9 Investments for Better Learning

learning is a hobby so why not make it easier to do it's not the end or be all but good equipment is damn important a d knife in the kitchen is not only dangerous but it's a pain in the ass if you buy cheap paint brushes then they're going to shed all their bristles on your artwork and ruin it and crappy hiking boots may have saved you a few extra bucks but they're going to make you're walking a misery it's okay to invest in your hobbies and learning is the same and I don't mean this

wild consumerism but I mean wise choices with intention behind them I've bought a lot of random in my ear and admit most of it was pointless but here I want to share some of the things that have proved themselves and become a part of my everyday routine the ones that aren't just dumb gimmics and they actually enhance my work and make it more comfortable I put this item first because it's quite literally the foundation of everything else on this list if you make a wrong choice here not only will it be expensive but it's going

to hold you back in the future we all need a good desk and I learned this the hard way because I have had some terrible work spaces in the past for the past few years this was where I did all my work this was where read I wrote and I edited these videos just to work comfortably for even more than an hour I had to twist and turn like some contortionist in a circus it was a nightmare and all this slouching and slumping may have been comfortable in the moment but I was ruining my health

all it took me was an aching lower back to realize that this couldn't continue I couldn't go on like this and I had to find some new place to comfortably work or I'd really screw myself up now I don't mean to sound like some ungrateful but most of the other desks available to me w't weren't good enough they were wonky they were too small or had all these annoying features that I didn't want and I'll admit I'm a bit fussy when it comes to desks but if you're going to be sitting at one for several

hours a day these tiny things matter because they can add up and make you feel more stressed than you need to be so instead of settling for that I decided to splurge and it's as the old saying goes you buy once you cry once and to me this meant buying a desk for life one that's sturdy high quality and big enough to give you that breathing room and since the health of your back goes beyond any price tag I'd actually recommend a standing desk these let you adjust the height with the click of a button

so you can immediately switch from a standing position to a seated position whenever you want one of the most annoying issues in the world of reading and writing and I'm sure you're familiar with this is that you kind of have to sit down and we both know that being seated is not really a natural position for humans and we also know that a sedentary life nowadays is a major killer like I don't know how many years or decades it can trim off your life but it's a problem and we have to find a way to

compromise with this somehow with a standing disc you're given the chance to fight off that chronic pain and all of the other issues that come with it plus it means I don't necessarily have to stop and stretch and walk around a bit to continue working cuz I don't want to lose that flow sometimes it just helps to switch to a standing position and Carry On And if you can't be out standing up that's fine you just sit and you have a break this model here is a flexy spot D7 and it is expensive but it's

something that I'm going to be using every single day probably for the rest of my my life so it's worth it but if that's not your style I'd recommend getting a desk that's as big as possible for your current situation because we may not always notice it but it's so easy for a small desk to piss us off it makes you feel cramped you have to shuffle between papers and there's just no room to spread your workout and have an overview of it which is so annoying every other feature of your desk is your choice

and I'm not going to force my stuck up desk Dogma onto you you clicked on this video because you're a curious person and you want to improve the way you learn and that's why I think you'll like imprint who are kindly sponsoring this video imprint helps you use small pockets of time in your day to help you build a learning habit with these nice visuals and animations that not only tell a story but offer you some new insight every time each course is sharp and quick to the point and I like that because I can

get a taste of what a topic has to offer me in just minutes maybe as I rest in the gym or if I'm waiting on a train for example and it's beyond just a book summary up there's a whole range of short courses and articles on almost every topic you can imagine from philosophy to finance to nutrition imprint was recently named Google's app of the year and I can understand why my knowledge of philosophy is still quite shallow so I'm working through this course called essential philosophy to get a broad overview of the topic maybe

before I do a deeper dive into any one specific area and I also love that I can use it to refresh my mind of things I've already learned all without the extra time burden to explore imprint yourself with a free s-day trial you can scan the QR code on screen or you can click the link in the description and with that you'll also get 20% off of an annual premium subscription so do check that out one of the most disturbing modern Trends is how everything is being digitized nowadays like a track your fridge contents with

a smartphone app please log in to use your toothbrushes tracking feature experience your work calls in VR no piss off no one wants to do that there's so much out there the promise is to make your life more convenient but in reality it just adds clutter and confusion and I want to specifically draw attention to the alarm on your phone of course it's convenient but it's on the same device as all the other addictive time sucking apps in the past I'd wake up and I'd reach for my phone to turn off the alarm but then

the phone is in my hand and naturally I'd start scrolling on Instagram on X on YouTube whatever and not only is that a huge waste of time but I swear it feels like 50 points of your IQ are just chopped off there and then it makes me feel lethargic and slow and as if I can't get any momentum going to start the day properly this is a common issue I know it's happened to you before and you can fight this off by investing in a traditional alarm clock no Wi-Fi no smart features no Bluetooth just

a clock that tells the time and wakes you up now I can put my phone in another room and wake up and actually get the day started with a fresh mind one that's going to help me read write and learn more effectively surprisingly I'm not a clock Guru so I'm not going to tell you what to buy these range from cheap to expensive and they come in a 100 different Aesthetics depending on what you prefer I bought this one from a home good shop in Ireland in Cork and it was like 20 quid 20 sorry

and it's done the job for me I take a lot of notes from my books and I'm pretty confident you do the same that's where the real Learning Happens that's where you can play with the ideas and let the book touch your mind with true wisdom but there's this annoying issue that creates that's small enough to be overlooked but still really irritating let's say you're writing up some ideas you found from a book you read the page and you see something that resonated with you so you put the book down you start to type and

then you forgot what you left off so you have to find that again and then you find something else pick up the book again again you start writing you have to put it down you pick up the book again and it's this annoying cycle of jumping between the page and the screen or your notebook and this clumsy cycle gets even more annoying when you have to copy a quote or a passage from the book and into your notes and that's where the bookand comes in because you can hold your book open at any page and

suddenly taking notes becomes this effortless hands-free experience I don't know the exact model of mine but if you go on Amazon or Etsy and you look up adjustable wooden bookstand you'll find so many different models that get the same job done all for about 20 quid I think not all of them are adjustable but I would recommend getting something that you can change because it saves you from the neck pain I love to place mine just below my main Monitor and I can easily keep track of where I was and overall note taking just becomes

so much smoother I bought this next item completely on an impulse and I wasn't expecting much from it but then it surprised me as to how much it improved my everyday work life it was probably a year ago when I was studying in Ireland that I was aimlessly browsing through a home sense and if you don't know that's a homegood shop and I saw this desk organizer on the top shelf being sold for a tener and I thought to myself surely that's just a gimmick that's what people on Tik Tok buy to make their aesthetic

desk setups and they pretend to study and don't actually do anything but I bought it anyway and I'm glad consumerism got to me that day because it did declutter my entire workspace before that my desk was a tragedy there were all these pens papers and just dumb knick-knacks scattered everywhere and I didn't realize it at the time but this clutter reflects onto your state of mind it's like when you walk into a messy room and you just get this chaotic aura that surrounds you and you can't get anything done until that room is clean it's

the same with your desk but once you have an organizer you can clean that up and restore some peace to your area and even better you don't waste time looking for things cuz you know where it's going to be again there's so many different models and what you choose is up to your personal taste I've seen wooden ones transparent ones big ones small ones everything and anything I want you to picture yourself doing something around the house maybe you're cleaning maybe you're cooking or maybe you're just reading in the corner and then suddenly out of

nowhere this amazing idea falls into your head and this is not just any idea this is a special one this could potentially be life-changing so of course you rush to write it down and you look around ah there's no pen there's no paper I'll do it later or I'll just remember to write it down tomorrow when I wake up that's not happening and you know it's true that's not happening the amount of good ideas I've lost because I told myself that lie is actually quite sad but the problem is solved by a product that's dirt

cheap and abundant everywhere it's the humble pen and notepad now before you get mad I'm not taking the piss here by seriously recommending you such an obvious product but the twist here is that I recommend having a pen and paper in as many places as possible in every room of the house for example so now instead of being too lazy to drw something down it's always in Arms Reach and it's always convenient for you that means less forgotten thoughts more awareness over your mind and a slightly easier life of learning which matters and for a

few dollars more it's worth it this next item will be either dead obvious to you or revolutionary like it was to me for context I've never been into tech gear and it's only very recently that I can say I have a proper desk setup I find it therapeutic to spend money so naturally I explored how I can improve my setup and when I bought this second monitor I realized just how much I was limiting myself before I had it I used to do everything on my laptop screen and Not only was it uncomfortable but everything

was cramped if I was taking notes on a video or article I had to squeeze them together on the same page and if I was doing research for a piece of writing I'd have to constantly flick between tabs and it slowed down my editing too with so many windows cramped onto one page I can never zoom out and see a broad overview with a second screen I have that breathing room I can put my main work on the big one and on the side put some research put a video I'm taking notes on or even

just a a music playlist or something again you have so many options here and the price range is quite large so I would tailor this setup to serve you the best I like to use the more expensive high resolution one in the middle and then put the inferior one to the side which is usually cheaper and low resolution of course this is your setup and you do what works best for you but even then I have two small pet peeves that really annoy me when I see them in other people's setups and if you value

your comfort and you don't want to have next strain I'd recommend you consider them first I'd recommend that you put your main monitor directly in front of you because if you don't that means you're going to have to 100% of the time be looking either to your left or to your right as you work and that just doesn't make sense it's uncomfortable it's weird looking and over time it's going to strain your neck if you put your main monitor head on yes the secondary one is going to be tilted towards you but you're not going

to be looking at that too often so what matters is that you're comfortable most of the time the second quality of life tip is to make sure that there's no visible Gap in between both monitors now I'm not sure why you'd want this in the first place but it just makes more sense when there's a seamless transition between both it's more comfortable and it makes sense I guess I don't know what else to say so if for as low as about $100 you can make a significant upgrade to your workspace and give yourself that breathing

room okay but maybe the second Monitor and the fancy standing desk are too big a leap for you and I understand that it's no small investment and it took me years to make the switch but what if you want some of the extra comfort with a smaller price tag well in that case I'd recommend a laptop stand I have this aluminium one from boata and it lets me adjust the height of the laptop so that I can put it at eye level it doesn't sound like much but it's crazy how big a difference this makes

just a few inches higher and it put your head in a much more natural position so that your posture is preserved and you don't go into like this nasty Goblin mode that's hunched over there's loads of different styles of this there's folding ones collapsible ones 360 rotation ones there's so many and I like the simple up and down design but they all inexpensive and they're a nice addition to any desk there's a lot of noise in the online learning sphere content creators will come up with these overco complicated weird approaches to learning that of course

have a fancy new name to attract you to click some of these work and some don't but the point is that in this Pursuit for the ultimate learning strategy we tend to forget what matters and we lose sight of the basics that have been proven to work again and again and again no they're not always exciting or unique but that's exactly what makes them so reliable throughout my entire college degree I used one study tactic pretty much and it was to re-watch all lecture recordings reread my old notes and then write new ones in my

own words I'd add new stuff I'd learned and I would refine them a bit and it was essentially just transcription nothing crazy it was quite boring and underwhelming but it worked and I did well in my tests and this next item is a perfect example of a mundane learning approach that we may have forgotten in the past in pursuit of this shiny new stuff it's the humble whiteboard one of the best things you can do for your attention and your understanding is to visualize ideas you take this boring wall of theory from a book or

textbook and you make it come to life in this colorful picture because when you hack your way through the facts and the individual points of a subject it's easy to lose focus of the bigger picture which is often the most valuable to us but once you put that onto a real life canvas the Whiteboard you suddenly get to see the overview and you see how everything links together and you see the different areas within this field you use diagrams you use pictures you use sticky notes or bullet points anything else to help you understand the

topic in depth sometimes I like to dump everything I know about a certain topic onto the Whiteboard as a sort of exercise and I like to use mind maps to get a grasp on how everything comes together it's a nice exercise because not only does it help you remember what you just read but it helps you gather your thoughts and see what matters the most to you and it's not just for learning either back in Ireland I had one on my wall and I used it for putting my workout routine for my daily schedule a

to-do list reminders everything and anything I bought another one for here recently and the size is borderline ridiculous but I always think it's better to have something that's too big than too small but of course they come in all sizes and I recommend buying something that's not irresponsible and can actually fit in your room and if you have no free walls where you can drill the Whiteboard into then you could always buy one of those rolls of like sticky paper style whiteboards where you unroll it and it's like a sticker you can put it on

any surface be a cabinet or the side of a table or something and there's also the small handheld ones which are quite useful for just having on your desk to jot down notes so there is no perfect setup and all of the choices on these lists I recommend because they worked for me and they worked in my conditions in my setup but I don't know you very well I don't know what your bedroom looks like I don't know how big how small I don't know these things so ultimately don't see this list as a a

prescription to you but a recommendation and it's you who should take the choice into your own hands and make the decisions that are right for you we can't let this shadow of consumerism consume us just because some Guru somewhere was good at marketing so with that said I get to ask my favorite question what have you bought that helps you what has elevated your daily life and helped you read write and learn better I love to hear your recommendations so feel free to email me to to comment down below and I'm sure that other people

could find them really helpful as well and of course thank you for watching