BetterLearningBetterEarning™ | Get Better Work & Income - Teach Yourself Higher Paying Skills

Family get-togethers turn strange when relatives ask, “So, what is it you do for a living again?” I reply, “I’m an Instructional Designer!” Without fail, the next crack is something like, “Don’t they make some type of pill that will cure that?” My Grandpa-in-Law is still convinced I make comic books for a living – a far cry from the interactive computer-based training I develop. Learning the basic principles of instructional design can help you teach yourself more effectively and master higher paying job skills.

I get paid (decently) to create training guides, job aids, videos, online courses and even marketing materials to help people perform their jobs better. There’s a simple, effective pattern instructional designers use to develop these training materials and environments. Try this system to design your own learning plans for getting better skills that bring higher income. For simplicity, let’s say you want to learn a skill like using social media to market a business.

1) Assess Where You’re at and Where You Want to Be

Before you determine what to learn, exactly, and how you’re going to learn it, you’ve got know in measurable terms when you’ve “arrived.” You can do this best by defining a measurable accomplishment. It might be something like, “Learn social media marketing well enough to bring 5,000 unique visitors to my business website every day.” Or, “Learn and apply social media marketing effectively to get 25% of my profits through online sales.”

The second part of this step is determining where you’re at now, based on those same measurements. Perhaps you’ve got 200 unique monthly visitors to your site currently and no percentage of profits comes from online sales. Defining points A and B prepares you to bridge the gap.

2) Design an Effective Solution to Teach Yourself

You’ve got to discover what options exist to learn about what you need to know. What’s available online, for free? Does the local library have books on social media marketing that I can borrow? Any classes available online or at a local college? Can I learn those skills by trial and error? What can I learn by mirroring the techniques of people who’ve successfully marketed their businesses online through social media?

Once you’ve brainstormed these learning opportunities, couple those ideas with what you know about your own learning preferences. Do you learn best from a book? From watching other people, or with a mentor? You might prefer a face-to-face class or using a discussion forum to get answers to your questions along the way. Trust your own judgments about how you learn best and design a plan to learn this new skill.

3) Develop Your Own Learning System

People often confuse the Design and Development steps of this process. Design is like drafting the blueprints for a building, Development is actually constructing the building represented in your drawings. So it is with developing your learning plan for this new skill. It’s buying the books, enrolling in the courses, or connecting with the people who can mentor you to expertise.

4) Implement Your Plan

Do it. A plan is worthless without action. “After all is said and done, more is said than done!” You’ll have to schedule your time for studying and applying these new skills. Start plowing through the books you’ve purchased and taking notes from what you read online. When you feel motivation lagging, appeal to a mentor for a swift kick in the butt.

When we create new training programs in the corporate world, we have deadlines for the employees to complete the courses. These programs are urgent because they communicate skills and knowledge that give our company a competitive advantage over others. The longer you wait to develop these profitable skills you’re seeking, the sooner thousands of others will master them and make them mediocre commodities.

5) Evaluate Your Progress

In the training world, we also try to evaluate the effectiveness of training programs real-time. We look at metrics that justified the program in the first place: Are sales for this product increasing? Are the numbers of returns or repairs going down? In your case you might consider, is the number of unique visitors to my website increasing, and, are they coming from social media sources? How many referrals from social media sites convert into online product sales?

If you defined your goal in measurable outcomes, then you should know right off whether you are making progress or not. Evaluating the results of your new skill and knowledge will let you know if you need course corrections or not. You might discover that mastering one social media application is yielding the most results and choose to concentrate your skill development in that one area. You might find that other avenues area waste of time. Don’t spend any more time trying to improve your skills in an area when there’s no apparent payoff. Evaluating your progress will help you make these important decisions and save time or money.

When you apply this simple process to your own learning and skill development, you’ll become a master at teaching yourself. Let me know how it goes!

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