If you keep your eyes open, it is easy to learn something new every day. What good is that, though? Lots of folks out there have very little use or respect for “book smarts.”
Whether or not you ever use a fact that you learn, you are putting tools in your toolbox. Sometimes a simple observation can become the missing piece of a much larger puzzle. So pay attention. Even if you can’t remember Pi out to the 5th decimal place, your mind is metabolizing new knowledge all the time. It comes out in ways that may surprise you.
The luckiest people in the world are students of life–alert, always studying. As Henry Ford said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”
Check out these free online education resources to keep yourself sharp:
- Coursera: Coursera works with universities and other organizations to make some of their courses available online, offering courses in subjects, such as: physics, engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, digital marketing, data science, and other subjects. I’ve personally taken several classes through Coursera and found them extremely rewarding.
- edX: edX hosts online university-level courses in a wide range of disciplines to a worldwide student body, including some courses at no charge. It also conducts research into learning based on how people use its platform.
- MIT OpenCourseware: MIT OpenCourseware is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate and graduate level courses online, freely and openly available to anyone, anywhere.
