The busy lifestyles many people live result in a lack of time for self-reflection and growth. Working on personal growth is a powerful habit you can acquire that can massively boost your productivity at work. It will also give you skills that impact your wider life.

Tech can greatly help you improve yourself as a person if you know the right resources to use. Here’s a guide to how to use technology to work on personal development.

1. Schedule a Personal Growth Session Every Week

Setting a dedicated time of the week to work on personal growth will help you commit to your habit regularly and avoid skipping sessions. Choose a time of day when you know you won’t be disturbed and can find a quiet environment. This will help you get the most out of this valuable time to develop your skills and discover new ways to grow.

One of the best ways to use this is using a calendar app for time management. These apps will let you schedule a block of time during the week for your personal growth session. Some apps, like Google Calendar, enable you to repeat events, so you don’t have to remember your session’s time slot every week. To set this up, create a new event, press the small circular arrow tab labeled Does not repeat, then choose an option for how often the event should repeat.

Download: Google Calendar for Android | iOS (Free)

2. Improve Yourself Using Online Resources

Now that you’ve set up a time to work on personal growth, you may be wondering where you’re going to find information and learn. Luckily, there’s a large range of online resources to aid your personal development.

Udemy offers some insightful courses on personal development. On this platform, you’ll find courses about leadership, communication skills, and methods to boost productivity at work. You can filter courses by their rating to ensure you’re getting top-quality advice and not wasting your money. Every instructor also has a dedicated page with an About Me section where you can view their qualifications.

YouTube is also home to some powerful lectures and videos on personal growth. TED talks are a prime example of this, which offer public talks given by some of the world’s most influential people. You’ll also find a range of other good YouTube channels for self-improvement to maximize your personal growth.

3. Download a Note-Taking App to Record Your Knowledge

As you’re probably aware, mindlessly watching a video is not a useful method of getting information into your brain. Writing things down is an effective way to help you better learn and comprehend the information you consume.

Many note-taking apps can help you create a knowledge base of the information you’ve learned. Notion and Obsidian are two great options that will set you up for the next step. One of the key features of these apps is the ability to create bidirectional links. You can easily link two or more ideas in Notion. Obsidian allows for the same, which will help you connect the dots as you learn new concepts.

4. Learn and Develop a Personal Knowledge Management System

Personal Knowledge Management (or PKM) is a group of methods to help you organize and store your knowledge, so you can boost your learning rate. This tool is used by many top professionals, including researchers, engineers, and project managers, so it’s worth considering the potential this holds if you use it for your personal growth.

The Zettlekatsen Method is one powerful PKM system to organize your knowledge. The system relies on a unique labeling system that helps you expand ideas. This provides you with a clear view of topics and subtopics organized in a tree hierarchy. Roam is an app that’s built around the Zettlekatsen Method, transforming its origins using note cards into a digital space.

Building a Second Brain is another PKM system popularized by YouTuber and author Tiago Forte. This system uses a unique method of writing down the captivating thoughts and ideas you discover throughout the day. This method will help you emphasize your personal growth and insights. You won't need to remember any ideas—you can rely on your "second brain" to access the inspiring thoughts and discoveries you come across.

5. Journal About How You Can Apply Personal Growth Concepts to Your Life

For notes about personal growth, it’s important not just to write down hard facts as you would in a college lecture. Writing down how you can apply the concepts you’ve learned to your work and personal life is equally important.

Keeping a digital journal is one method to write down these reflective notes. Day One Journal: Private Diary is a simple and effective journaling app for creating and reviewing entries. The app’s minimalist interface reduces distractions to help you focus only on the words you write. You can attach files too, which is useful for capturing ideas you may have heard from a podcast or snippets from a digital book.

Journaling how you can apply what you’ve learned will give your personal growth sessions reasoning and a greater purpose. You won’t be just learning information for the sake of gaining knowledge—you’ll become a better person in real life using this strategy.

Download: Day One Journal: Private Diary for Android | iOS (Free, premium version available)

6. Stay Committed to Your Personal Development Goals Using an App

If you commit to personal development, your productivity and rate of growth will accelerate faster than you’d imagine. For you to succeed, consistency is key. That’s why a habit-tracking app is important to prioritize your personal development if you want to grow as a person.

Reach it: Goals, Habit Tracker is a habit and goals-based app that can help you stay committed to working on yourself. You can easily create a habit in the Habits tab by pressing the plus (+) icon. One useful feature is that you can link habits to goals. There’s a range of templates to choose from when creating a goal, including a whole section dedicated to self-development.

Download: Reach it: Goals, Habit Tracker for Android (Free, premium version available)

Achieve Your Goals by Working on Yourself

In today’s digital era, it’s almost impossible not to find ways to grow as a person. But with an overload of online resources available, knowing how you’re going to approach your personal growth goals can be a challenge.

Following this process will give you the right tools and resources to not only find credible information, but use it in a way to achieve your best goals in your work and personal life.