Learn Something New Everyday

7 min readMay 7, 2021

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever”-Mahatma Gandhi

Most of us have a couple of areas in our life that drive and strive to know well. Primary thing about our job and a hobby or two. Sometimes we know what we know but we do not know what we do not know. It is therefore advisable to learn something about everything and everything about something. If you do not learn you perish. If you learn new things you can teach new things. If you do not learn new things how long you can teach old things repeatedly. Can you remove darkness with darkness? It is the ray of light that removes darkness. Hate somebody continuously and you will be hated forever. It is the love that can finish your hates.

Prettiest thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you. It is stored in your brain and it is your private property forever. Think how painful it could be if there is 10% wealth tax for what you possess in your brain? In fact we are blessed for learning anything anywhere and there is no limit on that. You can learn as much as you can.

Do Not Be Afraid To Be Wrong

You may always commit some mistake when you learn new things. In fact go and commit some mistake, so that you can learn things more deeply and understand better. While coding for your program in my module, I faced more than a dozen of mistakes when compiled before execution. But it was always version one. With several attempts all the mistakes were eliminated and I jumped with a joy when program was executed successfully. Same thing happened in job, in sports, swimming, cycling, running at cross country and running a marathon.

You Can Learn At Any age

Generally it is believed that learning is possible at school or college days only. But it is myth. It is also generally thought that there is no time later on in life to learn things. In fact you can learn any thing any time. Some people laughed in my office when I was learning and applying techniques of typing with speed at later age. But it is the outcome of same learning that I am able to present a book every month to the world. One of my friends burst in laughing when recently after my 60 I took a course on Photoshop even I had uploaded more than one hundred videos on my YouTube channel. It is never too late to learn anything and no subject is too outdated to learn unless and until it does not lead to your ultimate goal. I had learned swimming at the age of 16 years but my relatives surprised when I learn SCUBA diving in deep water of sea at the age of 58 years.

Wide Range Of Subjects

It would have been a situation with mercy if you are restricted by some authority or a law across the country that if anybody learns more than six things, it will be punishable offence. Narrow down your learning to area of specialisation day by day and week by week. It will be exaggerated but I am of the opinion to learn every hour of the day if you want precisely to get legendary in your field. Psychologically speaking, mind is not always ready to accept or adapt the changes easily and frequently to new situation but you got to make habit and ultimately habit will form you. Once you have succeeded especially in unfamiliar situation, it will just feed as innovation to hundreds of individuals thereby to think creatively and provide examples to follow your pathway. It will not only impress every body around you but also deepen your own character and make you more confident. So make your life worth living by learning new things.

Barriers To Learn New Things

Everybody wants to learn things but everybody can not because there are internal and external factors responsible for hindrances.

(A) Internal Factors

1. Mental or Physical State

You are less interested violence happening around your city in comparison the pain you are facing in one of your teeth. My friend was not at all interested to learn skills of gaming as his grand mother was seriously ill.

2. Fear Of Failure

One of my close relatives did not learn driving through out his life because he thought he might meet with accident while driving in heavy traffic and invite disaster.

3. Confidence Level

You can not jump in swimming pool as you lack the confidence. People never attempt to speak in public even they have good oratory but lack the confidence to appear in front of mass or gathering.

4. Fear To Embrace Change

Most of my friends did not accept the change in working environment even expert had designed new models. They wanted to stick to their old patterns. I had seen people working in the same branch of bank for a couple of decades and never opted to change the place due to fear to embrace the change.

(B)External Factors

External environment is equally responsible for not adopting learning such as following.

1. Environment

If climatic condition is inadequate you can not develop certain sports or athletic ability. Our coaching camp was shifted to newer place where temperature and humidity were matching suitable for the workouts.

2. Bad Experience

You may be hesitant to learn horse riding again if you were thrown from the back of horse when it become hostile.

3. Lack of Innovation

Rigid unprofessional old style of teaching methodology may not imbibe pleasant experience in youth today. They may always want to have latest technology in their learnings.

4. Unwilling to Unlearn

My grand father used to tell a story of marriage. There was marriage ceremony in India where bride and groom make seven rounds around the fire. The father of the groom had a tamed cat. He hid the cat underneath a basket in which cat can not come out but breath. After 20 years when son of the groom was also getting married and somebody said, “First hide the cat!” Again after next 20 years when his grand children was getting married but there was no cat nearby. The marriage was cancelled as there was no cat available. Basically the cat was hidden because it may not come on the way to bride and groom when there were taking seven rounds around the fire as it is believed that when cat crosses the way it is believed to bad omen. So unlearning unwanted things are also necessary to learn new things.

Remedies To Update Learning

We can not keep the space with the time if we are not actively participating and keeping pace with the technology.

1. Repetition Is The Mother Of Learning

You can not a particular thing and there is not short cut for learning new things or new learning. For instance you have to practice hours together for learning typing, swimming, cycling, driving or boating. Things are not learned unless it achieves auto-pilot mode or it is stored in subconscious mind. For instance you are sometime not conscious to apply break or pushing accelerator in traffic when you are driving.

2. Follow the news to keep pace with current events

The media can be news paper, radio, television but it may be useful for keeping the good pace with current events or affairs. If you are not keeping the pace with the current happenings, you may be thrown out like wooden log in the river.

3. Read books and articles or blogs

Reading is one of the most effective ways to learn new things. Many of the multimillionaires have explored the hidden potentials and gifted inventions and discoveries after constant reading of books and articles.

4. Explore the internet to the fullest

Internet has endless resources for learning. The abundance of information is increasing day by day and there is no limit to learn from online sites. There are thousands of institutes on specific learning. Join the courses and learn on daily basis.

5. Learn, implement and teach

When you have learned certain skills or hacks, apply them in your daily life and also teach them to target audience so that they are not only better retained in your mind but also they may be beneficial to community and whole process may also become source of income.