I am looking for a self-improvement alternative to doom scrolling social media in my downtime. In the past, I have done mostly career oriented courses (tech/computer science), but I'm tired of those, want to branch out.
Has anyone taken a MOOC class, not necessarily for any specific objectibe, that was especially good?
Stanford and Harvard both have all sorts of interesting lecture series online! Harvard has stuff like urban design, religious history, art history, the relationship between cooking and physics, biology, Chinese history and much more!
I’m basically in the same boat as OP but this reminded me that I love learning languages.
Mandarin is a huge challenge but after programming all day, it’s actually incredible the way my brain feels after practicing with a tutor for an hour. Originally I meant to get away from the computer but ended up using an online service.
Have you thought of trying to pick up another language? Started learning Spanish 4 years ago and now I can go on vacation and have conversations with locals. Also, I'm more interested in their local history because I can read it/listen to it in Spanish and practice the language at the same time.
Learn an instrument! An hour of noodling a day will get you to pretty good quite quickly. An hour of real, hard practice, doing etudes, drills, and scales will make you a virtuoso one day.
Oxford Continuing Education has a lot of interesting courses. I did one in Inequality & Labour Markets to give me a taster of what a masters would be like, and if I was able to consistently devote time to studying each week.