nearly a hundred mentees. A day, a mentee asked me about a problem and I replied: google it. To my surprise, he said, “what should I google?”. I then realized that he didn’t know how to make a question to approach his problem. It turns out he’s been working and studying like this for his whole life, jumping to solutions to similar problems and with an unfamiliar, having no idea where to start.

He’s not the only one. Our schools have produced generations of people who reach success by following instructions on solutions for well-defined problems. Real life, however, gives us no details and undefined problems. To deal with it, one must be equipped with the problem-solving skills like asking the right question. “If I have an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions”.

It is especially true for self-learning when there is no clear problem and a coach sitting next to you to give you advice when you are in need. That is the reason why I create this 4-step learning model to assist self-learners to find a good solution to their problem.

Define your problem or Asking the right problem

“If I have an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions”. Einstein.

Understand the problem is an absolutely important step yet also the most commonly skipped step.

Two similar things are not necessarily the same.

Two patients with similar symptoms couldn’t be given the same medicine without the same diagnosis.

A solution designed upon poor knowledge has a remarkable chance to miss the mark. The more complicated the problem is, the higher risk of poorly thought solution gets.

Bottom line: Don’t jump to conclusion without carefully examine the problem.

To understand the problem, we use questions like “what, why, how, when” to get more information about the problem.

3 most important questions are “what is the problem”, “what are the characteristics of the problem” and “what is the cause?”

Example:

Problem: “My grades this month are worse than last month. I need to solve this.”

Why did my grades get worse? → examine the cause of the grades

What grades got worse? → are all the grades bad or only some of the grades?

When did it start?

Ect?

The more you understand about the problem, the better and more novel solution you will come up with

Find possible solutions

One mistake that people usually make is to assume there is only one single solution to a problem. One tends to choose a solution he most frequently uses.

For example, to increase profit, many managers choose to increase the price of the product.

Higher price can lead to more profit, but in the long run, customers might turn away from the highly-priced product and profit will be lost due to sale decrease.

There are many other ways to increase profit, for example, to cut cost, to increase sale or to increase price along with increased quality.

Bottom line: Be aware of other possible answers.

How to find good solutions?

We can think of solutions ourselves, or we can ask advice/assistance from experts, or look for answers on the internet, or do all.

In this era of information, there is a lot of fake and unreliable information published on the internet. When finding our solutions, always choose credible and reliable sources of information.

Weighing Solutions

After we gather best candidates for our solution, it’s time we choose the best. This step can only be done well with a good understanding about our problem and our intention.

Put everything on the table and choose the most suitable option.

Evaluate the result

Evaluating the result of our chosen solution can let us know whether our decision is correct or not. This helps us to make better decisions in the future with the same problem.

To conclude, get a credible answer for any problem you have with this 4-step learning model and gain maximum knowledge from your study.

Quan Nguyen

Written by

I write about languages and logic

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