Improve Your Skills Part I
Posted by Samit - 15/05/09 at 01:05 pmSkills of Learning, Reading, Thinking, Writing and Communicating
How many times have we come face to face with the concept of improving our own Skills? Its probably been on the our agenda from day 1, even when we were getting ready for school examinations, and since then on, during every stage of our life. As we graduated from our schools, pursued our own individual talents, moved into different trades, and settled into our different ways of life, this particular challenge lives with us every day. “Improve your skills. Create more value for yourself. Add knowledge, enable yourself, memorize the core aspects and propagate it through effective communication”.
We are pursuant of different walks of life. Some are still students; some are working as professionals, some into our own businesses. Some of us are associated with teachers, lawyers, management graduates, entrepreneurs, financiers, public relations executives, media-persons, sales and marketing executives, technology buffs, and so on. We may be artists, craftsmen, clerical workers, craftsmen, actors, athletes and dozens of other professions. Each of these would have a different ambit of activity, skills, practices and techniques. We all need to learn each of these, practice, hoard our knowledge, memorize the same, communicate it to others and practice it to bring it to good use.
In this article and the following ones we would learn how to develop some of these techniques to develop our quality s human beings. These factors would then percolate and perpetuate growth to not only ourselves but also to the small community we live in. And thus, as a society we can become a more developed one and thus be instrumental in partnering each other’s success.
Learning
Learning is a continuous process. No matter what yo do, or what you want to achieve learning it becomes central of achieving success. There is no age barrier for learning, neither is there any stage in your career where learning becomes redundant. As you advance in your career, move from one role to another, from one position to another, or even when you shift jobs from one company to another, there would be new set of skills and techniques required o you to master. It would also involve new thought processes to develop and also might need reinforcements of knowledge acquired earlier. I would take here, as an example , of myself. I was stuck for a decade on a job which basically involved selling and later marketing of products and services. I had worked from a position of sales executive with a small time company, toiling on the streets and roads of my city, visiting owners and heads o small businesses. I had learned the hard way, the techniques of selling, communicating, body language, use of phrases, voice , planning, handling objections, in order to achieve my sales targets. Once I began to move into marketing of products I learned the tricks of presentation, a marketing strategy, branding, corporate initiatives and basic management techniques. About a decade of working on these lines, I began to shift into IT. I took stock of the existing scenario and tried to find a way where I can place myself with the knowledge that I have acquired over years of my career. I selected business analyst and took a course to educate me one of the prevalent ERP packages and its processes. I have now successfully placed myself as an ERP consultant and business analyst. Now I lead a much comfortable life than what I was few years ago, providing much more added value to my services and the satisfaction of doing a much more satisfying work. It also has percolated a more comprising role to my family too, who are able to enjoy a better quality of life along with me. In the learning process, it has created value for me, value for my business colleagues, acquaintances and have been more productive in our daily life.
It wasn’t easy for me, and it took nearly five years to establish myself in this chosen profession of mine. I quote this only as an example of the role “knowledge” plays in our career and how, with more alertness of our immediate world we can benefit in achieving success and acquire growth.
Thus you would need to analyze the position you are in, understand the requirements of your position and find out for yourself what related knowledge you would need to gather. Remember that knowledge acquired never goes in vain and it always pays off.
A couple of things might be good to pick up in general. Firstly in this age of electronic computing, learning the basics of computers looks like a must have. Use of word processing, simple computing techniques, basic spreadsheet, presenattion softwares and email etiquettes forms the basis of everyday business activity in our modern day world.
Reading effectively
Central to the idea of improving ones skills is the practice of reading. The idea here is to not only understand ‘readng’ as a core activity to ones development, but also to learn to develop the system of reading effectively. We now live in the 21st century and our lives move at whirlwind pace. It becomes a challenge for us to find enough time for reading, except those who work in the fields of media, editing, publication or journalism. For them reading is a career defining activity as opposed to the choice of reading as an alternate activity.
Reading can be either for a synopsis or a general understanding. Survey the material and note the salient points, while eliminating the superfluous. Keep moving with our eyes, and do not repeat the last sentence. For synopsis , we can undertake a reading style of skimming or scanning. Practice higher concentration in memorizing the gist, adding to it with every line or paragraph you cover.Through Skimming you run through a paragraph, understand the important words, and keep higher notice to the the begining or the ending of a paragraph.
For Scanning, you run through a paragraph looking for a few key words or related words and thus look for relevance to what you are looking for.
For faster reading Students can also use what is known as SQ3R.
Survey, Question, Read ( and look for answers) , Recall( helps remmebering), Review (your notes). These would all collectively create a faster or effective reading process for you.As a start take up reading as a very healthy habit, it increases knowledge, adds concentration power ( as oppossed to watching television) and creates value within you. Try to practice the basic principles of effective reading and keep a note to yourself. test your reading skills and set a target for yourself.
For more information, Please follow the link here.
This article is continued in the next post ” Improve your Skills Part II” which can be found here.
June 13th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Hi, gr8 post thanks for posting. Information is useful!
June 15th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Very nice site!