LIFESTYLE OF LEARNING

So I buy a lot of books. I have an insane number of books on my Kindle, not to mention the PDFs and other e-book formats I own that are not strictly Kindle books. After that, I have a number of bookshelves and sadly a number of boxes still filled with books that I will not likely get rid of anytime soon. Mind you, I do purge from my book collection frequently enough, especially if the book is some technical skill that is outdated (that’s when I donate to the library … someone is probably further back on their learning curve and the book might still hold value for them.)

But this brings me to my favor way to learn: online courses.

I feel like online sources are a great way to learn a lot of stuff in a hurry. Video-based training isn’t the most interactive and you can develop some gapping holes in your learning, but it is a great way to get started or supplement a book or some face-to-face training.

But before I give you my personal list of online learning resources, I have a bit of advice on learning for you. If you follow this, you will be jamming glorious new learning into your brain more quickly than you could’ve ever imagined.

Learning tips:

1. Get in the right frame of mind! You cannot learn in a poor atmosphere. Get out of that distracting coffee-shop. Your learning-per-minute will drop considerably if the potential for distraction is up.
2. Set aside the time! If you don’t make time just to learn, then you won’t do it. Block out a goal in a timeframe. Try to get through a number of pages or a set of videos and stick to the plan to the best of your ability to commit.
3. Stop thinking, start reading! Your brain is like a catchers mit. Whatever comes at it, as long as you are ready to receive it, you will. Trust me. Imagine the words and concepts are flying at you like a baseball. Hold that mit open wide and let the ball hit you right in the sweet spot. But there is a problem. Thinking is distracting. It’s like this whole other baseball coming at you. If you are trying to read or learn, and you start thinking, then your brain/mit switches over to catch that ball. You need to learn to separate learning from doing/practicing. Just absorb and then go through it again experiencially.
4. Read for speed and not comprehension (at first)! If you do not know how to speed read, I highly recommend learning to speed-read right now! You might be asking yourself, “How am I going to learn anything if I am reading fast and I don’t understand what they are trying to teach me?” Here is the thing. You need to do two things to learn: Get the stuff in your brain, and THEN understand the stuff. The trick is (and I don’t think most people understand this) your brain doesn’t care about the order of those things. Get it in first, and then expand your understanding over time. Trust me. Slowing down to “understand” only accomplishes one thing… going slowly.
5. Read with a pen/highlighter When I read/learn something new I take a highlighter along. The most common “thought” I allow to interrupt my learning is the question, “What?” This is when I acknowledge I do not understanding, and so I highlight the moment or the margin. I don’t want to slow down and derail my speed. I just want to help myself go back later after absorbing more.
6. Writers and professors are flawed! That’s right. We all are. And not all teaching styles will connect with you. So sometimes you read, get confused, plow forward, and a paragraph or chapter later you see the author/trainer unpack the idea that was missing from earlier. How frustrating! This is just another reason to plow on and read for speed. The key is to keep going.
7. After read-mode, go into exercise mode You have just jammed a lot of stuff into your brain. And depending on your brain, you may have to do one of two things: Let your subconscious mind sort all of that out, or help your mind sort it out. Only you know what kind of brain you have. I have to help it sort it out. That means I pull out a pad of paper or open up a new Word Document, and I write a bulleted outline of ideas. Writing it down often helps it all find a place in my head. It locks it in. I might never go back and read what I’ve written. But I try to use it at least once (in conversation or somewhere else) within 24 hours. For some people, their minds do this sorting naturally. They need a mental cooldown period so their brain can work like a librarian to get it all sorted onto shelves. But here is the thing. You need to know the difference. If you should be sorting it out, then there is a limited timeframe for doing that before you neglect the information and do not lock it in. So if you need to sort it out, but you need a break because you re overwhelmed, then go back to (1) read fast, (2) then read less, and then (3) immediately sort it out. Even letting your brain sort it out often means making time to listen to music or garden so your brain can go to work for you. If you just dive right back into the next cerebral event, you won’t make room for your brain to lock it in.

Ok - those are my tips. Let’s look at my list of resources for learning:

• YouTube - Whatever you want to learn, it is probably out there. Here is how I use it. Take your topic and add the phrases “tutorial” or “tutorial series” to the end. Then look at the playtime of the video (how long is it) and the number of views and subscribers. This helps you figure out if the source might be worth your time.
• Vimeo - Same advice as above but they also have nice user groups where you can sign up and learn about a topic over time.
• LinkedIn Learning - A lot of the training requires a subscription but there is a ton of material out there in well crafted form.
• Udemy.com - This site requires you purchase individual courses, and the same rule applies for finding reputable teachers with lots of subscribers and stars (like on youtube.) The material can often be a lot nicer than youtube but sometimes it is horrible. The trick is to watch the free intro to the course before buying so you can see if the material and the instructor are a good match for your learning style.
• Coursera.org - This site was founded by a number of brilliant Stanford University professors who wanted to help more people learn without cost getting in the way. So now universities from across the planet basically let you audit courses on coursera for free, BUT you can actually sign up and get continuing education certificates from accredited universities through coursera due to their partnership and reputation (I did this with the University of Illinois-Champaign Urbana for Digital Marketing - it took me 3 months to get through the training and it cost about $600. You get class collaboration and instructor feedback.)
• Class Central - This is a new one to me, but it is a search engine to help you find free and for-purchase training on a variety of topics. It is definitely an interesting way to source new learning.

I have so many other resources, but they are pretty niche (like Blender Cloud or Packt Publishing or Gumroad or Microsoft Channel 9) and those are things you just bump into over time. That includes free access to e-books from your local library (if you didn’t know, then now you do.) But the list above is definitely where I go when I am first looking to learn something new.

SO what about audio books? I have recently gotten into the audio-book thing and for me, I don’t know that I prefer it. Here is why. I can get a bit too easily distracted. I like that it is reading for me. And like nearly all of the above video training sources, I can change the speed of the lesson (youtube lets you speed up the videos by clicking on the video settings widget), but because I am a fairly visual person, I end up seeing other things and I get distracted and miss content. If that isn’t a problem for you, then go for it. But I personally end up, looking around, or falling to sleep and then the whole thing is time wasted.

Well, I hope this was helpful in some way. God bless in your adventurous lifestyle of learning!