The best tech initiatives this year have served as an aid, helping enhance our lives rather than distracting us from them. We’ve seen VR that helps the visually impaired see, a new form of renewable energy harnessing the ocean’s waves, incredible lifelike prosthetics.

These all serve as a welcome contrast to smartphone addiction. It’s a modern cliché that we’re more connected than ever, and yet, we feel increasingly isolated. But it rings true.

So we’re happy to say that Circles

“Instead of going it alone, make this the year you try a self-directed learning group like Circles.”

Written by Verne Harnish, one of Circles’ advisors and founder of the Entrepreneur’s Organization, the piece focuses on initiatives that will help grow a business. As Verne puts it, “your business and career will benefit if you strategically pursue the smartest of today’s ideas”.

Here’s the Circles mention in full:

“Most of us absorb far more when seated in a circle of peers who are studying the same thing than from the rows of a traditional classroom or while poring over an online course on our laptops. Instead of going it alone, make this the year you try a self-directed learning group like Circles (at circl.es). It brings together small gatherings of people who want to learn the same thing in private videochat rooms—taking the best features of book clubs into the digital era.”

If you want to find out more about joining Circles, you can read more here. Or apply to join. We learn better in Circles than in rows.