What is self-education and how to create an individual plan. Where to start self-education

There is too much knowledge around. We try to remember a lot of empty information, we worry that we haven’t covered something yet. But if knowledge is not needed and you rarely access it, it is quickly forgotten.

Select the main thing

You can't learn everything at once, you have to make choices.

How to understand which interest is the most important? Greg McKeon in the book"Essentialism" gives two radical pieces of advice. First, if you can’t say a definite “yes,” then say a definite “no.”

Second, use strict and explicit criteria. For a new activity, choose three optimal criteria that are significant to your life: for example, it should raise your self-esteem, give pleasure and bring money. The more criteria it captures new practice, the more valuable it is to you.

Rate the practice

Once you choose an activity, find out what you can achieve in it. Find out how developed the practice itself is: does it have clear criteria for success and failure, are it staffed by experts and do they develop their own teaching techniques? If the practice is established in society, then you will clearly see where you are going. If there is no clarity, then it will be much more difficult to develop.

Set a Specific Goal

You can’t just “learn to run” or “speak English.” It is better to turn your self-education into a project with specific tasks so that it is clear when you have achieved your goal. Imagine what you want to achieve and what you can realistically achieve within the given time frame. Don't try to "get good at grammar", but choose the 10 most important topics, find as many exercises for them as possible and make a final test for yourself. Determine the time frame: 3 months. The deadline must be clear.

Build your horizons

The best solution for self-development is to build your horizons around a project. If you study English grammar, read comics, listen to podcasts about the history of the language, go to a lecture on linguistics. If you need to prepare for a half marathon, watch documentaries about famous runners, read sports magazines, find out the national and world records for the distance. Outlook will help the project and outline the path to new topics.

But if you completely subordinate your horizons to the project, you will get not an outlook, but a specialization. Therefore, it is better to free some time from any kind of plans, let it be open space for passing interests: random books, video games, lectures and anything other than running and grammar.

How to organize your workplace

The workplace should motivate learning. The best way charge it with energy - use the priming effect. It has long been used in marketing: images from environment influence us even when we are not aware of them. This means that if you hang motivating works, posters or diagrams above your desk, they will penetrate into the learning process without conscious effort. Choose images that are quickly read. complex schemes like geographical maps or endless lists are weaker: they need to be analyzed.

Give up portraits of dead geniuses - we are motivated not by their haircuts, but by success stories. Better use inspiring examples of skill: a short paragraph from a good writer, a bright collage, a photo of your favorite athlete at the finish line.

Think not only about the workplace, but also about the work environment. It includes any locations where you can practice. The main criterion is an atmosphere suitable for self-study. Local stadiums, embankments, secret paths in parks for practicing your running steps - or your favorite cafes, libraries, museums for practicing English. Create your own self-learning network. When it’s too dull at home, or, conversely, it’s too far from home, it’s the work environment that will support motivation.

How to work with information

Start anywhere

Adjust the scale, change speeds

Any exercise and any work can be worked out in detail or superficially. Plus, you can change the speed at which you learn the material. If you get stuck reading Faulkner in English, try to speed up: forget about details and strange expressions, the main thing is to finish reading. The brain will receive a complete image of the story, and you will understand the unusual vocabulary when you reread it.

Sometimes, on the contrary, it is useful to bury yourself in details or slow down at a difficult moment. Assess your cognitive load in this moment and select the optimal scale and speed.

Protecting motivation: how not to break down

Make a schedule

The worst way to stay motivated is to work on inspiration. It is fickle and uncontrollable. Mason Curry's book Genius Mode has a terrible title, but a great idea: a variety of writers, musicians and architects believed in great power schedules. Run for at least fifteen minutes, but every day, and in a year you will be at a completely different level.

There are many tricks to getting the schedule right. It is advisable to work at the same time of the day: then the schedule will become a habit.

Set yourself not just small, but minimal goals. Those that can be achieved with virtually no effort. This approach eliminates self-flagellation: do not think that you could not and did not have time for something, even a small success is a success.

Finally, among these small tasks, always highlight three that are enough to complete in order to fall asleep at the end of the day with peace of mind.

Plan for graduation and reward

The commitments you make to yourself are overwhelming and need to be balanced with irresponsible rest. Always indicate exactly when - up to the minute - you will finish. The behaviorists are partly right: we are all laboratory mice in search of positive reinforcement. When you finish a lesson, reward yourself with a cup of coffee, a walk, or an interesting book. The reward should be simple pleasure. You can’t reward yourself with something useful and responsible: I studied English for an hour, and now if I reward myself with an interval run, I’ll lose it in a couple of days. Rest should be relaxing.

Even if you miss it, don’t quit

Perfectionism destroys good habits. The worst thing about self-study is to give up everything because you missed it once. It is much more useful to accept yourself with all your gaps. It is better to complete 30% of your tasks than to do nothing.

Don't keep a debt book of failures. Don't try to make up for a missed workout on Thursday with two or three workouts over the weekend. The more obligations, the more difficult it is to fulfill them. Keep doing what you can. And always remember the minimum goals.

Prepare for obstacles

Most of the obstacles that derail your schedule can be easily anticipated. If you jog three times a week and have a trip out of town, think about training in new conditions in advance. If you have a microeconomics exam, reduce your time on English grammar to 10 minutes a day.

Find your people

Learning alone is difficult. Even if you set up the learning process yourself, you will still need an outside perspective.

Without criticism, any person slides into distortions that slow down learning. In addition, when motivation comes only from within, any personal problems threaten self-development.

Find people who are also interested in running or English. Start with amateur forums. You will understand how it is customary to talk about running, what problems athletes have. Make contacts, look for allies and, most importantly, determine who is best at running. The most useful self-learning friends are experts who are willing to share their experiences. Pay attention to other self-taught people, solidarity can work in your favor.

Look for a balance of cognitive load

Monitor your own cognitive load. On the one hand, it should be heavy enough not to get stuck on one level. On the other hand, overload reduces motivation and can disrupt the entire process. Find your balance that suits your schedule and learning environment.

Your goals are outside your comfort zone

By repeating irregular verbs over and over again, you get used to it, you become calmer and more pleasant, and you don’t want to leave your comfort zone. But if you do not overcome the boundaries of comfort, the development of the skill may stop.

At the same time, you cannot jump over them with one extra effort. You need to move gradually. Try irregular verbs in different conditional sentences, then gradually move on to mixed type conditional constructions. Set small goals beyond boundaries comfort zone.

How to Use Feedback to Learn Faster

Test yourself

Without feedback a person is not able to develop in his chosen business. In self-learning, feedback is what is most lacking. It doesn't have to come from an expert; sometimes you can evaluate yourself. Dancers and actors use mirrors for feedback. WITH English grammar most effective way- constantly test yourself. You read a new paragraph and immediately prepare a list of questions with clear answers that can be easily checked. Take your test and mark your mistakes. Swap the questions and after a while, test yourself again. In her online course Learning how to learn, Barbara Oakley provides many such methods; her book “Think Like a Mathematician” is available in Russian.

The faster the feedback, the better

Psychologist Anders Erikson, studying professionals in various fields, came to the conclusion: what faster man receives feedback, the better he absorbs the material. The longer the interval between practice and evaluation, the slower we develop.

Teach someone else

When you teach another person, you feel more responsibility to him than to yourself. Set yourself the goal of telling your friend why you need to change your stride length while running and how to do it correctly. You will prepare more thoroughly, tinker with the material, and look for more understandable arguments.

Look for different experts

Of course, the easiest way to learn is to periodically turn to experts. Even if you don’t have money for good tutors, nothing prevents you from following the public activities of experts: blogs, speeches, free master classes. Make a map of English language specialists so you know who to ask important questions. Remember that the best feedback is given by those who are successful in their business and know how to explain well. And never rely on one expert, even if you really like him.

Find a coach, understand his criteria

Occasionally you can meet an expert who explains things well and is ready to share his experience on terms that are convenient for you. That is, he can become your “trainer” or “master” in the medieval sense of the word. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu considered studying with such a master more productive than formal education.

But confining your education to one person is dangerous: you can quickly lose autonomy. In the case of an expert trainer, the main goal is to understand his evaluation criteria. Then, over time, you can continue without it. The main risk in this case is personal relationships that can interfere with learning, so communicating with ordinary experts is easier than with trainers.

How to track your progress

Document the process

Keep a journal to track your progress. The downside to keeping a diary is that it quickly becomes an extra commitment that you want to quit. Therefore, essentialist McKeon suggests not writing a lot in your diary. Just come up with a title for your day and describe your achievements in one phrase. This minimalist diary does not require mental energy and records the main points in learning.

Designers have their own documentation format - a sketchbook. This is a notebook or small album for notes, sketches, collages and experiments. If you work with visual material, for example, researching the running techniques of famous athletes, then a sketchbook is ideal. Running in general is easy to document: there is a whole market of apps for runners. They collect all your training data and even make recommendations.

Hang photos from competitions or your texts in English above your workplace - they will remind you of bright breakthroughs or the most interesting mistakes.

Analyze your past work

Past achievements are not just a memory. Without them, you will not understand your educational habits here and now and you will not be able to change them. Re-read your diary, look through old works and statistics in applications; look for patterns.

You will find out which grammar materials were easier for you to work with and which routes you ran faster on.

Gather your ideas

Ideas arise anytime, anywhere. As soon as a thought flashes, write it down in your phone or notebook - where you constantly look. Most of ideas will be useless: either banal, or time-consuming, or fantastic. But occasionally original and feasible solutions will appear, so keep notes for them. In addition, the accumulated ideas will show how your creative mind works.

Study your mistakes

Mistakes say more about the learning process than ideas. Ideas are rarely translated into reality, and mistakes always appear in practice. Most often, they reflect the characteristics of your approach to learning. We repeat them all the time. Not making the same mistake twice is a utopia and a cliche for business literature. Therefore, collect and study your mistakes.

Experience is error. It is errors that set the boundary of the comfort zone; it is they that determine the balance of cognitive load. If you want to grow above yourself, make mistakes faster.

The modern rhythm of human life does not always allow one to fully attend university to obtain additional education, take courses and long-term trainings. Despite this trend, the need for constant development and advanced training does not disappear, but only increases: every employer needs professionals. It is possible to deftly get out of a difficult situation. This can be done using relevant educational sites. All you need is a desire for self-improvement and a couple of hours of free time every day.

In addition to the well-known methods of learning on YouTube, there are a lot of other useful and exciting programs about which, unfortunately, there is little information. Even if they don’t teach you how to scuba dive, they will definitely increase your level of knowledge on a particular topic.

5 websites for those who are passionate about art

If your hobby, passion, profession is any branch of art, then the next top sites will definitely be to your liking. The downside of some of them is that they are aimed at an English-speaking audience. But there is also a hidden advantage in this: there is a chance to improve the level in English. However, the sites are compiled and described clearly, and therefore are easy to understand.

1. https://artchive.ru is a Russian-language platform for everyone who is fond of fine arts. Huge virtual art gallery expanded interesting facts, information about artists, exhibitions and other thematic events. The site is useful for beginners and professional artists, collectors, art dealers and ordinary users.
2. https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/– all Google users have the opportunity to plunge into the world of artistic art. The corporation has developed a special website that contains the most famous collections of artists that have left their mark on the history and development of the movement as a whole. You can examine in detail not only the paintings, but also the museums that house the masterpieces.
3. https://www.drawspace.com – if studying theory and reviewing famous paintings is not enough for you, then it’s time to start practicing. The DrawSpace website will help you try your hand at fine arts. You upload a picture and repeat it according to the displayed instructions. Everything is simple and accessible.
4. https://photo-monster.ru – taking beautiful photographs, as everyone knows, is an entire art, the subtleties of which not every photographer masters. This Russian-language platform will help photographers solve many pressing problems, and will also share some tricks and subtleties of the matter.
5. http://teoria.com – it is impossible to master the art of music without practice, as the site’s creators knew. Here you can find both theoretical nuances and a lot of tutorials for working at home.

5 sites for general development

It is not difficult to increase your knowledge in any field, improve your vocabulary and acquire the status of a well-read person if you regularly visit one of the platforms listed below:

1. https://postnauka.ru - simple, accessible and exciting. Website with posts on various topics, supplemented with original content and unique information.
2. https://www.lektorium.tv – a constantly expanding portal with video files and lectures from leading experts, educational institutions. To gain knowledge, just enroll in the chosen program.
3. https://4brain.ru/ – Russian-language courses, articles and lectures for self-improvement. If you take the appeared free time using this site, it will not be useless.
4. https://theoryandpractice.ru – you can find out previously unknown information here, starting from the title page. The materials are not tied to a specific topic, so the site is useful to all users.
5. https://thequestion.ru/ is a platform for eternally curious people who wonder why. Current, problematic and noteworthy issues are addressed here.

5 sites for learning English

Not trying to improve your level of English is simply unacceptable now. Therefore, new ideas and ways to study it appear quite often. Below are the most understandable and content-filled platforms. Just choose the one that is most comfortable for you.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin

With the fact that education plays enough important role in our lives, everyone seems to agree. We may have different opinions about what education should be, both in terms of the goals it pursues and the methods by which they are achieved, but we all agree that we need it. It is very difficult to get by without knowledge, skills and abilities in this life. However, people’s opinions regarding self-education are no longer so clear; some see a need for it, while others do not. Intuitively, of course, we all understand that we need self-education, that we need to teach ourselves something new, that it is correct and useful. But at the same time, quite a considerable number of people, judging by their lifestyle, believe that they can completely do without self-education. But let's think about it, what is self-education anyway? And is it really possible to do without it?

Self-education is the acquisition by a person of the knowledge, skills and abilities he needs from his point of view through independent studies outside of any educational institution and without the help of a teacher or teacher. Although, in my opinion, having a teacher for self-education is quite acceptable. I believe that the main thing is that a person himself wants to learn something, to master something, to learn something. And how he will do it, with the help of what or who - this is not so important. In any case, the initiative in this matter must come from the person himself - he must want to learn, using all the opportunities available to him for this.

In general, if you take a deeper look at the process of self-education, you can discover a lot of interesting things in it that have to do with human qualities, capabilities, desires and needs. This is all we will talk about in this article. After reading it, you, dear friends, will learn about self-education all the most important things that, from my point of view, you need to know about it in order to start doing it and do it correctly.

So, let's think again about whether it is really possible to do without self-education in this life, as some people believe? Of course you can get by; in this life you can do without a lot of things if you want. The only question is, what will it be, this life of yours, if you prefer to do without such important things as self-education in it? Most likely, not the most successful and interesting, because without new knowledge and without the ability to use it, you will simply be weaker than those who know more than you and whose thinking is better developed. And besides, why do without it if it does not require anything special from a person, except perhaps his time and certain volitional efforts? We still spend our free time on something, for example, on the same entertainment. Why not spend it on self-education, because learning new things is also very fun and interesting? You only need to feel this interest, this joy, this pleasure in self-education in order to become seriously interested in it and become addicted to it. And self-education is necessary because the knowledge that a person can get by studying at a school, institute, university and others educational institutions- he is unlikely to have enough in the modern, constantly changing world. As a matter of fact, the need for new knowledge was there before, but not as acute as it is now, because the world used to change not as fast as it does today.

But from my point of view, it is not even the need for new knowledge that gives importance to self-education, but elementary human interest and curiosity. Think, are you really not interested in learning more about this world, revealing its secrets, finding something new that you don’t know about yet, even without any practical application of the knowledge gained, but just for yourself, to fill your inner world new ideas about the outer world? This is so exciting! You know, they say that most people are not curious and lazy, so they are not interested in anything except what is related to their basic needs and they do not strive for anything new. But I don't think so. I believe that curiosity can simply fall asleep in a person due to various circumstances, which is why he squeezes himself into certain limits in order to feel comfortable. However, if you awaken in a person his sense of curiosity, his inquisitiveness, his interest in everything new and unknown, then self-education will become one of the meanings of life for him. We have already done this with some people - awakening their interest and curiosity, after which they radically changed their lives, starting to actively educate themselves and strive for something. I often have to work with people in this direction. So don’t rush to give a definite answer to the question of whether you need self-education or not. Let's take a better look at what it can give a person from a practical point of view.

Education and self-education

But first, friends, let's talk a little about how self-education differs from education, from the standard education with which most of us are familiar. This is very important, because a person’s attitude towards himself and his life will depend on understanding this difference. So, education is, first of all, the transfer of knowledge to a person with the help of a teacher, with the goal of teaching him something that, in the teacher’s opinion, the student should know. And only then education is the process of a person’s assimilation of the acquired knowledge. That is, you see, in education, the teacher is put in first place, who teaches something to other people or an individual in a certain way. Whereas in self-education the focus is on the student himself, that is, the one who learns something on his own. The student in this case is both a student and a teacher at the same time, and all responsibility for the process of acquiring knowledge lies with him. And this allows a person to decide for himself what and how he will learn. It is not at all necessary that self-education should take place exclusively without a teacher; what is important is who manages this process - the student or the teacher.

It should also be noted that education often allows the student to acquire knowledge that he may not need. Whereas other knowledge, which he needs to a much greater extent, may not be given to him for one reason or another. In other words, in education, it is not the student who makes the rules, but those who teach him. It's not that it's bad, it's just not always good for everyone. Therefore, ordinary education may simply not be enough for a person. Or it may not meet his goals. Let’s say the state needs engineers and it influences the education system in such a way that it produces more engineers for the country. But the fact is that you yourself may not be interested in being an engineer, no matter what the reasons, you may be interested in, say, becoming an economist or a lawyer, or, for example, a psychologist, but not at all engineer Because you don’t want to prepare yourself for the labor market, you don’t need a job! You want to create jobs yourself, you want to work for yourself, so you may need an appropriate education. But at the same time you are forced to adapt to existing model education, under the rules that apply in it, under teaching methods, under training material, under the current knowledge test, and so on and so forth. And if choosing who to study for and who not to study for, today, in principle, is not a problem - you don’t want to be engineers, for God’s sake, you can study for whoever you want by enrolling in the appropriate educational institution, then that’s what concerns teaching methods, and I I would even say, the rules of training, then it will be much more difficult for you to choose them. And in general, the quality of your education does not always depend on you.

I remember when I was studying - I asked a lot of questions to my teachers and teacher, when I didn’t agree with something or I was just interested in clarifying something. But I was usually, if I may say so, shut up and forced to listen and remember, rather than think and reason, let alone argue. Not all teachers and lecturers did this, but nevertheless, I was not satisfied with such an education in which it was impossible to take a step to the left or a step to the right in one’s reasoning, it was impossible to discuss this or that topic from the position of criticism, besides, I wanted to know more, I wanted to find out why something works the way it does. But in the end, I was forced to behave in the way that was needed by my teachers and the education system as a whole. This is the peculiarity of education - you are taught, according to a program developed by someone, what is needed first of all by someone else, and not by you, with little or no consideration for your interests, desires and life goals.

But self-education can be for you the way you yourself want to see it. You can teach yourself whatever you want and the way you see fit to do it - using a variety of sources of information, and not those that were selected by someone for some purpose. This is a huge difference between education and self-education. Self-education is based on freedom of choice, and education is mainly based on the needs of society for certain specialists.

Targeted self-education

I, friends, divide self-education into targeted and non-targeted, or as I prefer to say in the second case - free self-education. Free self-education I call self-education that is free from any goals, obligations, from any need to learn something for a specific purpose and is built solely on interest and curiosity. But targeted self-education is always aimed at solving a specific problem or task. That is, let’s say you need to improve your qualifications or learn something new for work, for some business, for some task - you set yourself a goal to learn something specific within a certain period of time. For example, if you need to learn a foreign language to work with foreigners - you either study it yourself, with the help of books, videos, or sign up for special courses and learn the language in them. The main thing is that you know exactly why you are doing this and you have certain deadlines that you need to meet. With deadlines, of course, not everything is so simple - you can never calculate one hundred percent how long it will take you to learn something properly, but they are important for discipline, because a person needs to strive to meet them . Next, we will proceed from these two approaches to self-education - from targeted and non-targeted self-education.

Self-education plan

Thus, in order to achieve a specific goal with the help of self-education - to learn something and then apply your knowledge to something - you will need to draw up a detailed plan for self-education and start working on it. Let's look at what the plan should be for targeted self-education, while non-targeted, that is, free self-education, in principle, does not need a plan.

There is nothing complicated here - you just need to define specific goals that you want to achieve, then select the necessary educational material and determine the time during which you will study it. Well, let's say, if you decide to learn a foreign language, then you need to spend a certain amount of time studying every day, for example, two hours, and stick to this schedule until you notice real positive results from your learning. If you want to study psychology, then you need to understand where to start studying it, what books and other sources of information are best suited for this, and who you can talk to about this so that they can help you navigate this issue. You can, of course, start reading everything, but it’s not very effective method learning, and sometimes harmful, since, firstly, it will take you a lot of time before you understand something and learn something, and secondly, it is possible that due to studying everything you get a mess in your head and you simply get confused in the knowledge you have acquired. Still, in any training, including self-training, there must be some kind of system so that all the knowledge that a person receives fits in an orderly manner in his head and forms complete picture what he is studying, and were not separate pieces of information that do not really explain anything, and sometimes are completely contradictory. You should also understand that depending on what exactly you want to study, your self-education can be divided into theoretical and practical. In any case, the theory should strive to be tested by practice, so as not to have misrepresentation about your own education.

So I repeat, it is not difficult to develop a self-education plan - you will just need to find all the necessary educational materials - books, articles, video / audio materials, it is also possible to find the right people who can teach you something, and then begin to actively learn what what interests you, moving from simple to complex. Once again I want to note that self-education does not necessarily mean selfeducation a person of himself - he may well resort to the help of other people, those who will become a teacher for him, the main thing is that the initiative to learn something comes from him, that is, from the student. Naturally, for this sometimes difficult task you need to find time, energy, information, and people. And, of course, you also need to stock up on patience; after all, learning is not easy, and teaching yourself is even more difficult, especially if you have not done this before. But from my own experience I can tell you that you just need to start doing this once and in the future self-education will become a common thing for you - you will learn not only out of necessity, but also out of desire. And now let's talk about this.

Free self-education

Free self-education does not pursue any specific goals and does not adhere to any specific time frame during which a person needs to learn something - it satisfies our curiosity and allows us to acquire knowledge, as they say, in reserve. With free self-education - we enjoy learning something new, we do not force ourselves to study - we want to learn, we want to understand a lot and know everything. This is how I understand this process, in which a person, one might say, learns for the sake of learning itself. The main thing here, I repeat, is to be curious. To strive for new knowledge. Just like children, who are interested in everything and want to know about everything - this is how a person should be. Unfortunately, for many adults, curiosity is, well, not completely discouraged, but at least driven somewhere very deep. Therefore, many adults have little interest in anything; they do not know how to enjoy acquiring new knowledge and skills. Only a few of them are not just ready, but want, really want to constantly learn. But I hope that after this article, people’s desire will become even stronger.

I believe, friends, that the primary thing is a person’s desire to learn, and then some kind of need for it. Although you and I understand perfectly well that our desires depend on external environment, from our needs, from the conditions in which each of us finds ourselves. However, the difference between when you yourself want to learn something, just for the sake of interest, to expand your horizons or to improve your life, and when you are forced or forced to do it, is still significant. In one case, we understand why we want to educate ourselves, because we want it, and in the other, we learn something not so much for ourselves as for others. Unfortunately, most people are used to studying for someone or something - because they are taught to do so. For example, a person can imitate learning for the sake of a diploma and other waste paper, rather than actually learning for the sake of knowledge. Further, this habit of learning for the sake of someone, and not for oneself, forces people to look for an external, rather than internal, incentive to learn, to self-education. Let’s not now deal with why we are taught to study for someone else, I have already said this in part above, we’ll just conclude for ourselves that very few people engage in self-education of their own free will, and much more larger number people do this out of necessity or, in other words, under the influence of external factors. However, if a person teaches himself, he is undoubtedly engaged in self-education. And it will certainly benefit him.

Self-education is, first of all, openness to new knowledge, it is the desire to receive this new knowledge, it is the love of knowledge. This openness, this desire, is sorely lacking in many people. On the one hand, people are designed in such a way that they can do many things only under pressure, even if we are talking about something that is useful for themselves. And self-education definitely benefits anyone. But on the other hand, our education system also often discourages people from learning something on their own, because it is incorrect, I believe, to motivate learning, so many people learn something only through external incentives. Although there are exceptions, when people are taught in such a way that then they spend their entire lives happily learning something new. A person must be taught to strive for knowledge - this, I believe, is the most important task for education. Everyone is drawn to pleasure and entertainment, but few want and are able to learn and enjoy it. Therefore, if you instill in a person an interest in learning in childhood, then there is a high probability that he will study all his life, he will constantly educate himself, regardless of external conditions and incentives.

Motivation

Do you need any motivation for free self-education? Undoubtedly. Only this should be predominantly internal motivation, so that a person does not force himself, wanting to learn something new, but does it with passion and dedication. What is behind motivation? Behind motivation are emotions, and behind them are either internal or, which is much more common, external factors. Something should excite, excite, catch, irritate a person. Often, difficulties in his life lead to a person’s self-education, and not curiosity or interest. But at the same time, engaging in self-education in order to solve his problems, a person can fall in love with this business, and subsequently study no longer out of necessity, but out of interest and for the sake of pleasure. So sometimes a hard life and various problems only benefit people. After all, when a person’s life is going very well, then of course he may have an interest in studying if he is a sufficiently curious and purposeful person, but most often in such cases people prefer not to strain themselves too much, either mentally or physically. And it’s a completely different matter when something in a person’s life is not going the way he would like, then he begins to ask questions and look for something that can help him - information, knowledge, people who can help him. teach. So internal motivation caused by unfavorable external factors is a very fertile ground for self-education.

What to study?

Knowledge is power. And thinking is the ability to use this power. This is my belief. In our time, when a lot of knowledge very quickly becomes outdated and even more knowledge is, let’s say, not of very high quality or downright harmful - a person without a well-developed thinking is like a ship without a captain - anyone can carry him along, anyone can knock him off course. to no avail, anyone can impose their point of view on him, mislead him, and so on. See for yourself how often many people make decisions that are harmful to them, which from the outside look quite stupid. But a lot of useful knowledge is available to people today - the Internet, libraries and even smart people who know a lot and can teach a lot - all this is around us. It would seem - take it and use it. But, unfortunately, not everyone can take advantage of this goodness. And not only because people don’t have time for this, time can be found, but because in the ocean of information you need to be able to navigate. Now, if earlier a lot of knowledge was inaccessible, so some people who knew a lot had an advantage over other people who had less knowledge, today those who succeed are those who know how to work with information. So thinking needs to be developed - it is this that will make you stronger and more adapted to the modern world.

Well, in connection with the above, I cannot help but offer you my service in the form of a program for developing thinking. IN Lately I pay a lot of attention to this issue, because I believe that in the future it is quality thinking that will be valued above all else. It’s not that thinking wasn’t important for humans before, it’s just that in the future it will become our only advantage over systems artificial intelligence, which are slowly beginning to push us out of many areas. Already today, some computer programs can completely replace people, and in the future the role of humans in solving various kinds of problems will decrease even more. But it’s not only this, it’s also about our own attitude towards ourselves. I think I will not be mistaken if I assume that most of you, dear readers, would like to think very well in order to quickly and effectively solve your daily tasks and cope with various problems that constantly arise in the life of every person. Therefore, smart people have always had an interest in thinking, and in particular in ways of its development. However, not the smart ones either. I understand all this and, as I have already said, I show great interest in thinking, in the ways of its development. And so I developed a special program and continue to develop and improve it, which allows very in an interesting way develop thinking - with the help of the ability to pose questions and look for answers to them. On the one hand, it is not new, because Socrates in his time got to the bottom of the truth or refuted it with the help of well-posed questions, but on the other hand, I developed my program based on my own idea of ​​​​what questions and in what sequence a person should to ask himself in order to come to the knowledge, thoughts, decisions he needs, or to create new useful knowledge. So I have the right to say that my program for the development of thinking has no analogues today. As a matter of fact, if these analogues existed, then what would be the point of creating something similar. Being a parrot is unpleasant and often unprofitable.

And concluding the conversation about self-education, perhaps, I will say the most important thing - everyone should do this, always and in any available way. I believe that while we are learning something new, as in childhood, when we were interested in everything, when we were actively exploring the world around us, we, friends, live. It doesn’t matter how old you are, where you live, what you do, what interests you have - study, get educated, learn more new things, communicate with smart people, from whom you can learn something and thus maintain in yourself a love for life, which for us is not so long that we deny ourselves this great happiness.

To begin with, let us remember that main source knowledge is people. People write books, posts, speak at conferences, make presentations and videos. Therefore, to dive into any topic that interests us, we need to make a list of people who know what we don’t know.

We start by formulating 3-5 keywords related to what interests us. We remember that in Russian and in English there can be different formulations of the same phenomenon. First we use general dictionaries, then professional ones.

Let's go to . We type the keywords one by one. We write down the names of the authors we come across on the “Who studies this topic” page. We save the titles of books in a separate list “I plan to view”, always indicating the year of publication.

If the topic is research, go to , enter keywords into the search engine (preferably in English) and already found names. We save the titles of articles and links to them to the “I plan to view” list.

If the topic is professional, just go to Google, type keywords and already found names into the search engine. We write down new names that we meet along the way, save links to posts that seem relevant (by title).

In a simple Google we ask “keywords + conference”, “keywords + conference”. We find thematic conferences, programs, presentations. This means that there is a list of participants. Presentations and videos of performances are often posted as well. Names - to the list of names, links to speeches - to the "Plan to view" list.

We prioritize coolness. We raise in the list the names of those who are often referred to.

Lacquering all this with a Google search " keyword+courses", "keyword +webinar". We find distance and face-to-face courses related to the topic of interest. We write them down in the list "I plan to watch."

You will find yourself navigating through people who understand what interests you. Now you can read posts, articles, books, watch presentations and videos, sign up for webinars and courses. Did you dive into the topic a little?

Write to the top people on your list: in the comments on their blog, by e-mail. Ask questions that remain unanswered in the materials you have studied. There are high chances that you will be answered.

Topics for future articles are found by the authors themselves - for this, it is often enough to live an active day and communicate with other people. Today, talking with the lovely accountant Tatyana from the next office, we touched on the topic of self-education, what it is, and what a passion for self-education can lead to. Tatyana and I decided that the opportunities for self-education today are enormous))

It is clear that she and I were not the first to discover this truth, but when I came home and opened my mail, I read and saw a cry from the soul, which I quote in the original for complete clarity:

If you think about it, there are so many opportunities for self-education now! You can learn on your own any language, the history of any country, geography, physics, chemistry - whatever. All textbooks are available online, collections are published scientific articles with the most advanced developments and discoveries, there are online audio materials - books in original languages, radio broadcasts... Study - I don’t want to! And for some reason, the majority of people really don’t want to. Strange.

It is rightly said that brevity is the sister of talent; the entire topic of the article is revealed in a few phrases. It would seem, what else to write about? Believe me, we are so frivolous about the opportunities that exist in our lives, or rather, they run past our lives, since we don’t pay any attention to them, that it’s time to think about the opportunities we missed, and after some time... then it's time to regret it.

Look, today almost everyone has a computer with Internet access, but we do not use even a tenth of the opportunities with which we could improve our lives. Everything around us seems to be a deception, a scam, unworthy of us personally dealing with it. Is that what the majority thinks?

But we have learned very well, and we know how to complain about low wages, how to make jokes in the comments to an article about current events in the country, how to spend an evening, or even a day, wandering around social networks and spending pointless time. The opportunities and prospects that the Internet provides us today, in connection with gaining access to an unlimited flow of information and information, can help in increasing the level of our own development and acquiring new knowledge and skills. But not everyone likes it.

It’s boring, someone will definitely say... And someone is already making the most of what others consider boring. And since we are all very different, each will be right in his own way and will defend his own point of view.

And yet, if I can plant even a small seed in the “fertile soil”, I am sure that changes will definitely occur in each of us, and for the better.

There have always been opportunities for self-education

There have always been opportunities for self-education: Remember, at school we were always given homework, students had and still have to acquire additional knowledge during theoretical studies in educational institutions, a long time ago it was completely normal to enroll in some kind of club or section and reveal your talents one after another. All this was free, or did not require as much money as it does today.

Yes, today it is more difficult and complex than before... But did you know that difficulties strengthen and make our character stronger? Why should we suddenly assume that having paid money and sent ourselves or our child to a music school, we must study there until retirement? What if this is not what we thought was our life’s calling? What should I do?

Try and move on. But first you need to try to identify your strengths and weak sides, good way I described it in the article so that the trip does not take too long and does not cost money. After determining your strengths, take two or three areas in which you are interested and comfortable. And start studying.

That is, you can independently master both new directions and those that you have forgotten over time, or if you understand that there is no career growth in the workplace, you can develop yourself within the framework of your profession. So let’s think together about what you can teach yourself:

Health and healthy lifestyle

Because modern man If today you must have a number of certain advantages, skills and abilities, then you can start with yourself, thereby improving the opinion of others about yourself and reinforcing your confidence in your abilities. You can increase your knowledge about healthy way life, play sports, find like-minded people online, and discuss with them results achieved. A huge amount of practical advice can be found on how to dress stylishly and look beautiful. Look for such information if you realize that it is exactly what you need.

Oratory

To improve your communication skills, you can work on your pronunciation skills. Take a public speaking course, this will significantly increase your weight in the team and increase your value in the eyes of management. And for starters, take 45 sayings in a single text (read aloud).
Save it so you don't forget..

On Thursday the fourth at four and a quarter o'clock, the Ligurian traffic controller was regulating in Liguria, but thirty-three ships tacked, tacked, but never got caught, and then the protocol about the protocol was recorded as a protocol, as the interviewed Ligurian traffic controller eloquently, but not purely, reported, yes did not complete the report, did not complete the report, and reported so much about the wet weather that, so that the incident did not become a contender for a judicial precedent, the Ligurian traffic controller acclimatized in unconstitutional Constantinople, where the tufted laughter laughed and shouted to the Turk, who was blackly stoned with a pipe: don’t smoke, Turk, pipe, buy a better one a pile of peaks, it’s better to buy a pile of peaks, otherwise a bombardier from Brandenburg will come and bombard him with bombs because someone with a black snout dug up half his yard with his snout, dug up and dug up; but in fact the Turk was not in business, and Klara was sneaking to the stall at that time, while Karl was stealing corals from Klara, for which Klara stole the clarinet from Karl, and then in the yard of the tar widow Varvara, these two thieves stole firewood ; but it’s a sin - not laughter - not to put it in a nut: about Clara and Karl in the darkness, all the crayfish were making noise in a fight - so the thieves had no time for the bombardier, and no time for the tar widow, and no time for the tar children; but the angry widow removed the firewood into the shed: one firewood, two firewood, three firewood - all the firewood did not fit, and two woodcutters, two woodcutters, woodcutters for Varvara, who became emotional, drove the firewood across the yard back to the woodyard, where the heron withered, the heron dried up, the heron is dead; the heron's chick clung tenaciously to the chain; well done against the sheep, against the young man the sheep himself, with which Senya carries hay in a sleigh, then carries Senya Sonya and Sanka on a sled: sled - jump, Senka - to the side, Sonya - in the forehead, everything - into a snowdrift, and Sasha only knocked bumps with his hat , then Sasha went along the highway, Sasha found Sasha on the highway; Sonya, Sashka’s girlfriend, was walking along the highway and sucking dry bread, and besides, Sonya the turntable also had three cheesecakes in her mouth - exactly like a honey cake, but she didn’t care for the honey cake - Sonya, even with cheesecakes in her mouth, reprimands the sexton, - overreacts: buzzing, like a ground beetle, buzzing, and spinning: Frol was at Frol's - she lied to Lavr, she would go to Lavr, Frol would lie to Lavra, that he was a sergeant with a sergeant, a captain with a captain, that a snake had a snake, and a hedgehog had a hedgehog, and he had a high-ranking the guest took away the cane, and soon five children again ate five and a quarter quarters of a quarter of a quarter of lentils without a wormhole, and one thousand six hundred and sixty-six pies with whey curd from yogurt - about all this, near the stake, the bells were ringing, so much so that even Konstantin, a Salzburg unpromising man from under an armored personnel carrier, stated: just as all the bells cannot be chimed, not re-belled, so all tongue twisters cannot be re-speak, not re-speak; but trying is not torture.

Learn to type quickly

Taking a touch typing course will improve your productivity, especially if you type on a computer. Re-read about this method of learning in the article In fact, there is nothing complicated. In a nutshell, download the program from the official website (link in the article), install it on your computer, and take 10 or 11 lessons for free. Then pay Shahidzhanyan 200 or 300 rubles on his cell phone, and train for another 90 lessons in a row. The course is so exciting that I remember typing at night to get ahead. To be honest, everything progressed with difficulty, since having made 3 mistakes, I had to retype the text again, and with each lesson the texts became longer and longer. But it’s so exciting to type better than others, or than you did yesterday! I envy those who are still learning.

Second higher education

Using the power of the Internet, you can get a second or additional higher education. does the impossible - teaches us from a distance. This is where you have to work hard on your own - we know that you won’t be able to copy on the Internet, you’ll have to rack your brains.

Books

Books, e-books, electronic magazines... An excellent source of knowledge - we always turn to books when there is a need and necessity. By the way, you can buy the books you like online quite inexpensively; you can go to Ozone and look at the catalogue. Look at what those people you like and would like to emulate are reading.

Financial literacy

It’s strange why people always count money so carefully at their work, and do not do this at all in home accounting? Yes, and accounting, as such, may not be at home at all. Take a notebook, draw columns in it: date, receipt, expense, name, balance - and you will be happy! You will finally find out how much money you spend per month on food or other expenses, and you will be able to draw appropriate conclusions. Take part in webinars by different authors, compare, expand your knowledge on how to become a financially literate person - they don’t teach this in school. Do not let poverty into your life - learn to count.

Extra skills

This will be everything that you consider additional, for example, you write articles with talent, but you don’t know how to optimize photos at all. Learn, and with additional skills, you will have the opportunity to earn additional income. For those who want to learn any craft (knitting, embroidery, cooking, confectionery) - there are a huge number of interesting people and courses that will be an indispensable source of information for obtaining effective results. Search online for examples of experienced craftsmen successfully sell their works, and you will see that demand still exceeds supply. As an example, I can cite Nelly Fedosenko, she always writes very interestingly about new business ideas; for some of you, her newsletter will probably be a source of inspiration and new ideas.

New profession

It happens that the profession, as they say, has become boring, and you want something new. See how other people can make money using their time online and on social media. , for example, the profession of content manager, or administrator social networks, and bring tangible benefits not only to other people, but also to yourself as a financial benefit.

Teach others!

Surely you know well what other people do not know. Perhaps you are an experienced accountant, or an experienced lawyer, and know how to translate laws into Russian and explain what to do in a particular difficult situation. It is possible that you know better than others not only how to do repairs well, but also how to explain how, for example, you can hang wallpaper correctly. Create your own website, share useful and free information with people, and conduct paid consultations via Skype. If you win people over and convince others that you are a competent specialist, then there will be no end to clients. Use this opportunity, don't miss it.

Foreign languages

Probably only in Russia the majority of its citizens speak only one language - their native language. Meanwhile, learning a foreign language via the Internet is quite possible - you just need to want and do it. Find a teacher that you would like to learn from. Today to study foreign language It’s not difficult: we have at our service a wide range of textual information, audio and video, if you wish. Amaze yourself, your family and friends with your abilities in learning a foreign language.

Strengths are those that bring money

I once read a good phrase:

Strengths are those that bring in money.

Undoubtedly, this is something to strive for, since an adult is often motivated by rather prosaic things. And yet, realizing that the possibilities for self-education are endless, staying outside the ongoing processes will not be to the taste of many. If there is interest and a person thinks about how to apply the acquired knowledge, then self-education begins to work. And if he finds a combination of self-education with his deep creative programs, then he turns out to be a unique specialist.

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