Self-management and motivation
How to set educational goals? How to manage yourself? What to do to learn what you want to know?
Knowles identifies four steps to take if you want to learn something:
- You need to set educational goals
- The sequence of steps to achieve them
- Keep a record of learning progress
- Assess your education
Educational goals are primarily related to. Before you set out what you want to learn, it is a good idea to consider why you want to learn it and what drives you to learn it. Generally, the best match is probably intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation can be a desire to learn, a sense of mission, an emphasis on compensating for something you lack, a desire to break out of your environment, etc. Extrinsic motivations are money, chocolate, friends or parents. Both forms of motivation are essential. The intrinsic gives meaning to what we do, and the extrinsic can support a person when they don't feel like it, carrying them through the learning activity itself.
As for the learning objectives themselves, remember that they should be SMART (this is a perfect way of describing any goals, not just learning objectives):
- Specific: the goal must be precise. Try to name it clearly, and avoid goals that are too abstract and difficult to grasp. So don't want to learn mathematics, but perhaps solve homogeneous first-order differential equations . Concentrate on small pieces.
- Measurement: the goal must be measurable. It's good to set a metric to track how you're doing to achieve something. If we stay with the example of differential equations, it might be reading a textbook and being able to calculate the relevant standards from a particular collection.
- Achievable: the goal must be achievable and realistic. There is no point in setting too high and challenging goals, or at least not in a learning and at-once way. Do you want to learn to paint? Don't give yourself the purpose of painting a new Slavic epic, but maybe a painting for your kitchen. So, as we know, the achievability of more challenging goals naturally increases.
- Relevant: does the goal match what we want to do? What is its relationship to the dreams we have, the problems we are solving, the challenges we are facing? Is what we want to do just interesting, or is it an activity directed towards our development or general well-being?
- Time: the goal must be time-bound. In the beginning, try to set the time needed to reach the goal. Be realistic - a common mistake beginners make is that they "over-start" and then don't achieve anything. Try to set interim milestones to keep you informed of where you are.
Now is an excellent time to stop and think - so what do you want to learn? Take a piece of paper or Google Docs and write the points. Take a calendar and write down exactly when you will do the task.
