Learning a new Skill

Recently I took it upon myself to learn JQuery. I’m toying with the idea of a redesign of both this site and my company’s site, and would like to do some cool stuff. I’ve written before on learning a new programming language but not new skills in general. I’m a big fan of the “learn by doing” approach.

The web is ubiquitous with tutorial sites (see envato for some great ones), which makes it easy to learn by doing. For JQuery, I will be doing one or two tutorials a week to get myself acquainted with it, then adapt what I learn to my own sites. This has worked well for me in the past- find good tutorials and it should be pretty easy (at least to learn the basics).

The key is to find some good, linear resources for doing tutorials. While the web is good for finding a specific tutorial to do, if you’re just starting out you should start at the beginning. I’d recommend picking up a book for that. As far as they go, there is no be-all-end-all series for anything. For programming, I like the Absolute Beginner books. For Adobe products, the Classroom in a book series is very good; but it’s really up to you to find something you’re comfortable with.

I’d say the hardest part is sticking with it. Learning something new can be time consuming and frustrating, especially when you have other things you need to do. However, once you do learn it you’ll be pretty happy you did. 

Finally, I only touched on resources for computer-based skills because that’s what I know best. If you have some “real life” skill, like how to build a deck, feel free to leave how you learned in the comments!