Getting stuck when learning new things? Try a journal challenge for that
Writing a journal helps you overcome the three big obstacles in learning new things out of your comfort zone
You want to make big progress in an area. Maybe you want to be promoted to a managerial position, but was told that you need to speak up more often in meetings. Maybe you became interested in a new career direction, but there is some knowledge or skill gap that you need to bridge. Or, you know that if you get better at writing clear emails, you will have much higher influence.
You read books to find tips, or attend courses to get a formal training, but there is still no sign of progress.
You can do a simple thing to crack it: do a journal challenge. In the next two months, write a journal entry about the area you want to make progress on for at least three times a week. It could be a reflection on your progress. It could be an observation of what you learn from people around you. Summary of an insightful book or blog you read also works.
This post analyzes the obstacles we face during learning and how a journal challenge can help.
Why do we get stuck?
There are three obstacles to learn new things and make tangible progress.
Obstacle 1: Learning the knowledge is not enough. There are plenty of self-help books that teach you how to improve. If you want to get better at networking, you can read Never Eat Alone. If you want to get better at public speaking, you can read Talk Like TED. If you find that you actually have a passion in product management, you can read Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love. Also, you can find plenty of online courses, videos, or blog posts for the topics you are interested in. They are all very valuable resources. The only problem is that, only if you apply what you learn in your life regularly, you can really get better.
And that leads us to the second obstacle below.
Obstacle 2: There is not enough opportunity to practice. Sure, you learned useful tips on how to get better at public speaking. But your current job does not require you to do public speaking every day. In fact, your current job probably does not need any public speaking skill, which is why you want to improve on it to move to the next level or a different career.
You need to proactively create opportunities to practice what you learn. And here comes our final obstacle.
Obstacle 3: It is hard to keep up the self-motivation. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone to improve is hard work. You need very strong self-motivation to keep working on it to make tangible progress. But who will motivate you? Your boss will not specifically tell you to speak up more often in a meeting. And no one will request you to study towards a new career direction that excites you. When life is busy, it is easy to deprioritize things that are important but not urgent.
Unfortunately, your self-improvement activities are super important but usually not urgent.
How does journal challenge help?
Now, let us see how a journal challenge can help you overcome those obstacles.
Solution for Beyond knowledge: Reflection helps you internalize the learning. Five years ago, I took a training for public speaking. After teaching us handy tips to deliver better presentations, the coach asked each student to do a presentation in front of the class. During the presentation, the coach recorded our presentations with a camera. After the training, each student got a copy of his or her own presentation recording and watched it with the coach. That was the most helpful learning I had! In the next year, I regularly re-watched the recording to reflect whether I have made improvement.
We can find blogs, books, and courses that teach us tools, the real change happens when we apply those tools by ourselves. We need reflection to monitor our progress and identify improvement opportunities. Journaling is the best tool for that. When you write a journal, you can review key events related to your progress, do a post-mortem on actions you took or could have taken, and come up with ideas for more actions.
For example, I wanted to get better at speaking up more often during large meetings. One day there was a very important meeting and I did speak up several times. In the meantime, there was a topic for which I spoke purely for the sake of speaking (I did not really contribute meaningful thought and actually confused other people). So in the journal I wrote:
Today, we had a meeting about our proposal for the project. My goal is to speak up at least three times during the meeting. I did meet my goal of speaking up three times (kudo on me!) by preparing and identifying areas that I can contribute ideas beforehand. I should keep doing that for important meetings in the future. However, when I spoke about potential ideas to solve a problem, I did not really contribute meaningful ideas there and I got silent response. Looking back, I was speaking for the sake of speaking. This is because the problem is intrinsically hard, and I did not really have a good idea. Next time, I will either listen to other people’s thought or ask probing questions if I do not have a well thought idea.
The above reflection helps me monitor my performance and I can adjust my strategy for the next meeting accordingly.
Solution for Opportunity: “The Yellow Car Phenomenon” identifies more opportunities to practice. In 1994, a commenter learned about an ultra-left-wing German terrorist group (Baader-Menhof group), After that, the commenter heard the name twice in 24 hours. The commenter posted this experience on the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ online discussion board and came up with a name for it: Baader-Menhof phenomenon. Another way to illustrate it is to use yellow car as an example. Have you noticed yellow cars in your city that is not a taxi? That must be rare. In the next few days, you will probably notice a lot more yellow cars. They do not magically show up because you think about it. Instead, those yellow cars show up every day. It is after thinking about yellow cars, you start to notice them everywhere. The phenomenon is also called The Yellow Car Phenomenon.
That is what happens when you start doing a journal challenge for an area you want to improve. Suddenly, you will notice that there are a lot more opportunities for you to practice than you thought before. For example, I recently learned that I need to work on building my personal brand and I started a journal challenge for that. One day I received a email to my group asking for volunteers to help conduct an internal training. I immediately realized that it is a great opportunity to build my brand. If I was not doing the journal challenge, I would ignore the email. Still on personal brand, I have been reading stories on Medium for a while but never wrote anything. After doing the journal challenge, I realized that writing on Medium is also a good way to build my personal brand. And yeah, here comes my posting on Medium on your screen now!
Solution for Motivation: The goal of the journal challenge is an incentive for practice. We need motivation to do what we do, either external or internal. This is especially true when we are working on something that stretches our comfort zone, which is common when we are learning new things. A journal challenge creates a goal for you. Now you have a goal to write about your progress three times a week. To meet the goal, you will need to find opportunities to create your content. That is your motivation, and the good thing is that it is an internal motivation, which is more effective in driving actions with lasting effect.
Let us start writing the journal
If you are interested in doing a journal challenge, do it now! Below are a few tips for you.
Find a tool for journal writing if you do not have one yet. I have tried multiple tools to write journals. Personally, I like Apps that are specifically designed for journal writing. For example, I currently use Journey. I also have good experience with Day One. Saying that, creating a Google doc or Word doc also works. I also wrote my journals in a physical notebook before. Pick the tool you like. The key is to start!
Associate your journal challenge with a SMART goal. Instead of “I want to get better at speaking up during meetings”, make the goal specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Change it into “In the next two months, for meetings with more than 5 people, I want to proactively contribute my ideas at least 3 times during the meeting.” When doing your journal challenge, you can track your progress against your goal.
Be bold in experimenting. With a goal in mind now, try some bold actions as experiments. If you learned something cool from books, blogs, courses, try it out yourself! In your journal, you can review your actions, results, and what you will do differently next time.
I believe that every person has the potential to achieve his or her dream. It is a long journey where you will keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. It is rewarding and fascinating to see you grow. Use a journal to track this beautiful journey.
