‘Too Busy To Learn’? Try Microlearning Instead
Too busy for traditional courses? Hectic schedule got you feeling unmotivated and unproductive when it comes to your learning?
Welcome to the wonderful world of microlearning: Jackafal is here to guide you with some recommendations of our favourite microlearning resources.
December is here again. Cue the holiday season, and the lack of productivity that comes with it: most people have mentally logged off from the beginning of the month until the end of the year, and it’s impossible to get anything done. The working world seems to slip comfortably into that feeling that it’s nearly time to close their laptops for the holidays, and there’s no point in starting anything new, because you won’t be finishing it until the New Year rolls around anyway.
While the holiday season is of course a great time to be festive and celebrate your well-deserved wins for the year with colleagues and employees, there is one side-effect that is often forgotten about: people give up on learning for pretty much a whole month. Despite what popular sayings would have you believe, the brain isn’t a muscle - but it does work at its best when you exercise it regularly. Keeping learning over the holiday season can help you to keep your memory and critical thinking skills switched on so you don’t hit that January slump (not to mention, novelty is a great source of dopamine which can help carry you through the tiring whirlwind that is December).
But the holiday season is so busy with parties, celebrations, festivals, birthdays… When is the time to devote an hour a day to some online course, I hear you ask? Luckily, you don’t have to. Enter microlearning, an approach which focuses on doing small amounts of learning on a regular basis. And we really do mean small - you can dedicate as little as one minute a day and still get something beneficial from it. While you may not get the depth and detail you’d benefit from in more traditional learning environments, it’s a great way to keep your mind curious and give you new things to think about, and can be a welcome boost in a draining month of the year. It’s also a super tool for people with neurodiversity (e.g. ADHD) because it provides a lot of flexibility for you to learn in the way you do best.
Here are our top picks for microlearning you can do every day and not get tired of:
1MinuteCPD (1 minute)
With just one minute a day, you can make the most of these 700+ handy tips that might upskill your digital knowledge. Some of them you may already know, but some of them are nifty little ideas you may not have come across. Two particular favourites of ours are using Menti to create 'Spin The Wheel' style questions to spice up your meetings, or using the OpenDyslexic font to aid readability for people with dyslexia.
Blair Imani’s ‘Smarter In Seconds’ (2 minutes)
With a range of characters and guest stars talking about Diversity and Inclusion topics from stereotypes to childcare, Blair Imani’s brilliant series is a great conversation starter. Our recommendation is watch with a colleague, and open a short dialogue about whatever today’s topic was to get the most benefit. When it comes to microlearning, move over Learning Management Systems - TikTok, YouTube and Instagram are on your tail!
Word of the Day (2 minutes)
Remember as a child when you learnt a new word at school, and it gave you such joy to share it with everyone? Capture the grown-up version of that joy with Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day. Not only do they include a new word every day, but in case you’re already a wordy connoisseur, they also include fun facts about the contextual usage and the etymology. You’ll be sounding like a dictionary in no time.
Do You Really Know? (4 minutes)
If you want to do your microlearning on the go, this microcast (i.e. mini podcast) is perfect for getting up-to-date with what’s going on in the world. Covering everything from current affairs to virtual trends, the episodes are fantastic whether they’re recent or from the older archive. We recommend this episode from July 2020 on Brand Activism as great food for thought.
If you are interested to learn more about designing microlearning for your own business needs, or want to see some examples of how we’ve helped organisations in the past, why not get in touch with us for a free consultation? We always love to chat to new people, and we’d be happy to talk to you about your learning & development and EDI needs.
