I have a goal of learning something new each day. Why have such a goal?
While learning can be fun, it is often painful or difficult. Learning hard things can be frustrating because we may feel we lack the talent or know how needed to actually learn the thing. Learning a new language or to play a musical instrument can take years of practice. And yet many of us take these challenges on. Why?
There are obviously many reasons people choose to spend their energy on learning new things. It could be they have to in order to progress through school or pass a certification. Or they may need to learn the new skill for a job or thing they want to do. There's also learning for it's own sake.
I think a lot of people who have a hard time learning or just have had a bad experience in school are very happy to forget about learning new things in any kind of formal setting. Unless, of course, they are interested in them in a way that compels them off the couch and away from their phones. I think that all people actually are lifelong learners, even if they aren't pushing themselves into harder subjects, simply by being alive. The Universe is a teacher by nature.
But for the people who think about learning in a planned way, why? I think these people are the ones who enjoy learning for its own sake, and so they get curious about what they want to tackle. We don't have the time and suitability to learn just anything, so we must choose wisely. And many things we learn are progressions built on existing skills.
There are also people who learn things from a sort of ambition. It could be social signaling or the motivation to learn in order to be able to gain something from it. I think both intrinsic and extrinsic motivated learning, while different according to aims, can be beautiful and rewarding.
But I also think that learning for its own sake can have a bit more open exploration to it. We don't know where it is going to lead, and we don't need it to do anything for us in particular. Although, maybe in the end there is no real learning for its own sake. We just think juggling will get us laid or getting good at Wordle will give us a healthy mind, the kind that lives well longer.