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Lifelong Learning: a Requirement in Working Life

Lifelong learning is becoming increasingly important against the background of employability. It should enable people to independently and permanently learn throughout their life, especially during their professional life. Due to the necessary innovative skills, educational policy programmes have entered into companies. Besides occupational training, the participation in further training schemes, learning through changing working conditions and through changes in society and in the working world are part of these.

In doing so, it is important to constantly learn and repeat as the quota of what "sticks" is only about 5 percent of the subject matter. The more often and intensive you occupy yourself with the material, the sooner it will remain in your long-term memory. Learning correctly is a stimulating and exciting process that shapes your personality, yet demands discipline, diligence and a strong will.

• Make use of further training opportunities
• Actively follow changes in your working world
• Try to learn with high motivation and emotional participation
• Look for someone who is enthusiastic about it to help you in the case of difficult subject matter, or learn in groups. Learning groups stimulate competition and in this way promote the storage of knowledge
• Learn with feeling
  • Reward yourself with an ice cream, holiday, visit to the cinema to maintain your resolution to learn
  • The body also rewards itself: when you solve a task, you experience an aha moment that effects a feeling of happiness as dopamine is released
  • Deal with the subject matter intensively, evaluate it and get annoyed about it or marvel. Later you will remember these feelings and can then remember the subject matter itself
• Learn without getting frustrated
  • Divide your subject matter into small parcels and work off one parcel after the other with repetitions
  • Make sure you divide the parcels in such a way that you are challenged but not over-challenged.
  • Find your own learning tempo
  • Avoid distractions. Effective learning requires full concentration. Music, TV or street noises limit your learning success
• Learn with breaks and repetitions
  • Repeat what you have learned several times during the day
  • Let what you have learned sink in overnight. Sleep promotes remembering and maintaining sustainably. In deep sleep, the impressions of the mind are sorted and assessed. This is why sleep firms new tracks on the mind and changes them in a qualitative way
• Learn systematically
  • Link up available knowledge. This is where we also speak of the "network structure of thinking" or "knowledge networks"
  • Create your own comprehensible organisation of your knowledge
• Permanently promote your mental abilities to keep them fit
• Practical tips
  • Learn intently for 20 to 30 minutes and then take a short break
  • Learn regularly, repeat and apply your new knowledge. In doing so, you increase your learning tempo and train your mind
  • Train yourself to learn fast
  • Make sure you get enough oxygen by moving. Avoid drugs and alcohol
  • Apply the loci technique: go for a mental walk past various buildings where you have placed your abstract information and recall this knowledge
  • Create a neutral and peaceful area where you can learn intently and do not let yourself be disturbed by distractions, even those of the sub-conscious