Boost your learning with positive experiences

Every now and then I decide to learn something new. It might be a technique related to what I do in my everyday job, a recipe in kitchen or something totally beyond my usual scope of activities. While trying (and sometimes failing) to learn I realized the following:

• first few encounters with new "stuff" are crucial for your motivation to continue
• picking up low hanging fruit has a very important role in your perception of potential success and self esteem in the subject
• both things are closely related

problem

I always kinda sucked at higher math. I was quite ok with everyday one, but I basically lost the track mid high school. Why it was so? When I started to study complicated mathematics, I had some success in solving the introductory stuff, but anything beyond that was a mystery. The problem was, that our educational system didn't allow us to stop for everybody to catch up (in this case me). Grades went from worse to worst as my knowledge shrunk and my frustration grew.

Some years ago I got myself a guitar. I started to learn some very basic stuff. The first two chapters of video course were good na simple and I enjoyed every second of it. Untill we hit first barre chord F. I know there are harder chords that F, but since I really lacked the finger strength I could never get it right. So I was left with two options: 1) I could drill the F till I know how to play it and being frustrated most of the time or 2) I could try to find songs without F to play and have fun.

solution

I decided to go for the low hanging fruit and I played only songs that had chords I already know how to play. I did this for a month and I was having a good time. Since the only problem was with my fingers being too weak, the regular exercise help me gain some extra push. When I tried that F again it sounded better (although it was far from flawless). So I repeated the whole practice model till I was able to play first songs with barre chords.

application

I do Front End development for living. Since I am in the industry well past 10th year I also do mentoring on the subject. My juniors are bright so I encourage them to contribute to open source. They always like the idea, but the actual execution is not so straighforward. They often worry, that they are not good enough (which may or may not be true), don't know how to start, etc. Needless to say, their perception of themselves and OS ecosystem might determinate their future. Therefore, I try to push them towards seeking out very easy task in open source community (e.g. searchich for GH issues with low-hanging tag). I want them to have positive experience very early on, so they can be rewarded for every little step they take. A passionate contributor fixing a typo in docs can on day become a core contributor of bleeding-edge framework.

conclusion

My approach takes longer than a focused drill, but more importantly it helps to avoid frustration, that often leads to abandoning projects however rewarding they may be at the end. So if you are not pushed by a deadline and just want to learn something new, don't be ashamed that you are not keeping up with some imaginary schedule. Do the easy stuff, progress at your own pace and most importantly, have fun as I did. Every now and then, you'll inevitably run into some harder things, but keeping the overall experience mostly positive will help you stay on course in the long run.

image source: http://www.gettingsmart.com/