How to approach a boring or difficult subject?

1. Change your mindset towards that subject

This is the first and foremost thing to make a subject interesting and easy to understand. A subject
appears to be boring because it is your mind dictates you that the particular subject is boring or
difficult. This negativity never lets you take interest in that subject. What all you need to do is, have
a positive approach towards learning that subject. Try to find out what are the benefits of learning it,
how can it be implemented in real life and how can that subject can contribute to your personal
development. Once you change your mindset, it would be easier for you to understand the subject.

2. Find a seed of motivation.

The first step in building passion for a subject you do not like is to identify a reason to learn it. One
of the best motivators is wishing to make an improvement in your life. Wanting a lifestyle upgrade
allows you to make a mental contrast between where you are now and where you want to be.

3. Attend lectures even if you don’t like the subject

Unless you sit in the class, you will not understand what the subject is all about. If you are in class,
even forcefully, you will at least grasp something about the lesson. Once you start reviewing the
lectures of that subject regularly, you will become habitual to it.

4. Realize it is perfectly normal not to understand something on your first try.

Most people need to go back and forth between focused and diffuse modes in order to learn a topic.
When you cannot solve something in the first focus, you are not stupid — you just need to allow
time to toggle to the diffuse mode. This mode gives your brain a chance to consolidate and consider
the material from a different perspective.

5. Start to love the teacher

This is something, which is a bit tough to digest, but it is a fact. It usually happens that you find a
subject to be boring and worthless just because of the teacher who is teaching it. Their graceless
personality, lack of delivery power, poor class control, etc. can be a reason behind this. This makes
a sense of disrespect for them and ultimately makes that particular subject boring. You need to
develop more and more respect for the faculty.

6. Involve multimedia in your learning and understanding

This thing can help to turn anything into a super interesting one. Try understanding a few concepts
of the subject from the internet, which will be including images and videos. You will definitely
develop an interest in it. This helps you to turn onto the subject as it involves non-traditional
learning form.

Example: Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning by Richard Mayer

NIRVANA DOMINIQUE F. BULACAN

LLB-IV
LEGAL MEDICINE
 7. Build a collection of neural “chunks.” 

When we are learning something new that does not come naturally to us, we often skim instead of
internalizing. Developing expertise involves easy recall of and automaticity with key concepts and
tools.

If you are working on problem, see if you can solve a key problem entirely on paper, without looking
at the solution. If you cannot, try it again, the next day, and over the next few days. Each day of
focused learning followed by an evening’s sleep, strengthens your new neural patterns, which are
“chunks” of learning. Soon the solution steps will flow quickly through your mind.

The bigger your collection of neural chunks related to solving different problems, the greater your
expertise. The greater your expertise, the more you will like what you are
learning.

8. Spend more time on the basics of the subject

It is an obvious thing and a logical one too. Try to give more time to that subject and start
from the basics. You might find a subject boring just because you have missed its basics. It is
better to begin from the base and eventually you will develop interest on it.

There are no boring subjects, only disinterested minds.

-G.K. Chesterton

References:

9 Ways To Turn a Boring Topic Into An Engaging Presentation retrieved from

https://magneticspeaking.com/8-ways-to-transform-boring-topic-into-engaging-presentation/

How To Convert A Boring Subject To An Interesting One? retrieved from

https://www.isrgrajan.com/how-to-convert-a-boring-subject-to-an-interesting-one.html

How to Get Excited About Topics That Bore You? retrieved from https://hbrascend.org/topics/get-
excited-about-boring-topics/

NIRVANA DOMINIQUE F. BULACAN

LLB-IV
LEGAL MEDICINE