Life Long Continuous Learning

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Most people when they graduate from college or high school think that’s when their education stops and truth be told it likely is for many people unless they force themselves to be a life long student. In order to survive and thrive in the world nowadays, a person has to be a life long learner and maintain their skill set and keep their mind sharp. There’s an old saying that “If you don’t use it, you lose it”. And it’s true. What you don’t use and continually work on, on a continual basis will become rusty and you’ll be out of practice. Actors continually use their memory muscle in rehearsal, memorizing and rehearsing their lines over and over day in and day out. Math teachers teach kids and teach them while reinforcing their own skills daily and prep throughout summer and spring break to get good at what they do. Athletes have to train continuously, whether they are runners or gymnasts or football players so they can be battle ready. And the same think holds for everyone whether you’re Rocky Marciano, or Thomas Edison, in order to be good and be the best at what you do you have to continously learn, continuously strive to be better, and keep working on yourself for improvement.

It was years ago when I first had my first job that I heard this philosophy called “Kaizen” which was made famous in Japanese cultures and work environments. For example Toyota plants had an assembly line and in order to avoid flaws and defects in manufacturing, everyone from CEO to assembly worker had the chance to stop the line to make sure of quality control to ensure a better and better quality product.

In this day in age one has to be learning, reading, absorbing and gaining information. While a person may seem to be fiddling with their phone or watching TV, sometimes that in itself can be another way to learn new skills or technology or things about their world.

A good thing is that a lot of local libraries, including that of those in Ohio now offer customers access to online training such as Lynda.com and help them improve areas of creativity, business skills, software and technology knowledge. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to attend a masterclass or study under an expensive tutor. If you simply have a library card you can access a variety of high quality books, video tutorials by industry experts that include subjects such as:

• Audio and music creation to create songs, beats and how to play instruments.
• CAD and 3D animation to design models, animations and build architectural designs
• Print and photography for design, illustration and typography
• Coding and developing such as learning to code in object oriented programming languages, web development and Java
• How to create professional vido, motion graphics, set up lighting, correct colors, and storyboard with nonlinear video editors.
• Start a website and work on content and design.

This is all made possible by the fact that Ohio residents have access to hundreds to thousands of courses thanks to a state library learning program that has expanded to include this agreement with a partnership through LinkedIn via The Ohio Library Council to be able to provide services from Lynda.com. Some of these are short courses but some of these last several hours long and are offered simply for free. Normally these would require a paid subscription but you just have a library card, a pin number and internet connection.

This is an incredible offer and has helped our region to grow and increase our skills and bring growth for jobs and the economy.

If you’re a millennial or just someone out of college, take advantage of these great resources to learn, keep growing and make yourself known and needed. The best asset is you. That’s why they call it human capital. And so take time out of your day to read, check up on a newspaper and listen to podcasts and audio books while at the library. There’s a saying that people work hard on their jobs, but they need to work even harder on themselves as motivational speaker Jim Rohn was accustomed to saying. You have to keep working to bring value to your life and people around you. And as Zig Ziglar used to say: “You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.”