Five ways to develop your skills while working a job
Whether it’s learning how to draw or improving your productivity in the workplace, developing skills is important to our everyday lives.
Learning a skill can be fulfilling, it can be enlightening and it can lead to a better lifestyle. However, we understand that it’s important for you to focus on your main job. After all, your job probably takes up the majority of your day.
It’s difficult to free up time to study, so here are five ways to develop your skills even while you’re working a job.
1) Consider using audiobooks
Audiobooks can be a fantastic way to pick up new skills during your daily commute, while you’re working out or generally doing something repetitive and simple.
Audiobooks are a great option for busy people and there are plenty of online sources for both paid and free audiobooks that can teach you something new.
The beauty of audiobooks is that you can just put on some headphones and learn – even if you’re not physically sat at a desk. So if you’re driving, walking the dog, jogging or even doing housework you can make more of the time by increasing your knowledge.
2) Look for a mentor
A mentor can do wonders for your career. Having someone teach you new skills and critique your work can greatly improve your ability to identify and brave opportunities that advance your career.
However, if you feel that you’ve got plenty of knowledge in a particular field, you can actually become a mentor and still learn plenty of unique skills such as how to motivate others and criticize someone from a productive angle.
3) Check out online courses
Online courses are becoming an incredibly time-efficient way to learn new skills. For example, Kettering Online can offer courses on business administration and engineering management which are studied in your own time.
This allows you to look at your study materials during a lunch break, on the weekend or even before bed – giving you more flexibility and helping you to develop new skills, even while working a full-time job.
4) Network outside of your department
Depending on the type of job you have, it may be possible to network outside of your department at work to meet new people with different sets of skills.
Many modern companies today will focus on bundling people together based on their skill sets. For example, technical experts will focus on tech-related things like computer networks, while marketing departments are usually filled with design and SEO experts.
Networking outside of your department can help you meet new people and even pick up on some of their skills.
5) Break out of your comfort zone
Our comfort zone is a concept that many people consider bad. While a comfort zone can make you complacent, it’s different to having a career comfort zone.
Once you get too comfortable with your skills, you’ll find that growing them and applying them to different situations becomes increasingly difficult.
By breaking out of this comfort, you’ll find yourself feeling motivated to learn something new and do something unique that you previously wouldn’t have tried.
Photo by Blaz Erzetic
