I surveyed 120 people on their approaches to lifelong learning. Here's what I found...

As some of you know I've been doing my own "Personal Masters" degree as I wrote on LinkedIn a few months back. Since then I've been personally experimenting with what works and doesn't work for me as I look to focus my learning, maximize my weekly output and ultimately translate what I'm learning into real skills and knowledge that I can apply.

As I went through this exercise I started to think about learning much more broadly. With the changing landscape of careers as jobs are displaced and we have to constantly upgrade our skills, we are all going to need to invest more into our lifelong learning. I'm quite passionate about this topic and I wanted to better understand what others want to learn, what challenges they experience, what works well for them and where they want to be. Thus I sent out a simple 5 question survey to understand this better. Thanks to the great people in my network who took the time to respond!

Time Dedicated

The first area I was curious about was how much time do people look to spend on learning? The survey respondents I asked were a mix of young professionals, and older professionals with families in order to balance things out. The majority of respondents (in red below) remarked spending 1-5 hours per week on lifelong learning.

The individuals who responded 1-5 hours all reported wanting to invest more time into their learning, in their case the primary objective is to increase the quantity of learning they're doing. For the individuals spending 6 or more hours, many of them have systems in place, and it's more a question of how to optimize the output of their learning activities.

Focus Areas / Curriculum:

Next I reviewed what do people actually want to learn? There was a lot of variation in the responses, but the top ones came out to be (in order of the number of times they appeared):

1. Technical skills & knowledge
2. Business skills (including marketing, sales, entrepreneurship, business acumen)
3. Learning new languages
4. Financial acumen (including personal finance/investing, corporate finance and financial markets)
5. Soft skill development (including leadership skills, communication, decision-making, critical thinking)
6. Lifestyle design (including spirituality, mindfulness, personal productivity)
7. International affairs, politics and economics
8. Career-related knowledge (i.e. learning more about an individual's industry, and best practices for their function)
9. Other (this included parenting, musical instruments, astrology, fishing, home improvement and creative writing amongst other pursuits)

In the responses I observed that some people had carefully defined what sub-skills they wanted to develop (i.e. I want to improve these 5 technical skills) whereas others were more broad (i.e. I want to improve my coding abilities). My reflection on this, is with a vague description of the skill, it becomes overwhelming with so much content out there to get started and to assess progress along the way.

Also, it was interesting to note that the majority of respondents were looking to learn in at least 2 categories. Often one would be work-related and another would be more life-related (i.e. languages, soft skills, lifestyle design, learning instruments). There does seem to be value in learning skills that help us in our careers, but also skills that help broaden our perspective, spur creative thinking and provide balance.

Biggest Challenges:

I then asked what challenges do people observe in their approach to lifelong learning. The biggest ones that people responded with were:

• Creating time and structure for it (especially for those with families)
• Having enough energy to do it
• Actually applying the learning into real life (to ensure it's properly retrained)
• Having a clear way to measure progress to date and have specific plans / deadlines
• Understanding what their learning curriculum should be, what resources are best suited to develop that skill and what the job market will validate
• Not staying focused on specific learning objectives (and instead moving from one subject to another at a general knowledge level)

This last point is one that I've personally experienced a lot. Last year I read a book every 2 weeks and to be honest I jumped around into so many topics. This was challenging as I didn't go deep within any of these areas. What I needed to establish was a filter to focus my learning on my core learning objectives. Now for example I know that building my financial acumen is my top priority this quarter and I'm focusing my learning on it accordingly.

Best Practices:

Then everyone was asked to share what best practices they employ today. I`ve summarized them below:

1) Establishing a Curriculum and Plan

• The first step I believe for people in their lifelong learning is to go through the exercise of writing out what is it that they want to learn and why. In this process I believe there needs to be some prioritization so it can serve as a filter for other items. Tarek Attia mentioned the challenges of jumping from one topic to another and the importance of having a mechanism to go deeper into one subject.
• Leonardo Silveira wrote how he focuses on one of these learning areas per month and then goes super deep into that subject, using a variety of sources to develop a thorough understanding of the topic. I'm now wanting to attempt this (in my case I've designated financial acumen is my top learning priority for the quarter, and thus I'm trying to filter the books that I'm reading and podcasts I'm listening to towards this topic).
• Martin Gross mentioned that he keeps his learning top of mind by having a flip chart visible with his learning. I also do this with a one page life plan / learning priority document that I have up in my bedroom and at my desk at work to be a constant reminder

2) Establishing Dedicated Time & Maximizing Energy Levels

• It's important to then map out when you want to invest time into this learning (similar to if you're building an exercise regimen to lose weight or build muscle). Ava Yazdani says she plans out her weeks on Sundays so she can know where to allocate her time for learning and what types of learning for each space.
• Some examples that came up included people dedicating the first 60 mins of every day to learning, designating the commute to work for audiobooks, podcasts or courses and/or the first half of the first day of every weekend to deep learning
• The mornings came up again and again as one of the best times to invest time into learning because generally we control them, and our mind is sharpest (as opposed to trying to get into a serious topic after a long work day).
• Jerome Gagnon-Voyer mentioned in his response that the evenings can be good for "light learning" such as watching a TV series in Spanish to improve Spanish while also getting some entertainment out of it.

3) Learn to Teach

• Dave Inglis spoke about this in my recent podcast with him. He advocates learning a subject to be able to teach it and pursuing opportunities to practice this
• Scott Young references the Feynham Technique as a way to learn how to teach something in 20 minutes
• Ben Jackson references how he will look to apply the knowledge he's learned directly in a blog post or podcast, and that this helps him with his retention
• There were many references to finding a way to apply this knowledge. In online courses this often takes the form of a Capstone Project, where you need to apply this learning. Some others looks to build their own projects as a way to apply this knowledge

4) Tracking Progress

• Krista Boniface, Milena Nguyen and others mentioned tools that they use to track the progress of their learning such as Trello and Google Docs.
• Personally I've been printing off a physical calendar the past few months and writing in each day what I've done as it relates to learning. I've traditionally done this for my exercise, but now I've found it to be a good way to build some gamification into my learning. You can see my example below (in chickenscratch writing of course), where I'm tracking the chapters I'm reading per day or the other learning activities I'm doing:

5) Learning from and with others

• Several people brought up the idea of having mentors (Dominic Tremblay) or coaches (Dave Inglis) as a way to maximize their learning investment.
• Many respondents brought up the fact that they'd like to learn with / from others much more but aren't sure of the best way to do so. Their reasons included having someone to stay accountable to as part of their learning process, and also to add a social component to their learning

6) Leveraging Tools

• Ava Yazdani mentioned how she took the free online course Learning how to learn on Coursera which taught her the optimal ways of how to actually approach learning
• Using Pocket to bookmark articles to read later (so as to not distract from the current task at hand or to lose that article later on)
• Learning on mobile in general - people mentioned that it's much easier to fit into the day. Rolf Schmachtenberg mentions he does his online courses on mobile on his way to work. Several others reference using the Duolingo application for language learning on their commutes
• Using Evernote or OneDrive to record all notes. Some mentioned that they will initially record their notes in a physical notebook and then later record them on these apps
• There were a few flashcard applications mentioned for retention
• There were several mentions of Youtube for How-to videos
• Audiobooks and podcasts to maximize commuting time
• Several respondents mentioned meditation before / after a learning session to maximize focus during that time. Some easy to use mediation apps include Headspace, Calm and Insight Timer (my personal favourite as it's free)

Where to go from here?

If you've read this far, you may be asking yourself, ok what do I do now?

The most important first step is to determine your focus areas and curriculum. From there experimentation is required to figure out what techniques, tools and resources work best for you. To Ava`s point earlier, it`s important to learn how to learn, and that is different for each of us.

Personally I believe there is more that can be done in terms of systems, applications and the like to support people in their lifelong learning or personal masters. Coming out of this survey I aim to explore this further. Stay tuned! Also if you're interested to hear more I speak about this on my podcast The Global Shuffle this week.

Would love to hear your thoughts below and if you have any other best practices that work for you!