Plenty! When we made the decision to be our own bosses, we gave up the luxury of having our employers sending us to us seminars, workshops or conferences that help improve our skills and gain knowledge related to our work. All this became our initiative. We have to look for and invest in our own education. But as busy entreprenuers, taking time off to learn can be quite a feat. On the other hand, it need not be that way especially if you have a portable MP3 player. The Internet has opened up a whole new learning avenue we can take advantage of, right from the comfort of our own home offices. A majority of courses online are in MP3 format or can be extracted to MP3. With the popularity of podcasts, teleseminars and web conferences, you will find no shortage of audio learning material. In fact the opposite is true - you may find yourself not having the opportunity to listen to all these great information. What an ironic twist of fate huh? But this is where the portable MP3 player can become the entreprenuer's best friend. You can download MP3 files directly into your portable player and begin to listen and learn while you do other tasks away from the computer. I know this has helped me tremendously. I used to have piles of MP3 files clogging up my computer hard drive. I'd download them, start to listen but never finish because of other duties away from the computer. It got to a point I didn't even bother trying to listen because if of the constant interruptions. It was frustrating because here was all this great information at my fingertips that could be put to use immediately to advance my business. Instead, it's sitting gathering cyber dust. Once I purchased a portable MP3 player, I had the freedom to listen, learn and apply. What a great difference it made. There is also a flipside to this. What if you're the one creating the content? For many of us the thought of sitting down to write an article is almost paralyzing. In our mind's eye we see it as moving a mountain. It's not that we don't know how or it's hard to do but the thought of is simply unpleasant. So how can your portable MP3 player come into play? Most portable MP3 players have a recording function. You can record as much as you like limited to only the drive space of the player and a simple 128MB drive can store quite a bit of audio. So, why not dictate? Record your thoughts or pretend you're talking to a friend on the phone about your topic. Then have it transcribed. By doing so, not only are you making the most out of your time because you can do so where ever you are. You also get things done instead of letting a mental block stall your business. So if you're having a hard time consuming your training material creating content or even writing your book, pick up a portable MP3 player. They are so inexpensive these days you really have no excuse to start. It's time you moved on. |
