“Every day is a learning experience” or “ We learn every day from everyone.” are common phrases we hear constantly. These kinds of phrases teach us that learning is not tied to specific places (schools, college, work) but that each little thing that we live throughout our day can and will be a learning experience. We can learn about anything, anywhere, at any time, and that’s the truth.
However, this concept confuses most people, leading them to think they are lifelong learners.
The sole fact that you are learning something each day doesn’t necessarily make you a lifelong learner. But don’t worry, it means you are already getting there.
What you need is just more knowledge and guidance about what it means to be a lifelong learner and how you can truly become one. Fortunately for you, there are plenty of lifelong learners in our team of freelancers, so after gathering testimonials and doing my own research, I can also say that I’m on my way to being a lifelong learner.
I summed up four important steps to being a lifelong learner, and when you start applying them, you’ll see improvements in your professional and personal lives.
Still, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s begin by talking a bit about what it means to be a lifelong learner and its benefits, and then, when we have all our bases covered, we can get started.
What is Lifelong Learning?
Lifelong learning is the ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge for personal or professional reasons.
Being a lifelong learner means you have a growth mindset and an innate curiosity about the world. You’re constantly pushing to find more through new challenges, ideas, and experiences. You’re reading articles and books, learning new skills, and honing your expertise.
Lifelong learners are in a never-ending pursuit to be the best, most well-rounded version of themselves, personally and professionally. Are you ready to become one?
The Benefits Of Lifelong Learning
Learning new things will always come alongside good benefits, and becoming a lifelong learner might give you more benefits than you initially expected.
Be More Appealing To Employers
Employers are increasingly looking for people who know how to do their jobs and are dedicated to continuous growth and development to keep up with technological improvements.
Continuous learning will increase your chances of success, including finding jobs with a better salary, getting more promotions, and being reached more by recruiters. The goal is that employers see how valuable you are just by examining your skill set.
Want to know which skill you should start to improve right away? Learn more about the skills employers are looking for in 2021.
A Broader Perspective
Being a lifelong learner helps you think outside the box and gives you perspective on both the world and yourself. With a bigger perspective, you can think outside the box and approach issues from various aspects, helping you understand other people’s decisions and ways of thinking.
You’ll also start to learn more about yourself and what you have to offer, and once you get a better sense of your skills, I’m sure that you’ll surprise yourself with what you see!
A Healthier Life
The more you learn and are eager to keep learning, the greater your cognitive abilities will be as you age. Being a lifelong learner will help you face your challenges as you age while also allowing you to prevent age-related memory loss and lower the risk of Alzheimer’s.
4 Steps To Becoming A Lifelong Learner
Becoming a lifelong learner can be difficult at first. It’s pretty hard to live through your daily life, and now you also have to focus on learning and improving. These tips helped me become a lifelong learner, so I hope they also help you on your road to self-improvement.
Commit
You should commit to learning the same way you commit to a certain diet or hours of exercise during the day. I know firsthand it isn’t easy to do, but that’s why this is your first step.
Commit to becoming a lifelong learner, focus, and make the extra effort to dedicate a portion of time to learning and improving your knowledge and skills.
Adding it to your schedule is an excellent way to ensure you follow through. Make some room in your daily schedule and try to set aside a little time each day to dedicate to learning and nothing else.
Work Smart, Not Hard
To ensure that you are really learning new things, you have to know what’s the best way for you. There are many ways of learning, and we assure you that forcing yourself to learn is not the right option.
When working, studying, or trying to gather information, it’s been proven that the best learning occurs in short periods of intense focus followed by periods of mind wandering. Incorporating relaxation into learning will help you retain more information and boost your productivity!
I recommend you try the Pomodoro technique, which recommends 25-minute bursts of work and five-minute breaks. Remember to focus on small amounts of information during your burst so as not to overload your brain!
Plan Your Learning
Learning something new will be very difficult if you don’t know what you are planning on focusing on.
A good idea is to categorize the subjects that you want to learn and make some plan or schedule to organize, depending on the day, the subjects, or your personal choice, what you would like to know more about that day so you can be prepared for a good session of learning.
You could also implement apps or tools to your learning schedule to keep everything organized and track your progress, keeping it all in one place.
Concentrate
It’s essential to keep your focus when you’re learning.
Remember the Pomodoro technique. Try your best to focus on learning for those 25 minutes, then take the other 5 minutes to rest and center your attention on other matters.
However, in those 25 minutes, it is essential to avoid the urge to multitask and take on too many things at once.
Multitasking has its benefits when working, but in this case, it will only make you lose your focus and prevent you from gathering as much information as you’d normally do. Since the goal is to learn something new, it’d be best to think about how to get in the zone without any distractions.
Are You Ready To Be A Lifelong Learner?
Following these four steps, you’ll notice how, each and each day, your knowledge, skills, and abilities start to improve. Once you have a whole new skill set, getting the job of your dreams will be much easier.
In fact, at Freelance Latin America, we are always looking for capable freelancers to join our team. How about you check our available positions and reach out to us?
We’ll be glad to work with you!
See more articles by Ender Cárdenas.
