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Chocolate Musings

Set your goals - make the plans - artfully create your life - live it beautifully. Grab the good chocolate and find your muse.

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Home » learning

How to Learn a New Skill in 5 Easy Steps – and Keep Your Life, Too

August 1, 2019 2 Comments

5 Steps to learn a new skill (and keep your life, too) | ChocolateMusings.com #habits #skills #talents

How to Learn a New Skill – all it takes is a small commitment every day

How to learn a new skill: believe it or not, it doesn’t take a tremendous amount of time every day to learn something new. In reality, all it takes to learn a new skill is a small commitment, every day to develop a new talent or start a new hobby.

What is one thing you want to do but you haven’t started doing it, yet? Maybe it’s because you don’t feel like you have time or it feels too complicated or any other excuse you give yourself.

Practice Makes Progress - 5 Ways to Develop a New Talent or Skill | ChocolateMusings.com #practicemakesprogress #practice #skill

Learning a new skill or practice won’t happen immediately. My kids always say, “I’m not good at that.” My response is either “neither was I until I practiced a lot” or another one of my favorite responses: “well, you’ll have to practice to improve.” Learning a new skill is like riding a bike or learning to swim.

Buying a new bike doesn’t guarantee you’ll keep your balance; it requires practice, practice, practice. It requires skill development and sometimes some scraped knees. But it always requires you get back up and keep going.

Examples of Skills I Want to Learn or Habits to I Want to Develop

  • Learn to create a variety of lettering formats
  • Journal Everyday
  • Write
  • Illustrate books
  • Paint Murals
  • Watercolor Paint
  • Paint realistic art
  • Draw from memory
  • Draw Faces
  • Sell my art
  • Blog full time
  • Keep my house clean
  • Learn something new
  • Watercolor plants
  • Create quotes in awesome layouts
  • Paint florals
  • Photography
  • Write Comics
  • Sing

When I was learning to brush letter, I committed at least 15 minutes per day to the activity. Investing just 15 minutes per day removes a lot of excuses. It feels more like a bite-sized piece every day than eating the whole elephant at once.

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Make Your Own List

Go ahead and get your notebook out or a scrap of paper then brainstorm a list of things that you want to learn. Don’t edit your list right now; write down all the things you want to do. Don’t worry about how long your list is, keep writing until you feel like you’ve listed everything.

Once you’ve listed all the ambitions in your life, choose one (maximum two) items from your list to practice every day for a short amount of time.

Decide which one will capture your focus. You can’t learn everything all at one time. For one thing, the time commitment is certainly not feasible. For another thing, you’re probably overwhelmed by your list already.

Choose One Thing

The above list of skills I want to learn/habits to develop to do isn’t comprehensive by any means, but even that shortlist is overwhelming when it comes to doing them all at once.

Trying to learn everything at once quickly becomes overwhelming. The key to learning a new skill is to focus on one thing at a time. I used to be an advocate for multitasking, but I have learned over time that splitting my efforts is certainly not as effective as focusing on one thing at a time.

I’m not saying to neglect everything else in your life, in fact, contrary to that. Choose one as a focus. I’m not going to neglect cleaning my house while I learn a new skill other than cleaning, but the books I read, the research I do, my general focus will be on creating a different skill instead.

If You Can’t Decide Which One

If you can’t decide, try this: choose the first thing on your list. Think about spending the next 3 months, devoting your time every day to learning that skill. How does that one make you feel? Were you excited or secretly disappointed that it wasn’t another item on your list? If you were disappointed, choose the thing that you thought about doing instead, that’s probably the one you really want to try.

Muscle Memory

You’re creating ‘muscle memory.’ It’s like going to the gym for your brain and hands. Working out a little every day is better than working out in one long session on Saturdays. It creates a more established habit and doesn’t take an entire day to catch up.

If you give yourself just 15 minutes per day, you’ll be amazed at how much you improve at this new skill. A short amount of time every day is better than a big chunk of time – especially when you have to train your hands or mind to do something different like lettering or drawing.

You’ll make better progress if you do a little every day. And you’re not asking yourself to eat huge chunks, which is easier to swallow.

Now Commit to Learning Your New Skill

Just like my cleaning/decluttering regimen, set a specific time for when you intend to do your practice every day.

How to Commit:

Now that you’ve decided which skill you will practice, there are a few things that will help you to commit it to memory. They are simple things, but very useful.

  1. Set a time
  2. Write it down
  3. Block it out on your calendar
  4. Show up & Practice
  5. Every. Single. Day

Set your intentions for real then commit to yourself or tell someone else if you need accountability. Tell them what you are going to do and when you are going to do it.

Comment below, which is the one thing you are going to do & when you are going to do it every day.

5 Steps to learn a new skill (and keep your life, too) | ChocolateMusings.com #habits #skills #talents

My Commitment

For me, I am going to write for my blog for 15 minutes every day at 8:30 am before I go to work. If I need to, I will put in headphones to drown out the extra noise and reduce distractions. My work doesn’t have to be perfect, and I need to show up and do it. Every. Single. Day.

Where can you learn more about creating a habitual creative practice?

I love SkillShare – an online learning environment with hundreds of courses you can take to learn new techniques and enhance your skills. Sign up for a free trial, take some classes and see what else you learn.

Here are some related courses from SkillShare:

365 Day Project
You Can Draw Anything!
Stick to it: How to Maintain a Creative Practice

If you already use skillshare – are there any classes you’ve enjoyed? I’d like to know.

Want to start handlettering? Check out my post for beginning lettering supplies.

2 Comments
Filed Under: Blog, Find Your Happy, Get Creative, Get Inspired, Habits Tagged: create, habit, how to, learn new skills, learning, lists

Ready for Take Off: Lessons Learned – January Monthly

January 11, 2018 3 Comments

Lessons Learned from Bullet Journaling

Every month I learn something new from bullet journaling. This month is no different. This month, one of the lessons learned from Bullet Journaling I’ve learned is that open boxes are fun. I did it in my January future log and continued the trend in my January Monthly Calendar. Not all boxes have to be perfect or closed off.

The background art took up more room than I wanted to give at first. But then the colors just seemed so beautiful I couldn’t let them go. So I didn’t fight it and just let things meet where they wanted to meet. I don’t get a lot done the last week of the month anyway right? But the more I look at it, the better I like it. Another lesson learned is that I need to leave room in my life for art and for the ‘things to do’.

(FYI I tried to find the inspiration picture for this spread so I could share it and now I cannot find it anywhere – I looked at it once briefly know how to draw the back of an airplane and I loved how the sunset looked with the clouds) Lesson here: save the picture to your Pinterest board, you so you can find it again.

Monthly Calendar Set up with theme - "Ready for Take Off" - lessons learned from bullet journaling + process video

Intentions Foiled – Ready for Take Off, Anyway

I fully intended to do a whole year’s worth of flowers and foliage and the like as my yearly theme is ‘grow’. However, the transportation theme just built on itself and each doodle became more and more fun (just wait until the mid-month habit check – I think that layout is my absolute favorite for the month). So what can I learn from this seeming mishap? I learned to just let inspiration take place. Crazy that I can learn from bullet journaling, but it seems to have a lot to teach me.

What has Bullet Journaling Taught Me This Month?

I guess you could say that Bullet Journaling has taught me how to compromise. Sometimes what I think is very important at first is actually not important after all. Am I making a big deal about something that truly doesn’t matter why not just be open to new ideas? Who knew a little-dotted notebook could hold such insight in its blank pages? Who knew it held life lessons that years of living have not been able to teach me yet?

I think that all this drawing and journaling and planning have gotten into my brain and tried to make me a better person. I’d better let it do its magic and learn how to compromise in real life. I think I’ll take a cue from my monthly theme and let the good things take off. It’s easier to let things come naturally and not force them. I learned that when creating this month’s group of spreads. Just allow the inspiration to come and learn from it.

Recap: Lessons Learned (just this month!) from Bullet Journaling

  • Open box design is fun
  • Leave room in my life for art AND for ‘things to do’
  • Intentions aren’t always what you need
  • Intentions don’t always give inspiration
  • Compromise – if something doesn’t work out the way you want it, don’t just say no at first. You might enjoy it.
  • Allow yourself to become a better person

Question:

What unexpected objects have inspired your life lessons? Let me know in the comments below!

Watch the process video below for how I painted/set up this page.

Remember to plan your life so you live beautifully and don’t be afraid to find your inner muse.

~Tricia

3 Comments
Filed Under: Blog, Bullet Journal, Get Organized & Start Planning, Plan With Me, Plan With Me 2018, Planner Spreads Tagged: #BuJo, brush lettering, Bullet Journal, bullet journal spread, bullet journaling, creativity, hand drawing, hand drawn, January, January 2018, learning, lessons from bullet journaling, Lessons Learned, monthly, monthly calendar, monthly layout, monthly log, plan with me, self-improvement

About Me


Hi! I'm Tricia, the creative behind ChocolateMusings.com, I know how it feels to lose your inner muse. After years of darkness (which I call the dark ages of my life), I found my inner muse hiding in the forgotten corners of my soul, I vowed never to lose sight of her again.

Bullet journaling helped reignite the passion for art and living life again while organizing my days. I also discovered modern calligraphy and watercolor. Since then, my use of the bullet journal system has evlolved and I call it 'creative planning'. Here on the blog, I show you how to use your planner to ignite your inner muse and explore creativity and art while staying beautifully organized and living a joyful life.

I invite you to grab some good chocolate and dive into my musings. Let’s ignite your inner muse.

Read more on the about me page. You can also find my policies and disclosures here.

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