This is the fourth in a series of 10 articles that give suggestions meant to improve the over-all quality of your life.
4. Learn something new. Pick a topic, preferably something you know nothing about and learn something about it. A good source of inspiration for this can be the newspaper or Wikipedia. It helps to retain it if you have time to make a note of what you learned or explain it to someone else, but even if you don’t get the chance to do that, your brain will thank you for the new patterns you introduce as you learn something new every day.
Learning something new daily will can:
- Help you become a better conversationalist
- Keep your brain active for learning
- Enhance your creativity
Once you’ve got new ideas rolling around in your head you will be surprised at the patterns that start forming. Connections will be made from seeming unrelated topics–that’s the stuff from which innovation comes. If you’re not doing it already, learn something new every day.
If you need somewhere to start, check out the following books that I’ve found to be good inspiration for learning:
“On Intelligence” (Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee)
“Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means” (Albert-Laszlo Barabasi)
“Think!: Why Crucial Decisions Can’t Be Made in the Blink of an Eye” (Michael R. LeGault)
“The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few” (James Surowiecki)
As you’re searching for books, don’t forget to turn to the classics as well. Have you read Don Quixote? War and Peace? These are books that will change the way you think forever.
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