Well, to first let you know, this isn’t another blog or piece of information on COVID-19. Trust me, and you will discover the next few hundred words to be very critical for yourself and your peers as well as family. After all, it’s a learner’s perspective.

Ever since we’ve discovered the existence of this disease in our country, there have been several episodes of anxiety and panic among most of us. You might not concur with me on this, but deep down, we all have agitated (even just a bit).

India has been battling the disease pretty well, as the experts say, and I won’t go down and put my thoughts into this one.

But we all have been disturbed and praying hard for a vaccine to be developed or a drug that could overpower it. Out of all worries, many have also been fretting about unemployment and lay-offs.

Yes, in a country where the unemployment rate was already attaining three-year highs, we are compelled to have this rate touch more heights, thanks to COVID-19. More importantly, I can see everywhere that people are now shifting towards learning new skills (soft and hard, both).

Now, this could be because of any reason — the fear of losing jobs, to advance in your career, or to promote your current position at work (these are not all the reasons, but I am considering them to be at a more general level).

During these difficult circumstances, I do understand you and all your feelings within which might or might not be full of anxiety or fear. But, what I will be addressing in the next few paragraphs might help you to pause your life at the moment, think about it, and then take decisive steps.

I see many people on my LinkedIn posting several certificates day in and day out. I manage to push my finger over the ‘celebrate’ symbol and acknowledge them. But you need to understand how a human brain works and how you could pull-off good with even a single certificate on your CV, or in some cases, even none would benefit.

And now you must be like, let me hit the back button, this inexperienced person doesn’t know shit and is talking crap. Well, hang on, buddy! Understand my point here.

For any skill you develop, you need to have a practical implementation. Every online course which you are studying right now offers you some exercises and small projects to perform. If its a soft skill course, you will find more exercises and quizzes committed to helping you more. But this doesn’t always help. Real-world problems don’t necessarily appear to be that way. If I talk in terms of data science, there are far more complexities involved in real-world projects, and the experience you gain from such complexities is way more beneficial for your brain rather than some capstone project at the end of each course.

Don’t think of me as a cynical person here, but this is a reality, and that is the reason why many firms lead to demand prior experience in the domain. Unfortunately, many fail to deliver that. But my point here is not to put your head down and make you believe as you are on the wrong route.

My agenda of writing this piece is to make you understand that how learning can be powerful and could aid you gain commending results.

Our brain’s memory can always be sharpened and improved is what I believe. None of us can never be good at memory. Our memory increases by the way we train it. And the most useful and efficient way is to have an output to your learnings.Because if you keep stuffing your brain and produce zero output from that, it is known to be as shallow learning. Shallow learning will enable your brain to never keep grasp of the stuff you learned throughout your program. Always manage to have an output after you have good takeaways from a course or even a book.

And the simple solution to producing an output can not always be practical implementations. It can also be sharing the knowledge or application of that skill in your day to day living. For example, one of the recent books my friend read was related to finance, and because of her propensity to always associate things and implement key takeaways in her life first, she did the same with her finances. She then urged all of us in our group to follow the same principles (or strategies).

Learning improves your brain and eventually helps you advance more and more. That’s why most of the successful people you are aware of, focus on being learners for life.

So, its time for you to press the brake rather than hitting the accelerator and pause. Analyze yourself and the scenarios. Do a detailed study to understand what is happening and how things can be improved or may be changed. The moment you do a bit of research on yourself is the moment when you will be able to bucket various skills and prioritize which to learn and when.

Always remember, to be handy at a skill, you need your brain to be active and ready to produce more so that it can be trained well and help you memorize it lifelong.

Keep learning and keep advancing! Cheers!

Thankyou

Kashish Sodhi