New Year's Resolutions worth keeping - learn new skills

In our original blog on New Year’s Resolutions and how to keep them, we noted that amongst the most popular category of resolution were the “be better somehow” resolutions. 

So in this category we find the “learn new stuff” resolution. It sounds good, most “be better somehow” resolutions do but let’s get specific on why you would want to make this your resolution for 2012.

Living in competitive and constantly changing times most of us are aware that that the skills we learnt yesterday aren’t the ones that are valuable today. We could wait until this is patently obvious (ie redundancy) or make 2012 the year we are proactive in updating our skills.

The other reason to focus on learning new skills, and one that current research is increasingly supporting, is that we have choices about how we age. The good news is that our brains can stay agile and responsive into our later years – the hard-work news is that we have to push our boundaries and continuing forcing our brains to learn new skills in order for this development to take place.

Additional benefits for those who decide to learn new skills in 2012 include:

• Breadth in our learning gives us a range of perspectives to call upon when faced with new problems in our own areas of specialisation.
• The more unfamiliar situations we deal with, the more we practise our innovative and creative thinking. 
• Can we add, that learning deepens our character and makes us more inspiring to those around us?

So is 2012 the year you want to make that positive step? If so, take a moment to think about what skills you could learn. 

Firstly - what do you enjoy – really this is the most important criteria, all the others are secondary because if you decide to take up the most worthwhile new skill in the world but don’t enjoy it, you are highly unlikely ever to complete the learning.

Secondly:

• what learning is available? Your workplace may sponsor learning of new skills they see as valuable.
• what local opportunities are there to learn in the company of others – eg community colleges, night school. Many of us are motivated by our social nature. If you take a class with others and enjoy their company, you’re likely to keep going to class.
• other learning opportunities – the internet can deliver on nearly any learning need you have – a quick search will generally bring up a choice of resources – from free HowTo to Hack a Day to subscription only courses.

Whatever skill you decide to focus on this year, you’re going to have to allocate time.  Think carefully about the commitment you’re prepared to make and is that realistic to the lifestyle you lead. A little bit every day, is more valuable than big blocks of time every now and then.

We’d love to catch up with you this time next year and find out what new skill you took on board and how that made a positive difference to your life!