Independent learning is one of our core values. Even though you may deduct what this is about and why we value it so much, knowing something instinctively isn’t knowing it. This amazing skill comes with so many benefits any freelancer should be working on becoming an independent learner, even more, now our world is changing so much so fast into a more individualistic, distanced, way of living.
Long-distance education and working from home require a lot of independence and commitment to work. As this is the world we live in now, we wanted to give you all the basic notions about what an independent learner is and why you, as a freelancer, among all people, should be working on being one right now.
What Is An Independent Learner?
An independent learning person is someone who takes responsibility for their learning. Someone with great management of their motivation, commitment, and comprehension skills.
Independent learners like learning for what it is, for the sake of constant improvement in their lives and exploding their potential to become the better version of themselves, excelling at hard skills as well as soft ones.
Independent learners are naturally responsible and self-motivated, making them great workers in any possible job. They have many positive traits, such as:
Being Creative
When you practice independent learning, you find many ways for the knowledge to stick to your mind. And, as creativity grows by training just as any other ability, an independent learner’s skill to think outside the box is very well exercised.
For example, many self-taught English speakers have learned the language by watching TV shows and repeating dialogues, listening to American music and translating the lyrics, or both.
Having Great Critical-thinking Skills
Having the responsibility to set your independent learning schedules and routines teaches you to analyze effectively what you need to learn, why you need to learn it, and when and how you need to do it. Independent learners get used to being critical about any decision they make for education and occupational purposes.
Faster Comprehension
Although this isn’t scientifically proven, most independent learners are used to learning more things in less time, so their minds tend to work faster. This is an excellent ability for freelancing and remote work since it allows them to adapt to any client’s needs in record time.
Determination and Persistence
Since independent learners are their teachers, they motivate themselves to study any subject they choose. This inevitably teaches them how to be determined and persistent in their tasks, making them excellent professionals.
There is nothing better for any business than a person who is always willing to adapt to every situation and learn from it, making independent learners such valuable players.
For example, you get a Customer Service job in which you must deal with a German client who barely speaks English. An Independent Learner will likely start learning a little bit of German to establish a better relationship with the client and give them greater customer service.
For example, many real-life situations require workers to learn several abilities by themselves to excel at some task.
Benefits of Being An Independent Learner
Many studies show that independent learning skills help develop a deeper understanding and commitment to the ability to learn or train since these people take personal responsibility for their knowledge.
It is known that the more engaged the person, the more effective their work is. But being responsible for your training gives you much more abilities than just being more productive, and here we’re just going to point them out:
Learn Just What You Need
When you practice independent learning usually you start learning something with a clear goal in mind, therefore, you structure your learning method and look for informative material about that specific topic. You avoid boring classes of subjects that don’t have anything to do with your goals, and by doing that, you save time, money, and energy to invest in what you want to learn.
Go With Your Rhythm
You can set your independent learning schedule and learn as fast as you can/want without any outside push. This individual way of learning gives you room to explore many studying techniques and try anything that suits you better, which helps you learn faster and more willingly.
Save Money
By learning independently, you save the money you would spend paying a teacher or mentor. Independent learners usually look for creative ways of absorbing information, such as Internet material, TV shows, YouTube, music, old books, or anything else, and this is usually free or reachable for anyone.
Grow Soft Skills and Hard Skills
When you practice independent learning, you are both the teacher and the student at the same time, and both experiences leave tremendous knowledge besides the subject you are specifically studying. Even if you are not training a soft skill, you work on your discipline, self-motivation, responsibility, and commitment, which are some of the most useful abilities in the freelancing business.
How Can You Start Independent Learning?
Take Care of Your Learning
Think of a skill you want to develop or anything you want to learn. It can be a language, how to play an instrument or web programming… We usually associate learning with some teacher or academic teaching guided by another person, when today, we have so many free resources that we can get a significant amount of knowledge on our own.
Take charge of your knowledge by changing your mindset to one in which you consider that you do not strictly need someone else’s guidance to start advancing in your learning process.
Find and Download Free Resources
Depending on what you want to study, there are many ways to start your learning path. They can be ebooks, podcasts, tutorials on YouTube, or applications that make it easier for you to learn with games. The Internet opens up a world of possibilities if we know how to use it.
You can start by researching what resources are available to start your study, downloading them, and organizing all your material in the best way to know how to start consuming it and working on your personal development.
Establish a Study Schedule
Part of teachers’ remarkable work is to design a study plan to teach their classes so that knowledge reaches and settles in their students. Likewise, when you are learning something new on your own, you should plan to dedicate some moments of your daily life to developing this skill.
Depending on what you want to learn and the resources at your disposal, how many days and hours will you dedicate to this learning? Then, be constant and take responsibility for doing it every day.
Be Patient
Motivation is expected to be lost occasionally, and regularly developing independent learning skills takes time and is not a linear process. Many people walk away from what they are learning for a while and then come back.
Although perseverance helps a lot in this case, it is also important to be understanding with yourself and give yourself time and space to learn at your own pace.
A helpful tip is that instead of setting a goal of studying for two hours every day, it is better to start step by step: fifteen minutes each day, gradually increasing. Thus, once you get used to it and it becomes a habit to dedicate yourself to this, it will be much easier to gradually increase the time and effort invested.
Independent Learning Takes Time
Investing time and energy in your professional growth will always be worth it. Not only because it makes you an even more valuable freelancer, but also because it helps you grow your self-esteem, confidence, determination, proactive mindset, and many other things.
Even if it can be stressful sometimes, and if motivating yourself can be challenging, the benefits you gain from doing this are worth it. We assure you you won’t regret trying to learn that skill you’ve been postponing.
You can start with anything, from learning how to use a specific software to learning how to do origami. The important part is to find that thing that calls you and let yourself open your horizons and experiment with different learning methods. Remember, your success is up to you. Every one of us is an independent learner somehow, so we should exploit that potential to its best!
See more articles by Andrea Corona.
