15 Making Time for Learning
W
HEN IT COMES DOWN TO IT, LEARNING IS NO DIFFERENT FROM
anything else you might do in your busy life. It competes for your
attention with things like work, family, eating, shopping, televi-
sion, and sex. How you manage your time is therefore of the utmost
importance. Learning is the activity that does most to develop your
brain, the most important organ in your body. You therefore need
to make time for it. Of course, you have to exercise and feed your
body, but you also have to do the same with your brain. As Bob
Fryer, the prime architect of the UK’s lifelong learning strategy, puts
it, you have to “make learning normal.”Making learning normal
This is not a book about time management, but it may be helpful
to spend a few minutes thinking about how you can make sure you
use your time in the way you want. Books and courses about time
management rightly stress the need to focus on the things that are
important to you, not the ones that happen to come up as
opportunities.
To work this out with regard to your own learning, there are
two stages. The first involves analyzing the activities of your current
life and those you are planning or considering, and the second
requires you to set goals and break them down into achievable ele-
ments. Once you have done this, you can begin to plan.