4 Skills Worth Investing in Now That Will Make You Thank Yourself in Just 1 Year
And how to learn them quickly
Everything that we spent energy and time on is an investment, and thus it is important to choose the right ones.
Today I’d like to share with you 4 skills worth investing in now that will thank you in just 1 year, and these are:
· 1-Communication Skills · 2-Time management · 3-Efficiency centered working · 4-Mindfulness
“If you desire to be great in life and live a life of no regret the number one thing you should do with time is to INVEST TIME.” — Sunday Adelaja
1-Communication Skills
Whether it is within our close circles including friends and family, or within business life, a person who knows how to communicate well is always desired within the social circles.
This is because life is a game of collaboration, and thus it is essential to improve our communication skills. To achieve that we can start by realizing that communicating is only a transaction of information. All of us want to be understood, and so the ability to communicate well is often measured by the measure of being understood.
Therefore using empathy, listening well, and being open to understanding instead of judging can give us a great advantage in improving this skill.
“Communication works for those who work at it.”
— John Powell
2-Time management
Time management may be one of the most important concepts in one’s life because as it is often said, time is our only asset.
Using one’s time wisely can help one lead a better life, with less stress and more fulfillment, and thus learning how to manage one’s time can improve one’s quality of life.
To do that, we can start by discovering which style of planning works for us, and using it to manage our time wisely.
There are two styles of planning, and these are scheduling, and making to-do lists.
The first one, scheduling, is centered more around specific times set beforehand, and it is more of a strict planning technique. For example, you can set the time you are going to start working on something as 9:30 am and then set an estimated finishing time such as 11:00 am, and plan your whole day like this.
When it comes to making a to-do list, it is centered more around the tasks, and what tasks are going to be finished that day. For example, you can write tasks such as; clean your room, finishing that book, etc., and decide when you’ll do them later.
By choosing the planning technique that works for you, you can manage your time wisely, and prevent wasting it.
“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”
— Jim Rohn
3-Efficiency centered working
As an industrial engineering graduate, I’ve been studying efficiency for some time now. But before that, I would think efficiency was a word used only for businesses and manufacturing, but now I can see that the experience of everything in our lives can be enhanced by learning to be efficient.
As a skill, efficiency-centered working has two components: efficiency of time used for producing output, and how it affects you in the long term.
The efficiency of the time is a topic that is often talked about when it comes to efficiency, and it plays an important part in one’s productivity.
Sometimes a work that can be done in 1 hour can take us two days, and waste our time as well as energy. So to be efficient time-wise, it is important to estimate a standard time to finish a task, measure our time of doing the task and compare our results to it.
By doing so we can use this data to improve our performance and fulfill our tasks more productively.
When it comes to the second component, it is how this efficiency affects us in the long term. For example, you can force yourself and write 20 articles a day, but this one day of high productivity can lead to burning out, and result in a decrease in your performance in the following days.
Therefore it is important to balance out these two components and save your time and energy.
“Efficiency is doing better, what is already being done.”
— Peter Drucker
4-Mindfulness
To be mindful is to be in the moment.
But in life, whether it is the traffic, conflicts within relationships, or burning your tongue by taking a sip from that hot tea, there is a lot of distraction. So it is easy to get lost through daily struggles and forget to be in the moment.
But when we are not in the moment, we are either in the past or in the future, and this does not come without consequences. As Lao Tzu says “If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”. That’s why it is important to learn to let go of past and future and practice mindfulness.
To do that, we can start by trying techniques of mindfulness, and today I’d like to share with you my favorite one of all. It is called the 5 senses method, and it can be done by bringing our focus back to our senses. Whether it is what we hear in that moment or smell, it is an easy way to remind ourselves, we exist in the now, and nowhere else.
By doing so, we can avoid feeling pressured, and instead take life in by focusing on the moment.
“Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Final thoughts
In life, the things that we invest time and energy in determining our future, and thus it is essential to choose wisely.
Today we’ve discussed the 4 skills worth investing in now that will thank you in just 1 year, and these were:
1-Communication Skills
2-Time management
3-Efficiency centered working
4-Mindfulness
Thank you for reading.
-E.K.