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Top 5 Tips on Using the Web to Learn a New Skill

While I haven't been very vocal about it (yet) on the blog, I began teaching myself graphic design about a month ago now. Aside from the cost of having Adobe Creative Cloud, I have spent exactly $1 on actually training myself on these tools. Using the internet, I've been able to teach myself such things as creating this low-poly self portrait:


It's not perfect, but given that I was able to create that after only having had two weeks of training in Adobe Illustrator, I'm still pretty happy with the results.

Aside from graphic design, free (or nearly free) content online has helped me to build skills in project management, agile development, marketing, and much more. But because it's kind of a "Wild West" out there since anybody can post anything out there, I wanted to share some tips that I have found helpful in my endeavors.

1. Become proficient at really using Google search to its max capabilities. As smart as Google can be with anything you throw at it, it is much better at returning more relevant results if you throw better inputs into it. This means thinking through better keywords, omitting words that may spin Google off into an undesired tangent, using quotations around words to find specific phrases, narrowing results by date so you're getting the latest and greatest info, and more. I just did a very quick search and found this blog post that recommends tips for advanced search. It seems legit, so check it out.

2. If a particular website seems sketchy, get out of there and move on. What I mean by this is that you're going to come across a lot of bad information, so my recommendation is to spend literally only seconds on a website when combing for new information. If you have a bad feeling that they don't know what they're talking about, move on. Don't waste your time. You're gonna run into this a LOT.

3. Buddy up to your old pal, YouTube. I love YouTube. 95% of the stuff I've taught myself came from videos on there. You can generally gauge if a particular video is going to good or not based on number of views and the thumbs up to thumbs down ratio. If you're on a desktop or laptop, you can also watch videos at 1.5x or 2x speed. (And folks who work at YouTube - if you're reading this, PLEASE bring this feature to mobile!!!) In learning Adobe Illustrator, I watched this video playlist that contained literally over one hundred 5-8 minute videos which helped me arguably better than if I would have paid for something like a community college course.

4. Take advantage of trial offers on paid tutorial websites. So you're probably wondering where I spent that aforementioned $1. Paid tutorial sites, like Lynda or Coursera, do offer valuable content, but I tend not to use them because, well, I'm cheap. (And I find a lot of great free content out there.) But you may really be itching to learn something that you can't find for free out there. For me, I noticed the website, Skillshare.com, had a couple exclusive classes taught by renowned designer Aaron Draplin that I just had to take, and instead of paying the full monthly fee, I found a promo code to use Skillshare for 3 months for only $1. Definitely glad I did so, so I'd advise you might want to check out something similar.

5. Don't narrow yourself to a single site or source of information. I mentioned above that there was a particular YouTube video playlist that helped me out tremendously, but I'm glad I expanded my sights beyond those videos. While like 95% of those videos were really solid, I found other videos from other sources that were way better than the remaining 5%. The end result was the same, but I found these videos found much better ways of doing things, cutting out even half the steps sometimes. Nobody is perfect, so while you might find one source offers a lot of great info, I'd still encourage you to look beyond at what other people are sharing.
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