Campaign for Learning’s ‘Learning at Work Week’ is another fantastic opportunity for employers and their staff to review and invigorate their learning and development efforts.
This year’s theme ‘Made for Learning’ focusses on how as humans we are constantly learning and adjusting our understanding and behaviours accordingly. Certainly, this last year has never been such a fine example of us all having to adapt and evolve as we navigated the COVID- 19 pandemic. But how can we take our human capacity to learn and turn it into something more purposeful for active lifelong learning?
Making habits stick
Our routines have been ever changing this last year so how do you schedule time and make habits stick for consistent, active learning?
15 minutes each day – make it achievable
Committing to 15 minutes of learning each day amounts to over 90 hours of learning a year. That’s more than 2 average working weeks and over 10 years it’s almost half a year! Imagine what you could achieve, learn and become in that time.
Use your commute – find a pocket of time
Bite-size bursts of learning are short enough to do during a commute or first thing before checking emails. Considering that many employees are now home working the time that would have been used for their commute could be used for learning, helping to boost motivation for their day ahead.
Appreciate the benefits – self-improvement and wellbeing
Schedule and allow this time for you and recognising the importance it has on self-improvement. Learning directly contributes to self-value and enriches wellbeing as well as expending your knowledge.
Being ready to learn
So you’ve found your pocket of time but what could you do, whether it’s informal or formal learning here’s a short list of reminder ideas:
- Watch a TED talk www.ted.com
- Read a blog article, whitepaper or report
- Watch a YouTube video
- Listen to a podcast
- Complete an e-learning module
- Create a reading list and have a selection to hand whether it be books, magazines or trade journals
- Talk to a colleague about what you’ve learnt
With just 15 minutes a day it doesn’t appear much at first however over time the accumulative effect on your knowledge, skills and behaviour will be significant. The important thing to remember is that learning can take place anytime, anywhere and there are so many different ways to learn especially with the increase of online learning over the last year – choose what works for you to make habits stick and become lifelong learners.
