Long story short, too much to read, too many MOOCs, TED to watch, podcasts to listen, and not enough time.
But what can we do? I feel being in a rat race and maybe you feel that too.
I am not saying this from the perspective of fear of missing out but from the one of not knowing the optimum recipe for learning and doing. I don’t have any fear of control and I love chaos and ambiguity, I jump in the pool and start learning as I am drowning and so far I navigated my life really nice. But I am an optimizer, in my work life and in my personal life. Why do something harder if there is a smarter way?!
Life-long learning and having a growth mindset are amazing buzz words that may sound easy but don’t get yourself fooled, you still have to put stuff inside your mind.
My challenge and my question: When do we find time to apply the things we learn if there is so much to learn? What’s the perfect receipe for the mix of actions and learning? We just block times and go with the flow?!
There’s so much good stuff to read and learn. For example:
- We received 9 books from altMBA
- We are encouraged to read/watch 75+ resources
- This Personal MBA list has 99 books to read
- I already have around 200 books in my kindle from which I have read just half.
- Besides all these books recommended, I have a lot of others to read that are technical, about what I aim to do, sustainable homes. And I plan to learn everything about a home, so there’s a huge universe to read as well.
I’d like to share with you what helped me so far in reading more and better and these resources may also help you:
- How to read a book [really helped me]
- Blinkist or other similar apps [cheating on reading]
- Writing down [to summarise]. I use an iPad Pro with a stylus and GoodNotes app (best one). My system here: max 1 page per book, 1 short Conclusion and max 3 ToDos]
- How to read faster [really helped me]. Btw, you can test your speed here.
- How to remember more [beginning, this is one of this year’s goals]. This is the intro as an idea, Art of Memory is a way better resource and complete.
This speed-reading and the memory-boosting journey started with 2 books:
Frankly, I started reading very late in my life, at the end of high school. Until then I was sure I don’t like reading because I never liked anything school made me read.
One day I started reading Harry Potter and for the first time I saw that there was nothing wrong with me and then I discovered that I love reading. But it took some years to really learn how to read. The resources above and these two books helped me. Hopefully, they will help you as well.
- Moonwalking with Einstein – this is how I first found out about mnemonics. If you are interested in the story, read it. Spoiler Alert: Anyone can become a memory champion, but it requires practice.
- How to read a book – I was fascinated to see how many things I did not do and it struck me the irony of no-one ever telling me to learn how to read and the fact that it took me 26 years to do that Google search.
- If you are more a video-kind-of-person, on Coursera there’s a great free very usefully course offered by McMaster Univ and Univ of California San Diego.
My recommendation, based on my experience, is to follow the 5 resources I shared above in that order, from easy to harder.
Videos I usually watch/listen to at home, when doing other jobs and Podcasts I usually listen to while driving or commuting. No other tricks here. I tried to use the 1.5x-2x speed but it drives me crazy. This is why I prefer reading to watching or listening.
Thank you for your time.
I hope it was worth reading this.
Btw, I would love to hear what is your approach in learning better.
This was the first assignment from the altMBA I am going to start on the 6th of January. One month of intensive projects, discussions and debates. More about my altMBA journey in a future post.