You can learn them all within less than a year
Back in October 2017, on a hot and humid Cambodian evening, I decided: “That’s it! It’s time I diversify my skill set and learn more things faster!” I was walking back and forth in my room like a mad man. I had a deep desire to figure out how I could become more skilled.
I was 30 years old at the time. I felt that, even though I had already accomplished more than other people, it still wasn’t enough. As a senior software engineer, I felt like there wasn’t much more to engineering than I already knew. In a way, I felt like my learning had stagnated — a feeling I’ve always dreaded.
After all, don’t we all thrive when we learn new things?
I took my laptop and went downstairs into the coworking space. I started researching ways to learn skills. At that point, like most people, I thought it took up to 10,000 hours to become good in a skill. You can imagine my relief when I came across Josh Koshman’s TED talk showing how, with only 20 hours of practice, you can become pretty good in many skills.
I looked at my schedule and realized I didn’t need to work 12 hours a day like I was doing then. I decided to cut 2 hours from my work schedule and focus on my self-improvement instead. I started working out for 30 minutes every morning and kept the rest of the time for skill learning.
But learning one skill for the month wasn’t enough for me. There was, after all, over 80 skills I wanted to learn! I decided to learn three, spending 30 minutes every morning on each.
Day 8 Drawing. Creature based on Soul Reaper
For the first three, there’s one I chose which I always thought I could never do — drawing. As a logical person, I had a mental block preventing me from doing most creative tasks. Every time I tried, I failed. But not this time. I would not allow it. I knew I could do it if I deliberately practiced daily.
I was right. Eight days after, I looked at my drawing and was amazed. It wasn’t that exceptional, but it was something I drew, and it was much better than anything else I had done in the past.
I then continued for the rest of the month and got a lot better than I had anticipated. I had shattered my limiting beliefs. I stopped saying “I can’t…”. I started wondering: “What if there are other things I can do which I thought I could never do before?”
So I embarked on this journey of learning three new skills every month. This completely transformed me. I gained confidence. I learned a lot faster. I started connecting with people like I never had before. I became a writer and photographer. People now call me a polymath.
This has been a fantastic journey, to say the least. Now, over two years later, I want to help you get that same transformation. I’ve learned close to 70 skills, but not all of them are created equal!
In this article, I want to show you the seven most important skills that changed my life, and how I would recommend learning them. All seven are critical. I call them the “prime” skills. My suggestion is to learn one a month, in no particular order.
Are you ready?
*List ordered alphabetically
AdaptabilityCharismaForming Good HabitsLearning to LearnStorytellingTime ManagementWritingAdaptability
Ever since I’ve been a nomad, I’ve been moving to a new location every 3–6 months. I lived in new environments and was exposed to different types of people. If I wanted to thrive in new environments, I had to constantly adapt. It was an amazing experience!
How can it change your life?
For starters, it future-proofs you. The more adaptable you become, the less likely you’ll come to a scenario when you’re helpless about your situation, no matter the change. With Artificial Intelligence and Biotechnologies making leaps, it’s only a matter of time before our job as we know it will be altered or completely irrelevant.
The more adaptable you are, the less negative stress you’ll feel. As you manage to adapt to different situations, you get used to the uncomfortable. You lose your fear of the unknown and try things you never thought you could do before.
How can you learn it?
Here are a few points to get you started:
Stop yourself from using negative words.
In conversions, ask more questions than others (and truly listen).
Set aside time to do important but non-urgent tasks.
Visit locations you’ve never been to before.
Spend time with people who see the world from a different lens.
Take action on something that puts you out of your comfort zone at least once a week.
For more information on each of these points, please read:
Charisma
When people think about charisma, they don’t think about it as a skill they can learn. That’s a mistake. Charisma is something I’ve deliberately built over the course of a month and it has changed my life in positive ways.
How can it change your life?
A highly charismatic person has a positive influence on other people. They get people to collaborate with them in win-win situations. They are selfless and trustworthy. Others are attracted to them and want to work with them.
As I worked on my charisma, I realized more people started saying “yes” to me. When asking for deals and discounts, I started getting better deals than I even asked for. People started asking me “how can I help?” all the time.
How can you learn it?
There’s a lot involved in charisma when you view it from a “skill” angle. I’ve divided it in into three categories:
Communication
This is the biggest one of the three. Here’s a list of everything you should think about to improve your charisma when it comes to communication:
Listen more than you talk.
Ask questions more than you offer advice.
Don’t practice selective hearing.
Give your full attention; put your phone away.
Praise others more frequently.
Don’t gossip about others.
Learn to read other people’s emotions and react accordingly.
Share stories and anecdotes. Become a better storyteller.
Ask rhetorical questions.
Use words that people can relate to.
Don’t think about what you’re going to respond while the other is talking.
Wait 2 seconds before responding.
Mindset
Be a giver: give before receiving.
Don’t act self-important.
Limit “have-to”s. Take responsibility.
Be humble. Admit your own failings.
Be positive and upbeat.
Hum songs that make you happy.
Make others laugh and brighten their day.
Make others perceive that you are able to make the world move around you.
Body
Smile more.
Maintain eye contact.
Respond non-verbality. Show more facial expressions.
Be physically comfortable. Own your style.
Avoid fidgeting.
Power pose.
Do you see now how “charisma” is a skill? There are many ways you can get better at it. A very simple habit I started doing is smiling on the way to work. When I find myself not smiling, I simply resume. I don’t have a large smile when walking to work, but a subtle one that makes it so when other pedestrians walk by me, they think: “he looks happy”.
Have you noticed how people commuting look miserable? Don’t be like that. When you see a charismatic person on your way to work, you’ll know simply by looking at their facial expressions and posture. Try analyzing others more closely on your way to work or at the grocery store. It’s eye-opening!
Forming Good Habits
I didn’t realize the power of habits until I accidentally built a set of good ones. Nowadays, as much as I can, I try to turn every positive thing I can into a habit and stay as far away as I can from bad habits. It’s not always easy, but it’s always worth it!
How can it change your life?
Most of us know the power of habits. Especially bad ones. As much as you try, it’s hard to get rid of a bad habit. It works for a few days, then all of a sudden you’re back to square one, still doing your bad habit. How much better your life would be without it?
Similarly, you’ve tried to integrate new things into your routine, like meditation and going to the gym. It works for a short while and then it falls through.
Your habits define who you are. Are you a smoker? Are you an active person. Want to be someone else? Change your habits!
How can you learn it?
There are tons of resources out there to learn to form habits. The following are my 3 favourite methods:
Track the doing or non-doing of your habits
This is a habit in itself. It’s so simple that you can get started today! Write down somewhere which habits you’re supposed to do and which ones you’re not supposed to do. Every day, put a checkmark for things you’ve done right.
If you don’t track it, it’s much easier to allow yourself not to do something you should do and do things you shouldn’t do. For extra accountability, share it with other people.
Know your why
Answer this: “Why do you do what you do?”
This sounds simple on the surface, but dig deeper. Ask yourself 5–7 layers of “why”. Use fantastic tools like the Wheel of Life and Ikigai to help you reflect.
Shape your environment
You might not realize it, but your environment is the most powerful factor in your success or failure in keeping your habits.
In a mastermind group I’m part of, a student mentioned he can’t stop himself from scrolling on his phone for an hour or two before bed, even if he knows it’s not good for him. He finishes school late and starts early. I told him to leave his phone at school. “But what about my alarm clock?”, he said. “Buy a cheap one from Dollorama.”, I told him.
By changing his environment in this way, it’s impossible for him to do the things he knows he shouldn’t be doing but can’t control himself.
I hide my Nintendo Switch in my mailbox because I’m addicted to video games. It works.
When you can’t control yourself, let your environment control you.
Learning to Learn
Learning to learn is the skill I’ve practiced the most. Since October 2017, I’ve been learning 3 new skills a month on average. Close to 70 skills later, I’ve learned many different ways to learn better. I’ll share some of my best tips here.
How can it change your life?
Learning to learn changed my life in pretty much every way, the most important being increased confidence. I drastically accelerated the speed at which I learn new things. That has led me to learn things I never thought I could learn, like drawing, meditating, and salsa dancing.
I’m no longer afraid to try new, uncomfortable things. I now thrive in situations where everything is new or unknown to me. I’ve essentially become fearless and gained high confidence.
How can you learn it?
This is a very broad topic and I’ll only give some of the highlights in this article. I strongly encourage you to check out my eBooks and the Learning How to Learn course, by Barbara Oakley.
Ask yourself these questions and have clear answers for each:
Who is your average of the five people you spend the most time with?
Who or what keeps you accountable?
Where do you practice?
When do you practice?
How do you measure your progress?
What is your ultimate end goal?
How much did you spend learning your new skills?
How much research did you do beforehand?
What is your morning and evening routine like?
Who is learning alongside you?
For more formation, please read this:
10 Questions to Ask Yourself to Guarantee Success in Learning New Skills
8 steps to learn anything:
Just do it
Shatter your limiting beliefs
Learn to learn
Choose the right skills to learn
Plan your learning process
Be smart in your practice
Measure your progress
Collect honest and constructive feedback
For more information, please read this:
Your Comprehensive Step-by-Step Guide On How To Learn Any Skill
Relevant subskills:
Improving your memory (Check out Anthony Metivier)
Improving your sleep hygiene (Check out Nick Wignall)
Making SkillUp Trees
Applying the Spaced Repetition principles
Storytelling
When you listen to world leaders in most disciplines, you’ll notice they’re all good storytellers. With that in mind, I set out to become better at it in December 2017. I would never have guessed that it would have been so life-changing.
How can it change your life?
Storytelling is another skill that will boost your confidence. This isn’t so surprising, but when you’re a shy guy like I was, the results are extremely visible.
It also helps you with your vocabulary, makes you more interesting, and helps you build influence. The better I got at it, the more I realized how people started truly listening to me and agreed to help me on different projects.
How can you learn it?
There are four main ways to tell a story — through text, audio, video, and in person. While they share some of the same principles, they each have their own on top of it. You can be good in all of them, but you tend to be “inherently” better at some of them. For me, I seem to be better at telling stories in text and in person.
Identify patterns
Before we jump into the general principles, think about people you met or know who are good at storytelling.
What do they have in common?
How do they behave?
What kinds of stories do they tell?
How do they tell the story?
What is their body language?
The more you visualize this on your own, the easier it will be to grasp these general principles:
Do and observe. If you don’t do anything, you have no story to tell. A routine is not a story. Try new things!
Write and visualize. Write it down before telling it. Write the main events, then add the details. Make the story as visually appealing as possible.
Tell and Refine. You won’t get it right the first time. Notice reactions. Keep the parts with positive reactions, remove the parts with negative reactions.
When you hear someone tell a story and it feels so perfect, chances are it’s not the first time they tell it. I can’t count how many times I’ve told my story about skill learning or my nomadic journey across the globe. I could tell it in my sleep!
7 steps to a good story
A character…
Has a problem…
And meets a Guide…
Who gives them a plan…
And calls them to action…
That helps them avoid failure…
And ends in success.
This “blueprint” comes from the awesome book “Building a Storybrand”, by Donald Miller. It’s a business book, but the principles apply to any story you want to tell.
The key is always the transformation part. People relate to positive change. When telling stories, never forget the transformational piece!
In my story from the intro, here’s what the story looks like in a nutshell:
I…
Felt like my learning had stagnated…
Then I came across Josh Koffman’s TED Talk…
He showed me that it was possible to learn hard skills in less than 20 hours…
I started learning 3 new skills every month…
By carefully using top learning principles…
I managed to learn close to 70 skills in 2 years.
See the transformation?
Time Management
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with time. It is the one resource no one can ever get back, or get more of. Because of that, it’s the most valuable resource I can think of.
How can it change your life?
To me, this is obvious. With good time management, you get to do more of what matters to you. And because everything we do moves through time, any life improvement happens at the expense of time.
Basically, good time management helps you in any way you want it to.
How can you learn it?
The most important thing about time management is perfectly summarized here:
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all” — Peter Drucker
So, the first step is truly knowing why you do the things you do. Can you answer this about the things you do in your life:
Why do you do what you do?
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Ask yourself 5–7 layers of “why” and you’ll see how hard-but-essential it is. To help you answer it, you can use the Wheel of Life and Ikigai. Once you know your why, it’s time to place activities on the Eisenhower Matrix. I like to do that exercise during a Think Day.
Just doing the above should more than double your productivity if this is the first time you do it. When ready, investigate the general principles:
Don’t try to change things you can’t change (Stoicism)
Again, good time management is not about doing more, it’s about doing less of the non-important stuff and more of the important stuff.
My favourite tools:
Writing
Becoming a writer was an accident for me. I never meant to be considered a writer. Back in January 2018, I set out to write one article a day for a month. Little did I know I’d still be writing two years later!
How can it change your life?
For me, there are two aspects to writing: writing for others and writing for yourself. Each helps you in different ways.
Learning to journal (writing for yourself) helps you verbalize your thinking. It helps you get clarity on your thoughts, but also to think deeper. There’s only so much you can keep in your short-term memory, so when you put it on paper, you get to keep your thoughts and ideas for longer.
Learning to write for others (blogging, author) helps you learn new vocabulary and tell better stories. It also helps you become more selfless. And if you write publicly about what you set out to do, it’s a fantastic tool to keep you accountable.
How can you learn it?
For both journaling and writing publicly, set a strict time when you’ll write every day. This is key. It doesn’t matter what you write, just that you do write. If it helps, set a minimum number of words you want to write daily.
Journaling
There are so many ways you can journal. My approach is to just write whatever comes to mind. Sometimes it’s about:
repeating things I learned during the day;
a reflection of the ups and downs for the day;
a bullet list of the highlights for the day;
being grateful for others;
a to-do list;
a grocery list;
a letter to myself or to someone else;
etc.
I like that approach. But if it helps you to have more structure, try any of the above for some time and see what sticks for you.
A while back, I also used Benjamin Hardy, PhD’s Journal Mastery Course (I’m not an affiliate). It’s inexpensive and he explains the process and benefits in detail.
Writing publicly
Here are a few things preventing people from doing it:
They overthink what they’re going to be writing about.
They’re afraid that people will judge their content negatively.
They have imposter syndrome, thinking they know nothing.
They think it doesn’t matter and no one will care for what they write.
If any of the above apply to you, you have to change that mindset. That negativity will rarely help you with learning anything new.
When I started writing, I ended up writing about 23 topics. That was very broad, but it gave me an idea of what I was good at, what I wanted to get better at, and what I liked writing about. I never had a plan of what I’d write. I just wrote. This still applies today.
Unless what you write is unethical, people will not negatively judge your content in your first few articles. They might when you start getting traction and they’re jealous of your success. When that happens, focus on the people who react positively to your content.
Imposter Syndrome in the online world is almost irrelevant. There’s 100 percent chance someone else is better than you on what you write about. This means the reverse is also true. There’s 100 percent chance that you are better than someone else. Write for these people and they’ll be grateful for your knowledge.
If you write for platforms catered to readers (like Medium.com), people will read you. There’s always a bit of marketing involved, but people will read you, and that’s your opportunity to change someone else’s life. In my mind, there’s no better feeling.
If you want to learn to write better, forget the hacks, write more and eliminate the limiting beliefs above.
Conclusion
These 7 prime skills completely changed my life:
AdaptabilityCharismaForming Good HabitsLearning to LearnStorytellingTime ManagementWritingWith the knowledge you got from this article, you’re equipped to take action on them and learn them. My suggestion is to learn one per month. Start with the one you’re most interested in. Because they’re all prime skills, it doesn’t matter in which order you do it to have a positive effect on your life.
“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” — Henry Ford
Start with the mindset that you can do this because truthfully, you can. The limits you think you have, you created them yourself based on past experiences. Learning these primes skills will help you shatter these limiting beliefs. So, my friend, it’s time to get to action!
You can do this!
If you want to be prepared for a better tomorrow, then SkillUp! Check out SkillUp Academy!