The busy marketer’s guide to microlearning to upskill with ease
Mahatma Ghandi once said: “Whatever you want to be tomorrow, depends on what you decide to do today.”
We all want to stay ahead of the curve and be the smartest, most capable individuals possible. The biggest obstacle to being our best selves isn’t motivation or even resources. It’s time. Between meetings, deadlines, and personal responsibilities, finding hours to upskill or reskill can feel impossible. But as Audrey Hepburn famously quipped, “Nothing is impossible. The word itself says ‘I’m possible. ’”
The secret to big results lies in small, scheduled, purposeful microlearning sessions. By absorbing lessons in short, structured learning bursts, you can make room for continuous growth without carving out massive chunks of time. This commitment enables you to move quickly from acquiring knowledge to applying knowledge.
In this article, we’ll explore three microlearning strategies that fit seamlessly into even the busiest routines:
- Level up your learning with gamification
- Transform passive time into productive time
- Acquire and apply learnings
Let’s get started!
Level up your learning with gamification
According to eMarketer, in 2024, Americans spent a daily average of 25 minutes playing games on phones. Think of the impact of transferring just 7 mindless gaming minutes toward professional goals. You will quickly rack up a week’s worth of learning without sacrificing all your precious free time.
When learning becomes a habit, it naturally integrates into your life, making continuous learning effortless. That’s good news for professionals seeking promotions, accolades, or even a new job or position. Employers know that proactive learners tend to be creative problem solvers who independently seek resources to tackle the toughest challenges. Those 7 minutes a day make you a valuable asset to a company.
Tips to Try:
- Race against the clock: Try finding as many articles, blogs, podcasts, and resources as you can on a singular topic in 7 minutes. Curate the list (We’ll come back to this). Want to make it easier? Find resources with newsletters and automatic curation for you such as the Morning Brew, Harvard Business Review, LinkedIn Learning, and industry blogs
- Reward yourself: Achieved your goal? Awesome! Enjoy a well-earned reward like a second cup of coffee, a quick check of the highlights from last night’s game or a 5-minute yoga break.
- Check your rank and improve your score: For those who love a good competition, seek out opportunities to share your progress. Explore HubSpot Academy Another idea is to post your progress on LinkedIn with something like: “I just finished my 7th article on microlearning this week. Sharing links and highlights from my top 2 favorites.”
Bonus rewards: Racing against the clock gets your adrenaline pumping and neurons firing. Rewards can provide caffeine boosts, social currency, personal satisfaction and even wellness. Your competitive nature can inspire others and increase your visibility among your colleagues. Microlearnings offer double wins!
Learn how to fuel career success by embracing your learning style
Transform passive time into productive time
Remember those articles, podcasts and resources you curated? Now you need to find time to insert them into your day.
You can do this by following these strategies:
- Schedule a 15-minute meeting with yourself: Depending on your schedule and personal preferences, it can be prior to your official workday, over lunch or an afternoon break or during the end of the day wind down. Spend half the time learning and half the time rewarding yourself.
- Use gaps in your schedule: Find dead time between meetings and calls or time spent en route to a personal errand to play those podcasts. AI tools like, Descript and WellSaid offer text-to-speech software so you can transform any written article into an audio for on-the-go learning.
- Spin the wheel: Use an online random choice generator to roll the dice or spin the wheel to select the resource you are going to engage with next.
- Keep a running list of topics to explore: Keep a document – whether that’s Excel, Notes or Word – open on your computer or phone to keep a running list of rabbit holes. Heard something new and want to dive deeper? Did the podcast offer a link to another relevant podcast? Throw your future self a quick note or link and save it for later. You don’t want to risk burnout by accidentally making your 7-minute learning an hour-long deep dive on day one. And let’s face it, even the best habits can take a brief hiatus. If you find a week where it seems impossible to even think about what you want to learn, you have a list already curated to step in and help guide you back on track.
Bonus rewards: By replacing dead time and short lags in the day with productive wins, accomplishing these daily tasks will make your brain release dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward. It gives you a quick pick-me-up or mood boost which acts as a positive reinforcement loop for your actions and encourages you to keep them up. These few minutes of microlearning are coming in strong on ROI.
Acquire and apply learnings
Once you have acquired your new knowledge, the best way to reinforce it in your brain is to share it with someone else. It’s best to do this as soon as possible. Prompting your brain to actively recall the information you just acquired leads to stronger neural connections and a deeper understanding of the material. That’s why we had so many pop quizzes in high school.
Sharing can come in many forms:
- Summarize and share what you have just learned through an internal Teams or Slack post.
- Share a post on your social channels or engage in a group discussion on a related topic.
- Initiate or integrate into a conversation with a peer. In fact, you can engage a work buddy to select the same or similar topics and finish your week with a rapid-fire exchange of “Yes and…” to build on each other’s findings.
- Pop quiz, hotshot! Take short assessment quizzes or find quizzlets online. Perhaps this industry topic is being taught on college campuses and in masterclasses. If you can’t find a quizzlet, use your favorite AI platform to create one for you.
- Confirm your findings via AI prompts. Ask yourself the question first. For example, “What is the main distinction between ROI and ROAS?” and then ask ChatGPT or Perplexity the same question.
Bonus rewards: Quickly adapting the knowledge to fit your needs will give you mastery over the concepts. You’ll be seen as a thought leader within your organization, and you’ll deepen respect and trust with your colleagues, stakeholders and industry peers.
No matter how hectic your day looks, making time for microlearning will lead to macro benefits. These very small, very focused sessions have big rewards for your productivity, your brain and your career.
Ready to start? Pick one of these strategies and commit to a microlearning habit this week! (Hint- you’ve just read your first article, so you have one session under your belt already!)
We embrace continued learning. Keep growing by learning how to embrace your learning style and fuel career success.
