I am looking for a self-improvement alternative to doom scrolling social media in my downtime. In the past, I have done mostly career oriented courses (tech/computer science), but I’m tired of those, want to branch out. Has anyone taken a MOOC class, not necessarily for any specific objectibe, that was especially good?
Stanford and Harvard both have all sorts of interesting lecture series online! Harvard has stuff like urban design, religious history, art history, the relationship between cooking and physics, biology, Chinese history and much more!
https://pll.harvard.edu/catalog/free
Haven’t taken any with Stanford but here’s a link to their catalogue:
I’m basically in the same boat as OP but this reminded me that I love learning languages.
Mandarin is a huge challenge but after programming all day, it’s actually incredible the way my brain feels after practicing with a tutor for an hour. Originally I meant to get away from the computer but ended up using an online service.
Oxford Continuing Education has a lot of interesting courses. I did one in Inequality & Labour Markets to give me a taster of what a masters would be like, and if I was able to consistently devote time to studying each week.
Learn “Toki Pona” language, it’s the worlds tiniest language with only 120 words.
You can download Great Lectures on many high-level topics
Cant recommend meditation enough.
I pursued Zen seriously for a while, I still practice at times, should do it more.
Programming. It’s really fun. Learn the concepts of programming and maybe study CS. Then learn a programming language.
Start with the simple ones then try the “harder” ones. For example I started with Python and I now primarily use Rust for every project, big or small.
Fits like this on my phone
Fits like this on my phone
Literally anything you find interesting.
Learning begets learning. The more you learn the easier learning becomes.
So start learning things that are interesting… then worry about things tha are “valuable”.
Speedrun Hollow Knight
Set realistic goals
Study physics. It never hurts to know some physics.
i liked the ‘introduction to mathmatical thinking’ mooc from stanford. its free on coursera
