Feeling overwhelmed is a common problem for learners. It is one of the main reasons why people quit and never receive the benefit that learning something new provides.
The problem amounts to taking on more than we can handle in a given time. For example, moving on too early is an acute symptom of most school systems. The lessons are not dictated by the individual, but rather by where the class as a whole should be. If you haven't learnt your multiplication tables, I'm afraid it's tough luck because the class is moving on. In this kind of scenario, those who get left behind find trying to stay with the rest of the class is constantly overwhelming. This leads to frustration, and many give up entirely. It's a tragic situation, and it happens all too often.
A large majority of students have at least some subjects that they fall behind on. With me it was foreign languages and physical education. In both these subjects, the majority of the class was always ahead of me; I was constantly overwhelmed and could never catch up. With foreign languages in particular, I believed I was useless at the subject. There were just too many things the teacher said that I didn't understand.
As I moved away from the school system and became more of an independent learner, I started to find these difficulties again. Thankfully this time I realised I could tailor the speed I went through a course to suit me.
Still it took a while before I put this realisation into practice. Unfortunately, I became so eager to prove I could do these subjects that I fell into the same trap. Rather than taking a disciplined approach and learning the foundations thoroughly, I tried to learn as quickly as possible. At first it seemed as if this was working well, but soon enough I became stuck. As I tried to learn more about a subject, it gradually became more and more overwhelming. I just couldn't keep all the concepts in mind.
My problem was one of discipline. As soon as I started a subject I wanted to be an expert, so I rushed through it.
In reality, I think this was my way of dealing with feeling overwhelmed. When I saw new information, I felt I should know it. My quest to become an expert meant that any gaps I spotted in my knowledge had to be filled immediately. Unfortunately, as soon as I began to fill the hole, I would spot another one and try to fill that instead. After a while I started to see the same holes again, and thought of them as new ones!
My strategy has now improved. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by everything I have to learn, I concentrate solely on the one thing I'm learning now. If I see holes in my knowledge, I acknowledge them and then put them aside. I know I can always pick them up later. I make sure I learn the basics well so I don't have to come back and re-cover them. I actually find I save time by going over these concepts again and again, until they are properly drilled in.
I now realise I don't have to learn everything straight away. There will always be more to learn than I can cope with, so I push everything else aside and make sure I learn what I'm currently learning properly. Whenever I feel overwhelmed or frustrated, I just take a step back, slow down, and get back to work. By focusing on what is most important and cutting out the noise, it's surprising how quickly you start to catch up.
It's an overwhelming society
As you try to stay focused on your individual learning place, you will read things that encourage you to stay with the crowd. If you're at school, or university this can be especially true and it's sad that the courses you take don't always acknowledge the different levels of the students. It's unfortunate that you will often be asked to perform work that you are not quite ready for. It's not that you wouldn't be able to do it, or that you wouldn't be able to catch up, you've simply not being given the chance. In these cases, do your best to stay focused on where you are.
Even in the independent learning world we are still encouraged to keep up with the current news rather than work on getting a sound base knowledge. One of the subjects I want to become really knowledgeable about is politics, yet I probably spend less than 5 minutes a day reading the news. Why? Because most news will be forgotten the next day. It's far better to read books on the subjects. They are a little behind, but what they report is worth knowing for more than a day. You only need to keep up with the news, if you are going to take immediate action based on it.
There is so much that we can learn that becomes useless in the mid- to long-term. It's often surprising how important things soon become dated. Generally yesterday's news doesn't matter today.
By realising this and purposely staying a step behind with most things, we can often find ourselves several steps ahead on the important things.
This is the strategy I now follow:
- Decide what the most important thing to learn next is.
- Learn it well until you find it so easy you can use it without thinking about it. If something else comes up that seems important, ask if you can at least put it off until tomorrow. (How's that for using procrastination more positively!)
- When you have learnt what you decided to learn properly, only then head back to step 1 and move onto the next thing.
The key is to cut out the noise. We live in a world which is inherently overwhelming, but we don't have to listen to it all. Put off those things that overwhelm you until tomorrow. You've acknowledged them; you know you will learn them soon, so you can freely concentrate on the present activity without guilt.
The ideal learning state is to feel a little stretched, but not so much that you are anywhere near breaking point. Just concentrate all your energy on that one thing until you know it backwards. When you do, you will be able to use that knowledge without thinking about it. Then you can start adding new things which will build on that prior knowledge. But try to build too high, too soon, and your foundations will become overwhelmed and everything will collapse.
You'll never learn everything; just learn what matters.