Attitude
New apps, downloads, spreadsheets, etc. all have their uses, and can bolster your studies dramatically when used intelligently. But they will not learn for you, nor will they guarantee success or enjoyment.
When it comes to learning, one of the most important things anyone can do is cultivate an effective attitude. What does an effective attitude look like? What will such behaviour do for you and how can you cultivate a useful attitude towards learning?
What does an effective attitude look like?
To address the first of these questions, I would like you to think of someone you know and admire for their work ethic and intelligence. Consider how they speak about performing laborious tasks, how they go about finishing up anything that is on their to-do lists, and their general disposition and thoughts about their own actions. So often, these people find simple pleasure in engaging in any amount of work that they feel is required of them. These people have a sense of duty to every task they have committed themselves to, even when the task is mundane, or daunting, or seemingly impossible. I have seen time and time again that people with a firm attitude will approach such things as exciting challenges to take on and surpass.
What will an attitude of determination and duty do for you?
The second question is now a little simpler to answer. Considering the person (or people) you thought of earlier, you can easily see some of the benefits that a positive scholarly attitude holds for you. With a proper attitude, the work required to reach a goal will get done no matter what. Willingness to complete difficult work will grow over time and become easier to conjure up when necessary.
But aside from a willingness and determination to complete what must be done, there are other benefits that do not show themselves so clearly. With a positive attitude toward learning, peace of mind will follow. Assignments, reading, writing, and brainstorming all become an exciting part of the process of learning. These things are no longer obstacles getting in the way of your free time, they are often how you spend your free time. Confidence will surely increase as well, since you will come to know that learning is an iterative process chock-full of failure, misunderstanding, and finally breakthrough (and then back to failure with a new concept); it becomes an exciting cycle that you learn to work with and truly enjoy.
how can you cultivate a useful attitude towards learning?
What and why questions are very easy to answer, because they don’t require much explanation. Now it is necessary not only to point at excellent people who have cultivated effective learning attitudes but to explain how this can be done, because that’s the important part. Read on to the following section, because while the proper attitude adjustments aren’t fundamentally complicated or difficult, I want to spend a good amount of time clearly explaining what can be done incrementally in your learning career (and life) to provide you with the ability to improve and bolster your learning attitude. This is not a quick-fix solution that you can implement during a cramming session, this is a lifestyle change and will require long-term application and commitment. Read on to see how you can begin.
1. Get Over Yourself
I’ll start with the harshest facts. Studying, assignments, and most other little tasks surrounding learning are difficult and often not enjoyable. Naturally, when faced with irritating or challenging tasks, most people tend to complain about them. I completely understand and sympathize with these feelings. Doing any amount of work is difficult and requires motivation, energy, and tough critical thinking and can be extremely tiring. Studying can even be daunting when you feel that the subject matter is dense beyond your capabilities of understanding. But when it comes to complaining, there really is no benefit or excuse to do it. Consider how fortunate it is that you are in a position in which you actually can complain about education and availability of information. We all live in unprecedented times with amazing technology, opportunity, and even extravagance. Yes, studying is difficult, but a life without effort I don’t think is worth living, and most things worth having take work. Lots of work.
Recognize that other people are also doing the same assignments, learning the same material, and getting confused in similar ways as you. If you are studying something solo, you must also realize that someone in the past has had to learn the content in order to put together a course so that you can also learn it. You are not experiencing this learning alone, and other people have successfully made it through the tough work to reap the rewards of greater knowledge.
Think also about how amazing it really is that you are in a position to learn from other people. We have advanced so far in a society that it is entirely possible to learn vast amounts of information at home using the internet. Or think of more traditional learning methods: one person with detailed knowledge of a subject agrees to stand and share this information for hours in the year to large groups of people who wish to gain the knowledge. This is a noble thing that teachers do, and it is extremely beneficial for the crowds, no matter what pains we must go through to boost our understanding. In short: the learning infrastructure humans have created is astounding and very beneficial to be a part of. It’s just so cool! Please don’t squander your opportunities.
2. Just Start
Attitude is everything. It fluctuates daily though, so be prepared to have both wild successes and deep regressions into helpless attitudes. This is natural and totally acceptable. It is also beatable. Whether in a good or bad mood, you can quickly change your attitude on a small scale by just forcing yourself to start a task. Promise yourself to just begin one thing, for 10 minutes. Take a break, then do another 10 minutes. Soon enough, I think you will find that the breaks every 10 minutes are less and less necessary, your attitude is improving along with your mood, and you are one step closer to completing the task that put you in a sour mood to begin with. You cannot lose by starting.
It is so simple, right? Well, of course it is simple to say and to plan to ‘just start’ but of course that doesn’t come easy in the moments before you have to start. That’s why it is best to just make simple and small promises to yourself. Start, but start small.
Don’t forget that positivity does not equate to happiness either. A bad mood does not mean you are an unhappy person and it doesn’t mean that your work has to suffer. Moods and emotions are fickle, motivation is too, just get to work.
3. Make Your Attitude a Lifestyle
Changing your attitude towards anything does not occur instantly. Perhaps the decision to change your attitude can be instantaneous, prompted perhaps by a sudden realization, or by a comment someone else made, or even by observing people with really good and really bad attitudes. No matter how the decision was brought about, the actions required to make your choice a reality are what take time, effort, and constant practice.
Changes to your patterns of thinking are the primary requirement when changing your attitude about work and learning. You will have to start viewing projects, research, assignments, and any other undesirable aspects of your studies as enjoyable. Find the cool little tricks, facts, or stories behind discoveries or implementations of what you are learning. It is really quite amazing to see the ingenuity and perseverance of those that came before us. Realize too the fact that you are gaining all kinds of knowledge that you now can build upon further, use to your own ends, and create new ideas. It truly is an amazing process, and learning is a great skill we all have and can continue to develop.
If garnering enjoyment from your work is not possible, you should find a way to recognize that what is required of you is at least beneficial. If you do not enjoy the exact content you need to learn, consider spending extra time trying to apply the concepts to areas that you are extremely interested in. This exercise, when done consistently, becomes a lot of fun (I promise that much), can be quite funny (if you don’t limit the scope of your thinking), and is perfect practice for critical thinking, idea generation, and more thorough understanding of how concepts link together.
Don’t limit yourself by thinking that anything is too difficult for you to understand. There are topics that you do not and cannot understand upon first studying it. In fact, there are entire areas of human knowledge that most people never know. This does not mean that you can never know the subjects you are studying. All it means is that it will take several attempts, and perhaps more effort than other courses or subjects require of you. Luckily, the education system is set up knowing this fact. You progress through grades year by year learning more and more material that builds upon knowledge gained and skills sharpened in previous terms of study. You just have to remember this fact about yourself when you study, do not get frustrated when something doesn’t make sense. Instead, feel a compulsion to try it again and again until you can finally say that you understand the concept. Then take that understanding further by applying the concepts to new subjects. Learn, study, discover, repeat.