The Digital Learning Circle

Whenever we decide to develop a new skill, there’s a learning curve.  When that learning curve is steep, we can sometimes become demoralised and end up giving up altogether.

Although ‘digital music’ has been around for a while now, it’s still new enough that the landscape and the tools we use to navigate it are constantly changing.  It’s all too easy to look at this situation and think, “I’m never going to keep up with this, so why bother?”.

The important thing to realise is that there’s no point trying to reach the top of that curve because, by the time you get there, it will have moved.  Instead, think of it as a learning circle.  An endless circle that will allow you to never run out of new skills to master.  Forget about trying to satisfy that need inside of you to reach an ‘end goal’ and get excited about everything there is out there to learn!

Of course, no one can possibly learn everything.  If you tried, you’d very quickly start getting that sinking feeling again.  So the trick is to first ask yourself, “What skill would be most useful to me right now?”.  Then focus all your energy on learning that one skill.  When you’ve finished learning that skill, ask yourself again, “What skill would be most useful to me right now?”.  It’s important that you ask yourself this question every time, because your priorities may have changed since last time.  Something that you thought was important three months ago may be completely useless now.

So what skill would be most useful to you right now?  Maybe you’d like to learn some HTML so you know how to embed images, create links or even build simple web pages.  Maybe some Photoshop basics would be useful so you can create your own banner ads or even design the artwork for your next album.  Maybe you’d like to learn how to use WordPress to build yourself a shiny new website.  Whatever it is, ignore all the people telling you “you need to know x, y and z or you’re no good”.  Pick your skill and master it!