How to Make Sure You Learn Something New Everyday
Whether you strive to be a ‘jack of all trades’ or a master craftsman chasing perfection of a single pursuit, it’s always important to broaden your knowledge. Luckily, in our modern world of endless online articles, it’s easier than ever to absorb more facts and ideas to help you be more effective socially and professionally.
Why You Want to Be a Life Long Learner
Getting in the mindset of constantly learning new things instantly ripples through all your endeavors. With new facts and ideas, you can improve anything from that weekly pasta dish, to a tedious process at work, to small talk at parties.
By having some knowledge about more topics, you’ll be able to make more connections to create new ideas and improve other people’s ideas, which will naturally make you feel more engaged and useful — which builds confidence.
These benefits can help you grow quickly personally and professionally to be more adaptable, innovative, and happy.
How to Get Into a Routine of Learning
Think about the last situation where a little more background knowledge would have been helpful. Was it recent? It probably happens more often than you realize. Just try to remember to take note next time. Write it on paper, send yourself a text, or add a calendar reminder for the end of your day, so you can remind yourself when you can do something about it.
Follow up by finding a short article on the topic. Wikipedia is a great place to start, or just Googling it. An average news article is in the neighborhood of 700 words, less than a 5 minute read. You don’t have to spend a lot of time reading to come away with something new.
If you can turn those few minutes into a habit, you’ll notice a mental change quickly. Learning a little every day snowballs so, like physically working out everyday, it gets easer and easier to understand new concepts, and the more you know, the more you’ll be able to make connections and see relationships to each new topic.
Learning Can Be Easy
Listening instead of reading makes it easer to start the habit of learning, because you don’t have to add something new to your routine. You can quickly add online articles to your RatherListen library any time from a browser or your phone, and absorb the content as spoken audio while exercising, doing chores, driving, or other everyday tasks.
Conclusion
Challenge yourself to read or listen to three articles this week about topics you don’t know much about, then bring them up in conversation. Tweet @RatherListenApp to let us know how it goes!
Bonus: Some Articles to Consider
- A Brief Overview of the War of 1812 – Remember the USA’s “Second War of Independence”?
- Art History Timeline: Western Art Movements and Their Impact – Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical…
- What is Artificial Intelligence? – Learn what’s behind all those techy buzz words
- How the U.S. Army Is Organized – Do you know how many platoons are in a brigade?
- Don’t Eat Before Reading This – An Anthony Bourdain classic about the realities of restaurants