:- Self education ✨

I’d always seen my dad use Photoshop, and I was curious to learn. So in 7th grade, I scraped together my allowance and bought a copy of Photoshop for Dummies.

Through hours of practice, along with reading that book and online tutorials, I learned the basics of editing images in Photoshop. While I’m still no image editing wizard, my basic Photoshop skills continue to serve me to this day. And it was all because I chose to pursue that first learning project on my own.

It wouldn’t be the last such project, either. Since then, I’ve taught myself HTML, drawing, painting, and even Spanish.

Plus, I have the confidence to teach myself any new skill that interests me or is useful for advancing my career. My early approach to self-education was rather haphazard, but I’ve since learned a lot more about how to effectively teach yourself new things.

In this post, I’m going to share my favorite lessons for educating yourself on any subject. We’ll start with a look at why self-education is such a valuable skill. Then, we’ll move to a process you can use to start your own self-education adventures.

Credentials Are No Longer Enough

There was a time when having a college degree was enough to secure a good job. But with more people graduating from college than ever, you now need other ways to differentiate yourself.

While there are many ways to stand out in a job interview, one of the best is to demonstrate that you’re self-directed and motivated. And I can’t think of a better way to demonstrate these qualities than telling the interviewer about a new skill you taught yourself.

Compared to the other applications with the same degrees, GPAs, and extracurriculars, a self-directed learner is bound to stand out.

How to Educate Yourself

Learning is a highly personal process, and the array of subjects to learn is vast. Therefore, it’s difficult to give an exact set of steps for self-education.

But the following process should get you off to a very good start, particularly in areas where new independent learners tend to struggle.

Identify What You Want to Learn

The obvious first step to learning something new is to pick a skill or subject. You probably have a vague idea in mind already, but I encourage you to make it more specific. This way, you can better track your learning progress.

For instance, let’s say you want to learn piano. “Learn piano” isn’t a very helpful goal — it’s much too vague. What exactly do you want to learn? To play a few of your favorite songs? To play in a band with your friends? To become the next Carnegie Hall soloist?

These all fall under “Learn piano,” but they’re very different goals requiring different amounts of effort. You can see, therefore, why setting a specific learning goal is so important.

Besides being specific about what you want to learn, you should also determine why you want to learn it. As with building good habits, you shouldn’t decide to learn something just because your friend or mom or some guy on the internet said so.

Rather, you should choose learning goals that are personally meaningful. This could be to help you advance in your career, but it could also be pure curiosity. Regardless, you’re more likely to stick with a learning goal if you have a clear “why” in mind.