{"id":311,"date":"2012-03-24T18:44:22","date_gmt":"2012-03-24T18:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/?p=311"},"modified":"2012-05-22T18:44:47","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T18:44:47","slug":"continuing-your-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/2012\/03\/24\/continuing-your-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Continuing Your Education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Take time to improve your skills and knowledge. Take at least 1hr a week to learn something new. Read an article or a chapter in a book. Watch a tutorial. Go to a class, seminar, or training program. What ever it might be, take some time to improve your knowledge and gain a new skill. Your business depends on it!<\/p>\n<p>By learning new skills and gaining knowledge it will help improve your life and your business. You might find a better way to do something. Or you might have an idea for a new service or product. Plus staying up with the latest trends and skills will help keep your business ahead of the competition. <\/p>\n<p>But finding time and places to learn can be difficult. Hectic schedules can eat up time and leave you too exhausted by the end of the day. That is why I break up my learning into small 10 to 20 minute sessions per day. Here are a few things I do:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>On my lunch break I watch video tutorials or educational videos on TED.com, Fora.TV (some free, some paid), or Lynda.com (paid site). It might take me all week to watch a video but that\u2019s ok.<\/li>\n<li>To get me going in the morning and wake up my brain I read a chapter or a section in the latest business book I\u2019m reading. It is a little intense sometimes but it works for me. You might find reading before bed might be better.<\/li>\n<li>I subscribe to blogs, discussion boards, and newsletters, plus I have a list of sites I go to on a daily or weekly basis. I don\u2019t spend much time on each of the sites. I just skim the latest posts or articles. If something catches my eye I read it real quick. I rarely interact with the discussion that is going on but the point is to get a tidbit of information.<\/li>\n<li>Instead of music sometimes I listen to podcasts or videos while doing my work or driving places.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The awesome thing is almost every site and resource I go to is free. That is why the Internet is so awesome. If I don\u2019t know how to do something I just Google it. I can usually find a bunch of resources about the subject, if not a book or two by just asking Google a question. For example, Google \u201chow to install a window\u201d.  Right away on the first page I see 5 sites with tutorials and 3 videos on YouTube.com. Each video is less than 5 minutes!<\/p>\n<p>By doing everything I described above I learned countless new things.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u2019ve increased my knowledge of ColdFusion (my primary web language) to the point where I\u2019m a Senior Developer.<\/li>\n<li>I learned a new web language called jQuery in a few weeks and mastered it in 8 months.<\/li>\n<li>I learned how to change the starter on my car.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ve learn new recipes and cooking techniques. Food! Yummy!<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ve learned how to market my business better.<\/li>\n<li>and more!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019m addicted to knowledge thanks to the Internet. But that\u2019s ok. The more that I know, the more I can do and the better I can make my business by providing better services. So I will never stop learning and you shouldn\u2019t either!<\/p>\n<p>Your challenge this week is to find a few sites you can learn from, I would suggest maybe starting at TED.com, Fora.TV, or Lynda.com. Or joining a few Facebook or Linked In groups. Then once you find a few sites, setup a learning schedule. Something small and easy to follow, like 10 minutes a day at 8:50am, watch a video.<\/p>\n<p>If you are having trouble finding places to learn, email me, I\u2019d be glad to help you find a few sites!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Take time to improve your skills and knowledge. Take at least 1hr a week to learn something new. Read an article or a chapter in a book. Watch a tutorial. Go to a class, seminar, or training program. What ever it might be, take some time to improve your knowledge and gain a new skill. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-improvement","category-personal-improvement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2540,"href":"https:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions\/2540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}