If you’re looking for ways to add some variety to your life, and you happen to be a nerd like me, I highly recommend signing up for classes 🙂 It doesn’t matter what the class is for. If you can find a class that even remotely interests you, sign up for it. If it’s virtual – that works. If it’s in person, even better! (while being safe of course).

I love classes. I recently signed up for pottery lessons, and today was my first class. I have zero prior experience in pottery and I had no idea what I was doing. Almost everyone else in the class seemed much more comfortable with the equipment and what they were doing. I barely made a recognizable shape at all! And even then, despite the class being a bit of a fiasco for me, I loved it. Here’s why:

1. Classes force you out of your comfort zone: You are back to square one. You’re learning something new that you don’t know anything about. You have no idea what you’re doing. You’re forced to ask dumb questions. But in the process, you’re using previously under utilized portions of your brain and your body. This is good! In a previous post on ways you can inspire yourself, I’ve mentioned how the more you can expose yourself to new things, the higher is your probability of coming up with new ideas.
2. Classes help you meet other like minded people: I’m all of learning things by yourself, and there’s tremendous value in being able to pick up new skills on your own. And yet, it’s kind of fun to learn things in a group. You meet others with similar interests. You can help eachother out. You can ask questions if needed. I like the community aspect of classes.
3. Classes provide a structured format to learning a new skill: It is not easy to maintain the discipline needed to learn something new, over a prolonged period of time. Classes, with their regular schedules and a pre-defined pace, force this discipline on you. You can continue to learn on your own while leaning into the structure provided by classes.
4. Classes help you make better use of “dead time”: It’s easy to avoid signing up for a course, thinking that it would take too much time. And yes classes do need some time commitment. But if you observe carefully, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of “dead time” in a day that tends to get wasted anyway. For eg: My weekdays are always very slow. Going for a class helps me get going, especially if the class is early enough in the day. You don’t have to compromise on other things, you actually end up doing same number of things as before.
5. Classes help you meaningfully disconnect: Immersing yourself in trying to learn something new will help you disconnect much better than watching Netflix. As you challenge yourself and focus on new types of tasks, your mind will completely forget about everything else happening in your life at that time.
6. Learning a new skill will help you build your confidence: The surest way to increasing your confidence is to acquire more skills. The more competent you are, the more types of things you’re able to do yourself, the more confident you’ll be to be able to handle yourself in any situation. Think about this as an investment in your self-confidence.