We try to keep Sundays dedicated to the other stuff that supports our business lives but that which often gets ignored – Goal Setting, Productivity, Motivation, Review, Health (we’ve categorised these under “Constant Progress”) and Higher Purpose (giving back to the community and feeding your soul).

On Monday, we published a Benjamin Franklin quote recognising the value of learning and I thought I’d follow up on that in the first of our Sunday posts on what we like to call “Constant Progress”.

Here at Commerce Shop, we’ll try to keep business stuff off the weekend. On Saturdays, we look for light fun stuff to give you a bit of a break. But Sundays are perfect for self-reflection and self-improvement. 

Constant Progress

First I’d like to explain what I mean by “Constant Progress” – we strongly believe that business success is often be determined not by business talent alone, but through strong personal skills. Often it is our daily habits and mindsets – are we focused on the right goals? do we check our emails 20 times a day? do we follow through? do we learn from our mistakes? are we keeping healthy or are we burning the candle at both ends and in the middle? By identifying non-supporting behaviours and replacing them with supportive behaviours, we build good foundations for our business lives.

Higher Purpose

Sundays will also have the occasional “Higher Purpose” feature. While many of us may have financial goals fixed in our heads, having greater ambitions outside our own personal gain can create more meaning (and thus stronger motivation) for what we do. Activities that allow us to give back help to keep our soul healthy and that can only be a good thing.

So back to the topic for today, lifelong learning…

Lifelong Learning

Be proactive in identifying what it is that you need to learn. Be honest with yourself and with what your goals are. Clarify what are your learning priorities. 

Remember that learning doesn’t have be formal and institutionalised – reading books that look interesting, reading magazines and blogs like this one (perhaps not gossip blogs, I don’t think there’s much to learn of any use there), subscribe to relevant newsletters - you can even learn by talking to strangers at shops, the bus stop.  (If you’re reading this blog, you’re likely to already have realised the benefits of constant learning, at the very least subconsciously.)

Be proactive in looking for opportunities to learn: explore online bookstores for books in relevant areas, investigate adult learning facilities locally, search on the internet for courses and information. Ask on forums for people to recommend the best places to learn. Keep an eye out for conferences in your area.

Of course, that’s not to say that you should only learn and not do – sometimes it’s easy to feel that you can’t do something because you don’t have enough experience, you don’t know enough. Learning should never hold you back. But if you see learning as a constant process – that even experts still have plenty to learn -you shouldn’t fall into this trap.

Perhaps one way of approaching it is to make learning your hobby. If you view learning as something you choose to do for fun, it does become fun. I started doing an Economics course recently and if I had been forced to learn it at university, I know would have gripped and hated it. But because it’s something I don’t have to do, but I value the knowledge I get from it – it’s exciting to open up that Maths or Economics textbook and do my allocated exercises.

Another important thing to remember about learning is sometimes you will come across things you don’t understand – the best technique I can recommend is when this happens, relax. Trust that you will eventually understand whatever it is you’re trying to learn. If you panic and start telling yourself that you don’t understand and will never understand – that is what will happen. Go over the material calmly a number of times. Try seeing if you can find another source for the information – it could be that it just needs to be presented in a different way. Ask others for help – friends, colleagues or even on internet forums. 

Also, be open to teaching others. I find that the best way of consolidating your knowledge and finding where there are gaps to fill is when I am trying to help someone else learn. You can learn just as much through listening to their questions (and your own that pop up). 

As I mentioned before, remember that lifelong learning is just that – it’s lifelong, it’s a constant process. Technology is constantly developing, the world’s knowledge banks are constantly growing. Don’t be intimidated by experts, because even they need to update their knowledge. Don’t underestimate what you can learn in a number of months or one year if you do it consistently.