Learn on the Go!

I am an Entrepreneur, and in a Technology related industry, As an Entrepreneur CEO & Managing Director, I transitioned from a small team to am multi-location business and clients across the world. That meant I had to spend more time traveling, meeting prospects and clients.When I i got the opportunity at my Office, realised I had lesser and lesser time for working closely with individuals and teams, in the area of technology.

Also, I had to learn new things about negotiations, reviewing contracts, interacting with customers, people management, conflict management etc. The question on my mind for how do I keep up on my learning agenda, when my entire working day is consumed by meetings, and after returning home it was about getting into late night calls, attending to emails etc.

I fortunately have a driver who drives me between my workplaces and meeting locations, and then back home. I discovered about podcasts, and and other micro-learning streams, of which many are free and a few are subscribed, is a useful way of keeping myself updated.

They are typically learning bytes of 8 minutes, audio podcasts, or video podcasts, or short narratives supported by interesting animations. Podcasts are available in diverse ares, from basic sciences to scientific advances to current affairs, spirituality and entertainment. Plenty of channels are available and is nicely categorised, so you can narrow down to a category, and further chose only such channels you are interested in. The content gets pushed to your smart phone and gets queued up until you read it and watch it or listen to it, and then you get the next episode in the stack.

Busy professionals who are in meetings and traveling from one meeting to the other, may use this time to accomplish incremental learning using the learning nuggets that are pushed and available in a sequence. Mostly each Learning nugget can be completed in One Go, but just in case there is an interruption, one can pause it and continue later.

I find this an effective way of learning, because I can quickly get the relevant content stream and the learning nugget. Many time, I have found conversational audio podcasts more interesting, as different view points are discussed, and when you are listening, you transform into a keen learner for that duration.

I think in today's competitive world, this offers an option to "learn on the Go'!