I was discussing the idea of continuous improvement with some friends recently, and a comment was made that “I don’t have time to do any of that!”.

Maybe you feel the same - that your life is so crowded and hectic, that there’s just no space to be taking on yet another “thing”. I tend to agree with the view that you put time into what’s important to you.

Think about it - if you feel passionate about something, if you care about a topic, cause or issue then you are likely to be putting at least some time into it - be that actively or more passively. You might attend events, evangelise about the issue, or consume material through reading, podcasts etc.

My daily routine starts on weekdays at 6.30 when the first alarm goes off. I go downstairs, make a breakfast tray with a HUGE cafetière of coffee and then have 45 minutes breakfast in bed where we compare diaries & plan the day, and scan the online news to keep on top of events. Before that second cup of coffee has hit my system I’m still waking up …

The second alarm goes at 7.30, which is the cue to get up and head downstairs to make the children’s school lunches. I have until 8.00 to assemble their lunches, find the school bags, make sure Danny and April are dressed, hair combed, teeth brushed - you get the idea… No time yet for learning - just busy busy right?

Wrong.

That half-hour is actually one of my key learning slots on most days (assuming there are no fights or meltdowns between the children!). I take my laptop down with the finished breakfast things to the kitchen, plug it in and log on to LinkedIn Learning. My college has provided all staff with a login for this, and there’s a huge number of courses on almost any subject imaginable to choose from. So I pick up on whatever course I’m currently listening to and play it while I assemble the children’s lunch boxes and then tidy up the kitchen.

It’s typically about 20 minutes of pretty routine activity that I don’t have to think about too hard, so I can listen along to the course and absorb some new ideas or re-surface stuff I was already aware of. When you’ve completed a course there are options to add a new skill to your LinkedIn profile, post that you’ve completed the course and - probably most important for many people, add the fact that you’ve completed that course to your list of Licenses and Certifications.

Now look, these are not MBA degrees. Many of these courses are an hour or so long, but the quality of the instruction is generally very high, the structure and depth of knowledge transmitted is well thought out, paced and clear, and I come away from almost every course having taken in at least one or two nuggets that I then consciously implement in my practice as soon as possible.

For instance, I would consider myself pretty expert in PowerPoint - it’s a tool of my trade as an educator that I’ve used daily for 20 odd years. But the “Visual Storytelling in PowerPoint” module was a superb exposition of turning a boring sales update deck into a compelling visual story and taught me some tools I hadn’t been aware of in PowerPoint. Note to self - I must not overdo using the Morph tool now I know about it…

But yesterday after completing that course I went back to one of my existing decks and added a few Morph transitions in, which should add some movement and interest to my previous slides which simply appeared fully formed on each mouse click.

I wrote my first book “Streets of Dublin” in 42 hours, one hour each night over 6 weeks. It certainly isn’t the best book ever published, but it is a book, and I learned a whole lot about the process, about getting something up on Amazon, and then about how difficult marketing a book is. But I did it by intentionally setting aside a small chunk of time every day, focussing on doing a specific thing linked to a clear purpose that I cared about - in this case getting a book published.

Maybe join a community of learners - I am an Ambassador for EPALE, the Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe - and several times a month I try to join (or present) a webinar or learning session which always throws up interesting connections, ideas or possibilities. I’m plugged into a community of over 120,000 other people interested in education, teaching and learning - and for free!

You have to make your own luck, and being proactive in your choices of what you spend your time doing can lead to unexpected and often very positive outcomes.

So are you really too busy, or if you took a look at the nooks and crannies of your day, are there any times where you could slip in a half-hour and expose yourself to some new ideas? It’s time well spent…

Joe Houghton Asst. Professor & Director, MSc Project Management programmes, UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business

Management consultant - www.houghton.consulting

2021 UCD Innovation Academy Fellow - www.plusoneteaching.com

EPALE Ambassador - https://epale.ec.europa.eu/en Dublin, Ireland

Email : joe.houghton@ucd.ie / joe.houghton@gmail.com

Tel: +353 86 384 3670