Why You Should Learn Five New Things Every Day

Here are a few reasons for keeping your mind healthy:

• Looking for a new job? If so, prospective employers will want to know how you keep yourself up to speed with changes in your industry. In the December issue of this newsletter we talked about the steps you can take to get the promotion you’ve been after. (Click here to read it again) and improving your skills is an essential part of doing this.

• Problem Solved. Doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results is never going to work. If there’s a problem you’ve been struggling with for a while, look at what you might need to learn in order to solve it. It might not need as much as reading an entire management book or attending a three day course. Focus on the issue and you’ll find that new ideas and solutions will appear through the new things that you’re learning.

• Stay alive! If you’re not learning five new things each day, check your pulse because you might be dead! If you carry on doing exactly what you’ve been doing for the last few years, without changing a thing, then your life will become completely stagnant. You’ll get bored with your job and your hobbies. Learning new things will keep you energised and refreshed.

You don’t have to learn a new element of rocket science every day. Have you found a way to do a regular task in a shorter time? Have you learnt a new route to work? What can you learn that reinforces something you already know? Be open and you’ll find it much easier to learn new things and then put your new knowledge to good use.

How Can You Learn Five New Things Every Day?

Here are some tips to get you started:

• Find a place to write down the five things you learn each day. It could be the last thing you do before you leave the office, so type them into a spreadsheet. It could be last thing you do before you go to sleep, in which case, a note book by your bed is ideal.
• Look at your list and think about how what you’ve learnt can make tomorrow better. Then write down what you're going to do about it tomorrow! In the February issue of this newsletter, we’ll come back to this when we look at how to improve your personal effectiveness, so get started right away.
• At the end of today, click here to share with me the five new things that you’ve learnt today!

Learning five new things every day is like eating five portions of fresh fruit or vegetables every day – easy to do, easy to stick to and a great way to keep your mind healthy. No need to make any other resolutions this year!

Where Can You Get More Help?

At Absolute Learning we run workshops to help organisations develop their people, increase capabilities and gain competitive advantage. If you and your team need to learn about management skills, leadership development, career transitions, presentation skills, project management, redundancy issues, rapport building, listening skills or recruitment and selection, then get in touch to talk about how we can help you learn at least five new things in one day.