“Learning never exhausts the mind.” ~ Leonardo Da Vinci
School days may be long behind you, but that doesn’t mean you should stop learning. Courses, seminars, talks at business or professional meeting and conventions, and reading (self-teaching) can all be used to improve your mind and likely help you in business.
You may be thinking “I don’t have the time to do it.” Well, as with any worthwhile activity outside of business that you want to do—exercising, spending time with friends and family, etc.—it’s just a matter of committing to it and scheduling accordingly.
If you’re in a profession, you are required to take a certain amount of continuing education to maintain credentials. But lifetime learning isn’t confined to courses exclusively business-related. You can spend time learning about anything.
Why is lifetime learning important?
General benefit of continued learning
Learning offers a number of important benefits.
- Health benefits. Learning challenges help the brain to maintain cognitive function and improve memory. It gets you to engage different parts of your brain from areas that you usually use.
- Social benefits. Taking classes or participating in discussion groups—in person or online—gives you the opportunity to make social connections.
- Business benefits. Courses related to your business—continuing ed or learnings new skills—can provide help you work better, smarter, and more effectively.
Education to pursue
Whether you pursue learning to broaden yourself, help your business, or just have fun, there are many options to consider. Here are some:
- Learn a new language or two. Years ago, I had a boss who was committed to learning new languages. He spent only a few minutes on his learning, but did it every day. He mastered Spanish, and then Latin, and was moving on to Greek when he left the company.
- Improve writing skills. Don’t rely entirely on AI to create marketing materials, employee manuals, or the next great novel. It’s important to have sound writing skills to communicate effectively…through email and in other written materials. Or maybe you can use improved skills to write a book!
- Explore logic and rhetoric. For me, law school, which relied on the Socratic method, helped me to think more objectively. Learning more about logic and rhetoric can help you more easily solve problems, make better strategic decisions, and be a more effective negotiator. (I’m currently taking an online course in Logic and Rhetoric.)
- Learn new tech tools. The tech world is continually changing, and you need to stay up on things. I had to learn how to use a computer, a smartphone, and all the things in my car (e.g., touch screen for climate control and driving directions). This learning was barely a conscious thing for younger people who have grown up with tech, but it was a considerable effort for me.
- Study art, photography, music, or other artistic endeavor. Taking time to learn more about the arts not only is a fun activity, but can also be useful to you in business. It helps you to become more observant and appreciate responses to artistic cues, which can help you in branding and marketing. And it can stimulate creative thinking.
Final thought
I’ve told my daughters that it doesn’t matter what you learn because it will always come in handy in some way at some time. Majoring in one discipline doesn’t preclude pursuing a career in another. Two of my law school friends were drama majors in college, and this didn’t hurt their career at litigators.
My favorite quote is from Benjamin Franklin:
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
Start investing.
Find additional information about lifelong learning in this list of blogs.
