Hello Lovely Readers:
Last week I sent you the link to my blog post on "10 Ways Learning How to Learn Will Radically Transform Your Life". The post explains how, by learning the meta-skill of learning how to learn, you'll be able to learn almost any skill you set your mind to. This will allow you to do everything from keeping your job skills current, to achieving your goals in any life area (health, wealth, leisure, and so on).
Not surprisingly, two of the most popular Daring to Live Fully posts are about learning new skills. It seems we love talking about acquiring skills: learning to play a musical instrument, acquiring a new language, learning to code, and so on. At the same time, we could learn skills more quickly, efficiently, and effectively by first learning how to learn.
But, if learning how to learn is such a powerful meta-skill, then why don't more people take the time to acquire it? For the same reason that people spend years saying that they're going to learn how to lift weights properly--so that they can achieve their dream physique--, but then use the "I don't have the time" excuse and never get around to it.
Simply put, it's because learning new skills—including learning how to learn—falls into Quadrant II of the Eisenhower Matrix (also known as the Stephen Covey Matrix). This matrix—which I'm sure you're all familiar with—divides activities into four quadrants depending on how important and how urgent they are. The four quadrants are the following:
- Quadrant I: Urgent and Important
- Quadrant II: Not Urgent but Important
- Quadrant III: Urgent but Not Important
- Quadrant IV: Not Urgent and Not Important
As you can see, Quadrant II activities are those things which are high in importance, but low in urgency. They include things such as the following:
- Planning— e.g., setting long-term goals and planning how to achieve them.
- Prevention—e.g., taking the car in for maintenance on a regular schedule so that it doesn't break down in the middle of the road.
- Relationships – e.g., spending quality time with your spouse to reconnect and keep the spark alive.
These are activities that are vitally important for your growth and well-being, but which you probably put off because you're busy putting out fires in Quadrant I, or being distracted by email notifications and people asking you for favors in Quadrant III, or mindlessly surfing the web in Quadrant IV (or re-watching your favorite TV show from start to finish for the umpteenth time).
So, how do you make time for Quadrant II activities? More specifically for our purposes, how do you make time to learn new skills? I recommend that you follow a two-fold strategy. First, take time from the other three quadrants. There are many ways to do this, but the best way is to set aside one hour each morning to learn new skills, before the other three quadrants get a chance to suck up all your time.
The second part of the strategy for making time to learn new skills is to increase the urgency of this task. After all, we always find a way to make time to deal with urgent matters. Set a deadline, and then come up with ways to hold yourself accountable to that deadline. Get creative in finding ways to make "learn how to learn" as urgent as "the basement flooded".
Failing to set time aside for the Quadrant II activity of learning new skills is like failing to set money aside for making investments. You'll always be playing catch-up and you'll never be able to get ahead.
As I announced on Tuesday of last week, I'll be launching the pilot of my course, "Learn Any Skill Faster and Better: How to Learn to Code, Play the Piano, Lift Weights, Speak French, Draw, Or Anything Else", this week. One of the sections of the course is going to take you by the hand and show you how to use a time log and the Eisenhower Matrix—in conjunction with a few more time management/productivity techniques—so you can make the time to learn new skills. And remember:
"Skills are one of today's most valuable currencies." – Marelisa Fábrega
Sincerely,
Marelisa
P.S. If you haven't downloaded the Autodidact Manifesto yet, I recommend you go do so now (this free PDF has been downloaded hundreds of times).
P.S.S. Tomorrow I'm going to share with you why making changes—such as making the changes necessary to learn a new skill—is so hard (and what to do about it).
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