Planning LF2

Word count goal: 28,000 words

2021-03-11: 00:45:00 826 words, 18 wpm, current total: 8512 words

2024-03-04: 00:50:00 1675 words, 33 wpm, current total: 7684 words

2024-03-02: 00:37:00 775 words, 21 wpm, current total: 6003 words

2024-03-01: 01:17:39 2192 words, 28 wpm, current total: 5220 words

2024-02-29: 00:55:58 1317 words, 23 wpm, current total: 3028 words

2024-02-28: 00:58:54 1225 words, 20 wpm, current total: 1705 words

2024-02-27: 00:00:00 480 words, current total: 480 words

Planning Section Introduction

Welcome to this chapter on choose and planning your learning project.

Why is planning an important step to learning

Provide an overview for the upcoming section

Choosing A Learning Topic

Choosing a learning topic can actually be quite difficult or easy.

Connecting Learning To Interests/Values

Picking something specific to learn

Research Learning Topic

What is researching in the context of learning

Why research before diving in

How to conduct research

Don't forget that we have to record some of this information for our learning journal.

What to look for when researching

Identify Resources

What is a useful resource?

How to find the best coach/teacher

Learning Evaluation

Quote related to being fully present in the moment, or else being unable to be present when you would like to be.

What is learning evaluation

For those of us who are inspired to learn nearly everything that we can get our hands on, it can be difficult to focus our effort and make progress.

I have found that I am often trying to learn too many things at once, and in doing so am not able to focus my efforts and make any visible progress that motivates me to keep learning. I think that because I am unable to make progress fast enough, I mine as well start learning as much I can, as widely as I can in order to make some sort of development somewhere.

If I were to be completly honest with myself, I overwhelm myself with different learning projects at once because I hate the limitation of having to choose what I can learn and do. There is a limitlessness that comes with making no decisions, with allowing yourself to do and try everything. However, in doing so I am often unable to be able to do or practice any of the things that I had set out to do.

I had at one point tried to practice drawing, meditation, writing, reading and coding every more for about 10 minutes each. I continued doing this for 100 days before I had decided to focus on writing for writing for 50 minutes each morning instead. By focusing on writing, I was able to publish my first book within 4 months of consistent practice. I am unsure whether or not I would have been able to finish that book without sacrificing drawing, reading and coding for that time.

Learning evaluation is about accepting your limitations. Understanding what you are able to do, and learning accordingly. For myself I've found that I can have at max, 3 active learning projects at one time.

We will be walking through different things for you to look out for and think about when decided which projects are a top prioritiy now, or ones that can be waited until after you've reached a stopping point.

Why should you focus on only 1 learning topic at a time

It’s a matter of simple math: acquiring new skills requires a critical mass of concentrated time and focused attention. If you only have an hour or two each day to devote to practice and learning, and you spread that time and energy across twenty different skills, no individual skill is going to receive enough time and energy to generate noticeable improvement.
~ The First 20 Hours [1]

Let's assume that you only have a limited number of hours that you can use to learn each week. Connect this to having a shorter time span, and that the more projects you have the longer each will take.

If you have only 1 hour a week to learn a new skill, and we assume that it will take about 25 hours for you to reach the first check point for any learning project, then let's see how long it will take you to reach your goal, based on the number of concurrent learning projects you have:

With 1 project, at 1 hour a day, it will take 25 days to reach 25 hours.

With 2 projects, at 30 minutes a day each, it will take 50 days to reach 25 hours in each of those projects.

With 3 projects, at 20 minutes a day each, it will take 75 days to reach 25 hours in each of those projects.

With 4 projects, at 15 minutes a day each, it will take 100 days to reach 25 hours in each of those projects.

But those numbers are 'best case scenarios'. We are taking about 25 hours of focused effort towards these learning projects.

Not all hours are created equal in day, the efficiency of an hour depends upon a few things.

How much does transitioning between projects cost you?

It takes about 12 minutes on average to transition from 1 task to another. And a considerable amount of willpower to do so as well.

This means that the first 12 or so minutes of switching skills or topics is used to empty your working memory of the previous topic or skill and start recalling the mental maps needed for the current task. This first 12 minutes can be among our lease focused time spent learning, and is often the most frustrating as we typcially have resistance to tranisitioning from one task to the next.

These 12 minutes of transition time are required to get into gear on a task, but for every new learning project we add on to our 1 hour of focused time, the more deluited our focus time becomes.

With 1 project, at 1 hour a day, and 12 minutes to get into the focused grove, we will have about 48 minutes of focus time on this project per day.

With 2 projects, at 30 minutes a day each, and 12 minutes to get into skill 1, and then 12 minutes to get into skill 2, we will have a total of 18 minutes of focused time per project.

With 3 projects, at 20 minutes a day each, it will only be 8 minutes of focused time per project.

With 4 projects, it can be even as little as 3 minutes of focsued time per each project per day.

Counter point: As we will learn later in the _____ section, there can be a learning benefit to distractions and interleaving different learning topics. However, there are only benefits to switching between projects of differnet types or topics in specifc situations, which we will cover in more detail later.

Counter point: Creative problem solving can often be benefited by the right type of distractions.

We can't multitask.

Why you could have more than 1 project at a time.

Let's forget the math for a moment and have a heart to heart. Life's not always about doing what may be the scientifically best way to do something, or always following the instructions. (Which includes following all of the guidelines and research in this book). Sometimes, its about following your passion and availability.

While I am fully aware that there is a laundry list of reasons why having only 1 learning topic at a time allows me to finish that one project at a time, I think there is a gap of realisim in that advice.

For example, I am in the process of writing this learning framework book over the course of 1 hour everyday in the mornings, as well as any spare time throughout the day.

In addition to this, I also have a game that I really enjoy and play frequently to unwind at the end of the day called rocket league. The game has a high skill ceiling, and lots of interesting technqiues and strategies that you could use while playing. I have recently dedicated some time to practicing and learning the mechanics and positioning of the game. I would consider it my 2nd learning project.

I also am a full time college student right now taking 18 credits in my last semester, which involves taking 7 classes. Most of my classes are fairly low stakes and low interest, I just need the credits to graduate. But there are 2 classes that have spiked my interest: Guitar and Darkroom Photography.

So in addition to writing this book, and dedicating a few hours here and there to rocket league, I am also spending 30 minutes a day practicing guitar, in addition to playing with photography every other weekend or so. It is a lot, but in a fun way that is challenging what I think I'm capable of.

The reason I believe that I can maintain 4 concurrent learning projects is because they all have guardrails. This is an important concept I want you to understand if you are going to try taking on more than 1 project at a time.

Guardrails are my way of saying timeboxing, boudaries, or a little box that the project stays in. My learning framework book will only ever be 1 hour in the morning, and maybe a few more hours if the topic is interesting. Guitar will never be more than 30 minutes a day, execpt for days where I have class, which is only 1 monday a week. Photography is pretty much at bare minimum time it needs to meet the projects expectations, which most of the time is only a few hours 1 weekend every 3 weeks, and whatever in class time it needs. Rocket league will never be before 5 pm, unless its a weekend and I want to relax.

If you don't have guardrails than projects will easily consume your life if you let them. That is true of work or play.

If you intend to have more than 1 project going on at the same time, make sure that you allow yourself a day or two to drop something if its needed. Don't require yourself to do 7 hours of learning everyday just to say that you can do it.

There are days where I don't practice guitar. There are a lot of nights I'm not interested or able to play rocket league. Most of time I'm not taking new or more photos. But I do keep a minimum that I spent at least 1 hour everyday on the learning framework.

It's okay if you want to learn something and not have the availability or interest in pushing yourself to spend X number of hours everyday to do it. But it is important to have an idea of when you are going to spend time on it, and how you will check in with yourself on keeping it up, which we will discuss in a later chapter.

How to decide whether or not a learning project is for you (right now)

When I have an idea for a learning topic, a project or skill that I would like to take on, I write it down on a little pocket sized memo pad. This little note is just to record the thought and remind me to add it to my project evaluation system later in the day or week. Every so often I will go through this memo pad and transfer the project ideas to a small stack of project evaluation slips of paper.

I have a simple printable project evaluation card that I use to write down any ideas for things that I could build, or skills I would like to learn. Each project evaluation takes a fourth of a peice of paper. I have a stack of these project evaluation cards that sit behind my desk. This is like my list of 'Someday/maybe' things that I would like to learn or do in the future.

A Someday/maybe list of things to learn ~ Getting Things Done

Project evaluation ~ How to ADHD

Should you evaluate now, or later?

A quick note before we begin deciding whether or not this topic is for you. When organizing and writing this guide I had a lot of difficultly of where I should place this step. Evalutaing whether or not to take on a learning journery should be done early enough where you won't spend a lot of time planning and goal setting for a journey you're not ready to take, but also should be placed late enough that you have a clear idea of how long and hard the journey will be.

Let me explain why I choose to place evalutaing here, rather than later in the section, so that you can decide whether or not you agree with me and would find value in evalutaing now, or after doing more research.

The evaluation process should be done after choosing a learning topic and researching that topic. That much I believe is true regardless of where this chapter could be. This is the earliest it could be in the planning phase.

Yet, part of the learning process is setting a goal, identifying the steps to reach that goal, and the cost of practice. All of which will be covered in more depth and detial in the chapters after this one. This means that you could avoid double dipping in these topics and choose to evaluate after you have set a goal and roadmap.

The reason I choose this step, at this time, is that if I decide not to pick up a learning project at this part in the process, but decide that I do want to continue it at some point, I will be picking up the project and starting by creating a new goal, roadmap, and with a better idea of the time cost it will have.

It is up to you whether or not you agree with my decision to place this chapter here. If you disagree, try evaluating whether or not you want to try learning a skill later after the Learning Roadmap chapter. The order of most of these steps is up to your discretion, I have simply tried to do my best to order them in the way that makes most sense while researching and playing with the material.

Create the Project/Learning Evaluation as a printable/thing to print out.

Step 1. Project name + description

The first thing you have to do in order to determine whether or not a learning project is your top prioritiy is to give it a name, and a short description. Your name doesn't have to be anything fancy, it just has to communicate what you want to learn or be able to do.

The description should be as detailed as you would like it to be. Just keep in mind that while you have a good idea of what you want to learn, build or be able to do now, you may not have the same context a few weeks from now. Write so that your future self understands what it is exactly that you want to learn.

Step 2. Why Do You Want It?

Reflect on why learning this topic or skill is important to you. Is it something that you are really passionate about and would like to teach others about? Is it a skill that you would use to help your family or friends? How does learning to draw connect with your passions, values and what you would like to be able to do?

This doesn't need to be a 5 paragraph essay, but it should be to convey where your motivation for learning this skill or topic is coming from. When you are on your 5th week of practice, you should be able to look at this to remind you why you started doing this in the first place.

Step 3. What Does It Cost?

When most people hear the word cost, their first thought is money. Which is reasonable given the context that cost is used, however when you are evaulating the cost of learning a skill or topic I want you to think about three things:

Money to aquire resources, coaches, classes, or other materials.
Time it will take to learn and develop the skill.
Opportunity Cost, which is what you give up by choosing this skill over another skill.

Opportunity cost is the most difficult one to evaluate as emotionally we don't want to have to choice between one or the other, we would like to have both. Think critically about what you are willing to give up in order to obtain this skill, or have this knowledge.

If you were wanting to learn how to paint, your costs may look like this:

It would cost $50 for paints, canvases, and an estel.
I would spend 4 hours a week practicing painting on the weekends.
In order to paint, I would be spending less time learning the paino, or watching tv.

Step 4. End Goal.

You already know what you would like to learn, why you want it, and what it would cost. Now it's time to clearly illustrate what the end goal looks like. When you've put in your weeks of practice, and you've developed the skill and knowledge, what are you doing with it?

I recently took up an online class in deep point muscle massage therapy. There were about 6 hours worth of lectures that covered different muscle groups and where the tension is stored. My end goal for taking this class was to be able to help releave tension in my girl friend's neck and shoulders and she dealt with early onset arthritis.

Don't worry about having a super detailed end goal in mind. Just have a mental image, and a few sentences describing what you would be able to do, create or know after you've spent the time learning.

Step 5. Steps to reach that goal.

Identify the 6 steps that it takes to reach that end point. Start from the end goal and work backwards.

For my example of wanting to learn trigger point massage therapy would look like this:

End goal: Releive tension in neck and shoulders.
Practice massaging the specific trigger points in the neck and shoulder.
Practice different massaging techniques.
Knowledgabile and skilled enough to do that, which means practice identifying the muscle groups and understanding how to do it safely.
That means, I need to finish all the lectures on those muscle groups, and all of the safety lectures.
Get any materials I need to start the course and set aside time for practice.

The reason we start from the end goal and work backwards is that we might realize shortcuts we can take in order to reach our goal. In my example, I realized that I didn't need to focus on the leg muscles or arms becuase my goal was to relieve tension in the next and shoulders. I will at some point watch those lectures, but they aren't aligned with my goal at the moment.

Walking through the steps that it will take to reach our end goal will help us more clearly realize the effort that it will take to reach our learning goal. This can show us things that we may not have considered will take more or less time.

I didn't think about how much time I would dedicate to the safety portion of learning massage therapy until I walked backwards from my end goal. This will probably take longer than I was first considering as I will want to do more research and gather more information and practice before attempting it on another person.

I also realized I didn't need to watch all of the lectures, and could focus on the muscle groups I was interested in. Which means that I can also save a lot of time and effort with this specific skill.

Step 6. How Will You Pay For It?

What will you exchange in order to have the time, energy or money in order to learn this skill? If you are only willing to spend 10 hours to learn how to perform magic tricks or party tricks, then set that limit now before going into the project. That way when you go into your practice you can feel confident that you are giving enough of your time to aquiring the new skill, yet not so much time that you feel regretful later.

Asking yourself 'how will I pay for this skill' keeps you grounded in reality. Remember, when it comes to time and energy there is always an exchange thats occuring. Whether or not you are concious of the choice to trade 30 minutes a day to look at instagram reels is up to you. Sometimes when you just want to rest, or only have a few minutes that's a fair trade for some cheap entertainment. Other times, when you have the energy and ability, its more expensive becuase you could be practicing towards your learning goals.

I am willing to trade 1 hour a day, everyday in order to aquire the ability to read and learn faster. I will pay for this ability by spending my first hour after I wake up on learning reading and learning techniques.

Step 7. The Final Verdict

This is the point where you will make your decision on whether or not learning this skill is important or valuable to you now. You have 3 options with your learning skill that you've evaluated:

Not Worth It! If you don't have the time or energy to dedicate to the skill, or have something else that you think would be for fun or rewarding to learn, it's okay to say no to it. Saying no to projects that aren't important enough protects your time for the things that matter most. Saying no to the things that sound half interesting save your time and energy for the things that are completely engaging.

If you've gone through the evaluation process you may have realized that learning under water basket weaving just isn't a priority in your life. It's okay if you come to this decision after the research and thought that you've put into it. It can be challenging to face your own limitations and realize that you won't be able to learn every skill or build everything that comes into your mind.

It's hard to say no to others, and sometimes its even harder to say no to yourself. There are times where you can say, "no, not right now"...

Not Now! This is for when you are choosing between a few of your favorite most important topics and skills and want to prioritize one project for a period of time.

Saying, "Not Now" still gives you the space to focus and aquire skills rapidly, while also giving you more inspiration and things to keep you motivated once you finish your current project.

There is a technique called "this or nothing" in the self discipline world, which involves focusing only on one thing, "this", or nothing else for an allotment of time. If you decided to switch during your alloted time, you must throw away all of your current progress.

While this technique seems harsh, it does so to illustrate an important observation within your own psyche. The cost of switching between tasks, projects or distracts is dirt cheap. Which means that if you ever get bored, regardless of how close you are to finishing your current project, you will switch to something else, literally anything else in order to avoid going through the hardship of finishing what you started. When there is no consquense for switching, you will always switch to something easier, leaving all of the hard work left undone until you feel like finishing it, which mine as well be forever. In this case it is as if you have thrown away your work by letting it sit and collect dust.

I don't believe that this is the only approach to life, nor do I believe that this needs to be the only way you approach your learning. Being that harsh on yourself over too long of time may disconnect you from why you wanted to learn in the first place. But I do think that it's a valuble tool and concept to keep in your toolbelt for when the time comes.

Worth It! You've gone through all of your favorite up and coming learning ideas and have decided on the one that you want to see to the end. The skill that you're willing to pay for in hours and effort.

Learning Journal

What is a learning journal

A learning journal is a way for you to record your learning journery. Think of it as your companion that will keep track of where you want to go, where you are now, and where you've been. It will be a place to store a your plan that you are creating in this section, as well as your discoveries in the next section and a tool to help you evalute your learning in the last section.

Keeping a journal is a way to help you organize all of the different information about your learning that you will come across.

Why use a learning journal

Meta-Cognition

Meta-Cognition is thinking about your thinking. It can be broken down into two parts: A) Planning: "How will I know what I know?", "What are my goals?", "Do I need more background knowledge?", and B) Monitoring: "Could I learn this idea in a different way?", "Am I making progress?", "Why am I doing what I am doing?". Pg 72 Learn Better [4]

Studies have should that that experts spend more time thinking about how problems are framed, or thinking about how to think about the problem, far more than beginners do.

Writing is an effective way to practice Meta-cognition because it forces us to confront putting our ideas into words, which questions and challenges our thinking. When we write we have to think about the word usage, structure, and more deeply on the topic at hand.

Context is often one of the most important parts of comprehension. Put differently, learning to learn is often a matter of knowing about what you’re learning.
Metacognition is defined as 'thinking about thinking', it's about how you understand something.
Metacognition has two parts, according to experts. First, there’s the planning aspect: How will I know what I know? What are my goals? Do I need more background knowledge? Second, there’s the monitoring part: Could I learn this idea in a different way? Am I making progress? Why am I doing what I am doing?
This sort of metacognition often comes easily to experts. When a specialist works through an issue, they’ll think a lot about how the problem is framed. They’ll have a sense of whether or not their answer seems reasonable or not. They’ll reflect on how they got to an answer. The key is not to leave this thinking about thinking to the experts. The research suggests, in fact, that beginners often need this sort of metacognitive thinking just as much as the experts. In other words, the faster that we ask metacognitive questions, the quicker we can master new skills.
How will I know what I know? What do I find confusing? Do I have a way to measure my understanding?
~ pg 72 Learn Better [4]

The act of writing is a good example of metacognition because when we think about composing sentences and paragraphs, we’re often asking ourselves crucial metacognitive questions: Who will be reading this? Will they understand me? What things do I need to explain? This is why writing is often such an effective way to organize one’s thoughts. It forces us to evaluate our arguments and think about our ideas.
~ pg 72 Learn Better [4]

For their part, researchers recommend that people ask these sorts of questions well before they start learning something. By probing ourselves before we gain a bit of expertise, we’re priming our metacognitive pump—and making our learning more durable. Indeed, psychologist Lindsey Richland and a colleague have showed that people who try to answer metacognitive questions before they read some text learn a lot more, even if they can’t answer the metacognitive questions correctly.
~ pg 72 Learn Better [4]

Do I know this about learning? Why do I know this about learning?
~ pg 72 Learn Better [4]

How to create/use a learning journal

It doesn't need to be super complex, and oftentimes the more complex your system is, the less likely you are to keep up with it over the course of your project. You should be looking for a system that meets these criteria:

Fast Insertion. I can add information to my learning journal within 30 seconds of opening it.
Durable. The information and notes I store will not be lost, damaged, or destoryed, during and after my learning project.
Easy Access. I can access my learning journal at any point to add insights or ideas that I have about my learning journery.

You should consider the format of the information you are dealing with for a learning project. I deal with a lot of technical and digital information for some of my learning projects, so I like to have something that I can access on the computer or phone. I can add links to videos and websites (resources) that I find helpful and can add notes to them within my journal.

If I were to take up drawing as a learning project, I would probably perfer a smaller handheld notebook as I would want to be able to doodle and sketch the ideas that I have. If I have an insight about shading something, I want to be able to record that insight in the same format and technique that I would be using that insight in. Context matters.

How Much Time Should I Dedicate To A Learning Journal?

Think about this

One of the most difficult things to balance when dealing with meta-learning and practice when you start out is the balance between time spent on the system, and time spent in the system. If your goal is to learn how draw hands so you can draw your favorite characters, then spending hours watching videos of other people drawing their favorite landscapes is unlikely to help.

Time spent drawing hands improves your ability to draw hands. Time spent reflecting on drawing hands improves your ability to know how to draw hands.

Let me make this very clear: Hours spent reflecting, planning, and learning about drawing hands will only help you to a certain extent. Hours of drawing hands will teach to learn drawing hands. Knowing the proper technique, and atonymy of hands will help you see the hands you want to draw, drawing the hands you can will help you eventually draw the hands you see with studying.

Avoiding The Endless Student Syndrome.

Start Here

What should go in a learning journal

Your learning journal should be yours. It is up to you what you decided to record or not record in it. I will give you some recommendations based on my research, as well as some templated questions that have appeared time and time again in various books and articles on the subject.

The process of writing down your thoughts and discoveries helps encode them, and make it easier to remember in the future. It also offers you a way to look back and reflect on your process of learning, and the different techniques you try over the course of your learning journey.

You will notice that I recommend recording a lot of the steps in the planning and learning phases down as it the steps often play into one another. Having your learning goal written down will help when you are reviewing your learning journery and deciding where to take it.

The more you have written down before sitting down to practice, the easier it will be to focus on the practicing part, and not have to think about the meta-learning aspects.

Learning Journal Entry Format:

I have been experimenting with using a specific format for my learning journal entries to find a pattern that provides me with the most insights.

Date - being able to look back on your entries and know when you wrote them down helps you understand the pace at which you are learning.
What Did I Do? - a simple sentence or two, or a bullet point list that explains to your future self where you are in the learning process.
How Long Did I Practice/Study? - While not required, recording how long you practiced for can help you appreciate the slow pace that learning often takes. When you look back on your entries you can begin to have a more realistic perspective for how long your next learning project might take.
What Obstacles Did I Encounter? - This can be in the practice session itself, or about the learning process overall. For example, you could have had difficulty with the figure position of a specific chord, or the timing of a specific piece. Or maybe you had trouble making time this past week to practice, or felt discouraged to even continue practicing. Obstacles can take all shapes and sizes, and each one has a way around it or through it.
Am I On Track With My Long-Term Goal? - reflect on how what you did today aligns with your long-term learning goal. If you begin to notice yourself stepping away from your learning goal, you may want to update your goal/plan to include the new sub-set, or return to your main objective.
What Am I Going To Do Next Time? - defining what you are going to practice or learn will make sitting down next time to practice significantly easier. Think of this as giving yourself a place to pick up from next time.
When and Where Is Next Time? - Using the Intention Implimentation Technique can help you more easily get into a state of focus for your next session. Defining exactly when and where you plan to practice/study next will improve your likely hood of actually doing it, and planning around your learning time.
At Least 1 Meta-Cognition Question. - In the next section there will be a list of different prompts. Each one will take a differnet perspective on your learning journal and help you reflect on your learning process. Keeping the same quesiton will likely only keep giving you the same type of insights. Choose a different one every so often in order to keep your meta-persepctive fresh.

Learning Journal Prompts:

These learning journal prompts can assist you in exercising your meta-cognition around your learning process. Experiment with different questions each entry to gain fresh insights.

How will I be sure that I understand what I am trying to learn?
Do I need more information or research in order to teach this to someone else?
What are my specific goals for this practice session?
What are the different ways I could practice this skill?
What are the different methods I could learn this information?
Is this practice actually improving my ability, how will I know?
Why am I taking this approach to learning, compared to alternative approaches?
What do I find confusing or frustrating with this topic?
How will I be using this skill in competition, or 'the real world'?
What is the context of this specific sub-skill or piece of knowledge?
What ways can I gain feedback on my performance, or knowledge in order to improve?
What is my current weakest point with this skill?
What do I have the most trouble doing or understanding with this subject?
When this trouble point comes up again, how will I approach it?
How can I break down my process in order to examine what is slowing me down?

Things To Include In Your Learning Journal:

Your Learning Topic. In the first chapter we discussed some brainstorming techniques and how to connect your interests and values to a skill or topic you would like to learn. Having this information in your learning journal can be useful when creating your goal, as well as help motivate you to keep going when times are tough, or evaluate whether to stop your learning project altogether.

Your Learning Research. Remember when I said that you may want to take notes and keep this information for later because it will be useful? Well, this is one of those times. The research you did around your learning topic will be valuable to have when creating your roadmap, as well as creating your drills in the next section. Any notes you have from how masters of this topic practice will be valuable, as well as the primary and secondary resources you identified during your research.

Your Learning Evaluation. In the previous chapter we walked through the process of deciding which learning projects to give our attention to, why we are interested in them, what our goals are, and how much it will cost to reach them. Having this information in your learning journal will help remind you of why you started this project and keep you focused on reaching that goal. It will also be there to show you how much you estimated it would take to reach your goal, vs. how much it actually is taking to reach your goal. Having that feedback will help you more properly estimate how long future learning projects will take.

Your Learning Goal. Recording your goal setting progress, and you hope to achieve during your learning project will provide you with something to compare your progress to. Your learning goal will also help break down the different sub-goals or steps you would like to achieve in order to reach your larger overall goal. Having your learning goal inside of your learning journal will be helpful when conducting a post mortem and reviewing your learning journey once you've reached your stopping point.

As we will discuss later, the process of actually writing down your goal makes you 13% more likely to achieve it.

Your Learning Roadmap. Be sure to have the different sub-skills and steps along your learning path written down to reference later. Having an overview of the sub-skills that comprise your skill will make it easier to flow from one sub-skill to the next.

Your Learning Calendar. Record specific deadlines, and dates that are important to your learning journey. Also write down your implimentation technique of when you are going to practice and for how long. Having this written down helps make it more real. I also recommend that once you write it down in your learning journal, you also add it to your prefered method of calendar that you check frequently.

Reflection on your meta-cognition.

Reflection on your mindset.

Practice Reflection/Log.

Practice Drills.

Notes that you take.

Self Quiz questions and results.

Compeition Results and Reflections.

Evaluation/Check-ins

Where to go from here

Set A Learning Goal

What is a goal in the context of learning

Getting clarity on what you would like to accomplish. Setting the rules of the game before playing.

Setting goals or objectives for your learning helps us clarify what skills or knowledge we are trying to acquire. Setting an aim on an objective helps us be more selective on where we spend our effort.

There was once a study that followed participants and their progress on goals they had set for themselves. One group simply verbally shared their goal with the researchers before the study, and the second group wrote down their goals and shared them with the researchers. I don't remember the specifics, but those who wrote down their goals were 8-13% more likely to have reached them by the end of the study period.

What is the stuff that is obvious and doesn't need to be explained?

Why set a learning goal

Effective Goal-Setting Strategies

Throughout the following steps, I will use the same example in order to show you how you might apply the goal-setting steps and the effects they might have. I decided to do a simple example of wanting to improve health and choose running as the means through which to do so. I will also provide you with some more specific examples of learning goals that I have had in the past or am currently working to achieve.

Step 1. Write It Down

Get a piece of paper and begin writing the following down.

Step 2. What's Your Broad Aspiration?

Be as vague as you would like, but ensure that you write down what brought you to this idea. Connect this broad goal to your passions and interests for increased motivation.

Poor Example: I want to pass a test.

Good Example: I want to be a surgeon.

Example: I want to improve my physical health.

Step 3. Connect To Values.

Why is this goal important to you? How does it connect to your values?

Example: Physical health is crucial to me because it allows me to be more active with my friends and live a longer, more fulfilling life.

Step 4. How Good Do You Need To Be?

What is your target performance level with this goal? Is this a goal that requires you to be the best there is, or can you achieve your goal at a intermediate or novice level?

If you are aiming for a high level of compeition, such as winning a tournament, you will need to be really skilled. If you are interesting in taking on this learning project for fun, then you don't need to be worried about perfection and can allow yourself to make some mistakes.

Example: I want to complete a 5K run = I need to have a good endurance level.

Now, compare our example to if I were to say either: A) I want to maintain a regualr workout routine, where consistency is more important than perfection to situation B) I want to be in the top 25 in a marathon, which requires significantly more effort and training. Both of these example situations would help me reach my broad aspiration of imiproving my physical health, but in very different ways.

Step 5. Get Specific.

What are the specific outcomes you hope to achieve?

A Poor Example of this would be: I want to get fit.

A Good Example of this would be: I want to run a 5K in under 30 minutes by the end of the year.

Step 6. Use Inversion.

Imagine the Opposite of What You Want. What would it look like if you failed to meet this goal? Inverting these elements identifies crucial parts of the goal by considering what would lead to failure.

In our example of running a 5k in under 30 minutes, failing this goal would look like finishing in any time longer than 30 minutes. Which means that it's very important to focus on the pace and endurance that I am able to run at.

Another example of failling this goal would look like only exercising a few times a month. If I think that this would be an aspect of failing this goal, than it must be important for me to exercise more frequently.

If you continue to do this exercise you will come up with a list of what it looks like to fail your goal. This list, when inverted, will reveal what the most important parts of your goal are to focus on.

Step 7. Positive and Present Reframing.

Reframe your goal in the present tense, and use positive language.

A poor example of this would be: "I'm not sitting around anymore and hoping I'll get fit someday.

A good example of this would be: "I am actively improving my fitness every day and getting closer to running a 5K."

Step 8. Resources Needed.

What resources (time, money, tools, skills) do you currently have, and what do you need?

Examples could include: "I currently have a gym membership and running shoes.", and "I need a structured training plan."

Step 9. Potential Obstacles.

What obstacles might you encounter?

Examples: "Time management with work and family duties.", "Weather conditions for outdoor running."

Step 10. Support System.

Who can support you in achieving this goal?

Example: "My family for encouragement.", "A friend as a running partner."

Step 11. Realistic Timeline.

What is a realistice timeline for achieving your goal?

A Pour Example of a Realistic Timeline would be "I think I can switch from my seditary lifestyle to completing a 5K within 1 month."

A Good example of a Realisitc Timeline would be "I aim to complete the 5K run in under 30 minutes by December 31st, giving myself 10 months to train and improve."

Step 12. Backward Planning.

Imagine that you've completed your goal. Work backwards and write down the steps that it took to get there.

For me to have met my goal of running a 5K in 30 minutes, I would have to: Hold a pace of 6 minutes/kilometer over the 5K distance. Hold a pace of 6 minutes/kilometer over a 3K distance. Reach a speed of 6 minutes/kilometer for 1K distance. Improve my cardiovascular endurance. Get an idea of my current pace.

Step 13. Shorten Timescale.

Goals with deadlines further than 3 months out can be demotivating and are less likely to be followed through with. Create a smaller more achieveable stepping stone for your goal that you can reach within 3 months. It takes about 8 weeks for new skills to develop.

A Poor example would be: "In three months, I plan to run 5K every day without focusing on improving my time or endurance."

A Good example would be: "In the next three months, I aim to consistently run 3K three times a week, improving my pace to reach a 6-minute kilometer for at least 1K of that distance. This milestone will build my endurance and pace towards the larger goal of completing a 5K run in under 30 minutes by December 31st."

Step 14. Impact of Achieving Goal.

How will achieving this goal impact your life or the lives of others?

Example: "Reaching my goal of running a 5K in 30 minutes will improve my overall health and fitness. Improving my health will allow me to help my family move in the coming months and be more present with them."

Step 15. Lifestyle Adjustments.

What adjustments will you need to make to your current lifestyle or priorities to accommodate this goal? Think about the costs in time, energy and money that your goal will take. Think about where this time and energy will come from.

A Poor example of this would be: "I will not have to make any adjustments in order to meet my goal."

A Good example of this would be: "I will have to wake up 1 hour earlier 3 days a week in order for me to train for my 5K."

Step 16. Implementation Intentions.

Create a specific plan for when, where and how you will practice for your goal.

The template for creating a Implementation Intention looks like this: "I will do at least [num of mins] minutes of [activity] on [day] at [time of day] at/in [place].", or "I will [verb] for [quantitiy of time] after/before [existing routine habit]."

Here are 2 examples for our running example: "I will go on a 20 minute run after I wake up on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.", OR "I will run for at least 30 minutes on Tuesday after work at 5:30pm around my neighborhood."

Step 17. Re-Write Your Goal.

Re-write your goal with above information, and place it in a visible area that will remind you to stick with it.

Our example would look like: "In the next three months, I aim to consistently run 3K three times a week, improving my pace to reach a 6-minute kilometer for at least 1K of that distance. This milestone will build my endurance and pace towards the larger goal of completing a 5K run in under 30 minutes by December 31st. To achieve this, I will wake up one hour earlier three days a week to train and follow a structured plan. This plan includes running for at least 20-minutes on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays upon waking up. By achieving this goal, I will not only enhance my physical health but also increase my ability to be present and helpful to my family during upcoming moves."