If your inbox is anything like mine, I imagine that you have been receiving a lot of webinar invitations lately. I’ve probably attended more webinars in the past two months than I did in all of 2019.

It’s been really nice to see other people, many of them familiar faces, in the Brady Bunch layout. But this week I realized that the selections I’ve made up to now have been more about being with my community than personal education. And that is going to change.

My change of heart came because my exceptional alma mater is doing a series called “Lockdown Lectures” featuring star professors like Brian Cox. The first “lecture” wasn’t a lecture really – Cox was simply interviewed by a student and talked about a wide range of things including what made him decide to transition from touring rock band keyboardist to astrophysics professor in the first place. (I mean, really, what a story!).

In answer to one of the student’s questions, Cox mentioned that in the process of writing a new popular book about black holes he’s discovered that some of the ABCs of his field have bumped up against each other in his head, and not in a comfortable way. It made him realize that he needs to go back and look more closely at certain scientific theories and re-test some of his assumptions so he can understand his field better.

The guy is a brilliant scientist and communicator, and he’s unsatisfied with his knowledge about his field. I found that really inspiring.

So inspiring, in fact, that I signed up for a terrific webinar that happened yesterday sponsored by the Colorado Nonprofit Association called “What You Need to Know about Navigating Nonprofit Mergers, Partnerships and Acquisitions.” I knew nothing about nonprofit mergers (which was kind of the point of me signing up), and had honestly never given them a minute’s thought before, but now I’m much better informed about something that (I learned) is fairly commonplace in our sector.

So what am I saying here? Until the stars re-align and life goes back to whatever “normal” ends up looking like, we’re probably not going have another opportunity like this (let’s hope) to take advantage of all of the related and tangential learning that is available for free or low cost right now. Working from home now, we actually have flexible time to be able to fit learning into our day.

So I encourage you to take this opportunity to re-learn what you thought you knew, or to learn totally new stuff that will help you be better informed and become a more well-rounded employee, boss, or just…person.