How to Learn Slowly or Faster

SUMMARY

Learning skills have never been easy using the internet videos. You can hardly ask a teacher in the classroom to slow down or go back to the lesson 10 minutes earlier without distracting other classmates. However, with online videos, you can slow down or go fast watching an online pre-recorded tutorial or class. Nevertheless, there are still distractions like advertisements in online videos, and offers of paid courses if you really want to go deep in a certain lesson. In this episode, I highly recommended two principal ideas. First, have your BIG WHY in front of you all the time to keep you motivated throughout your journey to upgrading your skills. Second, be prepared to make some investments if you wish to be efficient and save time and effort, and if you are determined to stay online and develop as a pro. I then give 3 tips to go either slowly or faster in the online world of learning.

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

TRANSCRIPT

Our topic for today is how to learn slowly or faster. From the recent comments that I have gotten from my channel I realize I have two types of learners- the slow learners and the fast learners.

First of all I'm very happy that there are these two types of learners. I'm very happy for you if you are any of these. In either case you want to learn and that is something wonderful. You want to learn something new in spite of the current extra-ordinary situations of the pandemic or local elections, not knowing what is going to happen in the future. But still you are trying to learn so I can say you are growing on the inside. Probably you go to your usual work but you're thinking of learning other things and that is already an achievement that you have that desire to learn. So keep at it okay. At the minimum regardless of what skill you want to acquire, you are not stagnating as you are always wanting to learn. So congratulations for that.

Our topic of learning slowly or faster is going to apply to the online world of learning. This has been our situation for over two years now. The pandemic has actually brought us significantly to the world of online learning. ,Many people have learned that there are huge number of ways to learn. You might have experienced enrolling in free courses that many educational institutions have offered online during the pandemic. You're might be really getting into the mode of learning. I am like you most especially in YouTube and I have also enrolled in a number of online courses. 

I’m very thankful and very grateful that somehow you have gotten into my channel. And even if you say I'm talking too fast I'm going to give you some tips right now in order to still learn from me in spite of my talking speed. I’ll give you a way to learn from very quick video tutorials. I will share with you my method of learning many things from the online world.

To give you an example, I tried to learn photoshop editing five or six years ago. An administrative staff in the school where I was working took so much effort to teach me but I did not learn unfortunately. However, during the pandemic I learned how to use Photoshop Elements. It could have cost me 8000 pesos alone to buy the software. Then I learned how to use it by watching many YouTube videos.

The first big idea I want to share with you is this: you have to know first the big why. Why are you trying to learn something new. The options on whether you have to go for slow learning or fast learning are only options. But the more important thing is why do you want to learn because that will really keep you afloat if you are already drowning with all of the details of learning. You might say “Dr Avic is super fast and I don't even know what kind of device I have, what kind of operating system I have…”  

The big why will keep you afloat, will keep you motivated. You might want to learn how to do live streaming or how to use zoom as a video conferencing app from me. But if you don't like it from me then you will go for other creators as long as you achieve your goals. You will get less stressed if you encounter an online creator who is really someone not aligned to your communication skills and you shift to another. The big why will actually keep you going. 

It’s the one that's really going to encourage you, or motivate you to continue regardless of many difficulties that you will find along the way. Sometimes you will find a day wherein you might have listened to eight people online and “I didn't learn anything.” What can I say? Start again the following day.

Deciding whether you can learn more effectively by slow learning or whether you would prefer to learn faster is less important than knowing your goal. Examples of learning goals: you see the possibility of earning more in the online world and you want to start an online business. Or you want to have an online community. Perhaps you really miss being in the classroom and you're the type who has a sanguine temperament , you are very friendly and you like speaking. And you miss that opportunity of being able to talk to a group of people so you want to build your own own tribe or your own online community. You are trying to learn how to speak to the camera even if there's no one watching because you want to be more proficient in live streaming. That is your big why.

If you are based in the Philippines you know of the local elections. One of the leading presidential candidate, the current national vice president Leni Robredo said that when it comes to education, the the thing to do after being elected or starting to work as the president is to declare an education crisis. And if you want to participate in that improvement of education because probably you're also a teacher and you must have been saddened by the many young people employed in a machinery of lies during the election campaign period. You realize the students need more values formation. You want to create an online course so that you can give the skills for them to have a decent job, a dignified job and not the peddler of lies that they are in right now.  So you want to participate to solve that education crisis. This is a huge reason why in spite of the many difficulties that you will experience day in and day out trying to learn in the online world, this big why will really motivate you to continue.  

I share that motive. I am also trying to make a greater impact, trying to reach many people. It's very important that you deal person-to-person and it’s also good to have massive campaigns through the online world. 

Have your big why in front of you all the time. I just remembered a scene that I saw from the Korean TV series While you were sleeping (2017). The lead actress Suzy Bae plays Hong-Joo a reporter. In the last series episode was she woke up after a dream and then she started writing on post-it notes. Then she placed them on the glass window in front of her literally.  As she wakes up those are the first things she would see. That's a very graphic way of always looking at the north star. Because you will encounter many challenges in learning, a huge number of creators, a huge amount of differences in each of the creators, so you're going to be searching and searching. Probably you can say I would rather have everything in one course which is really the idea why some people would invest money in enrolling in an online course because it can minimize getting all these advertisements and all the searching.

If you have the money to pay for an online course, I can tell you that a comprehensive course could be worth a thousand dollars. Go for the ones that ctually offers coaching for one month at the start like a really good hand holding for the students. I have one that is like 400 dollars and the teacher has this monthly zoom meeting to answer questions. So that’s a peg, don't just pay for a course that for 400 and only gives the course because there are other courses that are also good that gives you beside the course some coaching sessions. It could be monthly session, one hour coaching session for all the students. It’s not one-on-one because it's going to be very expensive. 

Two years ago I didn't even know how to have a YouTube channel. I didn't know how to upload anything online. I didn't know editing. I just learned every day. I started with creating two videos every week and then afterwards I got involved in many other work. So I did upload once a week. But there was a time that I was so busy with other things that I was not uploading. Nevertheless there was always a chance to do those other work that involved editing. So I think every week I got to improve in my editing skills, in my live streaming skills. Even if it doesn't appear in my channel, even if it's something that I just do on the side as part of my non-profit work, still I'm honing that skill of live streaming. I find it very useful now that I am here in front of you doing the live streaming. I’m not just the person behind the camera managing the live streaming for other people. I am here in front of you so this is still a learning experience because it's different when you are in front of the audience.

I was saying that I was able to doing video editing almost every day for two years. I was able to put up 95 public videos. I would assume that I have spent 11 hours per video for editing, including producing the video thumbnails, doing the marketing, learning by watching other creators in specific challenges that I have in terms of editing or managing my channel.

So 11 hours x 95 videos could amount to around a thousand hours, Assuming that I would be working eight hours every day on that particular skill then I would be learning for four months. That could be the peg for the fast learners because I am a fast learner. And I will give you my tips on how I did that. But for the slow learners you can say it could be twice that amount if you want to learn how to do YouTube. You could be proficient within eight months if you're a slow learner. 

Apart from having your big why, you have to do a cost-benefit analysis. Remember you have a big goal that's your north star or your destination. So in order to get to that destination, it’s very important to do a cost-benefit analysis. You might say I'm just going to learn how to do video editing using a free app  or software. That would be the iMovie which is free and it is easy to use as it has presets. That means a lot has been done for you, like the transitions or color effects. 

Talking about my own experience if I'm going to learn to become a professional live streamer or professional online creator I cannot go for the free softwares.  Why? Because I might reach a point when I'm already very professional and I will feel dissatisfied with the presets. They are already pre-cooked if that's like food. If I'm going to be a professional and I was thinking of that two years ago, I would like to be the one to manage my own video color or transitions or other settings. I want to do it myself.

You might have heard of OBS or Streamyard or Restream for multi streaming to channels like YouTube and Facebook. It’s possible to use it for free in some instances that I can't recall the specifics. I am sure though that because I was multi-streaming to a Facebook page and my YouTube channel, I really had to pay monthly. But I realized that any of these semi-free apps are still very limited. And I want a kind of freedom to do many things and I can do that in paid professional versions of the softwares.

That's the reason why I would recommend to you depending on your big why you cannot go for free apps. You will reach a point where you will be very professional, you have spent so much time learning a free app, and you won’t advance much after that. Think ahead before you invest your time learning a software. I personally invested in a video editing software by Mac which is Final Cut Pro. It cost me in the Philippines 14000 pesos. But I divide that amount to the 95 public videos I have published and that’s only 150 pesos per video. SoI don't think of the entire 14 000 that's an expensive amount by itself. And I'm not stopping at 95 videos. I hope you get the cost-benefit analysis there.

Look at it another way. If you are thinking of retiring in the province, you're going to buy a house. You're also going to invest in some electric appliances. In the same way when you're thinking of going online in a future business, think of the softwares you will need as an investment for your future profession

This Ecamm (my live-streaming software) is also much more expensive than the semi-free multi-streaming apps like OBS or Streamyard or Restream. I could be paying 1200 pesos per month but because this is again a big investment. And I'm very happy with the way I could do many things using Ecamm. Just to give you an idea. Earlier I was just trying to experiment on doing my own video background. So my background is not just a painted wall, I am going to decorate it with frames which I call overlays. It is like some beautification.  I tried some geometric figures that are coming in from the left orthe right. You might see more of that as I'm trying to learn how to do live streaming. I think that's very important because it's not that you are just going to spend hours, you really have to spend money if you are thinking of the future online platform for you, whether you are going to teach or sell products. You could really maximize your learning hours from day one, from right now while you are just starting if you make some real investments. Later on you won’t have to worry about these anymore. It's like if you're driving your own car to go to work it was a huge investment but now you don't even think how you will go to a certain place because you have a car. So in the same way if you're going online how do you produce say a video. You hardly will think of that dilemma because you have invested in the right software. I don't have an affiliate commission for selling Final Cut Pro to you. You can just look for it in the App Store. 

Now I go to my tips.

1. I highly recommend that you invest in an external monitor to save you from going from one window to another in just one monitor which is your computer. It's quite difficult to be learning anything online using the same monitor.  I bought my Samsung external monitor eight years ago for 4000 pesos. It’s still a very good one. I could open a video tutorial and drag the window where it is showing, to the Samsung. It’s like having my teacher at my side showing me how to do something. And I could pause the video and play it.

So for the slow learner who's saying I'm too fast, I recommend that even if you don't have an external monitor, you can simply pause and play my video. And you can go back to the part that you did not quite understand what I was saying. but it will really facilitate your learning, you don't have to shift from one window to another if you have an external monitor. You can actually get a monitors at low price and even at a discount.

2.  Use the timestamps if the video has it. It facilitates that people can go faster by advancing to the topic that interests them.

3. Use the gear-like icon at the lower right side of any video. Inside that gear icon, you can select a playback speed. It can give you the possibility to adjust the playback speed from the slow speed of 0.25 to the fast speed of 1.75 or 2.0.  I use the playback speed when I'm learning editing techniques.

4. You can also use the closed captions to better understand the person talking in the video.

5. Lastly you can print out or copy digitally the transcripts. Use the three dots below a YouTube video where you have the option to report the video to YouTube if needed or to “show transcript.”