The 6-Step Guide To Becoming A Better Student

“Education is what people do to you and learning is what you do for yourself,” said Joi Ito in his TED2014 talk. “You’re not going to be on top of mountain all by yourself with a #2 pencil … What we need to learn is how to learn.”

Indeed, traditional education may not be for everyone, but learning is. Learning is about enriching our minds, honing our skills, and changing the way we see ourselves and the world. It improves our behaviour and the way we think by expanding and challenging our understanding. All too often I met students who were waiting for learning to happen, waiting for the right teacher to teach in the right way. But waiting can easily be disguised as productive—it isn’t. There are practices you can engage in right now that puts you on the path of self-education. Here’s how you can start:

Find Your Desire

You have to tell yourself a story on how learning will benefit you as a human being. It’s easy to believe that a desire to learn is commonplace, but I disagree. You have to be eager to want to explore your curiosities. Eager to discover solutions to your problems. Eager to improve, to stretch your understanding, to discover new insights. This requires initiative, a desire to start on your own without a syllabus or a teacher. Most of all, a desire to learn is a mindset. When you wake up, tell yourself that it’s your responsibility to deeply engage in a subject that interests and challenges you. You have to want to learn as if your life depended on it.

Read

Reading books is my favourite way to dive into a subject. The thinking goes: Someone who has a comprehensive understanding of the subject at hand is compelled to share their knowledge. It helps us collect dots, but more importantly, to start connecting them in ways that is meaningful and enriching. Reading exercises thinking. The more we read, the better we become at thinking about the information we come across throughout our lives.

Take Courses

Passnownow, Khan Academy, edX, Udemy, TED, CreativeLive — these are all online platforms that provide educational content, videos, learning communities, and more. Some of the content is free, and others require a very small fee.

It’s foolish to assume that you’ll learn everything you need to know in school to prepare you for your life and career. The quality of our lives is determined by our efforts to reshape and improve our minds. School is helpful, definitely, but it’s also our responsibility to explore our own interests, to study subjects that are beyond our comfort zone.

Listen to the Experts

This exercises our ability to truly listen, to pay attention to what’s being said, and to extract useful information.

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

What makes greatness possible is the ability to think—not just being an expert at one thing. By cross-pollinating ideas, we can unearth insight that is helpful to how we lead our lives. When you are able to extract something useful in a subject that you originally found uninteresting, it just goes to show how you’re exercising your mind.

Experiment, Engage, Discuss

Experimenting with information is at the heart of learning. How does this subject help me live better or work smarter? How does this perspective change the way I do business or engage with people? How does this idea relate to what I do?

Self-education is valuable habit to start building. It will carry you throughout higher education and well beyond it. Even throughout your career it’s important to stay fluid and open-minded, to relentlessly connect the dots and deepen your understanding of what you do and how you can do it better. This all starts with an intense desire to learn; an eagerness that keeps us hungry for knowledge.