Modern Business Magazine January 2016 | Page 10

MODERN LEARNING occasional documentaries on new things. Learning is a zest for life, the route to stimulation and engagement with the world and the knowledge that you are not standing still, you are ever improving your understanding of yourself, your place in the world and the contribution you can make. Your relationships will improve, along with your confidence and selfworth, all key ingredients of health and happiness. learning, perhaps through attending group meetings/classes or with learning materials. Consider finding a mentor who may be prepared to impart their specific knowledge and skills on a chosen topic. Finally there are courses and structured learning programs if this is appropriate for the topic. Utilise professional development opportunities at work, if you and your manager are aligned on your professional development needs, will your workplace fund a course and give you some time off to attend or complete coursework. In order to complete your learning plan, consider how you are going to learn about each topic, aiming for a mixture of styles that can be accommodated into your life. Few of us have the time to attend courses on all four focus areas, beside which there may be little point in having a certificate in stamp collecting if this is not your profession! On the other hand, if you are interested in pottery, then 10 ModernBusiness January 2016 you will likely have to attend a class to be able to access the required facilities of a wheel and kiln. Document your learning plan, a simple one pager should do, of your chosen focus topics and learning approach for each. Be prepared to be flexible as the year goes on, you may find the hobby you chose is not as interesting or rewarding as you thought, in which case you must be prepared to change. Review and update your plan quarterly. Finally, whilst my learning plan helps me to focus on a few topics at a time, which I find much more efficient that trying to learn about too much at once, the learning plan must not close your mind to other learning that will stimulate your mind. I like to ‘learn things I didn’t know I wanted to know’ in small bites, by reading the airline magazine articles on places and topics I’ve never considered, by listening to magazine style radio programs, by subscribing to relevant web feeds and by watching Caroline is a consultant and coach for developing professionals, executives and small businesses, using her years of corpor