How to Learn Effectively - WIWIKA

Summary: The moment you feel yourself fatiguing and becoming frustrated, STOP and take a break. You're maximising your artistic improvement and productivity by taking a break. When you forge full force ahead, putting in 10+ hours a day, there is going to be improvement, but what often happens is it causes burnout.

An interesting take on learning any skill is the one by stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, who talks about how skill-growth is maximized by optimizing periods of active strain and effective recovery, and that every time you train it's not about draining yourself completely but also NOT about stopping the moment you're fatigued. It's about hitting that wall, pushing a BIT further than you'd like outside your comfort zone, and then getting COMPLETE rest. So somewhat in-line with this take with the added caveat of pushing farther. When you do HIT that wall, reminding yourself that you've really just hit the ceiling, and every moment you push past it is "money in the bank" UNTIL your brain becomes slush. A middle path.

You're always having fun drawing as a kid, you have to find that fun again as an adult too because having fun was what motivated all of us to draw in the first place so it's obviously important. Thanks for another helpful video Sycra!

Having ADHD makes learning things so god damned hard. So much self doubt and lack of motivation really kills any "fun" you have in any situation.

Gave it a shot and I really wasnt expecting it to work that well. I was struggling hard on the head and getting frustrated, and it was a short session so I felt bad but did decide to stop because of this video. I go back today, and the first thing I did was nail the head! I felt stumped on the hands and frustrated, and now I have faith tomorrow's me can deal with that! :) thank you!

I'm pretty sure I've experienced this before. I started art 2 years ago. There was lots of times where I'd not be too into it but I'd always do "something" each day. I'd throw down some portraits for 10-20 mins and go to bed. Doing this in month periods, it felt like something close to afk grinding because when I'd get back into it, I'd notice great improvements. When I'd grind a lot harder, I'd get more push back from Art, takes some weeks off with my daily minimal activities, and come back so much stronger. Appreciate these videos because they help me understand a lot about many things and my self. Now I'm kinda at the point where I have enough knowledge to know what I need to do to improve so it's just been a road of motivation and fun.

Good video, good advice! A lot of artists struggle with the same things (me included) and just simply forget to rest, because, "oh, I rest when I draw!", but it's not entirely true. It's important to take just the rest. I usually give myself one day of rest to just play games and watch some videos, to recharge, and then I can continue with new energy and ideas! Also, our bodies and brains are not built to deal with psychological stress, we were built to deal with physical stress. It's a lot easier for the body to gain its strength back after a day of hard work, but it's a lot more difficult for the brain to relax and recover from psychological/emotional stress, it could take days, weeks, even months to fully recover. So it's very important for everyone to take not only physical breaks but also psychological.

This reminds me a lot of pomodoro technique, and other similar learning techniques. Practice for a set amount of time, take a break. A lot of professional instrument players do something similar - practice for an amount of time (max 90 minutes, I've read), and then take a break. The brain can't focus for extended amounts of time, and taking breaks not only allows time to assimilate what you've experienced, it can also allow you a mental step back that might help solve a problem you're facing. And most of all, it relieves your brain from straining to focus. Basically, you can either practice for 25 minutes and take a 5 minute break 3 times (finishing up with a longer, 15 minute break), or practice for 90 minutes and take a 15 minute break. You can then repeat this set, or just stop for the day. Experience will tell you which one works best for you. I've used this technique myself in other disciplines than art, and it helps provide structure, but also gives your brain some downtime. It isn't magic, but it absolutely works.

Youre a very good teacher Sycra, I find it easier to watch a 43 minute video from you than a 10 minute video from some other youtubers, and this is coming from someone who probably has legitimate ADD.

i kinda combine it all. i usually draw once a week but don't pressure myself to draw otherwise. but when i do i go for hours. it's pretty strange. took a break from even that recently because i realised, oh, i just am not feeling this. that helped too. but i've always taken long breaks for months in my life and come back like woaaaah. tossing this out there for people, since everyone is different! i also had the sudden kinda ego breakdown of technical skill and creativity tho. but that was when i was doing multiple days all the time

This is such an important video for me. I’m guilty of making myself not have fun at the expense of creativity and being stressed. I’m going to try this out for a month and see if it works for me.

Thank you for this! As i mentioned before I just started drawing and having fun plus learning effectively is my main factor!

"Hey everyone, Sakuraism here". Seeing the Youtube auto-generated subtitles for that part is a treat for every video 😂

I believe the key to learning is to do whatever you feel like doing with no guidance until you more consciously start to notice what doesnt quite work then go study that. Not only these "free" periods build your mileage how they also act as some sort of break since they should be different from your studies.

I can't tell you how badly I needed to hear this today, I was literally in tears frustrated with the progress I wasn't making. This truly feels like a gift.

I remember having a difficult time killing this dark souls 3 boss Midir, he was a big ass dragon that I had to chase down constantly and with the most bullshit moves in the series, I think I died 20 times in a row, getting progressively more mad at myself and the game. Then I thought "Ok, slow down, let's just enter the boss room, carefully examine every move he does and see if I can find an opening to hit this bitch, my goal is NOT TO BEAT THE BOSS, my goal is to OBSERVE" and just like that, I accidentally killed the boss on my first try, because I was not betting obsessed by my final goal I was able to focus on the moment and what I was missing, maybe the answer lies somewhere like that for acquiring skills in life as well, maybe we should stop obsessing about the end goal and how things should look like and realize we need to look at how they are now and how we can improve them, I dunno.

This video felt really validating. I've found in the last couple years especially that when it comes to both gaming and drawing, I tend to get better after I haven't done it for a long time. It always made me feel as if the saying "practice makes perfect" was just total garbage, because I wouldn't practice at all for months at a time and then suddenly the next time I did it I'd be much better. I always kind of attributed it to growing up and beginning to understand or see things differently, or maybe just becoming more dexterous, but it remained a constant thing in my life since the first time I noticed it. I'm glad to see that I'm not so weird for experiencing this, and that it's actually a rather effective way to learn. I should still practice more than I do, but it's a good start. I definitely find that it's a method of learning that works best for me.

A really good way to measure "learning attention span" is to practice combos in fighting games. For me the sweet spot I'm happy to do every day is 1-2 hours, after which I'm not tired, I just notice myself dropping more combos, it flips like a switch. If I don't brute force it and just come back every day for a week or two, combo will be eventually learned and I get a huge dopamine kick. It also feels very "right", like that's exactly what I'm supposed to do

The last bit hit me hard. I see myself as analytical, I gathered a lot of tutorials, I did them kinda semi consistent, I know my goal, but I have no idea/creativity what to draw now which is totally different from when I drew for fun in school.

Me: im going to make a massive playlist, and spend every day watching dozens of studies! Me: watches this video Guess I was going about it the wrong way. Very glad I watched this