How to find the time to learn?
This seemingly simple question seems to puzzle a lot of people. In the daily rush of life where people are working hard, barely finding time for family; how can they find the time to learn?
I see two distinct patterns and potential solutions to this problem:
- Binge-watching → Timeboxing
- Prioritisation → Prioritise 😂
Binge-watching → timeboxing
Not being able to find time to do something new has a lot to do with a binge-watching culture set by OTT players like Netflix. We want to go through a 20-hour course in one night. We definitely want to complete a 6-hour course in one binge-watching session. We want to learn all about a new language, framework, database, etc. in one go.
Learning is a slow process. Spend 30 minutes per day learning anything for a year and you would have a good understanding of that subject. That's nearly 175 hours spent learning something. It will be great if we can go back to college and spend 3 to 4 hours every day learning; until that happens 30 minutes per day is a great option.
Try to timebox your day and week into work, learning, family, leisure, and hobby time. It's very easy to let leisure take a whole of 24 hours and it's equally easy to let work take up most of the waking hours with no time left for family, learning, or unwinding.
Consistently show up every day just for 30 minutes to learn something and you will definitely become better at that topic. This is described rather well in the following Hindi poem:
करत-करत अभ्यास के जडमति होत सुजान ।
रसरी आवत-जात ते सिल पर परत निशान ॥
Prioritization
Is learning even a priority for you? Do you understand the benefits continuous learning brings to your life? Can you grow in your career, make your startup do better if you don't learn anything new for the next 10 years?
What are you willing to sacrifice to get 30 minutes of learning time every day? Some of the things that can get lower priority - Time on social media, time spent on short and long-form media consumption, newspaper(?), Reddit, and a big black hole we call timepass.
It's often easy for us to spend multiple hours preparing for meetup talks or interviews but we can't seem to find the time when it comes to learning something daily. We are neglecting things that are important for urgent and long-term for short-term.
Spend some time reviewing your day and where you are spending your time. Find a 30 minutes pocket for learning and you are on your way.