A Comprehensive Guide to Self Learning

Co-authored by Tracy Yun, MBA

Academic & Test Prep Specialist

Last Updated: June 21, 2024 Approved

Propelling your own learning can seem like a daunting process at first. However, it's not as challenging as it seems! With clear structure, an awareness of your learning styles, and an internal sense of motivation you can set yourself up for learning success without a teacher. Read on to learn some effective methods of self-study.

Things You Should Know

Gather information about things that interest you or do a deep dive into a specific topic that you want to learn about.
Dedicate 30 minutes (or more) every day to going over the information you've gathered. Try to practice or experiment with what you're learning.
Regularly review the information you've already learned to help you retain it in the long-term.

1

Lean into your internal sense of motivation.

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In order to be motivated, make sure you really want to learn something. If you do not want to learn for learning's sake, become clear about the reason why you want to learn something and try to imagine how it is, when your learning was successful. Maybe you'll find out, that you don't want to learn that thing, so at least you can save some time. If you don't really want to learn it, the time spent on trying to learn it will be mostly wasted.^{[1]
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- When learning something new, it helps be really excited about the subject or skill you're taking on.
- Reader Poll: We asked 308 wikiHow readers and 47% of them chose learning a new language as the skill they’d be most excited to learn. [Take Poll] So you may want to give that a try and see if it interests you!

2

Gather your materials.

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Take a look at the information you have at the moment: does it provide you enough stuff to learn? If so, start learning, else gather at least as much information as you need to begin learning. Some people may like it more if they have all the information they want to learn, but it is also possible, that you become discouraged by too much information, so find out how you feel most comfortable.^{[2]
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- Study and learn in a quiet place without distractions so you can focus better.

3

Experiment.

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Physicists for example often try to explain why something works like they've seen in the experiment, so it would be good if you can do the experiment on your own, make a thought-experiment or get a video of that experiment. Although in some fields like mathematics concrete examples may lead off-road, in most cases it will help you to understand what's that stuff all about. It's not beneficial to learn some formulae, statistics or dates if you can not imagine what they describe.

4

Practice.

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Although it may be tempting to rush through them, for somebody inexperienced it is better to do the exercises in a moderate pace and careful. This prevents sloppy technique or bad habits, which are much harder to correct than small mistakes at the beginning.

5

Get mentorship.

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Beside they can correct your mistakes, they - maybe even more important - can tell you when you are already doing something well, which can be very motivating.^{[3]
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6

Diversify your knowledge.

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One of the most common mistakes is that people concentrate either on the practical or on the theoretical aspects of something. This only leads to stereotypes like the stupid sportsman or the nonathletic nerd. However, it is also very ineffective, because you probably don't use your whole brain, but only the left side or the motoric part. Having an open mind also helps to see connections to things you already like, thus increasing comprehension and motivation.

7

Invest time.

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According to the topic it even may be enough just to spend everyday half an hour on some exercises or texts. Special learning techniques can make learning easier, but they still require work done by you.^{[4]
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8

Organize your learning.

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Then, wrap up by preparing the next session with some questions or tasks, so the next time you can just start working! This can help decrease the risk of procrastination.

9

Look into SRS.

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SRS means Spaced Repetition System (Anki is a good one to try). An SRS is essentially a computer managed flash card system. Instead of looking at an entire deck of cards including things you already know really well, the computer will remember how well you answer and only show you cards when you are likely to be about to forget them, allowing you to use your time much more efficiently and learn much more.