How I Learn

Last Modified: Dec 13, 2024

I have managed to teach myself a lot of basic skills in crafts and coding and stuff. People are sometimes surprised and curious at how I do this, so here are a few things I do:

  1. Find communities you can learn from, and ask silly questions to, be they IRL or online.
  2. Learn for yourself, and learn to do something you're interested in.
  3. Don't assume you will do anything cool or great immediately. If you complain about how it's harder than you expected, and you suck at everything, you will annoy youreslf, and everyone around you.
  4. To this point, own the shit out of being a bit crap, declare it loud. Be proud of learning something for yourself, and being crap at it, and not 'learning' for the sake of making an arrogant performance for social media about how interesting your life is.
  5. Start small. Like COMICALLY small.
  6. Don't be afraid to pick up and then drop a hobby for a while, even years. You'll probably come back to it and find it easier, or, the skill will randomly present itself at a time you never expected.
  7. If you think you know your stuff, teach your skill to other people. Nothing makes you understand something better than teaching it.
  8. If you are neurodivergent and learning is slow and difficult, this is not always a bad thing. It's frustrating as hell, but it doesn't mean that your skill cannot grow to be as good as anyone else's. I think that my Learning Disabilities do prevent me from understanding a wide range of topics, but the topics I do understand, I understand really deeply.