Learn a new skill before your time runs out

When was the last time you truly learnt something completely out of your comfort zone? A new skill that wasn’t directly related to any of your current skills?

I haven’t written anything new for a few weeks. Why? Because I’ve been creating my own WordPress theme for helpgrowchange.com. It’s been a great journey of self-learning and something you could try out (the self-learning, not so much the development).

Maybe you want to understand the human mind better by learning about social psychology. Learn about a popular career choice such as digital marketing? Or maybe you’d like to finally learn a new language.

But if learning is so awesome, why haven’t we done it yet? Time. He is not our friend, right?

Well, the truth is, time won’t open itself up for you — you have to make the time to learn.

“Never stop learning, because life never stops teaching.”

Cast your mind back to a time when you last learnt a new skill? Remember the feeling of satisfaction and triumph in realising you had now gained something new.

Bring back that feeling.

Where can I start?

There are many, many online course websites offering a plethora of courses for free. Most of them are designed to make it easy for you to begin — no confusing entry or special multimedia requirements.

I’ve mentioned in a previous article about how I personally used Coursera to learn about business strategy and social psychology, and I have a few more courses added to my shortlist to learn soon.

If you’re looking to learn development, one of the most popular learning sites is Codecademy. I started on that a while back, but other learning took priority (heh).

No matter what it is you’re looking to learn, with a bit of effort you could probably find a beginner course online for free.

I’m too old to learn

Hogwash.

People change careers and jobs all the time. The people in the article are prime examples of the change you can make for yourself if you continue to learn new skills. And they weren’t in their twenties either.

Here is a random Google search of 10 people who changed careers when they were over 50 years of age.

You’re never too old to learn. What will you learn today?

Originally published on my blog at helpgrowchange.com.

If you could sign up to my future articles, that would be great, thanks.