Like many people, since mid-March, both my husband and I have been working from home. He’s in the office upstairs and I occupy the guest room/office on the floor below. I can still hear him interact with colleagues and clients though, since our cozy New England home is small and it’s quiet except for the occasional barking dog.

I’ve come to realize from eavesdropping that Phil is always learning something new, even if it’s not required for his job. Lately, he has mastered Excel and pivot tables, showing off impressive charts and graphs and how he can manipulate all kinds of data for cool reports. Before that, it was getting a grasp on the Microsoft Dataverse or taking an online university course in C++. I asked him why he was hungry for all these new skills, and he said, “There’s an answer for everything, so when I am interested in something, I check Google, YouTube, or find an online course, and figure it out.”

During this period when many people have extra time that had previously been spent commuting, or because of an unexpected job loss or furlough due to the pandemic, Phil’s approach is a good one – use the time to learn something new. Here are some ideas:

• PR professionals like me rely on all kinds of tools to help with research, improve a client’s search engine domain authority, monitor media coverage, and create reports. I for one do not take full advantage of everything these tools (Cision, Meltwater, Moz) can do, so now is a great opportunity to figure it out.
• Start writing articles to publish on Medium. With more than 1.5M followers, chances are someone will be interested in your viewpoints and it’s a great ‘medium’ for sharpening storytelling skills.
• Practice using MailChimp for newsletters and SurveyMonkey to build surveys, even if you only send them to yourself.
• Learn to use video One thing we have all learned this year is that high-quality video production is not always necessary. Use your smartphone and some decent lighting to gather customer testimonials, client tips, or to share your own insight on various topics. There are free apps for teleprompters and for easy editing.
• Take an online course about Search Engine Optimization (free through Moz), analyzing metrics, or other topic you’d like to know more about. Hubspot Academy offers free courses from social media certification and learning Wordpress to measuring brand engagement.
• Play with PowerPoint. There are free tutorials on YouTube that will show you how to create infographics, add animation, insert video (Microsoft has helpful info), and make presentations more dynamic. Prezi is another creative tool that offers a free trial worth trying.
• Check out blogs for random companies that interest you or consultants you might like to work with. It’s worth taking the time to understand how other professionals think. The Rainier Communications blog, for example, offers tips for communicating effectively during the pandemic, messaging, surveys, and more.
• For more intense professional development, groups like the Public Relations Society of America offer certification programs and webinars on topics like ethics and team leadership, free for members or $200 for non-members.

Unlike Phil, whose lifelong learning always seems to benefit his company and his clients directly, I’ve signed up to learn Italian to prepare me for a long-anticipated trip abroad and try my hand with new recipes all the time. That said, I am a firm believer that learning anything new shakes the cobwebs off the brain and has healthy benefits overall.