With the current power of technology, information today can be accessed easily through online. If you’re reading this, that means, you already have some interest in some kind of self-improvement. Self learning has been more popular as the amount of information available online is increasing. This is a positive thing because it can broaden our knowledge and experience different topics that interests us. Changing career now a days is a lot easier than it was before. There are a lot of useful websites out there that can help you do that. Even if you’re not planning on changing careers, we believe that you should constantly improve yourself whether its in the workforce, or personal life.
Here’s a list of 12 websites that you can use to expand your knowledge base and seize new opportunities
1. Brain Pump
If you want to learn something new and interesting every day, then Brain Pump will be the perfect place for you. There are topics such as technology, chemistry, food, chemistry, history, casual science, game design, and much more.
2. Udacity
Brought to you buy the very same people from Google, Udacity focuses on active learning. Its mission is to bring higher education to people around the world and help them improve in their careers. There are lessons from self-driving cars, to building full scale websites. This website is taught by professionals from Google, Amazon, Facebook and much more.
3. Quora
Quora’s mission is to connect people who have knowledge for those that are in need. Quora is our generation’s Yahoo Answers. You can think of it as Yahoo Answers on steroids. You can ask pretty much anything and get answers pretty quickly. You can also share your own knowledge if you choose to.
4. Psychology Today
Thinking about self-improvement and mental health? Psychology Today is the perfect website for you. This site gathers a group of writers, academics, psychologists and psychiatrists to help spread knowledge and educate people on a number of topics, such as parenting, memory, anxiety, cognition, and many more.
5. MIT OpenCourseWare
Dreamt of going to MIT before? Well, they now offer free courses online. MIT OpenCourseWare is a place where you can find more than 2,000 MIT courses that can help you enrich your knowledge base. Courses can range from Business Management to Introduction to Computer Science and Programming, Artificial Intelligence, Algebra, and so on.
6. Investopedia
Want to get into finance or perhaps you’re interested in investing? Investopedia is the right place for you. You can learn everything about personal finance and investing from a team of data scientists and financial experts.
7. Highbrow
Do you have 5 minutes to spare? Highbrow offers 5-minute lessons and is delivered to your inbox daily. You’ll be able to improve your brain’s health, SEO, HTML/CSS, boost your emotional intelligence, about body language, and many other topics.
8. Guides
Guides is a free publishing platform where different bloggers, researchers, authors, and teachers can share their knowledge. You can learn almost everything with Guide’s “How To” articles from entrepreneurship, fitness, health, design, and so on.
9. Creative Live
Do you have a creative mind? Or perhaps you want to step away from your mundane work, and find something more creative to do? CreativeLive offers online workshops about photography, music, video, design, crafting and so on. This is the place to unlock your creative potential. You might be surprised on how much you can learn.
10. Code School
Want to learn about coding? Code School offers over 60 courses on various programming languages. Every course is designed as if you’re playing a video game so you’ll never be bored of it!
11. Chalk Street
Another amazing website full of online courses, Chalk Street presents you with more than 60,000 lessons on technology, business, yoga, arts and lifestyle, languages, smartphone, photography, Excel, and pretty much anything you need to get you ahead of your peers.
12. Makezine
If you’re a crafty DIY and/or inventor type-of-person, then Makezine will be your #1 source for step by step articles related to technology and awesome cool innovations.
How to make the most of self-learning
There are a lot of information out there, so it will sometimes be difficult for you to focus. I know I’ve been there. However, in order to make the most out of your self-learning experience is to set goals, and ask yourself why you want to know more about a certain topic. FIrst set mini goals, and after you meet each goal, make sure to cross it off your list of goals (this is how you can keep track of your progress). This is also a motivational tool since it gives you a sense of accomplishment. Then finally make a schedule of your goals, how much time you’d like to spend each week learning and when do you plan to finish your lessons. Then all you have to do is stick to it! If you find yourself feeling uninterested, go back to why you learned it in the first place.
