Psychologist advises how to get back into action after a break in training

The New Year holidays have passed, and it is still difficult to return to training. Or the vacation is over, and the study schedule has not been adjusted. Or, for example, you were so loaded at work that you managed to take up training after a few months. As a result, you can hardly remember the material you have covered, and it is scary and difficult to get down to business. We discussed with psychologist Oksana Zinko why such pauses in learning occur and what to do with them.Breaks in training are different. If the break was organized by the teacher, there is logic in this: they do this so that a group of students can rest or repeat and consolidate the previous material. If a break is initiated by a participant in the educational process, the responsibility lies with him. Let's imagine that a student of the courses has received basic knowledge, and then takes a break. What happens then? Basic knowledge after a break of several weeks or months is gradually forgotten, and when a person returns to study, of course, his rational part of the psyche says that he has completed 5 lessons, which means that it is worth continuing from the 6th. But the assimilation of information is completely different. Because after a pause, basic knowledge (perhaps not all) is lost. Based on this, we can highlight the following recommendations:

• Repeat base

If you are returning to training after a long pause, it is better to review the basic information of the course. Perhaps at a different pace, with a different approach, but first. Because the program is built according to a certain logic, and if you take a long pause, you destroy the learning structure. Why start over? To repeat and refresh everything in memory. And then the material to which you proceed will not seem too complicated. It will be logically layered on the knowledge that you received earlier. You will spend a certain amount of time on repetition in order to logically continue learning.

• Find motivation

For adults from adolescence and older, intrinsic motivation becomes the most important. An adult will rarely be motivated by extrinsic motivation. For example, a chocolate bar or a gift. Intrinsic motivation is subject to the question: “Why should I?”. Before returning to learning, analyze why you are returning to it. The key idea behind intrinsic motivation and the question to ask yourself is: what will I get when I graduate? A person introduces himself: how her income level will change, her life will change, what job he will get or what kind of people will be around. We must ask ourselves the main question that is used in self-knowledge: "Why" or "What for". That is, you can ask: “Why did I pause?” or “Why am I going back to school?” When a person asks himself this question and fully answers it, without moving on to the next one, then he can determine the intrinsic motivation that he lacks. But what if learning is no longer fun? You need to look at the material that you are going through. If learning becomes too easy, then the person loses interest in it. This is human nature: to strive for complex tasks that force one to develop.

• Analyze why there was a pause

By the same principle, when answering the question "why", it is necessary to analyze what caused the pause. It is important to treat the pause not as the period when "I skipped", but as the period "I accumulated strength." People generally have a distorted understanding of rest and holidays, which are perceived as "scoring to work." You can say to yourself: “I needed this period to gather all my strength and move forward.” In our culture, it is believed that you need to work hard, and then relax. You can do it differently: relax, gain strength and start learning. Who said that we should follow only one scheme?

• Find environment

The environment is a very important factor in learning. When a person learns on his own, incredible costs are needed to get involved in this process. Not every person is ready for such a regime. What additional mechanisms do we have to help ourselves be in this process and stay productive? It is very important to have a so-called support group, that is, to be included in the profession not only with knowledge, but also with the environment. If you are learning to code online, find those resources where programmers communicate, where there is a professional hangout. This is done so that there is no feeling that the person is alone, so that you can share your victories and problems. You need to understand that you are definitely not alone when you meet with some kind of learning problem. Most likely, someone has already encountered it.

• Practice and then pause

If you understand that a pause is simply necessary in the middle of training, you can use this technique: learn the theory and consolidate it in practice. In this case, even after a long pause, knowledge will last longer.