Continuous Learning

About a week ago I purchased a Nook from Barnes and Noble and it got me reflecting some on how I learn – which prompted this post!

I am a big fan of learning – I have always enjoyed reading and ‘playing’ with new tools and technologies.  As I have matured (read gotten older) there have been many more areas of focus in my life that have made it difficult to devote as much time and energy to learning new technical skills.  I try to leverage the time that I have in the best ways possible.  I constantly try to watch for tools and techniques that will help me leverage my time better.

Several years ago I bought my first iPod.  Unlike many people my intent was not to have a device to carry more music with me, but rather to use it for listening to audio books.  I signed up for an account at Audible (www.audible.com) with the purchase of my first iPod and have maintained an account there since that time.  It was a few years later that I learned about Podcasts and have since subscribed to several of those as well.

Two years ago I changed jobs.  I left a position in which I traveled full time and took a new position which had me contracted to a local company.  This changed my listening habits quite a bit.  When I was traveling I would turn on my iPod as soon as electronic devices were allowed on my flights and listen until we had to shut them off (I did not always do this, but quite often).  In my last 7 months in my old position I earned about 170,000 frequent flier miles – that was a lot of time to listen!

With the change of jobs I went from flying several hours each week to driving about 35-40 minutes daily each way to my new local client.  I found that about 2/3 of the time I would listen to my Podcasts and/or audio books, but I was not listening as much as when I traveled full time.  In December of last year I began working from my home office, now my commute is just the time it takes to walk a flight of stairs and my listening time has dropped to near zero.  I still like to listen and find it a great way to follow trends in technology and to learn soft skills and business skills (through audio books) but I don’t like to use my headphones when I’m with my family – so I needed something new.

One note about the use of the iPod – I decided on the iPod and have stayed with it largely because of it’s ability to play audio books/Podcasts back at a faster speed.  If anyone knows of other devices that have similar capabilities, and that do this well, please let me know!

I’ve been watching the eBook reader market closely for the past 8-10 months.  I’ve not done too much deep research, but I’ve watched new devices get released and tried to see the merits of the various options.  I came to the conclusion that the real players in the eBook reader market right now are the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes and Nobel Nook and the Apple iPad.  I did not want to drop the money for an iPad, and at this time did not feel that the reading experience was as good as the eInk screens of the Kindle and Nook.  I also did not feel the need for the ‘extras’ that would come with the iPad.  This left me looking at the Kindle and the Nook.  I settled on the Nook largely for two reasons: 1) the ability to lend books (although I’m not sure how much I might do this); 2) I felt that it supported more book/content formats than the Kindle.

I fully admit that I am in a ‘honeymoon’ period with my new Nook right now, but so far I am very happy with my purchase.  In the week that I have had it I have read two books (both technical/career focused) and about 400 pages of PDF documents – quite a bit more reading than I have done in a week in quite some time!

I have found it very easy to carry the Nook with me, and to have several choices of reading material when I have a couple of minutes to grab it an read.  I have not yet purchased a book from BN for the Nook, but I have purchased some ePub formatted books from O’Reilly and found them to work quite well.  As for the PDFs, there are more issues with formatting, but so far nothing too bad.  I also like the easy with which I can copy content onto the Nook from my computer.

I have found it to be more acceptable to me to read from my Nook when I’m around the family (depending on what is going on) than putting the earphones in and listening to my audio programs.  I expect that there might be more opportunities to do this as the kids get back into school later this month.  I expect that I can read while they are doing homework and feel less detached and more available to help them if I’m reading instead of ‘tuned in to’ some audio program.

I’ll plan on posting some thoughts about the books I’ve read, and those that I hope to soon read in the near future!

What tools do you use to help you ‘continuously learn’?  Let me know what you think and give me some ideas for other tools to try!