How to Be a Life Long Learner

In a previous series, we covered in detail how to succeed in college. One of the key messages of that series is that the main purpose of college is not education but rather to gain qualifications needed for a career.

That’s absolutely true. However, don’t misunderstand the point. While the purpose of going to college is not education, you personally should strive to be an educated individual. If anything, one of the reasons that it’s important to not think about college as being for education is so that you don’t confine your education to college years. Thinking about college as mainly for education creates the unfortunate consequence of education stopping after graduation. Most people will graduate from college in their early 20’s. How unfortunate if your education stops at such a young age.

Education, properly undertaken, deepens your reverence for Allah ﷻ.

إِنَّ فِي خَلْقِ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالأَرْضِ وَاخْتِلاَفِ اللَّيْلِ وَالنَّهَارِ وَالْفُلْكِ الَّتِي تَجْرِي فِي الْبَحْرِ بِمَا يَنفَعُ النَّاسَ وَمَا أَنزَلَ اللّهُ مِنَ السَّمَاء مِن مَّاء فَأَحْيَا بِهِ الأرْضَ بَعْدَ مَوْتِهَا وَبَثَّ فِيهَا مِن كُلِّ دَآبَّةٍ وَتَصْرِيفِ الرِّيَاحِ وَالسَّحَابِ الْمُسَخِّرِ بَيْنَ السَّمَاء وَالأَرْضِ لآيَاتٍ لِّقَوْمٍ يَعْقِلُونَ

Verily, in the creation of the heavens and of the earth, and the succession of night and day: and in the ships that speed through the sea with what is useful to man: and in the waters which God sends down from the sky, giving life thereby to the earth after it had, been lifeless, and causing all manner of living creatures to multiply thereon: and in the change of the winds, and the clouds that run their appointed courses between sky and earth: [in all this] there are messages indeed for people who use their reason.  [Qur’an 2:164]

Continuing your education after college will also make you more successful in your career, make you a more interesting individual to spend time with, and keep your brain healthy as you enter into old age.  Being well educated goes a long way towards developing haybah.

Excuses

There are a handful of common excuses given for not being able to engage in lifelong learning. By far, the most common excuse is time. “I’m too busy, I have too much on my plate. There’s no way I can add on unnecessary education to my already tight schedule.”

The reality is that all of us have a few spare minutes a day that we can devote to education. The good thing about not being in a formal education program is that you control your own schedule. You don’t have a class from 9am to 10am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. You can carve up your time how you want and fit in your education where there is availability. All that time on Twitter or Reddit or Facebook? Those minutes driving to work? You can repurpose that into a time for education.

The second most common excuse is money. “I’m strapped for cash, I don’t have the money to spend on online classes.”

Being frugal and financially savvy are very good traits for a Muslim man to have. The good thing is that lifelong education does not necessitate spending much money (or any money at all). The issue is less about there being a dearth of free avenues to learn from and more about not knowing what those avenues are.

Which brings us to the third most common excuse, “I don’t know where I would even begin.” If that’s you, keep reading; this article is all about how to become a lifelong learner.

Foster a mindset of lifelong learning

As simple as it seems, one of the most important ways of becoming a lifelong learner is to think of yourself as one. Think of yourself as a perpetual student and you will always be on the lookout for ways to increase yourself in beneficial knowledge. On the other hand, think of yourself as having already achieved all the education you need and you’ll turn a blind eye to the many opportunities in front of you.

Practical Tips

Utilize Wikipedia

With the advent of smart phones and internet, there’s a treasure trove of knowledge just a few clicks away. In your parents and grandparent’s generation, finding out about new topics took some serious effort. It might have involved physically going to a library or, at the very least, going to a bookshelf and taking down an encyclopedia. Now? Wikipedia is always at your fingertips.

Use that to your advantage.

When you travel to a new location, spend a few minutes on the journey reading its Wikipedia page. When you come across some new topic that vaguely piques your interest, skim the Wikipedia article about it. You’re not going to become an expert by any means, but you will broaden your knowledge base one article at a time.

Use online dictionaries

Do the same thing for vocabulary. When you come across a word that you don’t know, look it up. Again, the effort needed nowadays is a fraction of what it was even half a generation ago. Instead of looking it up in a physical dictionary, you can literally just type the word into Google (or DuckDuckGo) and learn the definition in seconds. Do this every time and your vocabulary will steadily grow through your life.

Books

There is no better way to be a lifelong learner than by constantly reading. Malcolm X talks about his relationship with books in his autobiography:

“I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My home made education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.”

Keep a book by your bed to read every night. Even just 15-20 minutes a day adds up to 100 hours of reading a year. For someone who reads at an average speed, that’s 1.5 million words that you’ve read in a year. The benefits of reading are too numerous to mention. Pick up a book that interests you and start reading. This can be anything: fiction, non-fiction, Islamic, secular, self-help, classic, etc.

Audiobooks

While audiobooks can never completely replace physical books, there’s ample evidence to show that they have many of the same benefits as actually reading a book. The advantage of audiobooks over physical books is that you can multitask with them. Think about the time you spend doing dishes, laundry, cleaning, driving, exercising, or playing video games that don’t require 100% of your concentration. Without adding any extra time to your day, you can listen to hours and hours of audiobooks.

Majduddin ibn Taymiyyah, the grandfather of the famous Taqi-ud-din Ibn Taymiyyah, would make sure to not even waste time in the bathroom! He would give a book to his son and tell him to read it loudly in front of the bathroom so that his time did not go to waste (Adh-Dhayl ‘alaa Tabaqat al-Hanabilah).

Check out your local library, most have digital audiobook services such as Hoopla or Libby where you can check out audiobooks directly on your phone. There’s also Audible and other paid services that you can use if there’s a book you want to read that’s not available through your library.

Great Courses

Very similar to audiobooks, one of my favorite resources for continuing education is The Great Courses series. There are both audio as well as video lectures but my preference is audio so that I can listen while commuting or exercising. These are recordings of introductory college courses by some of the most engaging professors in the country. Think about it as having the option to audit the freshman and sophomore level classes in college that always seemed interesting but you couldn’t fit into your schedule. Many libraries carry these courses in their audiobook collection.

Coursera

If you have the time and are looking for something more structured, a great resource is massive open online courses (MOOC). These are free online classes offered through reputable colleges. Coursera is the best example of this. The classes themselves are free; payment is required for certificates and other additional features.

Islamic Classes
Don’t neglect your Islamic education. There’s a hadith found in the Sahih of ibn Hibban:

إن الله يبغض كل ……. عالم بالدنيا جاهل بالاخرة.

One of the types of people who earn the anger of Allah ﷻ are those who are very knowledgeable about the dunya but ignorant about the akhira. Don’t fall into this category. Make sure that you’re always increasing your knowledge of Islam (and acting upon it).

There are plenty of Islamic institutions which will sell you overpriced courses. Skip over these. First and foremost, look up local halaqaat and classes at your masjid. After that, there are plenty of free online resources and lectures as well as inexpensive books that you can use to increase your Islamic knowledge. If you’re not sure where to begin, start here.

We ask Allah ﷻ to teach us that which benefits us, benefit us from what we have learned, and to increase us in knowledge.

اللهم علمنا ما ينفعنا وانفعنا بما علمتنا وزدنا علما