How entrepreneurial are you about your learning?

Many of us struggle to find time for learning in the busy routines of the workday. Having a mental overload already may not invite for more information to be stored on the heated brain. Yet we are constantly asked to be lifelong learners, to upskill and reskill to keep up with the demands of modern worklife.

How can this happen without a total meltdown of the brain and with some joy in the process?

One approach to learning can be a change in our mindsets. What if we were entrepreneurs in our own field, in our own area of expertise? How would we sell it to others? What knowledge skills could we offer? What would be our premium offering? The one that differentiates us from the competitors?

When we start thinking like entrepreneurs about our own learning, we take an active approach to being curious, finding things out, strategizing, networking and finding ways to increase our capability. This may be small at first but what counts here is a change in attitude. We no longer expect our employer to send us to a training (which may be a waste of time anyway). Instead we start reading, having discussions with like-minded people in social networks, watching videos and other micro-content and even publish our own stories and learnings within the company or other networks.

This approach has several benefits. It empowers us and gives us ownership of our own learning and our career. It makes learning much more enjoyable because we have a support network. We can also exercise our innate curiosity muscle and find out about interesting developments in our field. This requires priorization but it soon becomes a habit, an endeavour that increases wellbeing because we know that this is an investment that is worth making. And if the brain is too heated all the time, it’s time to consider designing the workday so that some learning can be squeezed in.