• About
  • Workout Routines

Daily Ramblings…

~ Thoughts on Productivity, Health, Writing, Job Hunting, and many other topics…

Daily Ramblings…

Tag Archives: Masterclass

Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursdays – Online Learning

20 Thursday Aug 2020

Posted by Dave Gardner in Thankful Thursdays

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Codecademy, Learn daily, Learn something, Masterclass, Study.com, Udemy, YouTube

Today, I’m thankful for online learning. Not only is online learning inexpensive or even free, it provides me a way to continue learning throughout my life. My tastes change from time-to-time, and it’s nice to be able to find anything I want, whenever I want.

If learning new things interests you, here are a few, I recommend:

  • YouTube.com
  • MasterClass.com
  • Codecademy.com
  • Udemy.com
  • Study.com

I realize that some may be on a tight budget, particularly now if you are unemployed because of COVID-19. If that’s the case, stick with free online tutorials and YouTube, which are all free. I recommend university lectures, since the information you are learning comes from accredited institutions, like Harvard, MIT, Yale, etc.

Some of my previous recommendations like Coursera and EdX are no longer on my list of recommended sources. Coursera is free, but requires interaction between you and other students. If no one in your class responds to your postings, you don’t get credit until they do. I’m also not a huge fan of deadlines. I’m learning to learn, not earn a degree. Coursera operates like a traditional college in this respect. EdX turned me off with their ID certification process and their lack of dependable IT support. I tried to take an Algebra course on EdX and I either could not log onto the site some days or there was some other unpredictable glitch that no one would respond to within a reasonable amount of time. Avoid Coursera or EdX if either of these issues troubles you.

I love to write, read, and learn. Learning is something I include in my daily schedule. I am very pleased with Study.com. It has a terrific interface and is reasonably priced. It requires a monthly fee of $39, but the service you get is amazing. I opted for the $59 per month option, but again, if your budget doesn’t allow for any expenses for this kind of thing, you can find some terrific stuff on YouTube. Jordan Peterson’s lecture series on Personality and his Maps of Meaning course are awesome! Even if you are not a Jordan Peterson fan politically, he is a brilliant mind and both courses do not reflect his political views. Like anything, obviously, a course is a matter of choice and need. I have also watched Harvard lectures on WWII, Yale lectures on happiness, and MIT lectures on Python and artificial intelligence. All of them are highly informative.

Learning is something that anyone should aspire to, even if you’ve been out of school for a while. Lectures don’t come with graded assignments, they literally just teach you. It is terrific. As a person with a father who is afflicted with dementia, I want to do everything I can physically and mentally to avoid the same fate, if possible.

On another note, I purchased a year’s subscription to Curiosity.com. This is a great site for documentaries and only costs $20 a year. If you are a fan of getting pizza delivered, sacrificing one pizza for an entire year of learning is worth it in my opinion. You can watch documentaries on space exploration, anthropology, history, climate change, and many other topics I find to be absolutely fascinating.

So today, I’m grateful for all the services that are available online to teach us something new. Thank you Study.com, Curiosity.com, Masterclass.com, Udemy.com, YouTube.com, and Codecademy.com. You stretch me each day and make me a better, more learned individual.

Have a great Thursday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Act As If.

18 Monday May 2020

Posted by Dave Gardner in Motivation Monday, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Atwood, Dorothea Brande, Execute, Masterclass, motivation, No excuses, Patterson, Writing

To guarantee success, act as if it were impossible to fail.

Dorothea Brande

I’ve been busy taking a lot of writing courses on Masterclass. If you’ve not taken any on here, it is a great platform and the teachers (experts in their craft) are wonderful to listen to and watch. There is one underlying theme common across all the writers I’ve been watching—write. No excuses, no worrying about whether it is good or bad, just write.

My favorite so far has been Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale. She said that the wastebasket is your friend and God made it just for you. Her point is that if you can’t work it out, trash it and start with another idea. The same goes with your initial draft. You can revise it. So, no excuses—WRITE!!

It is liberating to keep the mindset that you cannot fail. You really can’t fail when it comes down to it. Even the exceptional writers have been rejected by publishers, or written books that won’t ever be seen by the public. They keep writing because this is what they do.

I’ve also begun to get the idea that writing on paper is probably the best way to create. There are no distractions, you can get your ideas down on paper without the temptation to auto-correct or edit what you are doing, and you can get the first draft done! James Patterson, another author who offers a class on Masterclass, said to drive through the first draft like a freight train. Like Atwood, he made it clear that the rewriting will also occur. Get the story out of your head and onto paper. Then the real work can begin.

Keep this quote in the back of your mind as you tackle that next challenge. You’ll be more motivated when you realize that the project is not complete until you say it is.

Have a great week, everyone!

Until next time…

Dave

42.994893
-82.509824

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017

Categories

  • Accomplishment
  • Announcement
  • Annual Goals Posting
  • Birthday
  • Bonus Content
  • Book Review
  • change
  • Christmas
  • Easter
  • Father's Day
  • Four Dimensions of Life
  • Fourth of July
  • Funny Friday
  • Goal Setting
  • Halloween
  • Happiness
  • Happy New Year
  • Helpful Articles
  • Holidays
  • Illness
  • Independence Day
  • Insight Mars Lander
  • Journaling Series
  • Labor Day
  • Las Vegas
  • Life Happens
  • Martin Luther King Day
  • Memorial Day
  • Merry Christmas
  • Milestone
  • Mother's Day
  • Motivation Monday
  • Online Course Review
  • Politics
  • Procrastination
  • Productivity
  • Quotes
  • rituals
  • self-improvement
  • Series Sunday
  • Service
  • Spiritual
  • Spiritual Saturday
  • Spread Your Wings
  • St. Patrick's Day
  • Success
  • Super Bowl
  • Ted Talk
  • Thank you
  • Thankful Thursdays
  • Thanksgiving
  • Thinking Thursdays
  • Thinking Tuesday
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Valentine's Day
  • Veteran's Day
  • Visualization
  • Weekly Review
  • Wisdom Wednesday
  • Workout Routine
  • Writing

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy