sparkyoriental wrote:For those that are no longer in school - how do you keep learning? Either for work or personal development.
I feel like there's so much that I want to learn more about, but I'm just lacking the motivation to get started.
There are lots of ways, but self-directed learning and study I've found tend to be both the most rewarding and most effective, if only because you are learning about what you want to learn about. The actual method you go about researching something depends on the topic.
For instance, at some point a few years ago I decided I wanted to know more about how PCs worked, so I watched a bunch of youtube videos which explained everything. For more academic stuff I default to using google scholar and downloading (mostly) free journal articles. I've learned a lot about various economic schools of thought and modelling techniques that way. If you want to spend money, obviously there are going to be plenty of books around as well. Or just go to the library. My sister works in HR and just borrows out books about networking, interpersonal relationships, all that stuff.
The offices I've worked at have all run seminars or courses at some stage. these are way way more intensive than anything you have to do at school (we did an entire stats course in three days, for example). In some cases your boss may send you out to do a short, intensive course somewhere else. These generally suck, or are pretty challenging, but you have the benefit of being paid to be there, plus a framework for how you will need to use the info in your work.
Almost all the stuff I actually use in my day to day work, though? it's just stuff I learned on the job, and had to do a bunch of times, and now it's burned into my brain.
Motivation is hard but at the end of the day starting anything is actually reasonably easy once you get down to it. search something in google, refine your search, see where it leads. Sometimes having a goal is good (I want to build X, or write Y) but honestly man it's up to you. Follow the words of our lord n saviour shy lebuff and
just do it