Last Updated on September 4, 2024
Do you know what makes you a great freelancer, graphic designer, creative entrepreneur, or any other kind of professional really? It’s not your current level of skills. Sure; your qualifications are important during the hiring process. But your potential for progress is determined by your will and commitment to learn new things.
When you learn new skills, you gain tons of advantages not only from professional, but from personal aspect as well.
The time when people settled for a job and waited for retirement is long gone. Today, if you don’t keep learning, you stop being competitive and you can easily get replaced.
Still not motivated enough? How about a list of valid reasons why you should keep gaining new skills and learning new things all the time?
Reasons to Keep Learning
You Get Exposed to New Trends
No matter what your profession is, the industry is definitely making progress. Whether you’re an online entrepreneur, freelance writer, graphic designer, blogger, or anything else, you have to be on track with what’s happening in your niche.
Creative entrepreneurs, in particular, need to pay special attention on the trends. If Facebook or Google change their algorithms (again!) what will you do? Of course you’ll learn everything about those changes and you’ll start analyzing how your competitors are changing their strategies. Of course you’ll change your own strategy to paid social media advertising and SEO as well.
If you want to stay on top and you want to keep earning money, you have to keep pace with the development and growth of your industry.
You Grow
Do you know why some of the best companies, such as Google, invest in personal development plans for their employees? Researchers found that personal development, as perceived by the employee, leads to improved performance at work.
So learning takes you towards professional growth. That’s a fact.
However, you also grow on a personal level. You deepen your knowledge, and basically you become wiser. Knowledge itself won’t make you a better person, but the way you implement it sure can.
When you learn about different problems in the world, you also learn about ways to help. Let’s take the plastic issue as an example. As you keep learning how our daily actions affect the planet, you start searching for solutions. Even if that has nothing to do with your profession, it has to do with you as a person.
Learning Helps You Fight Boredom
Are you ever bored, just hanging around your house with nothing to do? Maybe you need a day like that from time to time. Maybe you get so tired at work that you absolutely need few hours or an entire day of doing nothing. But if this turns into a routine, you make boredom a consistent aspect of your life.
Continuous learning helps you fight boredom. It’s like an addiction. The more you learn, the more you want to know. You escape the average, common world of sitting on the couch, having meaningless conversations, and watching TV shows.
The new knowledge triggers new ideas, which won’t let you sit there and do nothing.
Learning Helps You Become Part of a Community
You’re never alone in the things you know and the things you’re interested in. It doesn’t matter what you’re learning. Maybe it’s graphic design or a new programming language. You’ll definitely find a relevant community that will support you and give you the information you need. You can exchange ideas, ask questions, and help other people grow. That connection will push you towards a continuous process of learning.
Are you wondering where you can find such a community? Well Reddit and Quora are always a good start. These platforms are easy to navigate through; just search for a relevant category and start bonding.
Learning Takes You Towards Success
Think of a successful person. Okay; let’s take Mark Zuckerberg as an example. Lifelong learning is the fundamental principle of his success as an entrepreneur.
Now you may start thinking: “But Steve Jobs and Richard Branson dropped out of college.” Yes; but they didn’t stop learning! When we say that learning takes you to success, we don’t necessarily refer to traditional education. We refer to the time and effort you willingly invest in your growth.
Take any successful person in any industry and you’ll notice the same pattern of lifelong learning. Any! Learning has been the foundational element of their progress.
Knowledge Boosts Your Self-Esteem
When you know more, you start valuing yourself more as a person. This is not the egoistic type of self-value we’re talking about. We’re talking about genuine self-esteem, which results from knowing stuff.
When you’re in a discussion about the origin of the Universe, you’ll feel more self-confident when you know more. If you know nothing, you’ll keep quiet because you’ll be afraid of saying something silly.
If you know a lot about a particular topic, you’ll be confident enough to write your own report or research paper. If you’re not, you’ll end up hiring an essay writer because you won’t believe that you’re capable of completing good work.
You see? Knowledge makes a huge difference in your self-esteem levels.
Continuous Learning Exposes You to New Ideas
Imagine you were somewhere in the Middle Ages and you believed that the Earth was flat. Nicolaus Copernicus tries to convince you that the Sun is actually the center around which our planet gravitates.
Who would you prefer to be? The guy who shames Copernicus for exposing a different idea? Or the guy who decides to listen to what he had to say and maybe doing some more research to find out the truth?
Of course you’d like to be the second guy in that scenario! You’d love to be open to learning, and you’d love exploring new ideas. Well you can be that person if you just try.
Learning Helps You Earn More Money
If you learn a new language as a programmer, you can start applying for more jobs. You’ll have a more versatile set of skills that would make you a more attractive employee. If you gain new skills as a graphic designer, you can do the same thing: search for better gigs or a permanent job at the company of your dreams.
You Get to Eliminate Things from Your Bucket List
- Learn how to fly the helicopter
- Learn French and live in Paris for a year
- Learn how to cook
- Learn how to dive
See? Whenever you want to gain new experiences in life, you have to learn something and gain new skills.
Now, you may say something like “I don’t have a bucket list.” Really? You couldn’t possibly be so stuck in the comfort zone. Maybe you don’t have the list in written, but let’s be honest here: you definitely have something you wish to do. It’s about time to revisit those wishes, turn them into an actual list, and start working on them!
Learning Keeps Your Brain in Shape
What do you do when you want to improve your posture or gain some muscle? You exercise, so you can keep your body more vital. Well learning is a workout for your brain.
The process of learning and practicing a new skill boosts the density of myelin in your brain. That’s the white matter, which is important for your performance of various tasks.
So there you have them – 10 reasons that will surely convince you to learn more. Who doesn’t want to become smarter, more successful, and essentially better? Lifelong learning takes you there!
