How To Incorporate Lifelong Learning In Your Career

Updated Feb 17, 2022

Discover:

What is Lifelong Learning?
Importance of lifelong learning
Examples of lifelong learning
Benefits of lifelong learning
Organizational lifelong learning
How to adopt lifelong learning in your life?

What is Lifelong Learning?

Lifelong learning is a class of self-initiated education that is focused on personal development. While at that place is no standardized definition of lifelong learning, it has mostly been taken to refer to the learning that occurs exterior of a formal educational plant, such as a school, university or corporate training.

Lifelong learning does not necessarily have to restrict itself to informal learning, however. It is best described every bit being voluntary with the purpose of achieving personal fulfillment. The ways to achieve this could result in informal or formal teaching.

Importance of lifelong learning

Whether pursuing personal interests and passions or chasing professional person ambitions, lifelong learning can help usa to achieve personal fulfillment and satisfaction.

It recognizes that humans accept a natural drive to explore, learn and grow and encourages us to improve our ain quality of life and sense of self-worth by paying attention to the ideas and goals that inspire us.

Lifelong Learning illustration

We're all lifelong learners

Only what does personal fulfillment mean?

The reality is that nearly of usa accept goals or interests outside of our formal schooling and jobs. This is role of what it means to be human being: we accept a natural curiosity and we are natural learners. Nosotros develop and abound cheers to our ability to learn.

Lifelong learning recognizes that non all of our learning comes from a classroom.

For example, in childhood, we larn to talk or ride a cycle.
As an developed, we learn how to use a smartphone or larn how to melt a new dish.

These are examples of the everyday lifelong learning nosotros engage in on a daily basis, either through socialization, trial and error, or self-initiated study.

Personal fulfillment and development refer to natural interests, curiosity, and motivations that lead united states of america to larn new things. We learn for ourselves, not for someone else.

Central checklist for lifelong learning:

Voluntary
Cocky-motivated or self-initiated
Doesn't always crave a price
Oftentimes informal
Cocky-taught or instruction that is sought
Motivation is out of personal interest or personal development

Examples of lifelong learning

Here are some of the types of lifelong learning initiatives that you tin appoint in:

Developing a new skill (eg. sewing, cooking, programming, public speaking, etc)
Self-taught written report (eg. learning a new linguistic communication, researching a topic of interest, subscribing to a podcast, etc)
Learning a new sport or activity (eg. Joining martial arts, learning to ski, learning to exercise, etc)
Learning to utilize a new technology (smart devices, new software applications, etc)
Acquiring new knowledge (taking a self-interest course via online education or classroom-based course)

Benefits of lifelong learning

Incorporating lifelong learning in your life can offer many long-term benefits, including:

1. Renewed self-motivation

Sometimes we become stuck in a rut doing things simply because nosotros have to exercise them, like going to work or cleaning the house.

Figuring out what inspires you puts you back in the driver's seat and is a reminder that y'all tin can actually practice things in life that you lot desire to do.

ii. Recognition of personal interests and goals

Re-igniting what makes yous tick every bit a person reduces colorlessness, makes life more than interesting, and can even open futurity opportunities.

You never know where your interests will lead you if you focus on them.

iii. Improvement in other personal and professional skills

While we're busy learning a new skill or acquiring new knowledge, we're as well building other valuable skills that can assist u.s. in our personal and professional person lives.

This is because we apply other skills in order to acquire something new. For example, learning to sew requires problem-solving. Learning to draw involves developing creativity.

Skill development tin can include interpersonal skills, inventiveness, problem-solving, disquisitional thinking, leadership, reflection, adaptability and much more.

4. Improved self-conviction

Becoming more knowledgeable or skilled in something tin increase our self-conviction in both our personal and professional lives.

In our personal lives, this conviction can stem from the satisfaction of devoting fourth dimension and effort to learning and improving, giving us a sense of accomplishment.
In our professional lives, this self-confidence can be the feeling of trust we have in our knowledge and the ability to utilise what we've learned.

Organizational lifelong learning

Sometimes lifelong learning is used to depict a type of beliefs that employers are seeking within the organisation. Employers are recognizing that formal instruction credentials are not the simply fashion to recognize and develop talent and that lifelong learning may be the desired trait.

Thank you to the fast stride of today'south knowledge economy, organizations are seeing lifelong learning as a core component in employee evolution. The thought is that employees should engage in constant personal learning in order to be adaptable and flexible for the system to stay competitive and relevant.

This type of personal learning is often referred to as continuous learning. Yous can read more about continuous learning and what it means for both the employee and employer here.

According to some researchers, yet, in that location is criticism that organizations are leveraging the concept of lifelong learning in lodge to place the responsibility of learning on employees instead of offering the resource, support and training needed to foster this kind of workforce.

Practise I need to be proactive most lifelong learning?

Most people will acquire something new at some point in their daily routine simply by talking with other people, browsing the internet based on personal interest, reading the newspaper, or engaging in personal involvement.

However, if making more endeavour to learn something new is important for either personal, family unit, or career reasons, or at that place is a need for a more organized structure, then hither are some steps to get started.

How to adopt lifelong learning in your life?

ane. Recognize your own personal interests and goals

Lifelong learning is about you, not other people and what they desire.

Reverberate on what y'all're passionate well-nigh and what you lot envision for your own hereafter.

If progressing your career is your personal interest, then at that place are means to participate in self-directed learning to accomplish this goal.

If learning history is your passion, at that place are likewise means to explore this interest further.

2. Make a list of what y'all would similar to acquire or be able to do

Once yous've identified what motivates yous, explore what it is about that detail interest or goal that you want to achieve.

Returning to our instance of someone having a passion for history, peradventure it is desired to just expand noesis on the history of Europe. Or perchance the interest is so strong that going for a Ph.D. is a dream goal.

Both of these are different levels of interest that entail different ways of learning.

3. Identify how you would like to go involved and the resource bachelor

Achieving our personal goals begins with figuring out how to go started.

Researching and reading nigh the interest and goal can help to codify how to go well-nigh learning it.

With our history case: the person who wants to simply learn more about a particular historical fourth dimension menstruum could discover books in the library catalog, blogs, magazines and podcasts dedicated to the field of study, or even museums and talks.

The individual who wanted to achieve A Ph.D. in history as a personal goal could research university programs that could exist done part-fourth dimension or online, besides as the steps one would need to take to achieve the doctorate level.

4. Construction the learning goal into your life

Fitting a new learning goal into your decorated life takes consideration and effort.

If you don't brand time and infinite for it, information technology won't happen.

It tin easily lead to discouragement or quitting the learning initiative birthday.

Plan out how the requirements of the new learning initiative can fit into your life or what yous demand to do to brand information technology fit.

For example, if learning a new linguistic communication is the learning goal, can you lot make fourth dimension for i hr a day? Or does 15 minutes a 24-hour interval sound more realistic?

Understanding the time and space y'all can devote to the learning goal tin assist y'all to stick with the goal in the long-run.

5. Make a commitment

Committing to your decision to engage in a new learning initiative is the final and most of import stride.

If you've set realistic expectations and have the self-motivation to run into it through, commit to information technology and avoid making excuses.