There is a line of thinking that you must re-ignite your education every seven years to ensure continuing relevance and growth throughout your life and career. My line of thinking: if you wait that long to learn you can...
There is a line of thinking that you must re-ignite your education every seven years to ensure continuing relevance and growth throughout your life and career.
My line of thinking: if you wait that long to learn you can guarantee you will be left behind.
In the last few months I have come across a number of people who have been able to master new skills in a shorter period of time than I would have ever imagined.
The skills they are picking up have ranged from learning a specific coding language, to mastering new cuisines, to being a qualified landscaper.
Even more interesting is that the people learning these skills have come from such wildly varied walks of life that it made me question how anyone could be “put in a box” due to pre-defined abilities.
So, how are people managing to upskill so quickly? Well our access to information is almost endless. Which means our ability to learn is constantly becoming easier and cheaper.
You can visit Udemy, Coursera or many similar online platforms, and dive into almost any course you can think of 24/7.
Major universities are now giving away education, with Stanford being a great example of this.
An endless array of podcasts now exists, providing insights into the success and failures of some of the biggest names in the modern world. All free for your consumption!
If you are interested in a specific topic, but don’t have the time to commit to study, there is almost certainly a website out there dedicated to pumping out tailored information just for you. It is one Google search away.
Then you have the books. So many books. Every other website has a free e-book these days.
You probably get my point.
Your capacity to constantly learn, improve existing capabilities or introduce completely new sets of skills is really only limited by one thing - you.
Take a moment to consider how much time in a week you could commit to reading a book, listening to a podcast or studying online. Swap out one of the five hours spent watching Netflix over a week and see what the difference feels like.
If you haven’t explored the value of self-education, and are part of the old way of thinking when it comes to slow burn learning, I challenge you to reconsider!
As always, I would love to hear about any other ways you are learning, just leave a comment below.
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@impatrickt
