Passion or Not: learn a skill
People have asked several questions on learning a skill — — “How can I learn a skill? What type of skill? Do I need to follow my passion?”.
Your passion fascinates, and it lights you up; you spend hours talking about it. They do not have to be central to your career, but your passions may be a guide when considering your next step.
Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.
-Jon Bon Jovi
The willingness to learn new skills is one quality you should have as a person. When you are open-minded and curious about the world around you, it is possible to gain something new every day and never stop growing. You become passionate about learning when you connect with the subject you are learning. Getting hands-on with creative activities is one way to get more interested and develop a passion for learning.
Why do you need to learn a new skill? There are many reasons you need to learn a skill, such as -
- keeping your mind sharp
- for promotion
- change in career
Whatever skill you want to learn, here are tips that will help you learn a skill effectively.
- Be passionate about self-development.
I realized how important it was for me to grow up; I hated communicating with people.
Well, I knew I needed to grow past my comfort zone (It was comfortable, to be honest). I realize that there ought to be some certain habits you have to change, changing the negative into positive. I wanted to see the world beyond where I was. Now, this brings us to the second part.
2. Find a skill
Passion most times do not determine what you want to learn because you switch later.
I always wanted to be an economist, but I loved unscrewing things and fixing them back. My interest grew as I discovered that there is a thing called programming and it equally involved unscrewing things via terminals and just looking for problems to solve, and it caught my attention.
I met flora, a 54-year-old woman who has worked in the banking sector for years and took up a new skill in programming. She said she loves the challenges which programming offers.
It doesn’t mean being an accountant is wrong, but many times interest changes.
3. Find motivation
The first action I took was surrounding myself with people have the same interest as I do. Building a community has always been a superb source to find motivation when learning a skill. One of the many benefits of a community is working on team projects, find people who hold you accountable for your growth, joining a session to gain value from experts in the field, and many more.
A mentor is a valuable source of knowledge but to get one, prove to yourself that you need one. Your concentration and determination work well for mentors because they end up giving you 30% of their time or more if you show them how much their guidance means to you.
I realized I was doing it all wrong because I lacked a community and a mentor. I had to build that stage of my career, and It helped me so far in working better at meeting deadlines, increased knowledge, and more.
4. Practice always
Whatever we practice is what we naturally become. Even if it is not always intentional, we are always practicing something to get better at it. For many activities engage in is the only way to get better. You would not learn how to walk without trying it over and over. You can not improve your social skills by visualizing them in your head.
I knew what it took for me to take out time to practice what I know now. It might not be simple at the beginning, you would feel like giving up, but the more you practice, the better you become.
When you decide to learn a skill, you make plans, and you commit to those plans. Becoming intentional about learning builds passion, and you find yourself fired up to do more. You’d find out that you have made much more progress.