When you work as a writer, part of what you’re signing up for is to be a constant learner.
Every time you take on a new project, you’ll need to learn new things. You’ll learn about your audience… the product… the client… the industry…
And, depending on your deadline, you may need to learn this information very quickly.
Sometimes, what you learn may apply to a single project — you may use very little of your new knowledge in future endeavors.
Other things, you’ll learn over and over again until they’re ingrained in you. They become something you know without having to think about it… something deeply internalized.
It’s easy to assume this kind of deep learning is superior to the quick learning you might do for a one-off project. But the truth is you need to be adept at both kinds of learning. They both have value. And, they both have their place.
Quick Learning: What It Is, When to Use It, and How to Do It
Have you ever memorized something for a class or even just for fun only to realize three weeks later, you’ve mostly forgotten it?
When that happens, it’s because you learned it at the surface level. That’s okay. It served its purpose… and then, when you didn’t need it any longer, your brain let it go.
This kind of quick learning can serve you very well on a project that involves a new writing format or a product/topic you’re unfamiliar with. When you quickly get up to speed about a topic, it helps you to know what questions to ask. It helps you to understand the information well enough to convey it to a lay audience in a way that makes sense. And, it doesn’t take a lot of time.
I recommend quick learning over deep learning when you’re preparing for a discovery call… getting familiar with a new topic (it can direct your deeper learning later, if it turns out to be a topic you want to learn really well)… and preparing for events or webinars, so you can get the most out of them.
You can tackle quick learning in a lot of different ways, but here are a few of my favorites…
Read a Children’s Book
If you can find a children’s book on the topic, that’s a great place to begin your quick learning. I need to give Bob Bly a nod for this one. I remember hearing him say, “Read a children’s book on a topic and you’ll have a good handle on all the primary points.” That’s not an exact quote. But I’ve used this advice several times to get familiar with new topics, and it works like a charm.
Use Other People’s Questions
Another way to make quick headway on a new topic is to use Google’s “People also ask” feature. Every time you click a question and read the answer, Google will return more questions you can click on for answers. You get familiar with a topic — at least at a surface level — in just a half hour or so.
For example, if you wanted to learn about growing wheat, the “People also ask” section looks like this…
When you click on the first question, its answer displays, but you also get more questions to browse…
Spend an Hour or Two Reading Up
Finally, do a couple of high-level searches on your topic. For example, if you’re learning about conventional agricultural methods, you might do a search on “conventional agricultural methods,” “commercial farming,” and “modern farming.” Open nine or 10 pages across your three topics and read through them. When you’re done, without looking back at your sources, jot down the things you learned.
Each of these three methods — or, all of them combined — can help you ask smart questions about a topic, identify what’s most important about it, and speak intelligently about it. Your new knowledge may not stay with you long, but it’ll serve you well in the short term, and it can give you a good launching point for deeper learning.
Deeper Learning: What It Is, When to Use It, and How to Do It
Unlike quick learning, deep learning is the kind of learning that stays with you. You can tell when you’ve learned something deeply when you don’t need to prepare to speak or write about it in a detailed, nuanced way.
If someone asks a question about it, you know the answer, and you know the reasons why the answer is sound.
As a writer, deep learning can aid you in several facets of your career.
First, learning deeply about writing as a craft will help you be a better writer. Understanding structure, logic, flow, pacing, word choice, voice, tone, and the stages of writing in a second-nature way can only help you write better and more prolifically.
A second topic worth learning deeply is human psychology and behavior. You’re always writing to a person. The better you understand people — what motivates them, what earns their attention, what makes them feel connected, what helps them to act, what keeps them from acting — the better able you’ll be to deliver the results your clients are looking for.
If you have a specialty, that’s another area where deep learning is smart. If you enjoy writing emails more than anything else, and that’s the primary type of service you offer, then learning all the aspects of email marketing — from deliverability, to what makes for a good email service provider, to data tracking and testing, to what’s new in the field — is going to make you a better email writer than most of your clients are used to encountering.
Likewise, if you’re focused on a single niche, learning deeply about it will help you write better for your niche audience.
So, how do you learn deeply, so your knowledge is second nature — a part of you rather than just something you memorized?
Deep Learning Takes Time
Learning deeply isn’t something you do once and are done with. It’s an ongoing process you engage in as long as that topic is still important and valuable to you. That means the first step to deep learning is to make time for it. Start scheduling an hour or two each week to dedicate to learning about your chosen topics.
Go Broad, As Well As Deep
In your writing career, you probably have two or three areas where learning deeply will help you succeed. Read broadly on these subjects by reading blogs, news items, industry publications, and by watching YouTube videos on the topics.
Also make time for deeper dives into each subject. Read books. It’s often helpful to read popular and widely recommended books on a topic — they usually get to be popular and widely recommended because they’re good. That said, it’s also helpful to read out-of-the way books on your topics — things that take a new approach or that not everyone in your industry has encountered.
It’s also useful to read books that are adjacent to your topic, but not necessarily about your topic. For example, biographies of people who played an influential role in some way can give you new and interesting insights.
Taking courses and programs is another way to deepen your learning about a topic. And attending live training events can also help.
Become a Teacher… Even an Informal One
Making the time and then focusing your learning efforts goes a long way toward deep learning. But, there’s another step you can take. Find two or three people in your life who are interested in your topics of choice, but not experts themselves, and tell them about what you’re learning. This process of teaching someone else is incredibly effective at moving things you’ve learned from your short-term memory into your more permanent memory. It also reveals very quickly what you understand well and what you may want to spend more time on.
In addition to talking and teaching about what you’re discovering, make some time each week to write about the new things you’re learning. Don’t just recall them when you write, but engage with the new ideas. How will you apply them? Why do you think they have merit? How would you adjust the ideas to make them stronger?
When you clarify your thoughts in this way, you move from being a learner into being a thinker… and that’s a step toward becoming an expert on your topic.
One of the best things about being a writer is the opportunity to learn so many new things. But, because learning is a constant, it’s useful to have a strategy for how you learn, both for quick learning and deep learning, so you can use your new knowledge in an effective way.
