Learning Something New Everyday
Innovations and development of science and technology do not only bring convenience to our daily life, but also have a profound effect on our learning styles. Abundant internet resources make learning much more accessible and easier than ever before. On the other hand, knowledge is updated and discovered at an more accelerated speed than ever before. Therefore learning is no longer restricted to schools but becomes a lifelong experience.
Benefits of Learning
Learning something new everyday brings me a lot of benefits. First, learning is a great way to satisfy my curiosity and make me happy. I also become more and more interesting and knowledgeable. Additionally learning makes me sensitive to catch life chances and flexible to career changes.
Furthermore learning from various areas brings extra benefits. It does not only make you open to new stuffs and creative in your own specialized area, but also helps expand your world to a larger one.
Effortless Methods of Learning
Learning is fun, especially when you master a systematic learning method. A good learning method will turn your learning experience into an effortless process. Methods should be adapted differently to different people, but the following rules are basic principles and held for most situations in general.
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Related to Something You Have Known.
A lot of subjects share similar principles and related to each other in some ways. Take learning a second language and learning music as an analogy. You start with a word or a chord; then you follow either grammar to combine words into a sentence, or harmony to put some related chords together into a music piece; both require a lot of practice and time to become an expert. By building a connection between new things and your old knowledge, you do not only learn new things fast, but may also have a further understanding of what you have known.
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Master Important Basics Well.
Josh Kaufman gave a Tedx Talk about learning things in 20 hours by mastering the most important basics. Note that 20 hours learning will lead you to an entrance level of an area, but not an expert level. In the talk, Josh Kaufman successfully played his first ukulele song by mastering four basic ukulele chords, G, D, Em, and C.
Learning Resources
You can learn from enormous resources. Here is just a short list.
- General Topics – Basic Level
- College or Graduate School Course or Advanced Topics
- 700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities
- iTunes U
- Coursera
- MIT Open Course Ware
- Harvard Extension School
- Stanford Online
- Yale Open Courses
- Knowledge@Wharton
- Khan Academy
- Stack Exchange
- Books. Don’t forgot our traditional learning source!
- Specific Topics
- Coding: Codecademy
- Investment: LearnVest
- Business: Online Courses to Help Your Business
- Language: A List of Learning 40 Languages for Free: Spanish, English, Chinese & More