A Journey of Micro-Learning: My Ultimate Growth Mix

I was strategizing my approach to personal growth, and it turned out that I’m a big fan of micro-learning. I’ve been doing it for years now in various forms, usually online courses in addition to dozens of books (and even more so audiobooks).

First remark here – it’s more of a growth mindset, not the means. And it evolves over time as our needs change, unlike the knowledge you acquire once in hopes to passively benefit from it long-term. Micro-learning is an active learning, to me.

So my growth mix at the moment consists of ThePowerMBA programme, HBR subscription and Audible with an occasional LinkedIn Learning top-up. Plus ad-hoc non-fiction books. You might be asking yourself what’s so special about micro-learning?

Well, there are two things that make it stand out from more formal, in-class learning approaches:

• Firstly, it’s relatively low time commitment – as it is distributed over the timespan and compounds over time;
• Secondly, it helps retaining knowledge because you repeat small chunks of information frequently enough for them to stick with you.

At least that’s my take.

So how did I get there? My micro-learning journey really accelerated since I decided to advance my career from pure design to corporate branding, a bit over 5 years ago. And it worked so well for me that I keep advising everyone to do the same. Really.

There’s no better way of tackling this – none that I’m aware of – than by incorporating those small micro-learning habits. Daily. And see them compound over time.

I realised that micro-learning is just so much more efficient way for me and many others in my age group to learn what we need, right when we want it. No sooner, no later, just in the right context. We live in an on-demand society where information can be found at any time right at our fingertips – so why not get smarter by taking advantage of these things? 

So back to my mix and the secret (not any more 😉) formula, here’s how I figured it out for myself.

Things that work for me 

I keep Audible for audiobooks. Usually personal growth and business stuff. I used to listen while driving to the office, now more often when running, or during breaks. This is often my first touch point with a title, and it happened several times that I looked at print copies after the first audiobook experience.

I use HBR subscription for business and management latest trends that I need to refresh occasionally, when a topic comes up at work or I just feel like diving into something new. I’m always up for studying an interesting business case too. Which takes me to recently booming MBA alternatives.

I’ve decided this year to commit to ThePowerMBA as I wanted to join some more structured business programme for some time already. However, the overly formal and traditional courses didn’t make it for me. It’s just not my thing. TPMBA came in the right time, in the right place. So I’m into my 3rd month of the journey and I can’t express how great it’s been, so far.

To improve various soft skills, I’ve done close to 100 online courses over the past few years on topics like business innovation, brand culture, organisational transformation, marketing, change management. The vast majority of this has been LinkedIn Learning, I usually keep it active for about half a year, on average.

Of course, on top of that comes the usual, more snack-able content from TED, blogs, Medium, podcasts & newsletters.

Things that didn’t work so well

So I’ve been subscribing to one of marketing gurus via Patreon for some time, and although the content was super valuable and very relevant, it only served me well short-time but long-term it didn’t prove that valuable at all. Cancelled it and focused on stuff that matters for me more.

I did also some one-off courses via Udemy, which have proven to be the least insightful for me. I learned too little for the money, the subjective ROI was too low to give it another try.

The greatest disappointment were conferences I attended in digital – the value of in-person networking can’t be questioned, that’s at least the lesson learned. But it’s very much the content of sessions which I’ve noticed was just not moving the needle for me. I mean, if I spend money and time and learn nothing new in return, that can’t be right. So I’m just more careful now on what I attend and why 🙃

Learning mode on. Always. All ways.

/K