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.

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.

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.

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.