You’ve just received great training and are hyped to start using your new found skills to make your job easier, faster and more efficient. You feel great! You get back to work and take a look at the task before you. Your reports are due by the end of the week and all you have is raw data. What did he say I needed to do? How do I make that sample chart work? It doesn’t look anything like what I need to create!

That’s when it hits you. Training doesn’t stop when you leave the classroom. In today’s post, I’m going to share with you 5 keys to successfully implementing your new skills within your everyday life.

1. ASK QUESTIONS

More often than not when I have delivered training sessions, participants either asked questions specifically related to the material I’ve presented but they don’t relate it back to what they do. If you have a unique need, ask the trainer to help you understand how you would solve this need using the tools that they’re demonstrating.

2. TAKE NOTES

The medium you use to do this doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that you take them. Research from Princeton University shows that people who tooks notes via longhand grasps concepts better than those that didn’t. Although this study compares using hand-written notes to notes taken on a computer, I can personally guarantee that taking notes of any kind is far superior than taking no notes whatsoever.

3. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE

Like me, you were constantly told as a child that practice makes perfect. Well, there is a good reason for that. The process that the brain takes when storing memories is that it likes to throw out any clutter. That is, if your brain doesn’t think the knowledge you gave it useful, it will throw that input away. Repeatedly telling your brain, “I need this!” helps these memories to get passed the short-term memory into long-term memory to be made available for retrieval the next time you do that task. So keep at it.

4. BE OKAY WITH FAILURE

Failure is the byproduct of trying to produce a result. People who are successful in business or scientists who make incredible discoveries fail more times than they can count. Two things happen when fail. First off, we realize that it’s okay and that there is still opportunity for improvement Secondly, we learned something. We learn that the method we used doesn’t work and that we have to try something different..

5. COLLABORATE WITH OTHERS

Whether this is your colleagues, an online community or just your friends, collaboration allows you to find a new approach to take knowing that the last one tried didn’t work as well as you hoped. You’ve heard “two heads are better than one” and it really is true!

The next time, you attend a training session, bring these 5 keys with you to make sure you get the most of our your training session. Have a idea that helped you apply training that you received to your job? Post it in the comments below