Boot camps, higher education, YouTube—there are many avenues to acquire skills and grow professionally. But if you’re looking for quick learning lessons to enrich your life right now, follow these nine suggestions from business owners and entrepreneurs.
- Self Awareness
- Greek Philosophy
- Agility
- Micro-optimize Workflows
- Journaling
- Tire Change
- Negotiation Tactics
- Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
- YouTube HotKeys
Self Awareness
Self awareness can benefit you in every sector of your life, from personal relationships to business. While self-awareness is something that can never truly be mastered, just by making the decision to look internally and commit to self study, you’ll have become more self- aware already! It takes less than 10 minutes—it takes only a moment. Meditation can be a powerful tool to develop self-awareness, and just ten minutes per day is enough to make it a part of your regular wellness practice.
Bill Glaser, Outstanding Foods
Greek Philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophers distinguished three types of knowledge: doxa, episteme, and gnosis. By understanding these concepts, we can be a little wiser and understand the world around us better. Doxa is the things you know because someone told you about it, your beliefs, the truths you have accepted from reading or heard opinion. Episteme is what we most often understand as “knowledge” in English. These are the things you know because they are taught, justified, and proven. The episteme is what science should be. Gnosis is a personal experience. This is a conclusion from a specific experienced situation. What form of knowledge do you lean on?
Sergey Petrov-Aradzhioni, Political Analyst and Author
Agility
While agile involves a mindset change, there are different steps you can take now to make necessary business improvements. One simple improvement is incorporating daily meetings with your team to set the intention for the day. This helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page and helps to hold everyone accountable for the work expectations. Besides being more productive, agile also incorporates feedback loops, which can help keep your team growing and developing.
Rronniba Pemberton, Markitors
Micro-optimize Workflows
It is incredible how much time we lose in aggregate when we have to take our hands off of the keyboard and put it on a mouse or trackpad to do a task. I estimate that I save 10 to 15 minutes a day in Gmail by being able to navigate the web application without using a mouse. For instance, you can select all unread emails, mark them as read, and delete or archive them in just a few seconds with the right key sequences. These micro-optimizations add up to hours and hours of time over the course of a couple of years.
Lukas Ruebbelke, Briebug Software
Journaling
By starting a gratitude journal, you can boost your health and overall happiness. Simply take out a journal, write a list of things you are grateful for for the day, and any other things that make you feel joy at the moment. This can be extremely helpful when just starting off the day with a cup of coffee as well as ending the day with a cup of tea!
Kristine Thorndyke, Test Prep Nerds
Tire Change
While the usefulness of the skill might depend on how much you drive or bike, it’s never a bad idea to know how to change a tire. While, at first, daunting, the learning curve isn’t that steep. So much so that you can definitely learn this skill well enough after two to three practice runs. I’d say it’s a pretty good investment of time instead of potentially getting stranded on your next road trip. Happy fixing!
Bart Turczynski, ResumeLab
Negotiation Tactics
A simple skill that will help you in all future negotiations is understanding the dynamics of price. As soon as one party in negotiation states a price, the dynamics work against this person. For example, assume you’re negotiating a price for something at a flea market. If the seller tells you a price, you’ll naturally want a better deal, so you make a counteroffer. This counteroffer is, by definition, lower than his price.
If you are the seller, the moment you say a price, the negotiation is against you. If you are asked to make an offer, the seller will say the offer is too low and will try to get a better price. The result is as simple as it is powerful: whoever says a number first is likely going to lose.
Edward Briggs, Home Reviews
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
This is a quick and easy way to release anxiety and emotional trauma. It can be learned in under a minute and works like a charm. The emotional freedom technique (EFT) is an alternative treatment for physical pain and emotional distress. It’s also referred to as tapping or psychological acupressure.
Dawn Del Russo, TV Lifestyle Expert
YouTube HotKeys
If you want to skip through a video on YouTube, you can without using a mouse or your computer keyboard’s arrow keys. Just press any of the number keys (not from the number-pad but the top row under the function keys). Press keys 0 to 9 to skip through small or large sections of the video you don’t want to watch. For example, when you press “3”, you get to skip 30% of the video’s playing time. Pressing “0” will bring you to the start of the video.
Anton Konopliov, Palma Violets Loans
Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.