The greatest obstacle to a free online education

My favourite thing about The Matrix was the ability of the characters to have information and skills instantly uploaded into their brains, such as martial arts, languages and learning how to fly a helicopter. 

Unfortunately the day is not yet upon us when we can plug a cable into our heads and load information straight into our brains.

Free online education resources are growing more plentiful by the day and people are getting some real results by taking part in them.

Whether you want to learn how to code (Codecademy), speak a new language (Duolingo), play the guitar (JustinGuitar) or get a free online MBA (Business Insider), there is somewhere online to do it.

However, I found myself stumbling from one free online resource to the next because I wanted to know it all, I wanted my brain to be full of all of the information in the world.

I'm sad to say that there is no quick fix when it comes to learning. When all of the materials are laid out before us, the hardest thing to overcome is ourselves and our innate laziness and procrastination. 

I signed up for a free qualification in Communications from the Saylor Academy, this seemed like a desirable skill that I can put to use. Okay, so here I was commencing Unit 1, oh wait Unit 1 is subdivided into nine sections, oh each one is 6 hrs long....aaahhhh......exit. 

This isn't to say it was a bad course, it just speaks to my character in not wanting to learn the subject matter to a high standard.

Save yourself some time and stop signing up for all of the free sites and take your time to decide what it is you want to learn, why you want to learn it and what you plan on doing with it. Because, if you are not willing to put the work in, you will give up. Or you may put just enough work in to get through the course but you won't retain the knowledge or put it to use because you simply aren't interested enough to do so.

Your time is precious, do not waste it going in the wrong direction.

Thanks for reading