Has anyone ever told you that you need to have a clear goal in order to achieve something or get better? Well, according to modern learning science, the opposite is true.
For example, the best surfers are not those who train to win a prize or to be featured in a glossy magazine, but those that play with the waves every day because they love it. “This technique argues that to get better at something, focus on the process of learning and not the outcome, a product too far away to motivate you.
In a Stanford University design experiment, a pottery teacher split the class into two groups: the first group focused on making as many clay pots as they wanted; the second on making one single very beautiful pot.
At the end, the teacher graded the pots and announced a winner. The results were clear. All the best pots came from students that made many pots, not those that tried making one single winning piece of art.
To optimize process learning set a fixed study time in which you focus on the material for say 25 minutes a day. In that time, don’t try to reach a certain goal, like reading an entire chapter. Just learn for the exact amount of time that you set yourself. Then stop.
Process learning will help you feel more relaxed during your study and give you a sense of accomplishment once you are done. The very fact that you are interrupted in the middle of your practise before reaching a milestone keeps interest up and increases the motivation to continue the next day.
Please let us know what you think about this learning technique by leaving a comment in the section below.
This is an interesting topic that I have never heard about before. Can you explain what process learning is and how it differs from traditional learning methods?