How to optimize your learning path without dying in the try
In 2011, when I ended my bachelor’s degree and started my professional career as a designer, I thought that I would never have to study, that I would empirically learn everything, but I realize immediately that I was completely wrong.
I worked in branding, advertising, editorial, and even audiovisual before I jumped into UX/UI, and since then I’ve been very conscious that learning and self-development is a task every day.
In this article, I want to provide you with the best practices that will help you to reach your maximum potential and to maintain the balance at work and in your personal life.
1. Identify your type of learning style
According to various research within the learning field, there are four core learning styles that include visual, auditory, reading and writing, and kinesthetic. Here’s an overview of all four learning style types.
1. Visual — Visual learners are better able to retain information when it’s presented to them in a graphic depiction, such as arrows, charts, diagrams, symbols, and more.
2. Auditory — Sometimes referred to as “aural” learners, auditory learners prefer listening to information that is presented to them vocally. These learners work well in group settings where vocal collaboration is present and may enjoy reading aloud to themselves, too.
3. Reading & Writing — Focusing on the written word, reading and writing learners succeed with written information on worksheets, presentations, and other text-heavy resources. These learners are note-takers and perform strongly when they can reference written text.
4. Kinesthetic — Taking a physically active role, kinesthetic learners are hands-on and thrive when engaging all their senses during course work. These learners tend to work well in scientific studies due to the hands-on lab component of the course.
But also, it can be a mix of 2 or more styles, for example, I feel comfortable looking at videos or listening to podcasts, I retain information extremely easy with both methods, but when reading it doesn’t work the same way, sometimes I have to read several times the same page to get the full understanding.
Once I identified this pattern, it was easier for me to start looking for content that fits into my learning style.
2. Have a career plan
Many people say that things that are not planned are the best, but in the case of your career path, I must disagree…
According to Frank Covey, in his famous book “7 habits of the people highly effective”, one of the first habits we should focus on is “Begin with an end on mind” which means to have a plan.
When we start without a plan, we still can learn great things, but they won’t bring us closer (and quicker) to a bigger goal.
For example, if you want to develop yourself as a UX Lead within your organization, you can start by:
- Visualizing the outcome that you want to achieve
- Creating a learning plan focused on your technical UX skills, but also developing skills like storytelling, team management, and emotional intelligence, among other soft skills that every leader must have
- Defining clear checkpoint dates to track your progress and for your expected outcome
- Asking for feedback from a mentor
- And constantly putting into practice all your learnings in the real-life
With these actions, you will leverage your time and potential, and in the end, you will have more tangible results.
3. Schedule time for learning
Another key to successful learning is to be efficient with your time, and this will depend on your priorities and your plan.
Creating a schedule that adapts to your lifestyle is key to getting better outcomes; consider this:
- Your daily basis bandwidth
- Deadline for your expected outcome
- Time of the day that you feel better to learn
Let’s create a couple of use cases:
Anna is a Senior Designer and she’s planning to get a UX Certification within a year, the exam is hard, and she lives with her husband and 2 children, so her bandwidth is tight, but she has the benefit that in her current job there is summer Fridays for a large period, so she can expend 4 hours each Friday during that year for studying for the assessment.
Juan got his first job after being graduated from design school and is a part-time job. He has a lot of bandwidth, so he decided to start to develop himself as a UX designer, he already has a learning plan (a couple of books and another online course) and he wants to finish within 3 months, in this case, Juan can schedule a couple of hours during the night (he’s a night owl) to complete his learning plan.
The key to this step is to be consistent even if is only a couple of hours during the week, I suggest you use a schedule template, here you can find a few.
4. Do You work at an organization? Take advantage of your resources!
Career development is a key metric for many companies, and they’re ready to invest in their talent, especially within large organizations, take a big deep into all the available learning resources and if needed don’t be shy about asking your leaders about investing in your career as long as this knowledge can be useful for your team.
In case you want to look outside these resources, I recommend you to be very selective with the content that you will consume since there is a lot of unreliable material on the web, so please double check on their sources before you jump in.
A good way to verify this:
- Verifying the credentials of the author
- Making sure of the authenticity of the website
- Asking for references from somebody else
- Reviewing if the content is still relevant to the actual times
5. Practice and share
Imagine that you learn how to ride a bike by watching video tutorials on YouTube and reading several bicycle history books, but you never actually ride a bike… it looks kind of useless, isn’t it?
The same thing occurs with any other knowledge, another key part of the learning process is to put all this knowledge into practice daily and let others learn from you as well.
This learning lifecycle helps ignite the spark within your team, motivating other members on learning about the new methodology you’re implementing or the latest design software, and helps you to reinforce your knowledge by constantly sharing with your teammates.
Takeaways
- How do you learn the best?
- Begin with an end in mind.
- Time cadence is key to learning.
- Use and verify the learning resources.
- Put in practice and share your knowledge.
