Last week I talked about digital skills, why they’re important and why you should learn one as soon as possible.
Today, I'm going to elaborate on how you can choose a worthwhile skill.
The principle is simple:
Don’t choose something that’s not in line with who you are as a person.
What do I mean by this?
As I’ve said before, I'm an expressionist. I like to express my thoughts and feelings when I can.
This means you will find me in a lot of interesting conversations, talking or listening. I'm also very interested in stories that explore human behavior, movies and anime.
I'm interested in the many different ways stories can be told, so you’ll find me consuming them in one form or the other.
This in large part has led me on my path to writing, and now copywriting, because I'm not going far from what I know and I’m familiar with.
And you shouldn’t either.
Choose things that are already in line with your behavior, your interests and your current abilities.
How do you this?
Here are three questions you should ask yourself before you choose a skill.
The first is:
Will I Be Paid Really Well For This Skill?
The first thing of course is always money.
In advanced countries, nobody pays a typist to type their work for them anymore.
The advancement of technology has made it easy for anyone to own their own computer; type their own documents and send it out.
What people do now though, is pay editors to look through their work, proofread them and arrange their sentences in a concise manner that is easier to read and understand.
Businesses pay copywriters to write for their websites so that it's easy for prospective customers to read through the site and make a purchase.
Both of these are skills I offer and if you’d like me to do them for you, you can reach out to me here.
Yes, allow me to sell my market
I bring this up because you don’t want to learn a skill nobody is willing to pay for.
What you should do is research skills that are high in demand and choose the one to learn from.
Skills like copywriting, UI/UX design, product and project management, data analytics, software programming, video editing and cybersecurity.
These are just a few examples of skills that people are constantly paying for. And if you do your research properly, you’ll find a lot more skills to choose from.
The next thing to ask your self is
Do I Enjoy Learning This Skill?
I have a personal rule:
If I don’t like something, I will not do it.
This doesn’t apply every time. I need to study courses I don’t enjoy to pass the exams
The point is sometimes you have to do necessary things even if you don’t like them.
But for the most part of my life, especially when it comes to things that require my time, effort and energy, if I don’t enjoy it or consider the results to be valuable, then I won’t do it.
Apply this to yourself when you choose a skill to learn.
If you're not enjoying the process and results, then you should leave it alone and move to the next thing.
Can I Learn This Skill On My Own?
If you focused your attention and consumed the relevant materials, would you be able to learn this skill on a basic level?
Are you okay with experimenting, failing and going back to try again just so you can improve this skill?
I know a lot of people who in their early days learned design, photography, writing and programming by just watching YouTube, reading articles and steadily implementing.
I am one of such people.
The thing most people forget is, and I tend to fall into this category some times, enjoying the learning process doesn’t take the work away from it.
It gets monotonous. You have to repeat one process different times just so you can get it right.
It’s not just hard work, it’s consistent work. And it’s not one many people enjoy doing.
So check yourself, are you interested in this skill, and the reward of this skill, enough to dive through the relevant rabbit holes and learn the basics of this skill?
If your answer is no, move to the next thing.
Final Notes
The advice I’ve given above strictly applies to beginners.
If you have an existing skill that you already make money from, you may not be able to totally apply this framework to your life.
But if you don’t have a skill, and you're confused on how to choose one, then I believe this will be totally helpful to you.
Remember, don’t choose things you aren’t interested in. And more importantly, don’t choose things you don’t enjoy learning and can't learn on your own.
If the reason you haven't chosen a skill is because you aren’t sure if this is what you want to be/do with the rest of your life
Then I advise you get of your ass and get to work!
Here’s why:
The skill you choose now is not a bloody prison!
As you grow older, your interests change and fundamentally you change.
You learn more about yourself and decide on the path you want to take in your life. And that’s okay. It’s necessary.
But right now, you’ll do yourself a disservice by waiting till you figure out what you want in your life before you take action.
A person without a skill in this economy is like someone who goes to war without weapons. You’ll die.
Learning a skill now is like having a gun you can use to ward off thieves so they don't steal from you.
You may not always need that gun, but isn’t it better that you have it around so you can protect yourself in case of an attack?
That’s all from me today.
If you have questions, confusions, leave them in the comments and I’ll get right on them.
If you want to ask them personally, you can reach out to me on whatsapp here.
If you found this letter helpful, join the KUWD community by subscribing and be the first to know when I release a new one.
And very importantly, if you know that there are people who will find this letter helpful, do me the honour of sharing it to them on all your social platforms
Thank you for reading
I’ll talk to you next week.
Till then,
Stay easy,
Dave.
P.S: I have been writing and editing for 3+ years. I have moved from short story fiction to articles, blogs and websites.
I’ve written for a variety of audiences and my experience has taught me exactly how to write to anyone so that they stay engaged in your work.
What this means is I know the errors people make that make it difficult for others to read and understand their work.
And most importantly, I know how to avoid them.
I will not be teaching you a writing course though, even though a lot of people have asked.
But I will be doing something even better, something you can easily appreciate and that takes less time than teaching an entire writing course.
I will help you edit your work so that it becomes the best possible version of itself that it can be.
So if you worry about the pieces you write,
If you aren’t sure you're using the right words or phrases, or if you’re grammatically correct
Or maybe you’re worried that your audience will not understand you
Or that your sentences don’t make sense
Then you can reach out to me here.
I will help you arrange your pieces in a way that strikes your target audience at their core and make them so engaged in your work that they come back to you for more.
And maybe you think this only applies to people who write articles, blog posts and stories
But if you're a person who writes anything
It could be the About page for your business.
You want to write something that concisely explains who you are, what you do and what you can do for your customers.
And you want to do that in a way that’s engaging and interesting so that your customer checks out the rest of your page
Or if you're a business person with a website,
You want the words on your website to be so engaging that your customers go through your page without leaving until they make a sale.
And maybe you're applying for a job,
You want a cover letter that intrigues the hiring manager so much, that she can’t help but push you to the next stage of the hiring phase.
If all this sounds appealing to you, then you can reach out to me here on whatsapp.
I’ll work together with you to create compelling and interesting pieces that anyone would love to read,
And I’ll reveal some of my secrets so that you can apply them later by yourself if you're unable to reach me and need to do it yourself.
And I will mention that yes, this isn’t free work.
But you're a sharp person, and you know that nothing valuable is ever for free.
And like I said, never choose a skill people aren’t willing to pay for
So yes, I live by example
Still interested?
Click here