Life is beautiful but also quite short.
So how much time do you want to spend watching cat gifs?
As much as we’d like to not think about it, the truth is most of us are engaged in tasks and activities that may entertain us and make us feel happy but aren’t often of much use.
While there is certainly no harm in pursuing your passions and playing games, watching movies, and even idling around from time to time, you should also strive to learn something useful on a regular basis.
When I say something useful, I mean things that can help you out in the long run, improve your productivity in different areas of your life, make you more self-sufficient, and those that help you out in achieving your lifelong and genuine goals.
This is an important thing to do for a number of reasons.
Why Learn Useful Things
Firstly, if you learn to do something useful, you won’t have to be dependent on others.
If you know how to unclog your kitchen’s drainage pipe, you won’t have to be dependent on a plumber to do that and can do that chore on your own. Similarly, if you know how to build a website, you won’t need the assistance of an outside source.
Secondly, you can save a lot of money.
If you know how to make a DIY desk, you won’t need to spend hundreds of dollars buying one from craigslist or won’t need to head down to the local furniture store for their "easy credit."
Thirdly, you will equip yourself with the ability to do a useful thing.
In the future, if you ever become jobless or go bankrupt you will always have a skill that you can use to support yourself during that tough time.
An example of this would be if you have learned to code in your spare time. Then you could create an app to support yourself, or if you now know how to make crafts from wood, you can sell those to earn a living for yourself.
Fourthly, if you learn something that is relevant to your genuine goal, you will improve your productivity and increase your chances of achieving your goal quicker.
For instance, if your goal is to become a top-notch motivational speaker you might have taken a public speaking course to enhance your speaking talent. Naturally, when you deliver powerful workshops and speeches, you will attract the attention of more people that will help increase your chances of success.
In addition, learning useful stuff also improves your confidence. When you know you are good at something, you feel good about yourself that improves your self-esteem and self-confidence.
I know when I fix something around the house I feel powerful!
As you can see, learning to do useful stuff always comes in handy and is often a lifesaver too.
Now let’s take a look at a few things you need to do to figure out what useful things you can learn and how to do that.
What to Learn and How to Do That
Firstly, think of your life goal and how do you wish to achieve it.
The reason why it's important to pay attention to that because your lifelong goal is something you passionately aspire to achieve. If something is so important to you that you have a burning desire for, it is best to prioritize it first.
When you think of how to achieve it, pay attention to the different skills and tasks which if you have and know how to do respectively can optimize your productivity. For instance, if your goal is to have your own café that serves dishes made from organic foods, learning how to cultivate crops organically and cooking a variety of delicious dishes are two important skills to build. Both these tasks will help you in the fulfillment of your goal and also improve your skill set.
Think hard about the different things you can learn to make it easier for yourself to grab your goal and then start working on them consistently. You do not always have to enroll in actual programs to learn how to do stuff and build skills.
You can acquire the same information online as well. There are scores of tutorials, e-books, articles and videos on how to learn a variety of things. From making website to writing books to building DIY crafts to revamping your house’s floors on your own- you can learn it all online. Carry a thorough research on the different approaches you can take to learn different things and then start following any one that seems suitable to you as soon as possible.
Secondly, think of the different things you can learn that can add more comfort, ease, and convenience in your life.
When I learned to do something as simple as cooking better, I started getting better meals at home. This easy skill has paid dividends as I no longer feel the need to go out for a "good meal." It has saved me a ton of cash!
Just think of the many things you wish you knew how to do so you could make your life more comfortable. Painting the walls on your own, fixing your own broken computer, and mending clothes on your own are some useful things that can add more meaning and ease in your life while saving you a lot of money to use in different areas of your life.
Thirdly, focus on learning things that you enjoy doing.
Learning how to play a sport, a musical instrument, or do something craftsy are apt examples of such things. These things won’t only help you enjoy more, but also slowly help you build more skills and diversify your skill set.
In Conclusion
I know this can be a little overwhelming especially if you haven’t really focused on doing these things before, but this does not have to be something daunting. Just perceive it as something fun you can do a little bit of every day and in time you will have learned a lot of useful things.
Moreover, you can squeeze in the fun activities in your spare time.
When you are free and do not have to do your high priority tasks, you can work on learning the fun stuff such as playing a sport or even learning to do something directly related to your goal.
Also, make this a daily ritual so you learn something useful every day and keep boosting your self-belief. It is never too late to learn to do something. If you have wasted time before or haven’t built any real skills yet you still have plenty of time but only if commit yourself to this endeavor.
Its really a harsh truth. Your post is really a fact. Good and valuable post.
You got a 100.00% upvote from @thebot courtesy of @thedawn!
I have 10% guaranteed positive return on bids to help minnows.
Delegate me to get 95% profit from daily rewards | 10 SP, 20 SP, 30 SP, 40 SP, 50 SP, 75 SP, 100 SP, 150 SP, 200 SP, 250 SP, 300 SP, 400 SP, 500 SP, 1000 SP or Fill in any SP.
Hell Yeah! Life is a process of learning and growing. Well, at least for those that are not in arrested development ;-)
Even a little learning every day will become a large amount of knowledge in time.
This is a great addition on the post you made that helped burn my desire for achieving my dream;
https://steemit.com/success/@getonthetrain/how-to-find-your-why-personal-life-goal-and-burning-desire
I got a strong WHY which is pushing me beyond my limits everyday.. and 'Seek Useful Knowledge' is a great catalyst for this 'WHY'. We often put a lot of time away to these small things that entertain us and yet play no purpose in building us. This is a complete watsage of time.. Which would be used to learn a thing or two that would save us a lot of money, increasing our productivity, and pull us closer to attaining our goals as you've stated it.
Paying attention to every detail of how to attain these goals and finding something we enjoy doing I believe will keep a mindset focused to the dreams that we have. There will be no time wasted since whenever we feel like relaxing, we'll be doing that thing that we enjoy which in the long run will make us better at it too.
Its ok - and necessary - to relax, but make it a reward for a job well done and knowledge learned.
Too many people say I will relax now and do my hard work later. How many actually get up and do what they said? Not that many, I bet.
Oh yeah.. leisure time is worth it after doing some work. It really requires discipline to keep this up.
Thanks.
I've been collecting skills from many, many, fields. I could probably work in 10 different professions thanks to them (not taking into account variations of different professions) , but the problem is that the next step is impostor syndrome :D Meaning that, even if I could make a living coding, I would feel like a fraud getting myself setup for such a position in the beginning.
But luckily I already have another professional skill, for a field I worked in while studying, in case I ever need it.
Anyway, learning new skills is fun, I like to know how to do a variety of different things and I always try new things to challenge myself. And it does help to know how to do general maintenance work for the home, the car, etc.
I've always been the type seen as a "jack of all trades" type. Learning new and different things keeps it all fresh.
Kinda like why my blog here on steemit has articles on many different subjects.
Some people say you need to "go a mile deep and an inch wide," meaning be EXTREMELY specialized. That's fine for them, but I don't want to have to call in other specialists to do basic things in other areas because I only know about one niche.
Personally, I think both kind of people are needed. Those that know a bit of everything and those that are super good at their specialty. However, I'd say that even they can enjoy and benefit from learning new skills :)
Oh, sure we need subject matter experts and some people will choose to know one thing very, very well.
It's just not my style is all.
Oh man, this one spoke to me. I'm also trying to improve my basic skills and by doing that trying to improve myself. This was a nice read Thank You
Keep improving every day and how good will you become? Who knows, but you will be better than you are today!
.
All the combined knowledge of human history at their fingertips and how many take advantage of that gift?
.
A great post! We spend far too much time on trivialities. There is so much out there. We have the greatest tool ever conceived, the internet and what do we do with it? Watch and like like cat memes. Thanks for sharing.
& thank you for commenting. 😀
wauhh....ended learning should always be our priorities. I sometimes read the history of the greeck empire civilation and i came to realise that at some point of time, everyone was asked to reflect or explain the lesson he/she learnt and this was done on a daily basis. This was the genesis of the great greeks pholophers and the discovery of their creativity and innovation potentials.
That's a cool way of reflecting upon your advancement. It can show you that even the small things can make big differences given time.
Yeah.... I agree with that.
Last weekend i learned a little about working with gimp, something that i always wanted to do since i was a child, it's providing me with better images for Steemit, next week i'll upgrade from gimp to photoshop since people tell me it's better and there are more people using it, i also need to learn how to work with InkScape for me cartoonish editing and adobe after effects if i ever want to do more videos for dtube.
All these skills are going to help me in the future, not only in my career but also on steemit, anything new we learn we can monetize and earn money from! That's the great thing!
The only times i procrastinate now is when I'm really tired from college and steemit, which is like once every week. And from my own experience reading a good book is 10 time better for our own brain than watching a TV show!
Hey, maybe once you are good with that image editing skill you can advertise your services. Maybe here on Steemit or somewhere like fiverr.
That is probably going to take quite some time, but yes, if i ever become good with photoshop i'll probably advertise my services here, or at least publish my own creations and earn money with them, i already started doing some posts about photoshop, it's only a matter of time, success is only a matter of hard work!
I always tell my friends that we are no longer in the industrial age, now we are in the era of knowledge.
"He who has knowledge has the power"
We must not stop looking for knowledge. You have to learn something new constantly to achieve success, even if you are a professional in something, there will always be something new to learn in your area.
Well said @osmerj
Totally right.
I really think one of our long term goal as a species (really long term), is to gather all knowledge there is in the universe. And the only way in which we can achieve that is by adopting that attitude you are explaining in this post.
Learning new things is one of my favorite things and that's the reason why I put "eternal learner" on my profile haha
There is always a new skill or information we can learn, its up to us if we use our current tools to better ourselves, or to lose our time.
I really think one of our long term goal as a species (really long term), is to gather all knowledge there is in the universe.
And that isn't going to happen overnight. Little by little new knowledge is found and placed on the pile. Later humans will see higher and further because of that height. Like money, knowledge can compound.
Learning a new skill may come in handy, it also may help prime the brain to manage everyday challenges. According to research, which debunks established ideas about the way the brain ages, we can grow new brain cells. All we have to do is exercise our brains. We have to make them do something they're not used to doing. So, if we take your advice and acquire a new skill, we get a bonus. We know something we didn't know, and we have a more agile brains. That's a no-brainer :))
A no-brainer that is a brain-builder!
your post all so good. i like it your post@getonthetrain
wow this is better post daer.Larnig is the main subject for us.larnig is my favorit.i very like this post.
@getonthetrain I do hope people walk away from this post feeling more confident and powerful in there own lives.