Each of us learns knowledge or skills, which can be divided into three areas according to the degree of difficulty: easy, somewhat difficult, and very difficult. It is very important to plan out the learning area for yourself when studying, because the results achieved are completely different depending on the area you choose to study.
The knowledge or skill that we can learn easily and effortlessly is calledEasy Zone。The easy zone is characterized by simple repetition without using the brain, and learning in the easy zone can make people feel bored and distracted. This learning progress is slow, or even non-progressive.
We feel particularly difficult to learn, and we have made a lot of effort or still learn the knowledge or skills that we can't learn well, calledDifficult area。The difficulty zone is characterized by a lot of effort or not being able to learn. Studying in a difficult area can be intimidating and giving up. This kind of learning is the easiest to give up halfway.
Knowledge or skills that we need to put in some effort to learn, called:Growth Zone。The growth zone is characterized by the fact that it takes some energy to learn. Learning in the growth zone makes it feel both challenging and learnable. This kind of learning progresses the fastest.
If you want to stick to one thing, it's hard to stick to it by willpower alone. If you use the principle of ability matching to do things or learn, you can make yourself interested in what you do and enjoy it, and it is not a difficult task to stick to it.
Competency matching principle, that is, your current ability should match the difficulty of the knowledge you want to learn.
If you study in a difficult area, and you want to learn more than you are currently capable of, there will be a great sense of oppression, not only difficult to learn, but also easy to give up.
If you learn in the easy zone, you can learn the knowledge you want to learn easily, without any challenge, or if you learn all the knowledge you already know, it will produce a sense of boredom, and it will be difficult to focus on learning.
In the growth zone, your ability and the difficulty of what you want to learn are moderate, neither too easy nor too difficult. Each study is not only challenging, but also can be learned with some effort. This kind of learning concentration is the highest, and the ability to improve is the fastest.
Just like the siege of a city during a war, it is necessary to occupy new heights, to keep approaching the difficult areas of learning, and finally to achieve victory.
Therefore, learning knowledge or skills should be learned in the growth zone, not in the easy zone and the difficult zone.
When studying, pay attention to the knowledge that can touch you the most, give you new experiences, new feelings, and bring a sense of achievement, which is often the knowledge that belongs to your growth zone.
For example, when learning guitar, don't repeat what you've already learned over and over again, these things belong to your easy zone, and no matter how much you practice, you won't improve. It's about practicing the mistakes that are part of your growth zone. If you get the mistakes of a tune, it's easy to play the whole piece.
Taking reading as an example, some people like to read books recommended by celebrities and think that the books they have read are good books worth reading. However, when I read these books myself, I found that many of them were obscure, boring, and difficult to read. This is because everyone has a different knowledge background and different cognitive levels, and celebrities read these books easily and easily to understand, while we may have difficulty understanding when we read them, which is the ability mismatch.
When reading books, you should choose books that can touch you and provoke you to think, and these books generally belong to the area where you grew up.
If you want to match your abilities with what you want to learn, break down the big goals into small goals that you can achieve. For the time being, ignore the knowledge that belongs to your difficult area, only focus on the knowledge in the growth area, and let yourself continue to gain a sense of accomplishment in small challenges.
Just like fighting monsters and leveling up in the game, there are both challenges and completions, and you can continue to improve your ability value, so that the original difficult area will gradually become a growth area, and then become an easy area. What I didn't know gradually became something that wasn't too difficult, and finally something that was easy to do.
As long as you continue to learn in the growth zone, you are destined to continue to grow and eventually reinvent yourself.