This guest post is contributed by Mariana Ashley, a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031@gmail.com.

One of the most important activities that a committed self-learner can engage in is reading. Of course, I don’t mean that self-learners should read just anything that grabs their fancy, though there’s certainly room for that sort of light reading every now and then; I mean that self-learners benefit the most when they pursue a targeted, focused kind of reading, one that combines their pleasures with their desire to learn more. The most successful readers create reading lists that combine these two factors, and they follow the reading list regularly.

As one of those readers, someone who is constantly looking out for great books to read, I’ve benefited from eventually creating a system of my own, which I use to organize my yearly reading. I’ve pulled some lessons I’ve learned from making this system and put them into a list of tips that can help you create your own focused reading lists.

Follow a Reading Routine and Calendar

I tend to organize my reading lists into three month chunks, simply because I really liked the semester calendar from my college days. Feel free to organize your own reading calendar however you’d like; the important thing is that you read regularly and often. I try to read for one hour a day in the evening after dinner.

Pick an Interesting Theme

Each reading ‘semester’ I pick a theme that will guide my reading. Two years ago I went to Russia for vacation, so for three months before the summer trip, I themed my reading list around Russian literature and culture. Another year, I somehow became fascinated by the First World War, so I made a reading list that grew out of Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August. It’s usually best to make this theme connect to some aspect of your life: an upcoming trip, a subject that could help your career, interesting relationships, or subjects that you’re passionate about.

Read a Variety of Books

You’ll also want to read a variety of different kinds of books. Don’t only read novels. Don’t only read self-help books. Try to spread your reading around a theme, selecting books from all areas of human knowledge: biology, fiction, philosophy, and so on. As a personal rule, I try to read three books at a time: one contemporary fiction, one classic literature, and one non-fiction book from a rotating discipline, such as history, philosophy, psychology, and so on.

Organize Your Reading List

This tip will try to keep you from having dead periods in your reading. How often have you stood in front of a bookshelf and couldn’t decide what to read next? I’ve done it many times, so I decided one day to organize my reading list so that I would know what book I should read next. This keeps me from losing focus in my reading, and it also forces me to make interesting connections between the books I read.

Keep a Reading Journal

Finally, you should keep a reading journal with you when you read. That way you can write down your thoughts about the book as you read or after you’ve read, and you can track how long it took you to read the book. The journal will be a record of your learning progress through each reading ‘semester,’ and it will help you plan out your future reading lists.

In my Thank You Letters As Writing Practice post today on my new Write Speak Show blog I commented on how writing such letters can act as motivation to write regularly and thereby improve writing skills. But since the post is about learning to write better and that’s related to self-education, I thought I’d alert my readers here to the post. Let me know what you think.

While reading Seth Godin’s book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, I was struck by the brilliance of something he said. Godin believes schools today should be teaching just two things: (1) solving interesting problems, and (2) leadership. How beautiful is that simple directive?

Isn’t solving problems what education is all about? How does the universe work? What forms the foundation of an ethical society? How can I make that computer do what I want it to do? How much is 46+89? All problems. In the pursuit of the answers, we learn.

Add in the concept of teaching leadership and it’s the complete educational package. We want people to lead good families. We want people to be leaders in their communities. We want good business and political leadership.

When you embark on your own self-education adventures, keep these two simple guidelines in mind. What problems do you want to solve in your life? What problems do you want to solve in the lives of other people? What type of leader do you want to be? How can you lead change in your family, among your friends, in your community, in your business, and in your country.

Identified problem that you want to solve can be great rudders by which to steer your learning. They provide a target that removes the extraneous and allows you to focus on the important information and skills you want to learn. If you take the time to identify a specific problem that you want to solve, this can instantly make quite clear exactly what self-education you need to pursue to meet that need in your life.

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

This TED talk about self-teaching illustrates the power of self education and how its proper deployment can change the way we educate our children for the better. At the same time, the findings of the research discussed in this talk have application to adult learning as well. We must move away from the concept that only teacher-led instruction is of the highest value. That’s not always the case and we need to start recognizing this fact if we’re going to improve the means by which we educate ourselves and educate society. Enjoy this talk by Sugata Mitra and let me know your thoughts.

This guest post is contributed by Alvina Lopez, who writes on the topics of accredited online colleges .  She welcomes your comments at her email ID: alvina.lopez@gmail.com.

Although our education shouldn’t stop after we graduate from college or complete a training program, it’s sometimes hard to carry on the routine of constantly learning new things. Some of us are naturally curious and have no trouble searching out new sources of knowledge; however, others of us face busy schedules, might lack the right resources, and sometimes feel just too busy to keep learning. But that doesn’t mean we can’t change our routine! Those of us who do struggle to continue furthering our education could benefit from a few tips to keep our self-education on track. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t try to improve ourselves, our careers, and our knowledge.

Gather Resources

One thing individual self-educators lack is a formal set of learning resources, the kind you might find at a university or training center. Instead of already having these resources readily available, self-educators must build their own library, so to speak. Search out and bookmark websites that provide free educational and inspirational material, such as TED or Project Gutenberg. Some universities also make lectures available on YouTube. Many educational programs are available on internet radio. Also check out physical libraries and museums in your area; be sure to visit these often, especially when new exhibits come to town.

Create Learning Goals

Teachers at all levels begin each semester, week, and day with a set of learning objectives to keep the class on track. Because you are your own teacher, you’ll want to think up your personal learning objectives. Create a semester of study for yourself. Maybe in three months, you’ll try to have a basic familiarity with a new language? Or perhaps your goal will be to have read an author’s major works of literature? Regardless of your interests, having a goal to aim for will help keep you learning.

Reflect on your Learning

As you study on your own, you may not have access to other students to help you. Instead, you might want to consider writing in a journal or learning log. By reflecting on your learning experience, you’ll be able to work through concepts you might initially not understand. Through reflection, you can try to reexamine things you’ve read, listened to, or experienced, all from a new perspective. Reflection as a learning tool is an important practice. Think of your self-reflection process as similar to how astronauts often debrief after an important mission.

Find a Partner

Finally, try to find a learning partner, someone with whom you can discuss what you’ve learned. Working together with a partner can often help you discover something you hadn’t previously thought up on your own. In many ways, someone who shares your own interest in learning can be just the right inspiration to keep you on your path. This person can be a husband or wife, a co-worker, a family member, or a neighbor. As long as you both can check in with each other and talk about your progress, you’ll feel as though you’re not alone in your pursuit of knowledge.

I stumbled upon a great web site today, how-to-study.com. Dr. Charles Mangrum and Dr. Stephen Strichart created this free study skills resource site and I love it. It targets learners/students at all levels and has a wealth of great articles and study tips. If you’re a teacher, there are also some curriculum products for sale for grades 4 through college.

While much of the content on this site focuses on study skills to be used for traditional classroom-based schooling, it’s rather easy to translate most of the material to suit the needs of the self educator.

One of the challenges self educators, indeed all learners, have is capturing their learning in some manner so that they can easily reference it later. Let’s face it, we can’t possibly remember everything we learn, at least not in detail. You might want to remember key ideas you’ve learned, refer to a quote you recall but can’t quite remember exactly, or find the title of a book you read years ago. There might be many reasons why you’d like to capture such information, and more, about what you learn.

The trick is to keep things simple. Yes, there are various notes and database applications that some people use to capture such information, but I find them overkill for what’s really needed most of the time. And I try to keep the necessity of learning new software applications to a minimum. So here’s my advice.

Create a simple word processing document for each subject area you’re learning about. I call these documents Learning Notes. Feel free to break down your learning notes documents into specific topics of a larger subject area. For example, let’s say the subject area is Software, but the specific software you’re currently learning about is the open source office productivity suite, Open Office (the office suite I use). In this case, it would probably make sense to create a separate learning notes document for Open Office rather than what would eventually end up being a very large document for all of the software you might learn over time. You’re better off with many smaller documents than a few large ones. It will make finding the information in the future much easier.

Once you create the learning notes document, don’t be too concerned with how you format the contents. Do whatever works for you. Keep it simple. The simpler you keep it, the more likely you’ll use it. My learning notes documents are comprised of plain text with a few bolded headings to organize things. That’s it. Name your documents clearly for easy finding later. For example, I named my Open Office learning notes document Open Office Learning Notes. That’s pretty clear and easy to find later.

So what might such a learning notes document contain? Here are some ideas. Remember, these are just examples. Feel free to create your own learning notes document sections.

• Key Ideas and Concepts. Encapsulate the major ideas and concepts you’ve learned into a few bullet points. We tend to hang our learning on the big ideas that form the foundation of most subject areas. Identify them and capture them.
• Notes. Write down any notes you want to capture. Don’t worry about organizing them too carefully. The important thing is to note anything you find of interest, new insights, interesting information, or whatever strikes you as important.
• Reading. List books, articles, blogs, websites and other material you’ve read. You might want to reference these again in the future. So also include where you can  find them again (your personal bookshelf library, your digital library, your local library, and so on).
• References. Include the URLs of websites you might want to reference in the future or other reference material you have (and where it’s stored or located).
• Images. If you want to capture images you see online, get yourself a free, open source screen capture utility (or use your operating system’s capture capabilities if it has them) and paste the image into your learning notes document along with a brief annotation about the image. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words!

Store your learning notes documents in a logical folder structure on your computer. I have a high-level folder called Library in which I store all of my digital ebooks, articles and other digital documents. Under the Library folder I have a Learning Notes folder and within that folder I have sub-folders by subject area. Use your own structure. Just make sure it’s easy to understand and access when you see it.

There is great power in these learning notes documents. You’ll be surprised at how often, over time, you’ll refer back to them, or add to or revise them, as you continue down your path of self education.

I’m currently reading a great book by Atul Gawande titled The Checklist Manifesto, which was recently picked as an Amazon.com book of the month selection. The message of the book is that in today’s deluge of information and processes that many of us are required to utilize in our daily lives, and in our professional lives in particular, there is no way we can remember everything we need to do without a reference. That reference can be a simple checklist.

A checklist is simply a concise listing of steps or considerations that should be addressed as we undertake a task. I won’t go into the power that checklists have. Go ahead and read Gawande’s book to learn more about that, but the gist is that the introduction of a simple checklist into a task or process significantly improves the likelihood that all steps or considerations will be addressed and that the resulting outcome will be better. The evidence put forth by Gawande is irrefutable in this regard.

So, how might this apply to self education? I’d like to propose you consider creating for yourself a simple checklist you can use to jumpstart any self education effort you might undertake. As you begin to embark on a learning project, use each of these checklist items to hone and improve your learning. Each checklist item need only have one or a few words to queue you to thinking about the item. How you construct your checklist is up to you and should be tailored to your preferred ways of learning. Simple and short is usually best. This following checklist should give you some ideas.

1. Start a learning document. This can be a simple word processing document that contains much of the content we’ll talk about in the remaining checklist. A learning document becomes your central repository for learning guidance and documentation of learning.
2. What do I want to learn? At first glance, this seems like a silly checklist item, but too often we start to learn about something and realize we’ve failed to identify exactly what it is we want to learn?
3. Why do I want to learn it? Why we want to learn something is important. Having a good reason to learn something motivates us and helps to keep our learning on track.
4. What learning resources are available? Are there people you can communicate with who understand the topic? Books? Websites? eLearning? Discussion groups? Make as thorough a list of resources as possible.
5. Can I identify some good overview material? Most of us learn best when we digest and understand high-level, overview material about the topic first. We hang the more detailed aspects of our learning on these larger, overarching ideas and concepts. Understanding them will improve your learning.
6. Use the overview material. Learn from any overview material you can find until you feel you have a good, high-level understanding of the topic.
7. Can I outline the topic? Creating an outline, even a rudimentary one, can assist you in organizing your thinking and your learning. No one will see the outline but you. So use whatever format works for you.
8. What should I do and in what order? Identify some specific learning tasks such as reading a book, viewing a documentary, talking with a knowledgeable person, attending a speech or presentation, investigating a website, and so on.
9. Act. You know what you want to learn, why you want to learn it, identified some resources, identified and learned from overview material, outlined the topic, and created an ordered list of learning tasks. Now it’s time to act and learn.
10. Can I produce something that proves I know what I know? Can you create a document, presentation, video, photograph, audio recording, or anything else you can think of that “proves” you know the topic. This serves two purposes. First, it helps you solidify the learning that’s taking place as you create this product. Second, if you should ever need to prove to an employer or someone else that you know about this topic, such proof is incredibly valuable.
11. Update, organize and store your learning document and any other materials you used to learn or prove your learning. Most of what you’ll be organizing are likely to be digital computer files, which are easily organized, but you might have some tangible physical stuff to deal with as well. When it becomes necessary to reference this stuff in the future, you’ll be glad you spent a little time doing this.

This checklist is just a suggestion for the creation of your own checklist. Adapt it to suit your needs. No one knows how you learn best better than you. And if you have any other suggestions for checklist items, please enter a comment to share with everyone so we can all keep learning.

Educational institutions, companies and organizations often create online learning portals to act as entryways into learning resources and opportunities for their students or employees. Search for “learning portal” using your favorite search engine to see some examples. You can create your own learning portal using just your browser.

No matter what type of browser you use, they all share the common feature of allowing you to bookmark a web page and to categorize those bookmarks. You can leverage this capability to create your own learning and reference portal.

Online learning destinations tend to fall into a few general categories. By categorizing your bookmarked web pages under appropriate category names, you can emulate the links you’d find in a typical learning portal, and this one will be tailored to your specific needs.

The trick is to decide upon the right categories. Here are some suggestions, but you should use these only as a starting point. Your learning portal should be individualized and relevant to what you want to learn, how you learn, and your areas of interest. You might create these categories under a single browser category of My Learning Portal.

• General Reference
• Libraries
• Professional Organizations
• Tutorials
• Blogs
• Videos

Within each of these categories you might break it down into sub-categories related to specific subject areas. Ultimately, how you organize your links is up to you. Only you know best what organization makes sense.

Keep your links and their categorization current. Over time it’s easy to get lazy about organizing your bookmarked pages and that will significantly reduce the usefulness of your learning portal. If well maintained, your personalized learning portal can serve as your pathway to ongoing learning for the rest of your life.

Here’s a great link I stumbled upon to a number of useful commercial learning portals.

We all make mistakes. Nothing we do is perfect. That’s how life is supposed to be. If we ever achieved perfection in all aspects of life we’d be very unhappy. Much of our joy in life, whether we realize it or not, comes from learning, from improving, from fine tuning this wonderful journey we’re all on.

Some folks don’t get to experience such joy because they don’t accept feedback very well. Walls go up the moment they receive any type of criticism, even when it’s delivered with the best of intentions. Sometimes people take feedback badly even when they have specifically asked for the feedback.

I’ve observed that those who learn best are those who are the most open to correction and advice. In fact, I believe that the ability to easily assimilate feedback from others is one of the key learning skills necessary to learn optimally. If someone is closed to feedback, their learning will suffer significantly.

So as you live your life, consider making a conscious effort to welcome feedback with open arms. You’ll learn more and you’ll learn better.

One of the skills that benefits everyone in terms of networking and productivity is learning people’s names. Once you are introduced to someone, it’s amazing how impressive it is to others when you remember their name the next time you see them. Of course, this is not new information.

Many years ago my father gave me a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and I still consider it a classic. One of the guiding bits of advice Carnegie offers is to “remember that a man’s name is the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” That’s wise advice.

By nature, I’m not inclined to remember people’s names. I have to work at it. But I consider it something for which exerting the effort is worthwhile. So many times I’ve remembered someone’s name upon meeting them again and seen the clear sign of pleasure the other person experienced when they realized I’d remembered their name. It’s validating. We all like it.

Enter Facebook. While I use Facebook for my closer circle of friends (I use LinkedIn professionally), I also have an extended range of casual friends I’m connected to on Facebook that I meet only rarely and often don’t remember their names. Now on Facebook I regularly see their picture alongside their full name. This reinforces their name in my mind, and this includes their last name too which most don’t remember nearly as often as a first name. All of sudden I’m remembering people’s names better. Yay!

Human interaction skills like remembering names is something we should all learn. It will serve us well in both our personal and professional lives. Not all learning has to be comprised of absorbing facts or complex technical skills. Much of the learning we should all pursue centers around how we can best interact and communicate with others. I’m glad Facebook has helped me with one human interaction skill in which I was truly lacking any expertise. Maybe it can help you too.

One of the important components of good self education habits is the ability to focus. I don’t buy in too much to innate intelligence as the determining factor in whether someone can learn well. I’ve just seen too many instances of someone with what appeared to be average intelligence and skills excel far beyond others who supposedly had much more of both. I believe focus makes the difference. Someone who can truly focus on a learning project is going to learn better than someone who is constantly distracted or multitasking.

Alan H. Cohen’s advice in his book Why Your Life Sucks and What You Can Do About It is one of the smartest bits of advice I’ve ever read in a self-improvement book. (It’s a great book by the way and I recommend it.) Here’s what he wrote.

The secret of genius is focus. If you can laser your attention on any subject or project, it will reveal its blueprint to you. George Washington Carver discovered 325 uses for the peanut and 100 for the sweet potato! Great geniuses are powerful focusers. Many have been called eccentric or insane because they put aside worldly concerns for the sake of their music, art, architecture, drama, inventing, or writing. But they are the individuals who change the world, while those with scattered attention wade through mediocre lives. Geniuses don’t fritter their precious minds on mass trends. They create the trends that alter the masses.

Cohen’s insight is so true and the focus he mentions, combined with tenacity and conviction, is an astoundingly powerful combination.

Recent research on the effects of multitasking back up the claim that focus is important and gives pause to those of us who are constantly emailing, tweeting, surfing, texting, watching television, playing video games and otherwise flitting constantly from thing to thing while we attempt to learn something.

According to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, heavy multitaskers are easily distracted by irrelevant information. A potential reason for this may be that people who multitask tend to retain all of that distracting, and often mundane, information in short-term memory. If your short-term memory is full of a lot of stuff that’s not relevant to the real tasks at hand (such as learning something), it affects your ability to focus.

So what can we learn from all this. When you want to learn something, focus on it. Set aside time to focus solely on your learning. If your environment is distracting, change it. Go to a library or anywhere you can best focus. Or find yourself some good noise-canceling headphones to create some privacy if you’re in a loud environment. No two of us are alike and what might be distracting surroundings to one person might be an atmosphere of solitude to another.

In addition to controlling the distractions within our environment, we need to minimize the distractions within ourselves. Whatever it takes to bring your focus to the objective of the moment, make that a part of your self education practice. Meditation might help. Taking care of those lagging chores or tasks on your to do list might free up your mind to focus on more important matters.  Perhaps you can “trick” yourself into focusing by thinking of your learning projects in 15-minute chunks of time. Whatever works for you, do it. The ability to focus is imperative if you’re going to maintain a life of effective self education.

Remember what Peter McWilliams said, “Our thoughts create our reality – where we put our focus is the direction we tend to go.” So put your focus on your learning and you’ll learn.