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I’ve recently taken a break from coding after my work and started to wonder what other things I could do, what other things I enjoy doing as well, and especially what could help me improve my creativity, as I started to get hooked up in this monotonous way of living and wanted to take up a break from all the additional work. And also, I started retrospecting and thinking about what I’ve done, what I’ve achieved, and what I want to do next.
So, after analyzing what helped me reach the point I’m at now, I noticed there were 3 main things that I either got to learn so far, or I am in the process of learning that I’ve either noticed have been helping me tremendously, or have been helping others I know or heard about tremendously; as such, I decided to make a list of these 3 main things that you can learn that will most likely help you in all areas of your life.
1. How to talk to people / How to be charismatic
This is something extremely hard to get the handle of, especially since you’ll be prone to make countless mistakes, to learn how to better socialize you’ll have to build up experience by talking with a lot of people, learning how to start a conversation, and having to pay attention to what people say, how people feel, and what people want.
This is not something you can just learn about from books or courses, or anywhere else online, as you would normally do with other subjects; you’ll need to get out there in the world and start talking with people, there’s no better way to get around it.
One of the things I did to improve myself in this area was to strike up conversations with random people in the street or in the office, or basically wherever and whenever I had the chance to do so. It was something that helped me a lot, as it allowed me to become more creative when picking up subjects for conversations; it allowed me to be prepared to discuss all kinds of subjects, and helped me learn how to deal with different kinds of people; basically, it helped me become more dynamic and outgoing.
It’s also important to note that I’m an introvert myself, so doing so was something I had to step out of my comfort zone to do. But it’s something I will never regret, as it allowed me to meet a lot of new and interesting people, which I wouldn’t have otherwise met.
One other thing that is really important is that this whole process taught me to be proactive, and how important having this quality would be. It allowed me to speak up whenever I wanted something, or whenever I was taking part in something I didn’t like or I had something to say about anything.
It’s also a great opportunity to see whether you would make up for a good leader or not, as you can’t really do that without being proactive as well. After all, someone has to take charge of something.
Overall, learning how to talk with people or to be charismatic is an ability that will come in handy regardless of age, the domain of activity, or the job you have, and is amongst the abilities I call ‘ageless abilities’.
Just to note, all of the skills in this list are ‘ageless’, and I’ll mention at the end what I mean by that.
2. How to learn
Yes, you’ve read that right; learning how to learn is something extremely important if you want to excel at anything. Some of you might’ve done this in school & some of you possibly didn't; even though I also did during school, it wasn’t really for school.
Since I started learning web development at 17, I tried to maximize my potential and my learning agility by any means possible, and I like to hope I did, but I’ll never know if there was any other way to increase this ability even further.
So, just to give out some insight into things I’ve done to improve myself in this area, although can’t promise it will work for you, the list would go something like this:
- Trying out and coding / doing everything I’ve seen in every tutorial
- Taking notes for concept explanations, and writing down the concept as I remembered it
- Trying to do and research anything I had the slightest curiosity about instead of just ignoring minor stuff
- Reading aloud notes I’ve taken and explaining to myself concepts & algorithms (Earlier on)
- Making diagrams of how some stuff works
- Trying to find ways to actually enjoy the process of learning itself, no matter what I’m learning
I believe it’s very helpful, maybe even essential to learn how to learn as it’s something you will only rarely have to go back to after you’ve done it once, and it will boost your capacity from then on by a huge margin.
It’s also a skill that’s going to help you develop yourself much faster and probably even better.
And I’m not meaning to brag at all, but I believe that by doing so I became a Software Engineer in six months — a year (It’s still a never-ending journey, but I always liked mentioning that from time to time, makes me feel better knowing all the hard work has paid off).
3. How to set your finances up
I know that this might be a sensitive subject for some, but I believe that at least getting some savings up and some investments up would save you up a lot of trouble. And the sad truth is that many people failed to do so.
I am by no means an expert when it comes to finances, and I’m simply inputting my opinion on this topic using the knowledge and experiences I have been through.
Unfortunately, close to nothing about money is taught in school, so your best bet of learning how to manage your finances would be just learning on your own.
Fortunately, there are so many videos and courses on the subject, so anyone who wants to do better when it comes to finances can do so on his/her own. I will also link some channels that helped me gain financial literacy down below, so maybe those will help you as well:
There might also be some other great YouTube channels out there, but these 2 are the ones that came out on the first thought and are some channels I really enjoy watching videos from, so let me know if they helped you as well.
There are some great books I’ve read on the subject of money and self-improvement, books I will also list here:
- Rich dad, poor dad (Cliche, I know, but that doesn’t make it a lesser book)
- The 100$ Startup
- Building a storybrand
- Thinking, fast and slow
Some of the things here I’ve learned during my period as a freelancer, where I was the one who had to manage my expenses, as I didn’t want to depend on my parents with anything, even though at the moment I was still living with them, as I was still going to high school. But nonetheless, these channels really taught me a lot more than I could learn on my own, not having much interaction with Economics.
All in all, I believe that being able to set up your finances, by saving up some money and investing money is really the key to financial independence, and building up your dreams, no matter what your dreams are; the money is always able to open up some doors you didn’t know could be opened.
Conclusion
Before I finish off, I wanted to mention the ‘ageless abilities’ I brought into the discussion at the beginning of the article. An ageless ability, for me, is an ability that no matter in what era you were to possess it, it would help you out tremendously. Take for example charisma, no matter if you had it today or 2000 years ago, it would still help you as much, unlike abilities like programming, or designing, or any modern skill. Each of the abilities here is ageless, and I consider them extremely important due to this very reason.
Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed this article, and more importantly, I hope it had a positive impact on you, and you will add any, if not, all of them to your repertoire and become a better version of yourself.
Cheers!
Some of my other stories:
My previous stories:
Front to Back. Is it worth it?
What do I think about all of these new JS Frameworks?
If you want to learn more about my journey as a Freelancing Web Developer who started working at 17 be sure to check this story:
My Roadmap of becoming a Web Developer at 17
As well as other articles related to this subject:
- What is a RESTful API?
- What is the MVC Architecture?
- Websites that helped me as a Web Developer
- Why is software testing so important?
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