To advance your career, pick one professional development exercise to focus on each month of the year.

Nurturing your learnability for new knowledge is important to moving up in your career, especially in an economy that’s rapidly changing year by year. Career development can take many forms, and doesn’t have to always mean getting advanced degrees or certifications. The challenging part is finding resources that fit what you need. Here are five ways to expand your education through sources that can help. 

Attend university guest lectures 

Here’s a secret: Students often don’t attend the open public lectures from guest speakers who are visiting their college campus. For students, they already get enough lectures in class. So that leaves universities with auditorium seats to fill when visiting professors, writers and other experts visit campus for endowed lectures. Browse the website of your local universities and colleges to look for lectures that are free and open to the public, and make sure to stay for the Q+A sessions if you want to follow up. It’s like having free teaching and consulting. 

Take advantage of your e-library 

If you’re too busy to sit down and read a book, many public libraries now lend audiobooks that you can download through a library app.

Listen to podcasts 

Podcasts today are similar to where blogs were 10-15 years ago. It’s a free-flowing world of idea exchanges, deep dives into subjects and a lot of exploration. In podcasts you’ll find authors talking about their books, researchers expounding on their discoveries and experts discussing techniques to improve any professional field. Search in Google Play or Apple’s iTunes for keywords that you want to learn for work, such as public speaking tips, advice for management or productivity hacks. To make sure you’re hearing from an authority, look for podcasts that are hosted by someone with credentials that you trust.  

Read the archives of this blog 

Are you thinking about entrepreneurship? Do you want to be more productive in the workday? Want to learn how to interview more effectively? No matter where you are in your career, we have resources to help. 

With the rapid pace of change, there’s never been a greater need to pursue continuous professional education on the job. The good news is that with the Internet, there has also never been a better time to learn for those who want to learn.