The Easiest and Best Ways to Make You Love Learning Again

Learning is a habit that lets us grow into “super-beings“. From the moment we arrive into the world, our learning process begins. One of our first lessons is learning how to breathe fresh air after escaping our mother’s womb.

From there, we learn how to eat, crawl, talk, walk, and interact in a social environment. The learning process follows us throughout life and is crucial to continue doing so even past adulthood. It keeps our mind fresh and active as we grow into stronger people.

However, some people usually develop a difficult time learning, or they stop caring after they leave High School or College. A mistake many Educational Resources take is making the learning process more of a chore than a pleasure for its students.

When we were children, we didn’t find it irritating to learn how to use the toilet, walk, and say our very first words. We didn’t see those lessons as a chore that had to be done because someone told us to. We did them because we found them enjoyable. Our parents or guardians may have been the source of encouragement to introduce us to our first lessons in life, but it was our desire to try something new that pushed us to stick with them.

A recent question we came across was “How to make learning fun again while in College.” During my time in school, there were moments where I didn’t have the motivation to continue studying because my teacher always taught the class with a monotone voice.

It would have been more exciting if a computer program had taught the class instead. So I had many difficult times finding the motivation to study mandatory subjects when the Professor themselves appeared bored of the subject.

Behaviorism

To start off explaining the concepts to how we learn, the learning process deals primarily with observable behavior, otherwise known as behaviorism. It’s how we learn from our social environments and develop the personalities we have today.

When we first learn how to kiss, we’re usually clumsy and don’t know what to do. But after a few more attempts and feedback, we naturally begin sharpening our skills and became better.

Such as kissing, we learn how to walk and talk through a repeated process of trial and error. To apply behaviorism when acquiring a new skill, try the repeated pattern method of doing something over and over until you begin understanding it.

Such as from Josh Kaufman TED speech about the concept of learning, it only takes 20 hours to learn how to do anything. During those 20 hours, don’t concentrate on trying to master every aspect to it. Just learn the essential roots to it so you could build your skills from there as you learn more about it.

Stimulus Association

The second form of learning is associating your mind to a new stimulus. It’s an automatic response when a smell, scent, or sight triggers a memory response. The concept was developed when Ivan Pavlov used a bell to stimulate a dog to drool every time he rang a bell. Humans are keen to connect their thoughts and memories to real-world stimulation rather than remembering random ideas because we’re told to.

When you’re struggling to learn a new subject, a method that works is connecting the subject to a real-world stimulation. An example would be hearing a certain type of sound as you look over a math equation. You won’t notice any difference at first, but after a few dozen times, it becomes easier to think of the equation after associating it with that unique sound.

If you want to trick yourself to enjoy learning, eat a meal with a unique smell before studying. It has to be a meal you could eat daily without endangering your health, but deliver a tasty treat to make you excited by thought. After smelling the dish, remember the scent as you begin studying.

Consequences Conditioning

This method is a favorite approach for a few friends of mine, and for effective reasons too. It’s when you give yourself either a consequential or reinforcement response after a behavior pattern. When we engage in activities that provide us with rewards, it tends to make us want to perform the same act again.

This works effectively because the reinforcement process towards a reward strengthen your motivation to get something done. It’s why when we treat a person with kindness and they give us the same treatment, we’re more likely to repeat the same process of kindness to others.

To use this method in learning something new, give yourself a reward every time you finish a task. It could be whenever you read a chapter from your Biology book you get 20 minutes of video game time. Create a balance of rewards and hard work so you won’t be stressed out while being productive simultaneously.

Provide yourself with reinforcements that strengthen your interest for learning, and eventually you’ll find the concept very enticing.

In final thoughts…

Based on your personal experience, you’ll have different reactions on how to learn than others. It’ll all depend on our beliefs, attitudes, and values that determine how our mind behaves in learning situations.

These values determine how we make decisions and what we could tolerate. It might be difficult for some to apply the strategies of behaviorism than a stimulus association and vice-versa. If you’re still wondering which approach works best for you, we recommend trying each one for a week and determine which was most effective for you.