Do This If You Want to Teach Yourself a Profitable Skill Everyday
“Just show up everyday.”
In theory, this sounds like good advice.
But in my head, it echoes like a mild rebuke.
If it’s so easy, why is there so much resistance sometimes?
Why is it so hard to do stuff that’s obviously for my own good?
Why do simple reminders work sometimes and not all the time?
Understanding my failure to show up on certain days was half the battle won.
When a habit or behavior it hard to implement, it’s most likely because there’s inadequate motivation, ability, or triggers.
In this article, I am going to talk about these three factors and their interplay with creating and sustaining daily learning habits.
The goal is to guide you on how to learn a new skill or subject on your own everyday, one day at a time.
Motivation and Ability
Motivation can be a double-sided spear; positive or negative.
Some college students pull all-nighters out of the sheer fear of failure or embarrassment — bad grades, disappointed parents, becoming unemployed and in debt after school…
An equally prevalent motivator is anticipation of the future — good grades, happy parents, an amazing job after school, etc.
These are two examples of anticipation as a motivator.
B.J. Fogg’s behavior model talks about three types of motivators for a behavior: sensation (pleasure/pain), anticipation (hope/fear), and belonging (social acceptance/rejection). [1]
It’s important to note that motivation comes in bursts, with its peaks and troughs.
It helps you do hard things, but it’s also that one flaky friend you can’t always rely on.
Ability, the other factor, also has many faces.
It doesn’t just refer to your physical or mental capability, even though that’s part of it.
The key arms of ability are time, money, effort, and your routine.
In terms of these, would you say your ‘ability battery’ is fully charged or no?
You need to do some heart-searching to get a feel for your levels of motivation when it comes to a certain activity.
Once you have a rough idea, you can use this graph to decide whether you need a facilitator, signal, or spark.
1. Helper: The Facilitator
When you’re a beginner at any skill, your ability level is usually low.
That means you expend so much more effort when trying to learn.
The trigger you need here is a facilitator to help.
A facilitator simplifies things for you, making up for your low ability.
Remember, ability is not just about physical or mental effort but also the availability of resources (money, time, a routine).
Here are some facilitators I use for my self-learning projects.
- Having access to native speakers for conversation practice and prompt feedback.
- Preparing a detailed curriculum in advance, with a pre-prepared list of videos and resources on each topic.
Others:
- Using finger caps for playing guitar as a beginner to help with calluses.
- Downloading checklists, cheatsheets, and keyboard shortcuts (for learning how to design with Adobe Illustrator).
- Using guided practice sessions or step-by-step tutorials.
If your skill of interest is a high-motivation, low-ability one, use this list to figure out which facilitator triggers you need.
2. Encourager: The Spark
If you are trying to master a high-ability, low-motivation skill, you’ll need a spark.
In my sophomore year of college, I felt extremely demotivated.
The science was getting more complex, and my grades were plummeting.
But I had a small, really trivial spark.
I’d downloaded a picture of a pharmaceutical company I wanted to work it.
I had it as my laptop’s wallpaper, and whenever I saw it, I was hit with anticipation.
Of course, this came and went and I needed other motivators to keep me going as well.
As humans, we are driven by the three key motivators of sensation, anticipation, and belonging.
Do you feel that you need extra motivation sometimes?
Here are some options to help out with daily learning habits.
- Subscribing to the DIY Learning newsletter for weekly inspiration.😉
- Using gamification elements or competitions.
- Having an accountability partner.
- Joining a learning community where everyone provides progress updates.
- Sticking an inspirational photo or note on your wall, somewhere visible. If you were trying to lose weight, you could put up a photo of a slimmer version of yourself where you can see it every day…something like that.
Note: Keep rotating the location and format of the inspirational image or note to avoid habituation*
*Habituation is where you are repeatedly exposed to one thing till it no longer triggers a response. Change the format of your spark triggers (digital vs. written), change up the location in your home, or switch up the content periodically to avoid this..
3. Nudge: The Signal
Sometimes, you already have a truckload of motivation and ability.
In these cases, you’ll just need reminders or alerts to signal you when it’s time.
Examples:
- Calendar alerts on your phone, watch, or other digital devices.
- A physical alarm or cue in your living space.
- Notifications from an app, like Duolingo.
- Automated emails or texts.
- Latching the new learning habit to an existing, automatic one.
These mostly work when you already have enough motivation and ability to learn a skill/subject.
A personal example
After studying Spanish intensively for a couple of months, I ran into a roadblock.
Even though I was seemingly making progress, I wasn’t retaining as much vocabulary or grammar concepts.
The most disappointing realization came whenever someone started a conversation with me in Spanish.
I’d just freeze.
The discouragement made it difficult to keep up with my daily learning.
To fix the problem, I had to do some digging.
Digging deeper
To know what’s keeping you from sticking to a daily habit, you need to look at your MAT (motivation, ability, and triggers).
I’m going to take you step-by-step through my process.
1. Ability (Time, money, routine)
Months ago, I found that my Spanish learning ability level was pretty low.
I was still using training wheels, trying to learn grammar and make some meaningful sentences.
I also had limited time: just one hour in the mornings for focused study.
I had a stringent learning budget I needed to stick to.
Every day, I’d waste a bit of time deciding what to learn next, so that slowed things down even more.
To learn and fully retain knowledge, I had to incorporate revision and spaced repetition into my learning habit.
From all these limitations, I concluded that this was a low-ability habit.
2. Motivation
Now, here is where the waters get a little murky.
My primary motivator for learning Spanish has always been anticipation.
I look forward to traveling and teaching in Spanish, pursuing a career that enables me to express myself in different languages, and having the ability to enjoy cultures that are vastly different from mine.
But here’s the problem.
My motivation was valid, but on some days, it wasn’t quite enough.
So while I considered this a high-motivation habit for me, I could still use some day-to-day motivation.
3. Triggers
The trigger I was using at the time was a simple reminder (signal trigger).
It didn’t work as well.
Sometimes, I would ignore the reminder to prioritize other tasks.
The answer was staring right at me.
Instead of just a reminder, I would also need a facilitator to help me sustain the learning habit.
High-motivation, low-ability habits benefit from having a facilitator, as we have already established.
Here are the solutions I have implemented so far:
Solution 1: Gantt learning curriculum
To make learning decisions smoother, I took some time to design a personalized curriculum.
I like the visual appeal of Gantt charts so I decided to create my own ‘Gantt curriculum.’
My favorite part is coloring the boxes whenever I complete a section.
It serves as an additional day-to-day motivator because of the pleasurable sensation it gives me.
A quick look at this chart gives an overview of problem topics and months where I slacked.
Everything is already mostly laid out and learning is much easier.
Solution 2: Revision calendar
One of the most effective learning techniques, backed by science, is spaced repetition. [1] [2]
As a self-directed learner, you must note that revision is just as important as learning new material.
To retain vocabulary and some key grammar concepts, I needed a system.
I decided to use intervals of 2, 7, and 30 days based on my time constraints.
This is also based on my understanding of the Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve. [3]
I’ve never been much of a calendar geek, but I decided to make it work.
It’s still not perfect, but I can confirm from personal experience that spaced repetition works!
Solution 3: Human facilitators
One thing I like to emphasize about DIY learning is this:
Self-directed learning doesn’t mean completely going it alone.
Right, you need to independently set your learning goals and commit to sticking with them.
However, you also actively seek out help when you need it.
With language learning, the best way to become conversational is to chat with native speakers.
I connected with a Spanish tutor on iTalki and started a language exchange with someone learning English.
These facilitators provide prompt feedback on my speaking ability and have helped improved my fluency.
Taking time to create personalized triggers and facilitators for my self-learning has been a gamechanger.
If you are struggling to get your learning habits off the ground, consider these factors:
- Select appropriate triggers based on your levels of motivation and ability (Poke through the examples above and get creative).
- Facilitators work when you have high motivation but low ability.
- A spark is for high ability, low motivation.
- A signal works for you when both motivation and ability are high.
I write about purposeful and productive self-directed learning, even with a busy schedule.
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References.
[1] The Science Behind Spaced Repetition
