How to Learn Something New

Students at all levels, from elementary school to graduate school, are continually challenged to learn new things. But I would argue that a fulfilling life demands lifelong learning. If you’re living a good and interesting life, then your task throughout your life will be to constantly update your current understandings and learn something new. Maybe you’re in a new job where you’re required to master new procedures or access a skillset that feels rusty. Or maybe you’re taking an online class for which you’ll need to grasp the complexities of an unfamiliar subject. Regardless of the specifics, life calls on us to grow in all sorts of ways. Read on to ensure that you’re ready to respond to the call—

Three Strategies to Learn Something New

Strategy 1: Feel Okay About Being a Beginner (Again)

The first strategy is simply to prepare yourself mentally for that “fish out of water” feeling that comes along with trying or doing something new. We often avoid things that make us feel uncomfortable, even when a part of us wants to head in this new direction, or we know we’d stand a lot to gain from doing so. The key here is to realize that it’s natural to feel anxious when we’re in unfamiliar territory. Our brains have been honed over millennia to try to keep us safe—and nothing feels less safe than doing something new, where we might mess up, make mistakes, and look foolish to others. Instead of stuffing these feelings down, and continuing to avoid whatever exciting new challenge is making you anxious, give voice to these feelings and go ahead and do the new thing anyway. Show yourself that you’re capable of moving forward even when you don’t have all the answers. Naming for yourself that it’s normal to feel anxious and insecure when you’re stepping out of your comfort zone takes the punch out of the fear associated with doing so.

Tell yourself: “I’m doing something new, so it’s normal that I feel a little anxious. I can get through this just like I’ve gotten through lots of other things before.”

If you know that it’s normal to feel uncomfortable when you’re a beginner at something, it won’t feel like an emergency when you do.

Strategy 2: Use Spaced Repetition to Onboard New Information

When it comes to getting new information into your brain, and making it a part of your long-term memory, where it can be called up and used at will (say, at that cocktail party you’re attending or at a job interview), lots of research has shown that spaced repetition is key. I say this to my clients all the time—cramming doesn’t work for long-term retention (you might be able to get something into your head for an exam by staying up all night and studying the night before, but most of it will be gone over the next couple of days, or certainly by the next exam you stay up all night to study for). The key to remembering new information over long periods of time is to hold multiple (relatively short) review sessions and to space them out over time. There’s this thing called the forgetting curve, which provides a theoretical model for how long any of us can remember new information provided we never try to access it again. Suffice it to say, the decline is pretty steep.

The Forgetting Curve: We Remember Less and Less Over Time Unless We Make an Effort to Recall Information

 Humorous Image of the Forgetting Curve courtesy of ELearningIndustry

Alt text: Line graph illustrating the rapid decline of memory retention over time, followed by a more gradual decrease. A bearded white man is depicted sliding down the memory curve with his hands raised in the air, as if he were on a roller coaster—he is in the process of forgetting things over time!

Furthermore, it turns out that it’s most useful (that is, most beneficial to our long-term retention of information) to review new information just as we’re about to forget it. Think of it like this—just as the new groove you’ve laid down in your brain is fading into oblivion, you swoop back in and reinforce that track, strengthening the connection between those neurons and causing them to fire together again (I’m sure you’ve heard: “neurons that fire together, wire together”). Our brains are designed for efficiency; we really only remember information that seems, or has proven to be, useful and significant to our lives in some way. The slight emotional charge we get from struggling to recall information that has almost been forgotten sends a signal to the amygdala (often called the “fight or flight” part of the brain), which reinforces the sense that this information is important, and makes us more likely to be able to remember it later.

It’s also really helpful to make yourself recall/retrieve the information rather than just reading it over again, but most of us go easy on ourselves when we’re studying and don’t do this. We think that reading through the book, or rereading our notes, will be enough to get the information back into our heads and we stop there. For some types of information, this may be the case—but if you’re having trouble learning something new, be prepared to take your study strategies to the next level. To really learn something new, you need to process the material at a deeper level than simply scanning your eyes over it. This is the reason why creating flashcards is a popular study strategy—making the cards acts as the first study phase, especially if you force yourself to distill your understanding of the material into a bare-bones representation of the facts. You don’t want to simply copy passages from the book, or even from your class notes, verbatim. Distilling the material down to its essentials will ensure that you think deeply about what really needs to be on the card. Once you’ve made the cards, you can then use them to quiz yourself. If you can retrieve the desired information, this means that you really know it. Retrieval is a much harder cognitive operation than simple recognition, which is what you’re asking your brain to do when you merely read over your notes. If flashcards aren't a good fit for what you’re studying, try the strategy Jade Bowler calls "blurting.” To study by “blurting,” write yourself a few questions about the topic you want to learn (you can consult your notes for this), then set a timer and, from memory, answer the questions by writing out everything you know about the topic. In other words, you’re “blurting” out the entire contents of your memory related to this topic—the processes involved, the vocabulary, key terms or chronological details, etc. When the timer goes off, or you’ve exhausted your memory, then look back at your notes or the book—What did you forget? Use this time to fill in the blanks and flesh out your understanding. The next time you “blurt,” the hope is that you will have forgotten less.

Strategy 3: Make Associations Between the New Material and What You Already Know

The third strategy for learning something new is to make it meaningful—that is, to connect it to something you already know. My favorite metaphor for this comes from Julie Dirksen, who wrote a great textbook on learning that I used when I taught the Master’s in Psychology Capstone course at Harvard Extension School. Dirksen uses the metaphor of a closet to explain this—when you give learners new information to take on board, you want to give them a place to “hang” it. So, if the new info is a garment, say a dress, you want to first build the closet that the dress will be stored in. Give the dress a hanger, where it's hanging next to similar garments. Place a handbag on a shelf where it sits next to other accessories—you get the idea.

In other words, when you’re trying to learn something new, you should always think about how this information fits into what you already know. Making associations is another way of processing new material deeply. How is this information similar, or how does it connect, to something you already know? Can you “chunk” it together in a set of related ideas or processes? Can you tell a story about it, with a beginning, middle, and end?

Final Thoughts: Why Writing About New Material is a Key Strategy for Helping You Learn It

As a writer, writing coach, and editor (that is, someone who loves working with words), I would be remiss if I didn’t mention writing about new material as a prime strategy for learning it. The reason for this is simple: when we write about a topic, we are in the role of ‘teacher’ to our readers. We are taking them through (our thoughts on) a topic. We have to start by giving them background—which often involves placing the issue in the context of something they already know, telling them why they should care about it, convincing them that we are knowledgeable informants about the topic. We have to sequence our arguments in a logical way, so that readers can follow the development of our claims and evaluate them for themselves. Unlike in conversation, or class discussion, in which ideas are bandied about, and possibly never fully developed, if we commit our argument to writing, it has to be sound. It has to be logical and coherent. It has to have a beginning, middle, and end. If evidence for our claims is missing, people are likely to notice. We are likely to notice—and hopefully before we hit “publish” or turn in the final draft!

So, if you are seeking to learn something new, try writing about it. Being forced to put your understanding down on paper will help you figure out what you know and don’t know. Explaining your ideas to others will help you realize what you really think. I think you’ll find that, when you write, the first person you reach, as a teacher, is actually yourself.

Image by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu via Unsplash.

Alt text: A hand fills out a standardized test form with a pencil.