A Professor's Honest Take on 2 Years of Daily Microlearning

*Disclosure: This story was created in partnership with Nibble. The author is a real Nibble user who received a free gift in exchange for sharing their honest experience. Views are their own; individual results vary.

I'm an academic. My days run full: teaching, supervising, meetings from morning to late afternoon. A couple of years ago, the gaps between those meetings were filling up the same way they fill up for most people with a phone. 

Social media, mostly. People are trying to sell me something or make me feel guilty about what I'm supposedly doing wrong. It was the default, and I'd stopped questioning it.

I started using Nibble about two years ago. At first, I described it as a replacement for doomscrolling. That's still accurate, but the cleaner version took longer to find. What changed my thinking was recognizing that I wasn't short on time so much as I was spending it in ways that weren't giving much back.

That's the framing that made sense then, and it still does now.

Before Nibble, I explored topics outside my field through books, articles, and podcasts. Those formats still have value, but they usually require more time and commitment. When I have a few minutes between meetings, starting a book isn't realistic. The gap is too short. So the default became the phone, and the phone meant social media.

In small gaps between meetings, I would much rather do a Nibble session than be bombarded on social media by people trying to sell me something or make me feel guilty about what I'm supposedly doing wrong. Nibble gives those short breaks a much more positive quality.

The difference comes down to resistance. Nibble's sessions are bite-sized and easy to start, so there's little resistance to using it when I have a few minutes. That matters more than it sounds. 

With a book or a podcast, there's activation energy required, even when the topic is interesting. You have to pick up the context and decide whether five minutes is long enough to bother starting. The calculation usually doesn't work out. With Nibble, the gap is enough.

"I usually use Nibble during my quiet time in the morning and again at night. It gives me something meaningful and calming to do instead of doomscrolling."

That place in my routine has remained fairly consistent over the past two years. The morning and night slots are anchors. Between-meeting sessions happen on top of that.

The consistency is probably what makes it stick. Two years is a long time to maintain any daily habit, and for most of that time, the morning slot has been the same. No decision needed about whether to do it. It's just part of the morning.

I use Nibble more often now than when I started. The new design makes it easier to track what I've completed and see what's lined up next. Earlier, the experience felt a little more chaotic to me. That structure helps with momentum, especially on days when I don't have a strong preference about what to go into next.

I'm not limited to topics related to my field. In fact, I enjoy exploring something different, like gardening, even though I'll most likely never actually garden. It's relaxing to learn without being tested or having to turn that knowledge into a work requirement. I can just follow my curiosity.

That kind of freedom is hard to find in academic life. Most of the learning I do is tied to something: a course or a question that feeds into something else. 

Nibble sits outside that loop. When I open a lesson on art or food or something I wouldn't have sought out otherwise, there's no deliverable at the end of it. The lesson ends, I move on, and I carry whatever I found interesting.

The variety matters too. There's no pressure to go deep on any one subject, no track I'm expected to follow through to the end. Some sessions connect to things I'm already thinking about. Most don't, and those are often the ones that stay the longest, because nothing was expected of them.

I enjoyed the philosophy lessons, especially those exploring essence versus existence. Those ideas stayed with me and led to some interesting conversations. That's my best-case outcome from any session: not developing expertise, but finding a question that keeps coming back.

AI connects to that same thread. Many students and junior researchers feel discouraged because they fear that AI may eventually take their jobs. That naturally connects to philosophy: What makes the human contribution valuable? 

This question now comes up in lessons, meetings, and many conversations in between. I didn't go looking for that connection. It came from following my curiosity into a topic I didn't expect to think much about.

The crossover between Nibble and my actual work wasn't something I planned. One thing I learned is that different people may experience different kinds of resistance to new knowledge. 

When I'm teaching or supervising, I invite people to explore that resistance together rather than pushing past it. It has led to some interesting conversations and experiences.

That framing didn't come from a professional development course. It came from following curiosity without any professional agenda behind it. The lesson landed, I think, because I had no stake in it. No project that needed it, no outcome to produce. I could just sit with the idea.

"I still make time for Nibble on stressful days. I see it as a treat to myself. It is untouched, uninterrupted quality time when I can feed my curiosity for its own sake." 

No emails, no meetings, and no reports. On stressful days, that makes it even more valuable. That matters in academic life specifically. Most of what I do for work feeds into something someone else is waiting for. The session exists outside that cycle. No colleagues waiting on it, no students expecting a takeaway.

That separation matters. Once I treat it as a work task, it stops being what it is. The value is that it isn't connected to any output. What happens in those sessions belongs entirely to that time.

Two years in, the slot is the same: morning quiet, night wind-down, and whatever gaps open up during the day. What's changed is that I look forward to it differently now. It started as something I was trying. It's become something I protect.

When a colleague asks whether it's worth it, my answer is that it isn't about adding one more app to your day. 

It's about looking at what already drains your time, asking what those habits actually give you, and considering whether you could replace some of that drainage with something more fulfilling. For me, Nibble does that.

Two years of doing it every day and still wanting to. That's the most concrete thing I can say.

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Academics, teachers, and any professional who fills their spare minutes with whatever happens to be on their phone: this case study is for you.

This professor has used Nibble daily for two years. Philosophy questions from the app began to surface in classroom conversations about AI and human contribution. Short gaps between meetings that used to mean reflexive scrolling now, in the professor's own words, have a much more positive quality. 

And on the hardest days, the session still happens, because it's the one block of time that doesn't belong to any output.

Looking for more Nibble user stories? Then check out these articles:

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• I'm a Busy Dad of Two, but I Start My Day with the Nibble App
• I Used to Scroll Through Every Airport and Work Break. The Nibble App Changed What I Reach For

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