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When I  moved into my first actual apartment, the awesome kitchen (actually a square of ancient appliances that overlooked a stinking alley) inspired me to learn to make bagels from scratch. I read about making bagels, I tried different recipes, a friend and I experimented with different dough-boiling techniques and flavors of mix-ins. For a few weeks I was obsessed with nothing more than bagels. Of course, this passed, and soon I was fixated on the challenge of reading Ulysses cover to cover. A few weeks later I was compulsively knitting terrible scarves. And then...well, you get the idea.

These days I tend to scoff, "Oh, I don't have time for that," "that" being most anything, but particularly teaching myself new things or taking on novel habits or hobbies. Pretty much everyone I know does this, too—it's like we're all in a weird competition for who's the busiest. But I miss those days of having goals, of trying out things I knew nothing about just...because. Leo Babauta of the excellent blog Zen Habits writes about this phenomenon in his recent post on self-directed learning, "Autodidact." He writes, "Learning is one of my favorite past times...I learn not as a chore to check off my list, nor as a route to self-improvement, but because I’m excited about something." He describes the eclectic list of things he's currently discovering (with no classes, by the way, or organized groups), from baking bread to  learning Javascript, and lays out his steps for acquiring each skill, which I loved.  Here it is, boiled down to its essentials: 1. Read, 2. Do, 3. Socialize, 4. Practice, and 5. Love. For more details, read the whole terrific post here.

We can all say "I don't have time for that" all we want, but in the end, do we have time not to learn something new? Hey, I want to make origami bird thingies! I want to pick up ordering in Spanish! Most of all, I want to regain that "I can't wait to get back to my new project" feeling that's so energizing and exciting. You know what I want to learn about first? Don't laugh—it's crock pot cooking.

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