Self-directed learning requires a good dose of motivation to begin with. But motivation alone won’t keep you there, because there are always other interesting things to do, many distractions to avoid, and less favorable circumstances to overcome. I’ve found a few strategies to remain focused in my independent studies, and I’ve been using them for the past two and a half months: scheduling and tracking learning time. In this article, I’ll show you how I’m using them to improve my productivity and focus, despite having a variable work schedule at the moment. ...

Imagine you discover this beautiful mountain: the tallest of all around, it’s summit’s bare during the summer, and covered in snow during winter time. Simultaneously beautiful and frightening, would you like to climb it? I would, for sure. The view from up there must be breathtaking! Choosing My Mountains Last month, I spent every early morning for a week walking and hiking back in nature’s grounds, soaking in the sound of birds waking up for the new day, enjoying the smell of wet grass, and stopping to appreciate the view when the sun finally shone its light. ...

Every time I’d open my email app, I would feel a pinch of despair. With over 3000 messages, I felt discouraged about how I could solve this. Processing a few messages at a time wasn’t working. Inspired by Mischa van den Burg’s video The Importance of Digital Housekeeping, at the end of July I decided to challenge myself and clean my email inbox in one sitting. Problems I had three major problems caused by a poorly managed email system: ...

I always had an interest in finding out how things worked to really understand them. So, when I decided to start this learning journey it didn’t make sense for me to begin at the software layer: I sought to learn about how computers are built, their different components and their functions. After a while, I felt the need to see and hold these parts in my hands, because learning the theory is important, but putting that knowledge into practice consolidates what you’ve learned. ...