New Start, New Skills: How To Stay Motivated

Planning to learn a new skill or improve an existing one this year? Got a New Year’s Resolution to perfect a new hobby?

Whether you’re looking to further your career or try something new for fun, Jackafal is brimming with ideas to keep you motivated in your learning during the next year.

With the whirlwind of the holiday season over and a new year on the horizon, many people are beginning to reflect on what they’d like to do differently over the coming year. Last year, an estimated 34% of the UK population picked a resolution that was based around taking up a new hobby, skill or pursuing a career ambition. But with all that enthusiasm to get started and learn as much as possible, there are often pitfalls that new learners can be tempted to fall into. Never fear – Jackafal is here, ready to help kickstart your year and keep you on track with our handy tips.

Aim small, be specific

Shooting for the moon with big goals is admirable, but can leave you feeling deflated if your enthusiasm has gotten the better of you. Aiming for something that’s small, achievable, and you can measure your progress in will leave you far more likely to feel satisfied with how much you’ve learnt. For example, is it possible to learn a language fluently in 12 months? Absolutely. Is it realistic while holding down a full-time job and making time for friends and family? Not unless you’re willing to make some massive sacrifices. Pick a goal that will stretch your abilities, but doesn’t push you to breaking point.

Handy tip: Spend a little time researching your new learning journey, and then pick a relevant course to complete, or a particular level to attain (e.g. a certification within that field). Picking a benchmark you can realistically meet within the timeframe is a much more satisfying and realistic goal. It will help you to stay on track, and to tell yourself ‘I can do this’ when your motivation flags later in the year.

Be consistent

Consistency is key, and it adds up. If you put aside just 10 minutes a day to focus on your new skill, by the end of the year, you’ll have racked up nearly 4000 minutes of learning time. That’s the equivalent of having spent nearly 3 days learning your new skill or discipline (though in reality, given you’d need to sleep and eat, it’d actually be nearer to 5 days!).

While it’s not always possible to put aside time every single day, finding a way to maintain some sort of consistency around your learning will help to keep you on track, give you a boost when you’re tempted to lose motivation, and give you something rewarding to look forward to when you’re bored with the rest of your week.

Handy tip: Some ideas for how to get consistency in your learning are:

• Schedule ‘you time’ in your diary at good times for learning

• Use a diary to track how many minutes you’ve racked up this year

• Set an alarm each afternoon at work for a learning tea break

It’s OK to ‘fail’

Progress is not linear, and there will absolutely be times in your learning journey when you either can’t seem to get something right, or don’t have the time and motivation to keep 100% on track with your plan. It is not only OK to ‘fail’, but in many ways, it’s a good thing: you often learn far more from your ‘failures’ than you do from your successes. In the words of Nikki Giovanni, “mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.”

A lot of the time, what makes mistakes difficult to overcome is the guilt that comes with not having done everything perfectly. Ultimately, we’re all human, and no matter what appearances suggest, it is impossible to be 100% perfect all the time. Building an expectation that you will ‘fail’ and that’s not the end of the world when it happens is crucial for making good progress and feeling satisfied with your own learning.

Handy tip: The next time something doesn’t quite go to plan with your learning, imagine it as an opportunity for a mini ‘restart’. Congratulate yourself for everything you did well this time, be honest with yourself about what worked and what didn’t, and don’t beat yourself up about whatever it is you’re finding hard. We don’t succeed by fighting against our nature, we succeed by finding how best to apply whatever is unique to us to what we are doing.

Find a community

Learning a new skill is a great reward in and of itself, but another thing that is a fantastic benefit is the community you meet as a result. Whether it’s buddying up with a friend or colleague to take a course, or finding an online forum about your new area of learning, finding people for support and advice is a great way to keep yourself on track throughout the year.

Finding a community is a win-win situation: it is great fun to meet and chat to other people who you can share ideas with, and it can help keep you on track when the going gets tough, because they’ll understand exactly how that feels. Whether you’re the kind of person who likes networking in person, or you prefer more type to think about and type out your response, there is a learning community out there for you – time to get searching!

Handy tip: Try checking out Meetup, Eventbrite and Reddit for free events and discussions in your local area using keywords that relate to what you’re learning. Even if you don’t find something that 100% matches, by finding interest groups and friends who are learning similar disciplines, you may be pleasantly surprised to find out there’s some overlap (not to mention that mental cross-training will help you to reap some great benefits).

Celebrate your successes

While it’s easy to be hard on ourselves when things don’t go according to plan, it’s tricky to remember to celebrate the things that do go to plan. Not only do you deserve to feel good about what you’ve achieved because you’re a human being who did a good job, but celebrating your successes will also help to keep you motivated when you hit tougher patches.

Remember to celebrate your successes as you learn, whether that’s achieving mini goals, sticking out your learning for a certain length of time, or even just finding the motivation to sit at the desk and do your 10 minutes for the day when you’d rather be curled up watching Netflix. Pat yourself on the back whenever you get the chance!

Handy tip: Set aside some time at regular intervals (for example, once a week) and write down 3 things you’ve learnt in that time. Then treat yourself to something small, or shout about how you enjoyed learning it on social media. Whatever you’d consider a reward, use it to celebrate – you deserve it!

If you are interested to learn more about how to get the best out of your learning for this year, or want to see some examples of how we’ve helped organisations in the past, why not get in touch with us for a free consultation? We always love to chat to new people, and we’d be happy to talk to you about your learning & development and EDI needs.