Writing Like any skill, you learn by doing. And make a commitment to write publicly.You learn better when people can actually see your work. It forces you to do your very best. It gives you accountability. You get feedback from others and improved based on it.

Meditating Start with guided meditations. They teachyou that it’s okay to have thoughts and guide you through clarity of mind.Commit to it. Don’t try once and leave.The more hours of practice you put it, the easier it gets. You'll have more clarity on your emotions, body, and mind, and you'll make better decisions.

Learning to Learn Learning new skills increases your motivation, makes you more adaptable, relatable, interesting and helps you get better jobs and earn more money.And today,learning anything new isn’t as hard as it used to be. Start by understanding how your brain truly works.

10,000 hours of deliberate practice is the amount of time it takes to be a top performer in a highly competitive field, according to Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers. In the past 2 years, I’ve…

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8 hours? Are you kidding me? It takes 10,000 hours to learn a new skill!

10,000 hours of deliberate practice is the amount of time it takes to be a top performer in a highly competitive field, according to <a href="https://amzn.to/2F40R0x">Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers </a>.

In the past 2 years, I’ve proven time and again that you can learn valuable soft and hard skills in about 15 to 20 hours of practice. And I’m talking about starting from nothing. I’ve learned 70 new skills in the past 2 years. But I’m not the only one who has experimented with that. My original inspiration came from Josh Kaufman’s TEDx talk, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY">The First 20 Hours — How to Learn Anything </a>.

Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Barack Obama, Oprah, and many more <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/317602">top performers dedicate a lot of their time to learning a variety of skills </a>that allowed them to be where they are today. All of them have achieved much because of what they’ve learned and what they know. They are not more intelligent, they just dedicate more of their time to learning the most valuable skills.

I was very careful in choosing skills that are as applicable today as they will be years from now. The skills that follow were useful or would have been useful thousands of years ago as well.

Each of these skills can be learned to a level in which you can be good enough in it in under 8 hours of practice — one full workday!

But be careful, practicing any skill for long hours will not yield the results you expect. Your brain doesn’t assimilate new knowledge that way.

The first skill in the list is the basis of every other skill you’re going to learn for the rest of your life. It’s no surprise then that <a href="https://www.forestco.co/blog/the-3-most-important-skills-to-learn-now-to-thrive-in-2019">I listed it as the #1 skill to learn to thrive in 2019 </a>.

Do you want to change your life forever?

Start with the following skills, in no particular order, except for the first one:

<ul><li>Learning to learn </li><li>Writing </li><li>Public speaking </li><li>Meditation </li><li>Forming good habits </li><li>Negotiation </li><li>Mathematical thinking </li><li>Coordination and flexibility </li> </ul>

When I started my journey to learning, I was slightly disorganized and didn’t fully understand what I was getting into. With practice, I understood the importance of knowing how our brain truly works. Today, learning anything new isn’t as hard as it used to be.

Just this month, I’m learning how to write a book in Spanish, composing epic music (starting from zero knowledge in music), developing backends in the Go language, and salsa dancing (again, starting from zero knowledge of dancing).

If that sounds overwhelming to you, it should, at least for now.

And it may seem to you that I’m spending 100% of my time learning these skills, but the truth is that I’m only just practicing 30 minutes each every day. In 15 hours of deliberate practice, I’ll be able to do each of these where I’ll be confident enough to say I’ve acquired a skill.

The reason I’m able to do that is that I’ve learned how to learn. Here’s how you can do this too:

It would take a whole book to teach you how to learn. To keep this article at a respectable length, I’ll refer you to this other story I wrote which details the keys aspects of learning to learn:

The first 8 hours:

Watch 30 minutes of the <a href="https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn">Learning to Learn class </a>on 2x speed for 16 days.

Learning new skills increases your motivation, makes you more adaptable, relatable, interesting, and helps you get better jobs and earn more money .

Just yesterday, I led a workshop where every member learned to create an online store and made money on that very same day! Who would have thought that it’s something I would have taught someday in my life!

But it’s not just me. One of the most inspiring members of my SkillUp your Life program, Prithviraj, learned to swim and that led to him getting a new awesome job, greatly increasing his salary and improving the lives of his parents and other people surrounding him.

Practical Techniques

I never aimed to write. If you asked me just a year ago what I thought about writing, I’d tell you it’s not for me. I’m a programmer. I code and I love it.

But then in January of 2018, I decided that I should improve my writing skills, simply because it’s one of our most powerful method of communication and it’s valuable both in life and in business.

After 5 days of writing, I got published by <a href="https://medium.com/swlh">The Startup </a>. 23 days later, I became a top writer in 7 categories. I received incredible comments from my reader and really started to enjoy it.

I always meant to stop after 30 days of practice but with all the momentum I had going, I had to keep going. So here I am writing this piece 10 months after I wrote <a href="https://medium.com/@danny_forest/i-learn-3-new-skills-a-month-and-so-can-you-61b328a8ba5">my first piece on Medium.com </a>.

Like any skill, you learn by doing. But here’s a trick most people don’t do: write publicly.

You learn better when people can see your work. It forces you to dig deeper and do your very best. It gives you accountability. You get feedback from others and improve based on it.

Create a blog and publish there regularly and consistently. Try publishing once a day on Medium, even when you’re not satisfied with your results. People don’t have to read it.

No need to write a crazy amount every day. Start small.

started with one sentence a day and now writes complete blog posts.

Write 300 words a day in 30–45 minutes in 12–16 days and publish on Medium.com or your blog.

Writing helps you define your voice . It helps you get clarity on who you are and who you want to become .

Little did I know that my stories could inspire other people , yet for the past 10 months, I’ve been a top writer in inspiration, <a href="https://medium.com/tag/inspiration/top-writers">currently ranking #5 </a>.

Your story is your story alone. It has the power to change both your life and that of others .

You learn to become a better storyteller , which is a crucial skill both in life and business.

As a shy introvert, I’ve never really wanted to do any public speaking. In school, to get me out of the shyness, I’d act out some confidence in front of the class. It worked pretty well.

It’s a technique I still use. Whenever I do a presentation in front of an audience, I picture myself in the shoes of Tony Robbins.

Isn’t there anyone more comfortable in front of a large audience than Tony Robbins?

Before writing in January, I picked up Storytelling and Public Speaking as two of the skills I would practice for the month. Little did I know that both of these skills would become invaluable in my writing journey after.

Seek opportunities to speak in front of groups.

Start with people you’re comfortable with, like your friends and family. Talk about subjects you’re passionate about. When you talk about the things you love around people you love, the nervousness doesn’t kick in.

Recognize that the first time you tell a story, it won’t be perfect. Take notes of people’s non-verbal reactions. Notice people’s interest level with each sentence you say.

Public speaking is all about refining your stories.

When ready, attend Toastmasters events. Do talks at your workplace. Do a TEDx talk. The sky’s the limit!

Attend and participate in one or two Toastmasters events (or similar) every week for 4–8 weeks.

Meditation is one of those skills, like drawing, that I thought I would never be able to learn. The problem was that I didn’t think of meditation as a skill. Simply put, I didn’t think I could learn techniques to meditate well. I had the preconception that meditation was about not thinking about anything, therefore any time I had a thought, it frustrated me.

And I know I’m not the only one who thought that way. But it’s wrong.

Back in September, I tried meditation with a friend in Cambodia and failed miserably. It took me 4 months after that attempt to finally give it a go again. Once I had the right mindset and I consistently practiced, I became good at it.

As a beginner, I strongly suggest guided meditation. I’ll list what has been most helpful for me in the resources section below.

What’s good about guided meditation is that it teaches you that it’s okay to have thoughts. It helps you get greater clarity of mind, which is what meditation is about.

You learn to be aware of how your body and mind feel. You learn to relax, even when you feel like you’re too nervous to relax.

The important thing to realize is that it takes time to learn it. Don’t try once and leave. Meditate at least once a day for at least 10 minutes.

You’ll feel all types of emotions. In the beginning, I was bursting in laughter when instructed to count my breaths. Sometimes you’ll be frustrated. No matter the emotion, don’t let it go to your head. You have control over it. The more hours of practice you put into it, the easier it gets.

It’s also important that you practice where you won’t be disturbed. And as a beginner, try where there isn’t too much ambient noise. Some people will tell you to sit to meditate but I started by lying down in my bed, otherwise, I didn’t feel comfortable enough and concentrated on that.

So whichever pose they tell you to take, try it, but comfort is more important in my opinion, especially when learning.

Do 20 minutes of Headspace a day for 24 days.

Here are some of the long-term benefits I got from learning to meditate:

I reduced the time it took me to fall asleep from 1–2 hours to 10–15 minutes. The quality of my sleep also tends to be better .

I’m not a stressful person, but I’ve seen a reduction of stress nonetheless. A lot of people report being much less stressed from doing meditation.

I have more clarity on my emotions, body, and mind , leading me to make better decisions .

And one thing I find important but is often overlooked: I’m much faster at context switching . Most of us work on different projects at the same time, and switching from one context to another takes time. I reduce that time by doing a quick 5-minute meditation session.

Of course, you can expect similar results in your life when you stick to it.

Free (with paid options) <a href="https://www.headspace.com/headspace-meditation-app">Headspace app </a>

Forming good habits is a powerful tool to increase your motivation for doing anything.

Forming bad habits, on the flip-side, can be extremely dangerous for your life.

By knowing how habits take form and how they work, you can better control what habits you form and get rid of habits that are detrimental to you.

The best way I’ve found to learn to keep your habits in check is to be accountable for your good or bad habits. Find one or multiple people to report to regularly. The more frequent, the better.

Find someone you don’t know that much, or at all. They’re less likely to sugarcoat it for you and will be less lenient. Ideally, that person would be working on the same habits.

8 Timeless Skills to Learn Now in Under 8 Hours to Change your Life Forever

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