The Five Pillars of Learning: Habit Formation & Student Commitment
A famous Chinese proverb says “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” But once you begin the journey, you need to have the commitment to continue in order to complete it successfully.
Learning a new skill such as coding can feel like a journey of a thousand miles. But by having the right tools and support along the way, you can complete your journey. That’s why the fourth learning pillar that Sololearn uses is habit formation. When you are able to make learning an ongoing, regular habit, you’ll be in a better position to keep learning and achieve your goals. In this article, you’ll learn why commitment and habit are important parts of learning, and how Sololearn makes it easy for you to form a lifelong learning habit.
Why Commitment and Habits Are So Important
In a traditional learning environment, you’re committed to your course of study. You may have paid thousands of dollars, traveled far from home, and made sacrifices to enroll in a college or university. And you may have the expectations of others helping to keep you motivated. But these external factors can only get you so far — you’ll need to have an internal, personal commitment to your goals to stay on track.
How To Build Commitment To Learning
One way to commit yourself to learning is to set goals for yourself. You may have one big goal, like learning how to code so that you can find a job as a programmer. But to keep it realistic, you can break that goal down into smaller goals or milestones that you can track. For example, you could set the goal to complete two or three coding lessons per week. These smaller goals can give you a sense of accomplishment as you progress through your journey.
You can further motivate yourself by telling others about your goals. By sharing your goals and progress with a friend or family member, it can help keep you motivated and on track. Or connect with others in your learning community to set goals and make progress together. All of these things can help you build your commitment to achieving your goals.
Commitment Keeps You Focused
When you’re committed to achieving your goals, you won’t easily become distracted by other things. There are lots of things in your life that can demand your attention and distract you from your goals. But when you’ve reinforced your commitment to learning, you won’t let those things keep you from putting in practice and study time.
Commitment Helps You Set Priorities
When you’re faced with a choice between doing two things, which do you choose? By committing to your learning, the choice will be an easy one. You’ll do the thing that will keep you on track and headed toward your goals. You won’t let yourself get distracted by unimportant things — you’ll make the time to keep learning and studying so you can achieve your goals.
Commitment Helps You Stay Positive
On any journey, it’s easy to get discouraged when things aren’t going your way. When you’re learning a new skill, you might not make progress as quickly as you hoped. Or other things come up that temporarily set you back from your goal. What do you do? If you’re committed to your goal, you won’t give up easily. You’ll pick yourself up and keep going, no matter what happens.
Habits Help You Stay Committed
It takes more than mental fortitude to keep your goals on-track. You can also take concrete steps to stay committed to your goals. For example, you could schedule some time each day to study and practice what you’ve learned. By sticking to your schedule for a while, eventually it will become a habit. Once you’ve developed your learning routine into a habit, it will be even easier for you to stay on track to achieve your goals.
How Sololearn Helps You Build Learning Habits
As you can see, having a commitment to your goals and building habits that will get you there are important. But it’s also important to have the right tools that will help you to build habits and maintain your momentum when it comes to achieving your goals. Let’s look at a few of the ways that Sololearn helps you to build strong learning habits.
Sololearn Lets You Learn Anywhere
When it comes to forming habits, you need to have the flexibility to fit them into your life. Otherwise it will be difficult for you to get into a good routine during the first few weeks — a time that’s critical to habit formation.
Sololearn lets you learn when and where it’s convenient to you. Simply download our free mobile app, and you’ll have all of the lessons and practice tools you need to learn to code from anywhere. Even if you just have a few minutes during your commute or on break, you’ll be able to build a valuable learning habit that will help you to achieve your goals.
Sololearn Tracks Your Progress
As we mentioned, your goals are easier to achieve if you break them down into smaller milestones. Sololearn makes it easy to keep track of your progress every time you learn. All of our courses are broken down into modules and sections so that you can easily track and visualize your progress through the course. And every time you complete a lesson or quiz, you’ll earn XP. The more XP you have, the closer you are to your goal. And you can see how your progress stacks up against other learners, helping you stay motivated and on track.
Sololearn Connects You With Other Learners
When you sign up for Sololearn, you’ll be connected with millions of other learners who are ready to help you in your learning journey. You can ask questions, get help and find others who have the same goals as you. Find a learning buddy who can help you stay committed to your goals and build your learning habits together. And if you get stuck on a lesson, the community is always ready to help you out.
Sololearn Keeps Learning Interesting
While it’s important to build consistent habits — a good study routine, a set time to learn, or a committed number of hours per week — variation within that routine is a key to keeping it interesting and keeping you on your learning path. With Sololearn, you won’t just learn information; you’ll be able to practice and play with what you’ve learned as you go. Each lesson has fun quizzes and activities that will check your knowledge and keep you engaged.
Want even more variety? Jump from any lesson into our Code Playground, where you’ll be able to write code in your chosen language free-form. Test out new ideas and see how they work. Put together previous knowledge with what you’ve just learned and see it come to life right on your screen. This kind of learning is essential to building a fun and interesting learning habit.
Next Steps: Habit Formation
Are you ready to start building your learning habit? Why not head over to our courses page and pick a course to get started. Take the first step in your thousand-mile learning journey today. And don’t forget to download our mobile app so you can stay committed to your learning goals when on the go.
In the final article in this series, we’ll discuss why feedback and assessments are the fifth pillar of learning.