The best way to start learning a new skill

The case for the cohort-based course

What makes starting a new habit so challenging?

Is it the lack of immediate rewards? The constant struggle for motivation? The fear of failure? Are the dishes in the sink suddenly calling your name when you finally sit down for your freshly started daily meditation?

If you don’t have a strong strategy, it’s normal to feel like the odds are stacked against you.

Effectively and sustainably starting a new habit requires a real shift in identity. You need to start to see yourself as the kind of person who actually does that thing you’re after.

“True behavior change is identity change.” — James Clear

After years of searching for habit-forming strategies, I finally found the best way to ensure meaningful progress.

You need a transformational start.

Stop buying self-help books

The double meaning of the word 'practice' is a humble reminder that every new skill involves both repetition and learning.

When you start a new practice, you are doing both: repeating the action, and learning through that repetition. 

But starting a practice by your lonesome has all kinds of disadvantages. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it requires some serious self-discipline, unwavering motivation, and a clear strategy to overcome the inevitable obstacles.

More often than not, I would buy a book or sign up for another self-paced course, hoping for a quick fix. Instead, I found myself stuck in the same place, with no real progress. The initial thrill of purchasing the book or the high of enrolling would quickly fade, leaving me disengaged and struggling to implement what I had hoped to learn.

Cohort-based courses by contrast are engaging and brimming with life. It’s why they offer the best approach to ensure your success.

For the uninitiated, a cohort-based course is where an instructor runs a select group of students through a curriculum over a set period of time.

With live sessions and peer interactions, a cohort-based course provides structure, support, and an immersive experience that naturally crystalizes a new identity for students, setting the foundation for a lifelong practice.

They naturally spark a transformational experience, including guidance, support, and initial hand-holding. It’s a potent combination that offers essential encouragement to build a strong foundation required for habits to stick and skills to build.

This is how you kickstart a new identity from scratch.

I wasn’t always a writer

I’ve always known that writing is an important life skill. A force-multiplier for all other skills.

But I somehow managed to postpone starting an actual writing practice until I was 40 years old. 

When I was finally fed up with waiting to start, I joined the aptly called course ‘Write of Passage’. Apart from the writing skills I learned and the friends I made (cohort-based courses tend to do that too), it was the transformational shift that ignited my actual writing practice.

That was 85 weeks ago and I haven't missed a week yet.

In 5 weeks I went from thinking ‘Those people are writers, but not me’ to ‘I’m a person who writes’.

I’ve been a writer ever since.

Stronger together

The most important thing that any course, workshop, or teaching should deliver is this transformational moment. Shifting into a new belief that helps you inhabit your new identity (e.g. ‘I’m a writer’) before you have tons of proof of it.

Cohort-based courses work because they cultivate this new belief in a few weeks, while you are kickstarting the actual practice. In that fragile, initial phase, they offer a supportive space where the stakes are low and the teacher and peers are still there to offer encouragement.

Those first vulnerable moments are crucial. Seeing others go through the same thing, feeling their camaraderie, and having the teacher there to ask questions, clarify, and guide you, is what makes all the difference in the world.

A good course cultivates the belief that you can (and should) start practicing.

The best courses leave you convinced that you’re already on your way

Practice builds skill

To this day there’s a part of me that, in the moment of excitement just before a new course starts, thinks that learning new skills alone will transform me into a new person. I have to remind myself that change only happens with practice.

We tend to emphasize learning all of these new lessons and having all of these new abilities, but those aren’t the biggest benefits.

‘If I just learn [fill in the blank], then I’ll be a writer.’

‘If I only complete this course, then I’ll be [fill in the blank].’

We have this idea that: the skills equal the identity. But there’s something way more important behind the shift.

While it might also be the case that you pick up new skills, the biggest benefit of a course is that you’ve started a new journey. It’s the kickoff that matters.

You are now standing at the beginning of an exploration that will unfold in the years to come. It’s not the skills we’ve learned, it’s the new direction, experience, and perspective that we’ve gained.

(Going through and) finishing a course is not an ending. It’s a beginning.