Learn by Creating Your Own Course
Get the most from books and podcasts by creating your own course of study.
They say that learning from books is academic, that it doesn’t apply to the real world. Not always!
Juanita wrote in with one of the best questions ever:
“I really like learning through reading and audiobooks, but I rarely make it all the way through. How can I create a course for myself so that I can actually absorb and apply the knowledge?”
When you read a self-help or educational book, understanding is the easy part. Understanding doesn’t mean you can or will do what the book recommends. I read The South Beach Diet. Then I read the North Beach Diet. Then the East Beach Diet. By the time I made it to the South-by-South-Northwest Diet, I had gained 10 pounds from munching on sugar-coated pretzels while reading the books. I hadn’t applied anything I learned.
Formal classes work for a reason. They provide a framework: understanding, applying, practicing, and recalling the material. When you’re reading a book, you’re being given the material, but the rest is up to you. Here’s how to turn your reading material into a course.
Tip #1: Set out a timeline and get a study group.
Schedule a regular time to work on the material. Classes are effective because they’re held at regular times set aside specifically for study. Get yourself a study group, if you can. Find some friends or use a site like Meetup.com or Craigslist to find other people who want to learn the book. Then establish one night a week when you’ll gather to discuss. If you’re really hardcore and have the flexibility, you can schedule more nights a week.
Tip #2: Structure each week with new material and recall.
Read a chapter or part of a chapter of the book for each class. Take notes on the main points. I recommend taking notes by hand, not by typing. Writing the material forces you to review it and engages your muscles in memorizing. The more of your senses—sight, touch, hearing—you can get involved, the better you’ll learn.
Reinforce the recall of the material you’ve covered so far by reviewing last week’s chapter briefly. If you have a study group, discuss the previous chapter for a few minutes. Share any insights or ideas that have come up between classes. Also spend a few minutes reviewing your handwritten notes from 4 weeks before (obviously, you can’t start doing that until week 5). Reviewing information a few weeks later actually reinforces memory better than if you review it every week.
Tip #3: Use exercises for applying and practicing the material.
After you’ve learned new material and reviewed old material, give yourself exercises. That’s your chance to practically apply what you’ve learned. You can do the exercise during your class time, or give it to yourself as homework. If you’re working through the “Tame Your Technology” chapter of my book, Get-it-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More, your homework would be to run a weeklong technology audit, so you know whether you work better with an electronic or paper to-do list.
Tip #4: Get feedback on your progress.
Qualifying for a green belt or a yellow belt in martial arts is feedback that you’ve reached a certain skill level and are ready to move to a more advanced level. Get outside feedback on your progress. A study group is a great forum for trading feedback. Or you can have an outside expert join you for a meeting or two, to evaluate your work.
Sometimes you can test your progress yourself. If you’re learning knot-tying, your homework is using this week’s knots to brace the giant planters on your roof deck where you grow 6-foot-tall man-eating Audrey 2s. Test the knots by poking your Audrey 2 with a sharp stick. If the knots hold, you know you’ve done it right. If the knots don’t hold … well, let’s just call that motivation for next time.
Celebrate when you master a skill or hit major milestones. It’s motivating to know you’ve made progress. You’ll be amazed at the pride you feel when you get that green belt,or don’t lose your other hand to Audrey 2.
Tip #5: Concentrate on vocabulary.
Often a skill has a specialized vocabulary. As you learn, make sure to jot down and remember special terms associated with it. If you’re a sailor, you’ll learn words like “jib,” “tack,” and “prow.” Weird? Yes. But try not knowing these on a sailboat. You’ll be going nowhere….in circles..
What’s tricky is when you’re learning a subject that uses everyday words to mean something different. I saw the musical BARE: A Pop Opera and loved it. The program said “Book by Jon Hartmere.” I wanted to read that book! So I went to my library, my bookstore, and Amazon.com. I searched for Jon Hartmere, but couldn’t find the novel.
Turns out that in musical theater, “book” refers to the part of the script that isn’t sung, aka, the story. Oops. Yes, I’m sure I looked silly, but my quest taught me the specialized meaning of the term and now, I’ve written both a book-book, and I’ve co-written a musical theater “book.” Viva la homework!
Now, Juanita, you’re ready to get to work! Schedule a regular class time with a study group. Read a chapter for class, paying attention to vocabulary, and give yourself homework to apply the ideas in that chapter somewhere in your life. Get feedback on your progress and review each week’s material the following week and a month later. And if you need something to serve at your study group, might I suggest deep fried vegetable chips from the roof deck garden? They taste just like chicken.
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
This has been Stever Robbins. I give keynote speeches that are fun and interactive on how businesspeople can be more effective at reaching goals. If you want to learn more, visit SteverRobbins speaking.
RESOURCES:
meetup – Meetup.com, a service for finding people to practice with.
craigs list – Generic classified ads for finding people to practice with.
Woman Studying image courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
