Enhancing Your Learning Experience With Adoptive Learning

 
 
Many of us want to learn more skill sets than we have time or resources for. The Internet has made the information freely available to everybody and it has only increased the things we want to learn.

 
 

The Dip

 

 
According to Seth Godin, most of us don't know when to quit and quit before what he calls 'The Dip'. When we start learning something new that interests us, we experience the feeling of Euphoria. The dip is the time when our progress diminishes or when we hit the plateau.

Many potential winners don't become successful because they quit before the dip. Most of the time we don't enjoy the thrill of being at the other side of the dip. It is extremely important to identify the dip before you hit it.

According to Seth Godin, most of us quit before the dip due to the following reasons.

• Due to nonseriousness.
• You run out of time and quit.
• You run out of resources and quit.
• You lose interest in the middle because of the challenge.
• You get scared of failure or success and quit.

 
 

 
 

Feedback

 
It is important to get the constant feedback about your learning to help you measure your progress. Without an instant feedback, you tend to feel lost and might lose interest in the activity.

Feedback lets you know that your efforts are bringing up the results you are after. Feedback can be in the form of live audience, customer feedback or feedback by an expert in your field.

 
 

Fundamental Components

 
A skillset is often composed of a number of components. Breakdown the skillset into different parts and prioritize the components you want to master first.
 
 

 
 

Focus & Brain Plasticity

 
In the age of social media and electronics, there are too many distractions to focus on one activity. Mobile notifications, a call from a friend, watching your favorite TV show, etc., there is simply no end to the number of distractions. You need to be serious and focus on just one activity and avoid multitasking to learn something quickly.

Our brain is highly plastic, i.e., it changes its form physically according to our experience. When we subject our brain to a learning experience, new neural circuits start forming in the brain. Focus helps us in reshaping the neural networks faster and keep us interested.

If you want to learn a number of unrelated skillsets, you should take them one by one. Also factor in the time and opportunity costs to set your priority scale.

 
 

Repetition

 
Practice triggers the same neural networks over and over again. It makes those networks stronger and easier to trigger for the brain and the nervous system. That's why you practice a skill until you can perform it without even putting an effort into it.

 
 

The Flow

 
According to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, you can get a genuinely satisfying experience while progressing in the state of flow. To achieve the flow, you should keep the activity little challenging but not too challenging to lose interest.

As your skills keep improving constantly and you keep setting achievable challenges for yourself, you enter the state of flow. During the state of flow, you lose awareness of time, interrupted by extraneous thoughts, have an energized focus, feel a deep sense of happiness and you work effortlessly.

 
 

According to David Kolb, there are four stages of a learning cycle and four different styles of learning anything.
 

The four stages of learning are as follows

• Concrete Experience

At this stage, you encounter a new experience or situation or reinterpret a previously experienced situation in a new way.

• Reflective Observation

At this stage, you observe all different aspects and components of the experience.

• Abstract Conceptualization

Reflective observation gives rise to new ideas and how you can reformulate your strategy to improve your learning process.

• Active Experimentation

You implement your ideas during the stage of active experimentation and have a new concrete experience.

 
 

According to Kolb, there are four different learning styles,
 
 

Diverging

 

 

People with this learning style tend to be excellent observers. They gather information, look at things from different perspectives and use their imagination to solve the problems. They are capable of thinking out of the box and have guts to try things in a way never tried before.

 
 
Assimilating

 

 
Assimilating learning involves a logical approach, reasoning, and ideas. They are capable of acquiring information from different sources and organizing it into a logical format. They excel at building effective agile strategy. They are excellent researchers and tend to use established sets of scientific approaches towards the problems.
 
 

Converging

People who tend to use this learning style are not merely interested in ideas but the implementation of the idea to solve the practical problems. They aim to connect the excellent ideas with existing problems.

 
 

Accommodating

The accommodating learning style relies more on the gut feelings than the ideas and logic. People with this style are the doers rather than the thinkers. They mostly depend on the other people's ideas and strategies to face challenges and solve problems. They tend to have a practical and experiential approach rather than the logical or rational approach.

 
 
 

Adoptive Learning

 
It is critical to understand that the learning a skill is not the end goal. Learning a skill set is interesting, challenging and useful in a lot of ways. You must ask yourself the following questions before you invest your time into learning a skillset.

• What will you do with the skills you want to learn?
• Will you disregard the skill or continue to use them after learning?
• Will you be able to utilize the skills in any way in your life?
• Will you be able to adopt the learning in your day to day life?

 
 

When you adopt the acquired skills in your everyday life, it is called as Adoptive learning.

 
 

Here is a list of benefits of the Adoptive learning.

 
 

• Beyond The Dip

With the adoptive learning, it is highly likely that you will stay on the other side of the dip and never stop progressing.

• Constant Feedback

It will be easier to get the constant feedback you need for improvement as you will be using the skills every day.

• Brain Plasticity

It is always easier for the brain to trigger the neural networks used constantly. Adoptive learning will only help the brain in strengthening the networks responsible for the skill set.

• Experience The Flow

It is easier to experience the state of flow which is deeply satisfying with the adoptive learning.
 

• Observe & Experiment

When something becomes an integral part of your life, you will be able to observe the activity in great detail and implement the changes that can improve the experience.

• Helpful For All Learning Styles

Whether you have a diverging, assimilating, converging or accommodating learning style, adoptive learning is going to help you with each one of them.

 
 

Final Words

When we start learning something new, it is highly likely that we will experience a plateau where we stop progressing. It is important to identify it before it happens and aim to go beyond it. We need constant feedback that reflects our progress.

Focus and practice is the key to learning as it remolds and reshapes the brain and strengthen the neural networks responsible for the skill. It is always better to learn a skill and bring it everyday use as you will not only continue progressing but experience the flow easily.