Self-education is a great way to stay in shape, improve your skills and just be a better conversationalist. Therefore, many people seriously think about where to start self-education. Alas, the lack of willpower, together with the accumulated mistakes, leads to the fact that time is wasted, a person who until recently was full of enthusiasm gets upset and gives up a very useful start. How to avoid such mistakes?
Set a goal
First you need to decide on the goal. No one starts self-education just like that. It would hardly occur to anyone to simply study the structural features of the ganglion in large ants or the declension of irregular verbs in the Irish language. Most people are looking for the answer to the question: "Where to start self-education?", at the moment when they realize that they need to know more in a certain area.
That is why it is very important to set a goal, reaching which,you can be proud of yourself. The goal can be very different: one just needs to become a more interesting person with a broad outlook. And another urgently needs to learn a foreign language or the basics of jurisprudence in order to be able to take a vacant position in the company by the end of the year.
However, not always a person engaged in self-education strives for such complex and lofty goals. Often, everything is much simpler, for example, learning how to repair a car, mountain bike or computer yourself. Or maybe learn the basics of culinary business.
In any case, you need a goal so that you have something to focus on. It should be assigned depending on what you want to achieve. Become a versatile person? Find the top 100 best world books and read by the end of the year (at least the next) all those that have not yet been read. Do you want to learn a foreign language? Decide at what point you should be able to read fluently on it, and at what point you should communicate with other people. Have you ever dreamed of learning how to cook? So, before the end of the month, cook ten new dishes, and before the end of the year, master a whole hundred.
The goal does not have to be global, it can be small, the main thing is that it be achievable. After all, the achievement will raise your self-esteem, allow you to believe in yourself.
Create a plan
Many people are wondering where to start self-education. The plan, or rather its drawing up, is the most important stage, the foundation, without which all thoughts will simply collapse and will not be realized.
Of course, the pinnacle of your plan should be the goal,chosen before proceeding to self-education. But its achievement is a very complex and long process. It is impossible to get to the very top of the mountain like that right away. You need to make h alts, and it is advisable to designate their places yourself.
Do you want to know the device of a car engine? In one week, study the device of the carburetor. On the next - pay attention to the gearbox and so on. As a result, in a few weeks you will be able to talk with your eyes closed about how the engine works, how it works.
It's the same with languages. For example, every day you have to learn 5 new words, and once a week - a new rule. Such a load seems (and is) very small. But imagine what will happen in a year: knowing almost 2 thousand new words and 50 rules, you can easily communicate with an ordinary native speaker of this language, even if not on professional topics.
The same principle applies if you are wondering where to start self-educating a lawyer. Make it a rule to study ten articles a day. Not necessarily verbatim, the main thing is to remember their number and meaning.
And most importantly, the schedule is made for your convenience. But you can’t get out of it, because it is self-discipline that is the only way to benefit from self-education. Any procrastination, statements like "today I will not do it, but tomorrow I will do a double norm", although justified in some cases, most often it is simply the beginning of the end. Well, having abandoned self-education halfway, you should not hope that itbenefit.
Looking for like-minded people
Some experts will answer the question: "Where to start self-education?" in a rather original way: from the search for like-minded people. They don't have to be physically close. Dating on the Internet (today there are many specialized forums) will also help. And this applies to any person. It does not matter what the purpose of self-education is - the formation of the beginnings of an ecological culture of preschoolers or the training in virtuoso woodcarving.
It is much more difficult to learn new things without like-minded people. After all, most people would rather laugh at your attempts to become better, they themselves probably never made such attempts and never will. But the person with whom you can talk on a new general topic will always support.
If you start learning new things at the same time, there is also a competitive effect: everyone wants to get around a friend, to show that he is better at his task.
Finally, a very effective technique: to promise a like-minded person "not to leave the track." You can always justify yourself in front of yourself why you didn’t cook a new dish or didn’t learn the words as planned. And deceiving another person, you will always feel uncomfortable. So, try not to let it happen.
Choose time
If we continue the topic "How to start self-education for a person", then in no case can you ignore the choice of the optimal time. Don't expect that you willread the necessary literature or listen to lectures when there is time. This is a failed path. There will never be time, you can believe. There is always something urgent and extremely important to do.
So decide that every day (or just weekdays) you will read or listen to selected books while jogging, driving to or from work, one hour before bed. It is very important not to get out of this schedule. Over time, there will definitely be a desire to postpone the case or give yourself a little indulgence. Follow your laziness - you can immediately quit self-education, which means this is not for you.
Pros
The advantages that self-education gives a person are quite obvious. But let's talk about them briefly.
Firstly, you get the opportunity to not conform to anyone. You educate yourself when you have time, not the teacher and a group of students.
Secondly, you can always correct the course, ignoring those areas that you are not very interested in or are already familiar with. This saves a lot of time.
Third, you set your own pace. In a group, the teacher adjusts to the average or even the weakest student. But you're not like that, are you? So, it is your time that will be used irrationally. If you are self-taught, you can slow down on a topic that is difficult for you and, conversely, speed up by studying several topics if everything comes unusually quickly.
Using the Internet
Telling how to start self-education for an adult, one cannot fail to mention the Internet. After all, this is not just a bunch of social networks and sites with interesting facts or photos of cats. This is a boundless treasury of knowledge, where all the wisdom of mankind is collected. The main thing is to find her.
Pick up the books you need. Many of them can be downloaded from free sites or bought for a symbolic cost of several tens of rubles. It's much easier than looking for highly specialized literature in a small town, paying hundreds or even thousands of rubles.
Don't ignore webinars. Either for free or for a few hundred rubles, you get the opportunity to communicate with experts in a field that interests you, ask them questions, and get comprehensive answers.
Don't forget to repeat
Repetition is the mother of learning. Everyone remembers this, but only those who achieve success apply it in practice. On the first reading, most people remember about half of the material, and the lion's share of this information will soon be forgotten. If, after some time, you re-read the material that is interesting to you, you will already assimilate up to 90-95% of the information, and the risk of forgetting something will drop sharply.
Make a proper schedule. For example, 20-25% of the time allocated for self-education should be devoted to repeating the material covered. It may seem to someone that it is foolish to spend so much precious time during which you can learn additional important information. But remember, you are working formyself. This means that all important material should be remembered, and not read and immediately forgotten. There will be no exam after which useless knowledge can be forgotten. You make the program yourself and you know that all the data you read (listened to or viewed) should be assimilated, if not forever, then for many years.
Learn to speed read
If you're wondering how to get started with self-education, learn this invaluable skill first. Today there are a large number of really working methods. Yes, to learn to read an entire page in seconds, you have to spend several weeks or months. But as a result, you will save much more time by literally swallowing books, and not reading them line by line.
Conclusion
Now you know where to start self-education, so you can surely achieve your goal. Well, the above tips will make learning even more effective, as well as avoid the most common mistakes.
