Monday, December 30, 2019

Learning Dispatch - December 30th, 2019 - End of Year Learning Review

Hi,

Why the dispatch? - I want to understand how I can make my learning more social. I love having interesting conversations with friends and colleagues about the new things I learned. So these dispatches are part of an effort to get those conversations started. I decided to send my first dispatch to a bunch of my closest friends, mentors, and colleagues. Basically this periodic mailer/letter/email is just a small update about films, books, articles, music, podcasts I have consumed during the week or month that I want to personally share with you, the reader of this series. If you decide to take up any of these recommendations, that would be awesome. In a small way, I would have made your life a tiny bit better. And that is all I ask in return for writing this dispatch. No commitment! Just learning! All fun :) 

Why am I sending this email to you? Because you matter to me and I know this is something that will add some value to your life based on my conversations with you in the past. 

Documentation of Learning

Every year I create a digital document where I record the names of all the books, films, videos and podcasts I consume through the year. It is a practice that I regularly followed for the last five years. At the start of the year, I set a target and push myself to accomplish it by the end of the year. In 2019 my target was to read 50 books and watch 500 hours of video. I was able to complete 42 books and 420 hours of video this past year. The reason I document my learning is that it allows me to make correlations between things I am learning about throughout the year. It also allows me to keep track of the kind of material I consume during the year. I try my best to expose myself to a large variety of material both in terms of depth and breadth.