If you are not continually working to increase your skills and knowledge, you will become stagnant. This is true in just about every aspect of your life.
Making Money – If you are not increasing your income year after year, inflation will eat you alive.
Career – If you are not working to increase your skills for advancement, your career will stall and you will be surpassed by people working to advance.
Health – If you are not adjusting your health habits as you age, you will suffer from high health costs as you age and will probably die early.
You must develop some habits and routines to perpetually increase and improve. Below are 3 simple things you can do.
Read
Reading is the easiest form of gaining knowledge. It depends on what you read and how you read. Instead of just reading for enjoyment, read to learn. Read about how to improve some aspect of your life. Some great sources of reading material? Books, Magazines, Blogs, and anything online (within reason of course, there is a ton of crap out there).
Below are 3 of my go to websites at the moment
- Smart Blogger – Great site to help develop writing skills for blogging
- Quicksprout – Also a great site for learning to blog
- Canva – Awesome resource to create custom media for free
Do
Reading is good to gain knowledge, but the next logical step is to put that knowledge to use.
Reading about investing? Good, open a brokerage account and start doing some trading.
Reading about blogging? (Like I am doing right now) Good! Buy a website, setup WordPress and get to writing.
Reading about career advancement? Great! Go talk to your boss and demand a raise! Wait, don’t do this one yet. Increase your responsibilities and workload, then ask for a raise.
Track
Perpetual improvement doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It could happen naturally and you don’t really notice, but why not do it on purpose? Do this by tracking your progress.
Reading books? Make a list of all the books you have read.
Trying to lose weight? Track your weight over time and make notes of what works and what doesn’t.
Carry a notebook around with you everywhere you go Richard Branson does this and you should too. He recently blogged about his to-do list back in 1972.
Make it easy for you to record information. Google Docs is probably the best place to put a list. You have access from your computer, tablet, or phone. Easy.
Apps – These days there is an app for everything. If the thing you are doing has an app and you find it useful, do it. Using the latest technology is probably one of the best things you can do since technology is supposed to help us do things better and faster.
Make Perpetual Improvement a Part of Life
No matter how you do it, perpetual improvement is a life skill that you will use until the day you die. You get to decide how much and to what extent you improve. It will all depend on your needs and wants in life and what you would like to achieve.
If you know what you want to achieve, then go get it. If you don’t know what you want, figure it out and get started living the best life you can.
About the Author: The Nerd is a hard working family man helping put things into space, working on this blog, and helping his amazing wife raise our children.