I am very inspired by the Small Passive Income Podcast session with Dr. Benjamin Hardy. In the episode, he mentioned a term called “Intentional Learning”. Intentional learning is learning by intentions and goal-directed. Unlike Latent and incidental learning, people use intentional learning generally to accomplish more results.

Key Step to Intentional Learning

In intentional learning, the foremost important factor is to know your goals. Goals are your fuels, your drivers, your motivations that push you through the learning process and put the most efforts into it. If you would like to learn a skill because you think it is important for you, that is not enough. To set the goals, you need to imagine the future self. How would you want the future self to be, after acquiring the knowledge or skills? Will you get a better job? Will you get paid higher? Or will you be able to fulfill a long time dream?

One simple example is the project management course — PMP. It gained popularity among many professionals, who started taking the PMP course and hoping to get the certificate. Because it is widely recognized by companies and they will have more career opportunities or a pay raise if they get the certificate. One problem is, there are many people who give up learning. Because they later found out that they don’t like it. The time and energy spent on it are kind of wasted. If they have a clear understanding of what is their motivation, how they want their future self to be, some of them would not have signed up for the course, instead, they might learn something else, which matters more to them.

In the episode, Dr.Benjamin Hardy mentioned that he intentionally wanted to make writing his profession and earn income from his blogs on Medium. That is why he took a writing class and learn how to write blog posts and improve his skills. Because he has an end goal in mind. Today, he is one of the most successful writers on Medium.

Start by identifying your goals, how would you want your future self to be, why do you want to learn whatever you want to learn? Why? Why? Why? If you are 100% clear with what end goal you want to achieve, then set yourself to the next step.

How to intentional learning

1. Set your learning goal. Know your WHY.

2. Research and strategize your learning. If you want to learn how to manage your personal finance, there are a lot of courses online, but not everyone produces the same quality. Do your research property and find one that really helps you transform through the learning. You might also want to integrate other practices, especially when you want to learn a language. Apart from attending the classes, you can listen to music, read books, and watch movies in those languages. Strategize your learning can help you to be more effective.

3. Learn and review what you learned. People forget 50–80% of what they’ve learned after one day and 97–98% after a month. Therefore, reviewing what you learned is equally important.

4. Implement what you learned. Have you ever heard of someone how learned swimming by reading a book or watch a video but never swan in the water? Do you think they have acquired the skill? The one missing step from knowing to achieving is the DOING. If you don’t implement what you learned, you will never get the results that you want. Taking massive action is a crucial step towards achieving your goal.

5. Reflect and improve. Practice makes perfect. What you have done is good, but what you have reflected, learned, and improved, is better. If you have made it to step 4, why stopping at it. Keep reflecting on it, make improvements and you will get better and better. As a natural consequence, the results will be even better.

Never-Ending Growth

When you make intentional learning a habit, you will never stop growing. Whatever you learn, makes you better at something, whatever you learn, brings you results. What is the next thing you want to learn about? Use intentional learning and see what a difference it makes.