One of my favorite things to do is learn. Learning in itself is a skill that has to developed through practice. This gets the question, “What’s the best way to learn something?”. I think the best method of learning is unique to every individual. While some people may learn through common methods, the inner workings of those methods themselves might look different on a deeper level. Take for instance an iPhone. Everyone who uses an Iphone uses the same operating system therefore, in a sense, they are all a part of the same system. While that may be true that doesn’t mean they all have the same configuration, apps, browser, settings, etc. I think that learning is the same way. Allow me to explain my current method or “framework” for learning that I called The Learning Ledger.
The Learning Ledger method is relatively simple and I’m sure it’s probably been done before. However this is something that I came up with on my own in an attempt to create a system that I could leverage to help me learn more efficiently. The idea of the Learning Ledger is to provide a simple framework for someone looking to learn a particular subject. Here’s how it works…
Step 1. Read through steps 1 through 12.
Step 2. Find what you want to learn about. Example: “What is the stock market?”.
Step 3. Then google “what is the stock market”.
Step 4. In your LearningLedger’s folder you will find a file called “Questions” (for this article refer to the pictures at the bottom of these steps to see a snippet of what the “Questions” file looks like). Next to number 1 but before the “?” you will enter in what you want to learn about. Example “What is the stock market”.
Step 5. Find an article that you feel has the best answer to that question.
Step 6. Copy the answer’s text after reading it all the way through.
Step 7. In your LearningLedger’s folder you will find a file called “Answers” (for this article refer to the pictures at the bottom of these steps to see a snippet of what the “Answers” file looks like). Paste the answer that you just copied from step 5 and paste it next to the number that the answer’s question originated from in step number 3.
Step 8. If at anytime you come across a term/word that you don’t fully understand the meaning of in step 6, example “employee stock option”, stop reading and go back to google and search “what is employee stock option”.
Step 9. Repeat steps 3 through 8 until you have pasted all of your answers to the Answers file. In step 3 remember to instead use the next highest number so that you can keep your questions in order.
Step 10. Starting with the very last question you asked in the “Questions file”, ask yourself each question in and then read the corresponding answer. Do this all the way until your have read all of the questions and answers in descending numeric value order.
Step 11. In order to track the genesis of each subsequent question after the first initial question, type the number of the “genesis question” at the end of the new question after “——>”
Step 12. If a question in the Questions file is underlined then that means that that question has been read and understood. Make these underlines while you are doing step number 10.
Using this framework you are able to customize however many questions and answers it takes for you to feel like you have a good enough understanding of what the answer to your original question was. I find that using this method helps me to establish a more conscious effort towards learning a subject. The act of creating and reading through the answers to a Learning Ledger for a topic or subject allows for me to remember it easier.
I’m always trying to improve upon my learning methods, I even made some corrections to my Learning Ledger steps in writing this article. I don’t think there is any one best format to learning and that formats can always be improved upon until everyone has learning everything about everything, spoiler alert…we’re not there yet.
