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Choose a learning method

Think about your favorite, most successful learning experiences and what characterized them. Try to recall experiences in a similar category of learning:

skills, academic knowledge, crafts, etc. You might realize that you prefer to learn in different ways about areas of knowledge, such as environmental sci-ence, and skills, such as drawing.

The nuances to preferred ways of learning are plentiful, but they boil down to two broadly defined approaches:

■ You learn new things with the goal of gaining mastery and understanding in a specific area of knowledge.

■ Or, you guide your process by learning what you need to complete a specific project.

Within either of these approaches, you will also need to explore the learn-ing strategies that are most effective for you. Strategies are ways of acquirlearn-ing knowledge: reading, listening to lectures, discussing your subject with others, explaining or teaching what you’re learning, collaborating on learning proj-ects, attending workshops, taking online or in-person classes. This is where you want to think back to what has worked for you in the past, or try something new if you haven’t found success with any of the methods you’ve already tried.

These strategies are the tools by which you’ll learn what you’re interested in, and in all likelihood you’ll use a combination of strategies.

Paths to general knowledge

First let’s talk about learning an area of knowledge. To do this, you can follow one of two paths through the material: linear or associative.

A linear strategy follows a trajectory like traditional classroom learning, using a textbook, a syllabus, or an entire curriculum that is mapped out in an orderly

How to Be an Independent Learner

way. This is a good choice if you have decided that you want to learn a subject as a whole, because the subject area is appealing to you, or it’s something you wish you had learned in school. It also works well if you find classroom learning ap-pealing, but want to do it outside of school. The main thing is the idea that you’re eager to learn an entire subject area, a large body of knowledge.

Here’s a picture of what a linear path looks like: You have decided that you want to learn basic physics. You can start by finding an introductory course online, or reading an introductory textbook, and learn the material in a com-monly taught sequence of concepts. Newton’s laws, motion, gravity, and so on, concepts that build on each other. The path through the material is straight and orderly. Completing established levels of advancement through the trajectory gives you a sense of accomplishing what you set out to learn.

By contrast, an associative path can start anywhere, and it often appears that you are starting smack in the middle, or even at the end of a classical learning trajectory. You become curious about something and work your way around the ideas you need to know to understand it. You skim over things that are too advanced, or back up until you find a level you understand, and go for-ward again. You will probably end up with an understanding of the subject that is deeper in some ways and shallower in others. It’s an equally valid style, and it feels more natural to some learners. It tends to emerge from a specific curiosity rather than a desire for knowledge in general. Because it is driven by specific curiosity, it can be easier to follow through on. People who operate this way gain a satisfactory level of understanding of their original starting point and often move on to focus on one of the tangents that came out of their starting question. This works best for people who don’t need a clear sense of comple-tion, as there are an infinite number of tangents.

If you’re new to independent learning, you may not be very familiar with what an associative path might look like, so I’ll describe in some detail how this would look, again with the example of learning physics. Let’s say you read a handful of articles about the Large Hadron Collider, a massive particle accel-erator that is expected to discover new particles that exist in theory but have never been observed experimentally. Now you want to learn more about par-ticle physics. You don’t feel the need to be able to understand and calculate every formula or equation involved; you simply want to understand the area in a general way. If you started with an introductory physics textbook, it would take at least a few semesters’ worth of learning before you get to the meat of particle physics.

173 how to be an Independent learner

Alternatively, an associative path might begin with reading the Wikipedia article on particle physics, or glancing at the table of contents of a particle phys-ics textbook. You’ll see from there that you need to understand the particles present in an atom and how they interact, so you find an introductory physics lecture online that explains the atom. From the textbook or Wikipedia article you would follow a path to gain a basic descriptive understanding of quan-tum mechanics. This might lead you to something called the Standard Model, which is a giant equation to account for the forces that hold atoms together (and by consequence, the universe). In order to work, the Standard Model re-quires the existence of particles that haven’t been observed, and that’s what scientists are looking for in their experiments with the Large Hadron Collider.

A book about physics oriented toward a general audience and general audi-ence talks by physicists you can find online can help you understand all of this.

By following the tangents you need to understand what’s going on at the Large Hadron Collider, you’ve arrived at a general understanding of a segment of physics. You’ve likely skipped basic Newtonian physical laws, but if you find that you need to learn them, you can go learn the elementary equations to de-scribe things like force and motion. You’ve gone through the frustrations of having to find your own way and the degree of backtracking and restarting that can be involved. You may have giant gaps in your knowledge. You may have a more nuanced understanding of what you’ve learned. Either way, you’re em-powered and satisfied from having found your own way.

Project-driven learning

Learning by doing a project is a more focused learning experience than learn-ing a body of general knowledge, and has a built-in means for keeplearn-ing you mo-tivated and marking your successes. It’s the most common approach among independent learners. Doing a project gives you a defined goal and a sense of progress when you finish the project. The project puts your new skills and knowledge in an immediate context. You may use traditional assignments and exercises to hone skills or internalize knowledge, but they’re in pursuit of something concrete, rather than material in a vacuum. Your project might be making a film, a physical object, a computer program, a science experiment, a book, a business, a graphic novel — anything that puts your learning in an active context and makes it useful.

These kind of concrete projects don’t obviously apply to every area of knowl-edge. One of the best tricks I’ve heard independent learners talk about is turning

their pursuit of a naturally abstract subject — such as philosophy or the history of art — into a concrete project. Often, the project involves sharing knowledge with others. You might go about this by making a film, recording a podcast, writing a blog about what you’re learning, writing an article, making a graphical represen-tation of your work, teaching a workshop, or running a reading group.

To learn in the context of a project, you’re going to use many of the same strategies described for classroom-style learning, but you’ll attach them to an achievable goal. You’ll define your project and then make a list of what you think you need to learn to accomplish it. You’ll seek out the knowledge and skills you need by some combination of the same methods described above:

reading, listening, discussing, taking notes, collaborating, using tutorials, experimenting, and finding experts to help you.

Learning independently involves not being afraid of failure and do-overs. If you get started and find that the approach isn’t working for you, see if you can reconfigure your approach by paying attention to what didn’t work the first time.

The key here is that if it’s not working, try tinkering with your method using any of the different approaches described in this section of the book. Everyone I talk-ed to reporttalk-ed that the process of coming to learn how they as individuals do their learning was one of the most significant advantages of learning outside of school. It also led to greater satisfaction with their experience and a deeper un-derstanding of their material or skills. So be prepared for some experimentation!