How Do You Learn?

I recently had a very interesting insight into myself....or, more accurately, how I learn.

I have always been a 'book learner'. By that I mean that my most efficient way to learn something new has been to get a good book and sit down with it and digest it at my own speed, making sure that I understand everything as the lessons advance. That is how I learned Photoshop and that was the way I made it through various institutions of higher learning. That's not to say that lectures weren't important. But, in a pinch, I always felt that I could get most of what I needed out of the book with lectures and other multimedia highlighting what the most important and practical issues were.

Well, I surprised myself recently. Several months back, I bought a couple of Michael Reichmann's downloadable video tutorials from The Luminous Landscape. I did this in the hopes of learning something new, but also because I thought that a video with Reichmann and Jeff Schewe would be entertaining. And it was, but along the way I surprised myself by feeling that I was learning more than I thought I would.

With this insight, I pursued the idea that perhaps I didn't know as much about my process of learning as I thought I did. So I followed up on this by buying Brooks Jensen's workshop PDF and Folio tutorials on DVD and loved them. In fact, I previously reviewed the PDF tutorial. Once again, I learned a great deal....even more so from this tutorial as I really had no insight into how to make a PDF book prior to watching the DVD. I found the same to be true when I ordered an HDR training DVD from Kelby Training. I have another DVD from Tony Sweet coming in the mail.

I thought I knew the most efficient way that I was able to learn, but am glad that I ended trying out a new approach that is both enjoyable and effective. If you haven't tried learning from a multimedia DVD it just might be an unexpectedly worthwhile approach. It was for me.