How I Learn a New Skill
You get an idea. Or you discover some new software. Or you decide to finally attempt that thing you always wanted to try. Where do you start? How do you dive in without getting overwhelmed? What’s your strategy for building the skills you need to actually enjoy the process?
Many people talk a good game about learning being a lifelong process and the benefits of adopting a growth mindset. In reality, for adults, learning can be an overwhelming, demoralizing, and infuriating experience full of “Wait, what?!” moments that shake our steely disposition. Most of our days are full of tasks we’ve been doing for years, if not decades, and so learning something truly new or even different can be a real challenge of will and commitment.
As you might guess, I love to learn new skills and ways of thinking. So, making sense of those "Wait, what?!" moments I encounter in the process is critical to doing something I love to do. It's also critical to how I do my various jobs. Pretty much anything I've ever done of note professionally was something new I had to learn. But I also teach and coach, which means I partner with others to make sense of their "Wait, what?!" moments. How do you guide someone through the process of updating their mental model without making them want to quit in exasperation along the way?
Work, business, and leadership in the 21st-century economy are learning opportunities. Whether or not you identify as an autodidact, whether or not teaching or training others is part of your job description, you are learning and teaching constantly by virtue of the speed of change and the inherent instability of late capitalism. Learning how to learn better (and teach better) is a productive, creative, and meaningful work (and life) activity.
I've learned a lot about learning through experience over the years. But I'm no expert. So I don't have explicit advice for you on this front. However, I had an experience over the last couple of weeks that I thought might reveal how I make sense of the "Wait, what?!" moments that arise in the process of learning something new.
What follows is the tale of how I began learning how to use Final Cut Pro.
Mirror World
Learning new software that does a similar job to software you’re already familiar with is strange experience full of a unique blend of “What, wait?!” moments. It’s sort of like how an American experiences the UK. The new software is a mirror world. Most of the language is the same, but things aren’t quite where you expect them to be. It’s not “takeout,” it’s “takeaway.” An emergency door doesn’t warn that an alarm will sound if opened, it declares that the door is alarmed.
I’ve taught myself a lot of software over the years. The biggest challenge was in building websites. I learned WordPress—the open-source software that powers an astonishing percentage of the web—before the era of drag and drop page builders or managed self-hosting, which means I also learned a good bit of HTML and CSS, as well as how to use FTP and navigate the backend of a web host. Over the years, WordPress became more user-friendly, both through improvements to the core system and through a network of hobbyists, developers, and for-profit companies offering themes and plug-ins that took a lot of the guesswork out of building a site.
When Sean and I launched YellowHouse.Media six years ago, I decided to build our website on Squarespace instead of Wordpress. Squarespace had rolled out some interesting features, and we didn’t need all the bells and whistles I could squeeze out of a Wordpress installation. Plus, I figured we’d encounter clients who used Squarespace and having some familiarity with its workings would be a plus.
Squarespace is very easy to use. Unless you really know what you’re doing, it’s best to just make a few initial decisions about font packs and color schemes and then kind of go with its flow. Coming from WordPress, that was a whole new way of thinking for me. On all of my other websites, I knew how to change every last finicky detail. And so I thought about every last finicky detail—often in ways that were less than helpful.
In Squarespace, while it’s possible to adjust the finicky details, it’s discouraged by the user interface. Code-level control is hidden away. Want to change the color of just this button? Can’t do it from the design-level controls. Want to change the font of this heading? Nope, can’t do that either.
Squarespace prioritizes consistency of design over customization. WordPress prioritizes customization over everything else. Shifting from one mental model to the other—thinking consistency first instead of customization first—took practice. By the time I decided to move my main website (this one), I was comfortable thinking in Squarespace. I still run into “Wait, what?!” moments from time to time, but by and large, I’ve become fluent.
From Familiarity to Frustration
Currently, I’m learning Final Cut Pro and Motion—Apple’s answer to Adobe’s Premiere Pro and After Effects. I do quite a bit of video editing these days. And I’ve been wanting to up my skills in that department and running up against the limitations of the software I currently use. Until now, I’ve used a combination of Descript, Canva, and CapCut to produce results I’m largely happy with. I focus on making the limitations of my ability look as good as possible.
I know how to squeeze every last ounce of production value from my current toolkit. I work fast and effectively. I know where everything else and how to use it. It’s hard not to bring that competence with me when I open Final Cut Pro. It looks similar in many ways. But it’s a mirror world—and I’m liable to drive on the wrong side of the road if I’m not extremely careful.
This initial familiarity crashes into frustration. Wait, how do I get these two clips to cross-fade? Wait, what do I need to do to add some animated text? Wait, why does that shape move like that? This head-on collision of one body of knowledge with another (lacking) body of knowledge often results—let's be real—in giving up.
I do it. You do it. We all do it.
Except when we don't. Except when we push through. So what makes the difference? What's special about the times when I do stick with the frustration until it's not frustrating anymore?
Adult learning theory can give us some insight.
As theorized by Malcolm Knowles in the 1970s, "the art and science of helping adults learn" rests on a process model rather than a content model:
"The difference is not that one deals with content and the other does not; the difference is that the content model is concerned with transmitting information and skills, whereas the process model is concerned with providing procedures and resources for helping learners acquire information and skills."
Moreover, those procedures and resources should be grounded in relevance, applicability, and purpose. I need to know how what I'm learning is relevant to my goals; I need to be able to learn by applying ideas to the task(s) at hand; I need the purpose of my learning to be clear and salient.
Knowles's adult learning framework is a useful mental model for teachers of adults. But it's also relevant to self-taught learning, as in the case of learning a new piece of software.
I would never approach learning new software using a content model. I don't work my way through the manual, learning about each feature as I go. I don’t work out a plan to tackle, say, text animation on Monday, transitions on Tuesday, and visual effects on Wednesday. The only reason I download a new app is that I have something in mind I want to do with it, and it's that something that guides my learning process and grounds it in relevance, applicability, and purpose.
So what does that all mean in practice?
Well, I had a video to edit for a client. That client was also updating their visual branding, and I wanted the new video—which would likely be seen by thousands or tens of thousands of people—to match the new brand and remain relevant for as long as possible. I also knew that Apple had just rolled out a far less financially intimidating way to get started with their creative apps, including Final Cut Pro and Motion. Editing this video seemed like the perfect project to experiment with.
The rebrand gave me a specific purpose (updating all of my templates and motion graphics to match), this particular video gave me an application for learning, and my desire for the longevity of this project gave me relevance. All three informed my process, even though that process was anything but strategic or formal.
I imported the video to Final Cut Pro and started by looking for familiar features. How do I make cuts? Can I get captions to show up? What are my options for creating a lower-third?
From there, I could ask myself, bit by bit, "What do I want to do?" Maybe I want a cool call-out to pop up on screen. Maybe I want to insert a title with animated text. Maybe I want a book cover to slide on and off the screen. Maybe I just want to figure out where the damn drop shadow setting is. Each thing I wanted to do with the video became a tiny problem to solve. That problem was something I could look for help with—templates, YouTube videos, exasperated searches through the help docs.
I think of a podcast episode or video as having "beats." A beat is a point in the content where something new occurs—a new idea, a new vocabulary word, a new question, or even a new emotion. Each beat in this video became the trigger to ask, "What do I want do?" And so, each beat became a problem for orienting my learning process. This is a key difference between a content model for learning and a process model. In a content model, the learning is divided into "content units." But in a process model, the learning is divided into "problem units."
I knew that breaking the project down into beats (i.e., problem units) would make me less likely to become overwhelmed and quit. What's more, I knew from experience with learning other software that even if I figured out how to do one cool thing with a particular beat, I could port that over to my more familiar tool and continue the work there. An incremental win would still be a big win!
Eventually, I made it through each beat in the video, and the final product was cool! But inevitably, I learn things in the process of completing a project that aren't represented by my first attempts. So I went back through the whole video, matching the first beats to the final beats and everything in between. Then I sent it off to the client, who came back with great feedback, which gave me an opportunity to learn more about using the software.
Am I now proficient with Final Cut Pro? No, absolutely not. Am I efficient? Oh, hell no. But in the end, I produced the sort of finished product that makes me smile and think, "Well, that's the coolest thing I've ever made." That's not literally true, but it was emotionally true in that moment!
Sticking To It
Reasonably or not, my brain and sense of self-efficacy led me to assume that Final Cut Pro would be more similar to what I was already comfortable with than it was. The gap between my expectations and my assumptions produced "Wait, what?!" moments that could have easily led me to quit in frustration. Instead, I worked through a learning process grounded in relevance, applicability, and purpose that produced enough sticktoitiveness to see me through to the end of the project. And as a result, I learned a ton that will make the next project less intimidating.
As I said at the top, learning and persisting through the "Wait, what?!" moments are required skills in the 21st-century economy. If you're reading this, I assume these are skills you value and utilize. Of course, valuing those skills can bump up against a host of other aspects of life and work, from busyness to relationships to all manner of proverbial dumpster fires. So it can be helpful to have some clear ways to structure your learning and bolster your persistence. Try asking these questions the next time you're trying to learn something new:
Why am I learning this?
Learning for the sake of learning might be the ideal. But a busy life and full to-do list can sink that motivation like a stone. So while it's tempting (and satisfying) to tell ourselves that we're learning this because we're curious or just because it would be cool to learn, getting specific is really helpful.
I recently read Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, which comes in at over 500 large pages of small type. I wanted to read it to learn how she thought about the rise of fascism and its ilk. You know, for reasons. As a result, it was a slog—but a really enjoyable and relevant one. My persistence was renewed every day I picked it up to read a few more pages.
What am I doing with this?
Again, new knowledge and mental models might be ideal outcomes for learning. But in reality, we probably need to do something with what we've learned. There are two ways to answer "What am I doing with this?" The first is a general skill to be acquired and how we imagine using that skill. The second is its immediate application—that is, the project we're embarking on that's inspiring this learning.
I want to learn Final Cut Pro and Motion so I can make cool motion graphics (general skill). I want to apply it to this video I'm working on for a client (immediate application).
What are the "problems" I'm trying to solve?
Or, what are the smallest units of learning I can break this into? As I mentioned earlier, adult learning is broken down into "problem units" rather than "content units." I don't want to learn about this concept or that event; I want to learn how to approach each problem as it arises. "Problem" here means the gap between what you want to do and what you're capable of doing.
When I first started editing video, I didn't know how to use a "chroma key." I'm still not sure if I'm using the phrase properly. If I'd found some comprehensive, content-based guide to learning video production, it would probably have been included somewhere on that.
Instead, I got to a point where I wanted to figure out how to create a reusable page-turn transition that revealed the next video clip as if the viewer were flipping through a book. That was the "problem" I was trying to solve. That led me to learning about how to use an offensively bright green color in place of my video and then remove that color by indicating it with a "chroma key" during editing.
I've also figured out that I don't have to solve all of the problems all at once. With each video, for example, I can focus on solving one new problem. Little by little, I become more proficient, and my results improve.
One More Thing
Learning new skills and making sense of the "Wait, what?!" moments that arise in the process is mentally exhausting. It can even be emotionally draining. Rarely do we have the best timing or environment for getting swept up in a rewarding yet exhausting activity. We have priorities and responsibilities that conflict with the reflexive desire to let ourselves give in to the learning vortex.
That's okay. Or at least, that's what I tell myself.
Part of learning—and part of making sense—is pacing yourself, letting small steps forward reverberate as much as big wins. That's how we keep learning for a lifetime.
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