5 tips for learning a new skill

Posted by Doug on December 19, 2008

The ability to acquire new skills easily is not a universal trait, but it’s the sort of know-how that is extremely useful to the almost anyone who is self-employed at home–freelancers, consultants, Web or graphic designers, programmers–almost all of us find ourselves needing to learn something new from time to time.  (For some of us, it’s nearly every week!)  What follows is a set of suggestions for how to go about learning a new skill.  You’re probably not going to become an expert quickly, but with some hard work and directed activities, you can that old dog (you) some new tricks.

1. Take small steps.

You may have a lofty goal–”learn PHP,” for example–but if your goal is big and broad like that, you will do well to break it up into a set of smaller steps.

There are two aspects to this suggestion:  first, learning a new skill takes time, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t learn it all overnight.  For example, you might desire to learn CSS or Rails, or perhaps you want to learn how to use JQuery or do something in Photoshop.  Pick a reasonably long time frame as a deadline.  It might be two weeks, or a month, or a year, depending on what you’re trying to learn.  If you make that timeframe too small, you’ll end up frustrated; if you reach your objective faster, all the better.

Secondly, it’s a good idea to schedule your learning time.  That’s not always easy, and the nature of your workload and workflow may be such that you have to take spare time as it comes, but if you schedule some time for learning something new each day or each week, put it in your calendar and treat it as a priority, soon you’ll be on your way to acquiring that new skill.

2. Collect the necessary tools.

If you’re learning a new software application, for example, you obviously need to have that application.  If you’re learning a programming language, you may want to find a text editor that has some built-in features for that particular language.  If you’re not sure which application you’re going to use, look around for a demo version that will at least give you a feel for how it works.

In the example of learning PHP, you’ll probably want to use something like MAMP, WAMP or LAMP to install Apache, MySQL and PHP locally on your laptop or workstation, so you can experiment and learn in an environment over which you have complete control, and where the consequences of “breaking” something aren’t great.

In your quest to learn a new skill, don’t forget books.  I’ll admit that in recent years I’ve bought far fewer books on technology things than I once did, simply because of the preponderance of online technical information.  But some of us like having a book that we can take with us and peruse whenever we like.  If you’re looking for good books on stuff like Web development and programming, freelancing, starting a home-based business, and such, please check out the Underpants Office Bookstore–we’ve done some of the searching for you in these and other selected areas, and you might find just the right book to help you get moving on learning something new.

3. Take a class.

There are countless options for structured learning–you can probably find a local adult education or continuing education course through a nearby college or university or community college.  There are also hundreds (perhaps thousands) of online courses that you can take.  For example, if you’re trying to learn PHP programming, a simple Google search will turn up dozens of resources, many of which are free.  The same is true for almost any Web development skill, but even if you’re looking for information about something a bit more obscure, such as lutherie (guitar-building), you’re probably going to find some resources online.  If you’re reasonably self-motivated, the online option is great.

4. Set yourself some goals.

Without a defined goal, you might flounder for a long time, so take a little time to figure out some reasonable, measurable goals.  To continue the PHP learning example, you might find discover the Killer PHP site, where you’ll find a bunch of instructional video screencasts–you could decide that a reasonable goal would be to set aside an hour each day for a month (there are enough of them to do that), and work through all of the examples yourself.  You won’t necessarily be a PHP ace when the month is over, but you’ll be a few steps farther down the road.  (See item #1 above.)

5. Pick a simple, real-world project to work on.

If you’re learning something like PHP (and by now you might have figured out that learning PHP is on my list of skills I’d like to aquire), you can write simple “Hello, World!” programs until the cows come home, but what will really help you is to pick a project that is interesting to you (and might actually be useful) and work on that.  If it’s learning how to build a guitar, get an inexpensive kit and actually build one.  It might not be your best work, but you have to start somewhere, and you might as well start with something useful.

I’m hoping to invest some time in 2009 in learning PHP (and a few other Web-development skills), and I’ll try to post along the way to let you know how I’m doing with that.  In the meantime, I’d love to hear about your experiences and goals and approaches.  Leave a comment and let us know how it’s going!  (And if this article has helped you get off dead-center and decide to learn a new skill, I’d appreciate any Diggs or Stumbles!)

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