00:00A lot of us want to learn new things and acquire great new skills, but often we lack the motivation to do so.
00:05Which brings up a lot of good questions, like:
00:21So therefore: Chapter 1
00:34It's important to address
00:35Procrastination first because odds are you are going to learn something new right now
00:39But you don't actually like the idea of learning something new and there's an actual reason for that.
00:45When you learn something new it actually adds a bit of stress to your mind.
00:48It's the same area in your brain that activates pain and that goes off.
00:53So because of this the idea of taking some time to learn something can give you anxiety
00:58Because why would you want to do the equivalent of hurting yourself? So the best solution to all of this is...
01:05Just start doing it. And that almost sounds too simple, but it's really important that you learn how to take initiative.
01:11It's important because you can fear doing something all day or for several days because you keep thinking "Well
01:17I just need to find the right mood for it and
01:20then I'll actually do it." but really you just
01:23need to start doing it because no one else can do that for you.
01:26And once you have started doing it all that pain and discomfort
01:29actually goes away. You move past it and it's over. You're now in the
01:34learning zone and it's a lot easier to get back into it
01:37the more frequently you get over this threshold. But then there's another problem. Once you've started doing something you're going to run into some problems
01:44And you're suddenly going to switch your attention to something else. Something frustrating or negative happens and it breaks your momentum.
01:52So because you're not reaching the reward you had anticipated your brain goes for something short-term
01:57But instead you just have to do it again
01:59You have to find your initiative again, and you have to remember that while it's easy to get short-term
02:05satisfaction from Instagram, Twitter and video games, it's all the stuff that's fun in the short-term
02:10But what you're actually doing in terms of studying and work is going to lead to long-term satisfaction
02:24If you want to get down to one learning actually is, it is a cell in your nervous system called a neuron and
02:30information flows from one neuron to another neuron through a synapse and your brain has a billion of these synapses
02:35So don't worry about it. You're not suddenly going to go. "Oh, I have zero point one gigabytes left in my brain
02:41I- I guess I'm never learning anything again. Bye everybody." Whenever you are learning something new your brain creates more synapses
02:47So there really is no limit to how much you can learn. But that said it is still important that you take rest
02:54You can't cram every single thing into your head immediately, because you need to take some time to memorize and process these things
03:00so you actually remember it. Learning is repetition and
03:03relearning the things that are kind of fading away in your head is important, because you need to strengthen these
03:09connections in your brain. Your brain is really good at remembering things but it remembers things based on how important they are.
03:16So if you have forgotten something,
03:18it's probably because you didn't really have a need for it. One way to approach this with something like drawing is not
03:24by tackling everything like anatomy, perspective and color theory at the same time, because that's just too much.
03:30Instead tackle your biggest flaws right now.
03:33That is how you establish the need for learning.
03:34And when you read a book for something like anatomy don't just read from page one to the last.
03:39Use the pages that you actually have a need for right now,
03:42and go back to those pages again when you need to relearn it.
03:46But the number one priority that comes to remembering anything is actually sleep. Sleep is extremely
03:52important because it plays a large part in processing your synapses.
03:55It creates more synapses and also cleans your synapses from metabolic toxins
03:59so we don't get dirty and muddled, and maybe you kinda remember or maybe that was about something else and now you only half remember.
04:06Another great option for your mental rest is physical exercise and social contact.
04:12Exercise and being socially active helps your brain produce new neurons.
04:17Staying physically active and talking to people daily will actually help you study and learn better, and in contrast
04:23staying shut in all day is a great way to develop severe depression.
04:32While you could listen to music, watch TV or YouTube videos while studying and working on something that's not going to be 100%
04:40efficient. But maybe you want to sacrifice some of that efficiency so you can enjoy some music some fun video stuff while also getting some
04:48work done. And here is basically the way that I would approach it because there are two different modes of thinking:
04:53The focused mode, also called the logical mode or the left brain mode, which has a lot more to do with
04:59concentration and sort of relating new things to what is already familiar. This mode pretty much requires that there are no distractions
05:06so your memory is not inefficient.
05:08But this might not always be the most fun thing to work with.
05:11So when you are a creative person you tend to prefer
05:14the diffused mode, also known as we creative mode or the right brain mode.
05:18And with this mode your brain is free to wander. You can put on some music, some videos because you're not really learning anything new
05:26reinforcing what you have already learned
05:28So knowing this and knowing that we are not completely left brained or completely right brained and that these are just modes that we can
05:35shift back and forth between,
05:37we can utilize the modes to be the most efficient for us.
05:40If you're going to learn something you even probably don't have distractions.
05:44But in expressing something let your mind wander.
05:48But no matter what you are learning or how you are doing it, you have to do it by yourself.
05:52You can't really watch a video of someone
05:54painting and pick up all the painting skills without painting along. When you see someone else do something
05:59it's not understanding it. Because a large part of learning is
06:03problem-solving and you have to solve the problem yourself.
06:09Sometimes it can be so hard to learn something new because it's so different that you have no way of relating to it.
06:17If something feels so abstract that you can't even relate to it,
06:21then you have to not just learn the name for it or what category it belongs to,
06:26but you have to learn about it until it feels real, until it's a part of reality.
06:32When it comes to drawing, I might think of an eye and the eye actually sticks out a lot.
06:36but it's kind of hard to imagine that on your own. So I can say eyes
06:40are like marbles and eyelids are like fabric over them.
06:44And now we have a way of relating to
06:46just how the eye looks as it sticks out. Or when it comes to figure drawing
06:51I can say draw from the head down to the dominant leg, so that you can feel the
06:56gravity and the force and the weight as you draw it. And when it comes to which leg is the dominant leg, then allow me to go over
07:03and kick the model so they fall to the floor and start crying. Which leg did I kick?
07:10That's the dominant leg. The important thing to learning
07:13the things that feel tougher is to get across the major
07:17idea and not get stuck in the details, because as you get to learn these things that are more abstract or harder to learn
07:24your synapses will start to connect easier with more complicated things. Because now you have something that is actually
07:30relatable. It's important to not get too stuck in the details because otherwise all you have is the details.
07:40If you want to remember something, you have to test yourself.
07:43You have to make it important to you and have a need for it.
07:47So you can test yourself by trying to do different things from memory to see how much you actually know.
07:52And then when you see what is wrong
07:54You can study it again to correct it. And there's nothing wrong with
07:58catching yourself not knowing something or having made a mistake.
08:01All of this is part of the learning process.
08:03There's always going to be mistakes,
08:05because mistakes are a part of how we learn.
08:08But a problem that can happen with creative people is that they become too trusting a fair right side
08:14intuition, to the point where you now refuse to learn something new because your intuition is misleading.
08:21Repeating something you already know well is pretty easy,
08:23so it can feel like you have already mastered something when you actually have not.
08:28Something that can happen with something like drawing is that you keep drawing heads from imagination until now
08:34this is what heads look like to you.
08:36So it really is important that you set aside time for deliberate practice and don't only rely on your intuition.
08:43Because your intuition is important but in the right situations.
08:47And then on the more left brain side of things: As much as we would like to cram all the studying in
08:53so we can learn everything immediately,
08:55it just doesn't work. Because your brain won't be able to keep up with making you neural structures
09:01I think a good way to approach this is by mixing things up.
09:05Don't just study one thing over and over again, but go back and forth between different things.
09:09So that you give yourself the space to repeat and process the things you are learning.
09:14Set aside time to fully study something and then time to freely explore it.
09:20So by spacing things out over periods, we can actually use our practice and our intuition to reliably learn new things.
09:31It's perfectly normal to procrastinate because things feel unpleasant,
09:36especially if they are really new to us. Maybe for a long time you wanted to make music
09:39but you haven't made any steps towards making music. You don't know anything about music. You don't know where to start.
09:46It's this big overpowering thing and in comparison, even the first steps feel so tiny.
09:52But if you were to focus right now, not so much on everything unpleasant up ahead
09:56but what you can learn right now; maybe you could open up a music software and just get acquainted with it.
10:02What if you bought a smaller instrument just to play around with and have fun with? What if you did something
10:07that works with where you are right now in the present moment?
10:10Because the thing is when we expect the initial pain of learning something new, we expect everything after that to be just as painful.
10:18Maybe you don't have any highly developed talents and skills,
10:21but you have these artists you look up to and more than anything
10:24you want to have those skills. You want to have what they have, but you can't have that right now.
10:29But you can have the initiative. You can have the talent of
10:34making effort, time investment, and getting something done
10:37no matter how small it is. And anything that comes after that can just be a byproduct.
10:44Maybe if we trace back to where talent comes from, then maybe this is where it starts. And it only relies on one thing
10:52That you take the initiative.
10:56Thank you for listening. And if you would like to support my work
10:58You can like this video, you can subscribe and you can follow me around.
11:02You can also support me on patreon, or if you don't like patreon
11:05I have a ko-fi where you can directly support my caffeine addiction. See you soon again, and bye bye.
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