Using free time in a way that can enrich our knowledge and understanding of the world I think is one of the wisest decisions we can make during our lifetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Learning will never give us the unpleasant feeling of having wasted time. How often does this happen to you after watching a movie, scrolling social media for hours or playing a video game late into the night? Self-convincing ourselves that we can procrastinate is dangerous; we risk becoming old and accumulating only regrets for the things we wanted to do and didn't.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today we are in a period of history where tools for learning have become available online to a very large part of the population. Taking courses on the Internet is now a viable choice that allows great flexibility because you can decide to learn whenever you want, even if you already have a job, regardless of your age, and you often don't have to pay anything or very low amounts of money, especially if you want to take courses done by experts who are on the other side of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To do so, however, we must defeat our number one enemy: laziness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I started working when I was 20 years old, without going to college but only doing a school to become a graphic designer that didn't teach me that much, just to say, a computer had been shown to us from afar as an inaccessible object (we are talking about 1989-1990). I didn't manage to buy my first Mac until three years later (a Macintosh LC II with 4MB of ram and 40 MB of HD), and from there on I studied on my own everything there was to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everything I have learned, and over the years I have accumulated a lot, has come from personal study. When I had a need or passion for a subject, I sought out the right resources and always set out to study while simultaneously putting what I had acquired into practice. Theory alone does not help to understand well and memorize correctly what has been learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, one may think that I want to make believe that I am smarter than the average person and therefore I am superior to lazy people in front of the TV wasting their time. No, those who know me know that I am not conceited at all and I am not one to look down on others. I consider my intelligence normal and my memory very below average (I forget so many things) but I have some qualities that help me: I can fight laziness by giving myself some self-discipline and I always have a strong passion for what I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Passion is the strongest engine in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can be highly intelligent but have no strong passion, and you will probably stay on the couch playing Playstation for the rest of your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I first started studying what I was interested in, all that was available were books or the courses to attend that lasted for months or years and required you to move around with fixed schedules and all that goes around this kind of teaching. It was a real struggle to learn in that way, not very fun and often unclear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today with online courses and artificial intellingence you have the best teachers\/coaches in their field who can teach you everything you want to learn almost as if it were a personal course. And if something is unclear or you have a question specific to your situation, there is always a way to contact them and have them explain it to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is a revolution as never before seen in the field of education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The biggest difficulty is to find the gold amidst so much junk. What I mean to say is that there are good courses, often free, but also a lot of stuff done badly or made just to sell you something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are platforms that, for more than reasonable costs, give you access to a huge amount of courses of all kinds, others that charge you a fee for each individual course, and then there is YouTube with a choice is endless where you can find videos with quality content amidst a lot of really bad stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On YouTube the best video is from people who want to share their knowledge without selling you anything. It may seem strange to some, but there are a lot of people who love to do this and expect nothing in return. As an example, I am following a Canadian guy who is very good at making documentaries and who, with many free videos on YouTube, talks about his whole experience giving invaluable advice that I could only get by working side by side with a mentor who decides to be mentored by me for months. Below is a video to give a better understanding of what I am talking about. Like him you can find thousands more for every area you can think of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n