每天学习一点新的东西

Learn Something New Every Day

Most of us have one or two areas of knowledge that we strive to know very well — things related to our jobs, of course, and maybe a hobby or two. But while it’s important to develop a deep understanding of the things that matter most to us, it is just as important to develop a broad understanding of the world in general.

A lot of unfortunate people think that learning for the sake of learning is something for schoolchildren, and maybe college students. All the things there are to learn and know that don’t impact directly on their immediate lives they dismiss as “trivia”. Out in the “real world”, they think, there’s no time for such frivolities — there’s serious work to get done!

There are a lot of good, practical reasons to make learning something new a part of your daily routine, but the best reason has nothing to do with practicality — we are learning creatures, and the lifelong practice of learning is what makes us humans and our lives worthwhile. If that idealistic musing’s not enough, here’s some more down-to-earth benefits:

• Learning across a wide range of subjects gives us a range of perspectives to call on in our own narrow day-to-day areas of specialization.
• Learning helps us more easily and readily adapt to new situations.
• A broad knowledge of unfamiliar situations feeds innovation by inspiring us to think creatively and providing examples to follow.
• Learning deepens our character and makes us more inspiring to those around us.
• Learning makes us more confident.
• Learning instills an understanding of the historical, social, and natural processes that impact and limit our lives.
• And, like I said, there’s the whole “making like worth living” thing

There is, after all, a reason the term “well-read” is a compliment.

With the entire world of knowledge just a few mouse-clicks away, it has never been easier than it is right now to learn something new and unexpected every day. Here are a few simple ways to make expanding your horizons a part of your daily routine:

• Subscribe to Wikipedia’s “Featured Article” list. Every day, Wikipedia posts an article selected from its vast repository of entries to it’s Daily-article-l subscribers. If you were a subscriber today, you would have recently discovered that Daylight Saving Time was first proposed by William Willett in 1907 and adopted during World War I as a way to conserve coal. You might have also been interested to find out that Kazakhstan discontinued Daylight Saving Time in 2005 because of alleged health risks associated with changed sleep patterns.
• Read The Free Dictionary’s homepage or subscribe to its feeds. The Free Dictionary has several daily features on its front page, including Article of the Day (RSS), In the News (RSS), This Day in History (RSS), and Today’s Birthday (RSS). One recent day’s stories told the history of the Hell’s Angels, the identity of the new “7 Wonders of the World”, the origin of the first cultured pearl, and the life story of one of the world’s most prominent tenors.
• Subscribe to the feed at Your Daily Art (RSS). Every day you’ll be confronted with a classic work of art to contemplate, along with a few notes about the piece. If you were subscribed right now, you might have recently seen Man Ray’s intriguing and playful “Le Violin d’Ingres” and Frank Weston Benson’s luminous “Red and Gold”.
• Subscribe to the feeds at Did You Know? and Tell Me Why?. These sites are both run by an R. Edmondson, who certainly knows a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. Updates are slightly less than daily, but I like the two sites so much I couldn’t leave them off this list. If you were a subscriber to these sites, you’d have recently learned why clouds are white, what the European Union is, the French terms for the days of the week and the months of the year, and the history of the development of public health efforts in response to the hazards of the Industrial Revolution
• Listen to podcasts like In Our Time and Radio Open Source. Radio Open Source is a daily interview/panel show covering everything from politics to science to art and literature to the greatness of the movie Groundhog Day. (At the moment, Radio Open Source is on summer hiatus, but subscribe anyway — they’ll be back!) For a history of the events and ideas that shaped the present, In Our Time is ideal: a weekly gathering of scholars discussing subjects as diverse as the life of Joan of Arc, theories of gravity, and what we know about the Permian-Triassic boundary. Subscribe to a handful of good, literary podcasts and get smart while you drive!

Check the directory at Elite Skills for more sources: there are college course podcasts, online documentaries, foreign language lessons, and more — all free. Believe it or not

your head will expand to fit whatever you try to stuff into it!

Which is really the whole point.

我们中的大部分人对一两个领域的知识熟知，这些知识或与我们的工作有关或与我们的一两个习惯有关。但深刻明了于我们切身有关的事物，就好比对这个世界的总体有广泛的认知一样重要。

大部分愚蠢的人认为为学习而学习是小学生或者大学生的事情，所有他们要学习或者认知的事情如果没有对他们目前的生活有直接的影响，他们都会认为那是“无关紧要的杂事”。他们觉得没有时间浪费在与“实际生活”无关的事情上面----还有更重要的事情需要处理。

让每天学习一点新的东西成为你的日常生活的一部分是有很多好的、实际性的理由的，但最佳的理由与功利无关-----我们是学习型生物，终其一生的学习实践让我们成为真正的人让我们觉得生命变得有价值。如果这个理想化的理由不能让你信服，下面给出这个习惯更多实际的好处：

 从广泛的事物中学习让我们能够以多维视角衡量我们每天都需要面对的狭隘专业领域。 
学习能让我们更容易和更有准备的适应新环境。 
 对多种非常规环境的熟知能够通过激发我们创造性思考和提供案例让我们学习的方式为创新提供动力。 
 学习塑造我们的性格，让我们更加了解我们身边的人和事。 
 学习让我们更自信。 
 学习让我们懂得历史、社会、自然的进化过程，这些进程正在影响着我们当下的生活。 
 还有，如我所说，这些都是“让生活值得一过”的因素。
毕竟，至少有一个理由让你明白“阅读”是一个礼物。

当全世界的知识变得仅需要动鼠标进行几次点击，再也没有比现在更容易让你每天学习一点新的、预期之外的东西的时代了。以下是一些例子让你拓宽你的视野，让每天学习一点新的东西成为你的日常生活的一部分：
 Subscribe to Wikipedia’s “Featured Article” list.
  浏览维基百科的“关注焦点”目录。每天维基百科都会从它庞大的数据库里面挑选处一篇文章作为头版。（树格注：中文维基百科地址为http://www.wikilib.com/wiki/%E9%A6%96%E9%A1%B5）

Read The Free Dictionary’s homepage or subscribe to its fee 
阅读免费字典主页或者浏览它的链接。免费字典的主页有一些日常新闻，包括：今日文摘，新闻，历史上的今天，今日生日。 
Subscribe to the feed at Your Daily Art (RSS). 
浏览你的今日艺术上的链接。每天你都会看到一些经典名画和一些文字说明。 
Subscribe to the feeds at Did You Know? and Tell Me Why?. 
浏览你知道吗？和告诉我为什么？上面的链接。 
Listen to podcasts like In Our Time and Radio Open Source. 
听流行的电台，如我们的时代和电台资源。
更多资源链接请点击 Elite Skills ，里面提供更多的资源。