Imagine that you could create your own graduate level course to complete on your own timetable and for little or no financial investment. You can. Today, anyone can take the equivalent of a graduate level course by reading and studying books or taking online courses through Apple’s iTunes U or other free website resources. Even select colleges and universities offer complimentary courses for curious minds. With this approach, of course, you won’t have the tests, papers, theses or dissertations to complete yet the education is all there.

Let’s say you have been promoted into a management position within your organization and you want to learn more about leadership. Decide how much time you will dedicate each week to reading and studying. For now, we’ll say ten hours. At the end of one year, you will have invested more than 500 hours and educated yourself in a deeply focused way on the topic of leadership. When those studies are complete, if you like, you can choose a new educational topic theme, say, human performance. Each year, you could receive a new “degree” in a new topic area from the Graduate School of the Mind. To learn, retain information and grow, you must put what you learn into practice.

When people begin asking you questions like, “How do you know so much about leadership?,” you will answer with confidence, “I am very interested in the topic of leadership and have studied it extensively.” So the next time your organization is looking for someone with top leadership skills, who do you think they just might turn to? Think of the exciting topics you could explore and master if you just remained focused.