What Are Essential Non-Tech Skills Everyone Should Master?

[nelsonic]

In Cal Newport's book "So Good They Can't Ignore You. Why skills trump passion in the quest for work you love", he describes the need to acquire/accumulate "valuable skills" and "career capital" before we can find work we love doing.

Cal makes a compelling evidence-based case why most people fail at "following their passion" or "doing what they love". People fail to find work they love, or to make a living doing that work, because they fail to develop the skills necessary to make their output valuable to the world.
i.e. if you don't have the skills, you won't pay the bills!

• So Good Book (8 hours): https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You/dp/1455509124
• Visual Summary (8 mins): https://youtu.be/DFjTD8v7xuw
• Talks at Google (40 mins): https://youtu.be/qwOdU02SE0w

That got us thinking: what are highly useful (and valuable) skills that anyone can learn/master
that do not require writing any code which will help people find work they love doing?

What are the "core" non-technical skills that everyone should master regardless of what they do for a living? What are skills that if mastered have a significant impact on your life in both the short, medium and long term? Here are the "Top Ten" that come to my mind:

• Focus - being able to focus your attention on one thing at time without requiring external stimulus. This might sound "simple" but it's surprisingly rare!
  Further Reading:

  • https://jamesclear.com/multitasking-myth

• Listening - if you are unable to listen to what someone else is saying you have fallen at the first hurdle. This is related to Focus; you cannot have listening skills without focus.

Obviously this is only relevant to people who are not hearing-impaired. 👂

• Empathy - understanding how someone else is feeling and being aware that their emotional state is almost certainly not identical to your own. Studying "emotional intelligence" is one of the best time-investments you can make, especially if you already have other types of intelligence and are struggling to understand why people don't "like" you!

• Reading - being able to read is a pretty fundamental skill to "modern life"; we take it for granite that everyone knows how to read, or that people are effective at reading.

  • What should I read? Knowing what to read and when to read it and what not to read. e.g: don't read mass-media news first thing in the morning, it will prime you for negative bias. Read something that moves you towards your goal or furthers your mission.
  • Speed Reading! How to rapidly process large blocks of text to efficiently extract the information you need without getting stuck reading hundreds of pages of irrelevant filler. Any "knowledge" work requires reading. From email to technical manuals, everyone needs to have the ability to "scan" through blocks of text and find the specific sentence they are searching for.

• Writing - writing on paper is an essential skill that few people focus on developing after they are forced to write prescriptive and uninteresting essays/reports in school. Developing writing skills is relevant to almost any work/job/career and it's especially important to Entrepreneurs/Freelancers. If you want to achieve anything in life, write about it!
  Examples:

  • tesla.com/en_GB/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me
  • https://seths.blog/top-100
  • paulgraham.com/articles.html

"Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is." ~ Dick Guindon

• Spelling good spelling can be the difference between getting hired. I've seen hiring managers/HR people reject a CV because it had a spelling error on it. Their reasoning being that if the person does not have sufficient attention-to-detail in presenting themself, they are not going to be a good representative of the company and/or they won't be excellent at doing their job.
  A good "side effect" of lots of reading is that spelling is just pattern recognition, the more you practice reading and writing, the better you get and eventually spelling is like breathing.
  But don't take it for granted! If you have had issues with spelling, find reading material you enjoy and set aside the time to read it! If you need a "short term fix" for your spelling, consider Grammarly. But remember that tools like Grammarly are a "band aid" treating the symptom not addressing the ailment; you are way better off putting in the work to develop the skills than trying to "shortcut" this!

Personal note: Trust me, as a dyslexic, I know exactly what it's like to consistently miss-read and miss-spell words for all of my school life. It was torture! It was all "stick" and no "carrot" in school! I'm not suggesting that I now spell every word perfectly, but since I started consistently reading, I have largely overcome my spelling "disability". 📚+ 🤓+ ✍️ = ⭐️✅

• Touch Typing! If you do anything with a computer, being able to type fast and accurately, is the difference between
  this has been explicitly mentioned in the "start-here" README.md for the past few years: https://github.com/dwyl/start-here#touch-typing
  
  Touch-typing is one of the most valuable skills a "knowledge worker" can have! It multiplies your output because if you can type as fast as you think there is no "bottleneck" in communicating!
  And yet, I still walk around our office and see people two-finger typing and looking at their keyboards!

• Arithmetic - I often see people reaching for a calculator to do simple arithmetic. 😕
  Or when discussing number for an idea, the look of panic on their faces when they cannot multiply two numbers in their head. e.g: 32 x 256 ... (8192 ...) Being able to calculate this in less time than it takes to (pull out a phone and) type the numbers into an App, is fundamental to success in life. I'm not suggesting that it's impossible to be "successful" without proficiency arithmetic. I'm sure you can think of examples of where people are "successful" without knowing "math". But, trust me, I can show you way more examples of people who, having mastered the "basic" math skills have transformed their lives from poverty to property! Even if "material wealth" is not your focus/goal, having food to eat probably is; and that is the origin of Arithmetic! The modern systems of counting were developed to count crops so that people could be fed. If you like food, learn Math!

• Memory - practicing memory techniques is incredibly valuable. Most people don't realise how much they rely on their memory to get anything done. You just need to sit with a person who has a defective short-term memory (either because of a neurological issue or simply lack of practice) to realise how debilitating it is to not have good working memory. All memory techniques can be learned and skills can be practiced. If people are not doing the daily practice, why not? Is it because they don't realise that Memory == Intelligence? If you want to be "smarter", pick up a book on Memory! If you want to dramatically improve your cognitive abilities, read all the books on Memory! (we have the 10 best ones in dwyl's library! if you are remote and want to read a specific book, just show your interest!)

• Reasoning - how to think about something without being trapped by logical fallacies, influenced by special interested or led astray by charismatic (manipulative) people with negative agendas!

What are other skills you think people should master that make them more effective in life?

[nelsonic]

• Communication (we covered writing above, but speaking, knowing when to keep quiet! Drawing! Not gossiping or speaking badly about people who are not present.
• Searching! You don’t need to be “technical” to know how to use a search engine!
• Punctuality being on time is both easy and essential.
• Organisation
• Mindfulness
• Sleep (yes, Sleep is “skill” some people have mastered and others can learn)
• Diplomacy (a combination of listening, empathy and communication)
• Financial literacy
• Patience

[iteles]

❤️

With the addition of your bullet points in the second bullet point, this is a pretty comprehensive list. Communication more widely and financial literacy were the two that came to mind for me when reading your list.

I would add:

• Self-confidence/sense of self-worth (I genuinely think this is a 'skill' - i.e. something that can be practiced and mastered methodically)
• Goal-setting
• Asking questions (this is a sub-topic of communication but I think important enough to stand on its own)

[YvesMuyaBenda]

I have thoughts about how to develop each and every one of those skills, but my recent research in movement, especially the work of the "movement specialist" Ido Portal, led me to a really good model of skill building (learning new physical movements is about as basic as learning gets; think of learning to walk).

Thus I would say that the meta-skill above all others is knowing how to learn (first ten minutes generalizes to programming, especially learning how to solve coding probems): How to Build Mathematical Intutition.

The original model of Ido Portal which relates to learning movements is isolation, integration, improvisation (for example): Three Magic Words

Using the model, allowed me to clarify in my mind how to compare different approaches to, say, touch-typing, and why the software I have seen just does not quite do it for me (the model of learning the software is based upon is incomplete causing the software to skip essential steps).

[YvesMuyaBenda]

Too, my interest in movement is wheras "knowing how to learn" is the basic meta-skill, the most basic skill for me is "knowing how to move". For example, touch-typing is essentially learning a basic set of movments, so too is learning how to speak a foreign language, so too playing a musical instrument, so too ...

The Movenat folk have quite a comprehensive list of basic general movement classified into categories. For example, here is a fundamenta list of movements: 15 Natural Movements Everyone Shouold Be Able to Do.

This whole topic relates to "developer health" in the sense that a lot of physical problems developers tend to develop (pun intented!!!) can be thought from the perspective of lack of movement, so problems like weight gain, lack of mobility, poor posture, wrist problems, muscle imbalances, weak spine, and lack of metabolic conditioning.

It is also said that learning new movements and physical activity in general are positively correlated to things such as improving short and long term memory, and the ability to focus, so ...

[YvesMuyaBenda]

Also @nelsonic: If a touch typing tutorial contained a library of common vocabulary (like books they give to school children) or allowed someon to input a text file of something they like reading as source material, then one can accomplish two things at once: work on touch typing and improve spelling.

The method would also likely be faster than just reading a lot, because if say, one had typing challenges compiled from the source material that one is reading, then the touch-typing would make a person pay much more attention to how the words are spelt; and too, they would have the mind-hand connection to aid memory (remember not how the word looked, but how it was felt in the hands).

Even as a potential addition, have the challenges where the computer speaks the word, adding another sense, that of hearing.

[nelsonic]

https://youtu.be/qe8gslqFUMw

[iteles]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLP7jEVIh8U

[nelsonic]

@iteles did you intentionally share a Jordan Peterson video...?

Best predictor of lifetime success is conscientiousness. ✅

[iteles]

@nelsonic Yes! I didn't look into his background and having read your issue it shouldn't be noted he and I don't share the same views, but so far I've heard the first 10 minutes of the video above (where he discusses conscientiousness) and found it pretty inspiring.

[nelsonic]

@iteles Yeah. I too do not share Jordan's views on a few areas ... and feel that he is undermining his "core" message by having/publicising strong opinions on too many controversial subjects. 😕
But then again, if he feels strongly about those things and is taking a "stand", that's better than keeping quiet and allowing those feelings to fester. That's kinda the point of "free speech"; to encourage civil debate on meaningful topics not shy away attempting to conform to "PC" while still harbouring negativity.

I can't think of anyone on any part of the political spectrum that would disagree with his "12 Rules" 💭

I agree with everything in the video you shared above.
Conscientiousness, industriousness, micro habits, setup aims for yourself, situational analysis.
All fairly common sense. but as Voltaire said: "Common sense is not so common.”

"You're going to have to put some effort into your life" ...
"Develop a vision of what you would like your life to be"
"The question always is: Why do something? Cause doing nothing is easy, you just sit there and don't do anything; that's real easy. The question is why would you do anything? And the answer to that is that you've determined by some means that it's worthwhile."
"Often people won't specify their goals, because they don't like to specify conditions for failure"
"If you keep yourself all vague and foggy, which is real easy cause that's just a matter of not doing as well, then you don't know when you fail. And people might say, I don't want to know when I fail because that's painful, so I'll keep myself blind about when I fail. That's fine, except you'll fail all the time then! You just won't know it until you've failed so badly that you're done."
"Willful blindness; you could have known, but you chose not to."
"A schedule can be unbelievably useful; make a damn schedule! And stick to it!"
"What's the right ratio of responsibility to reward?"
"You're a bad employee and a worse boss, you don't know what to do, and and when you tell yourself what to do, you don't do it anyway... so you should fire yourself and find someone else."

10:05 "You probably waste like six hours a day. I think we did an economic calculation about that a while back. Your time is probably worth about fifty bucks and hour ($50/h). You're not getting paid that now, but you're young so this is investment time and what you do now is going to multiply it's effects in the future. So let's say it's $50/h which is perfectly reasonable. So if you waste 6h/day, and you are, then you are wasting about $2,000/week or about $100,000/year. Go ahead, but that's what it's costing you. And you need to know what your damn time is worth!"

11:18 Predictors of Performance:
"Outline a goal that you would actually like to hit."

"You want to negotiate so that you don't walk away miserable and resentful, because that makes you hostile and then you'll work to hurt them."
"How about we walk away from our mutual negotiations thrilled?"

"People who whine about being alive are dangerous to themselves an other people."

"So you might think I can have what I want. You'd better well figure out what it is. And you can't just wait for the have what you want fairy to show up at your doorstep and grant it, because obviously that's not going to happen."

14:53 "Social Networking, that's another big deal. It's one of the advantages that older people have over younger people. When I go to one of them and say: 'can you do X?' or 'Do you know X?' they say: 'no, but I know someone who can'. And that's a huge advantage. So another thing you want to think about as you move through life is that use your ability to network properly. That doesn't mean 'shmooze' and impress people. It means you try to surround yourself with people who are competent in multiple different dimensions and you maintain your relationships with them.
That's something extraverted people can be really good at."
15:58 "Consciously develop and maintain your social networks."

16:05 "Let's talk about friendships for a minute. Here's how you know if someone is your friend:
(a) you can tell them bad news, and they will listen. They won't tell you why you are stupid and why that bad thing happened to you and how something worse happened to them once ... and derail the whole conversation. You can actually tell them bad news and they'll listen.
(b) this is a weirder thing: you can tell them good news and they'll help you celebrate. And that's a really good way of deciding who you should have around you, because if you have someone around you and something good happens and you're afraid to even admit it because if you let that be known and it will certainly be taken away. If tell someone something good happened and they give you a whack and then talk about the great thing that happened to them 3 years ago. Or worse the great thing that happened to someone that they knew 3 years ago ... Go away from that person, they're not helpful to you. And they're not helpful to themselves either."
17:10 "Surround yourself with the people who want the best for the best part of you."
"You can hang around with weasels who are trying to pull you down, to justify the fact that they are spiraling downhill aswell. The upside of that is that you don't have to have any responsibility and you can all whine about how retched life is. It's a bad medium to long-term plan."
17:34 "Surround yourself with people who are facilitating your development."
"if they don't pay any attention and they keep doing the same damn thing over and over and they are not going anywhere, then maybe the proper thing to do is say: 'you just have your misery, I'll go off and have my life. Maybe you'll wake up at some point in the future and thing that's a better way of being' ... just putting up with it, they call that 'enabling'. You put up with that behaviour and you're providing 'tacit consent' or even 'tacit approval'. It's a bad idea. You have the right and responsibility to surround yourself with the people who are good for the best part of you."

18:45 "Skills that's another thing you can do if you want to increase your probability of success."
"Every time you have an opportunity to take an opportunity, that would provide you with a new skill, do it! Learn to program. Learn to write. Learn to read. Learn to read new things! Learn to public speak. Learn how to introduce yourself to people. Learn how to social network. Learn how to talk to your boss; talk about the problem and the solution."
19:37 "Don't be a problem for the people who want to give you money. That's a good rule of thumb. If someone wants to give you money, then help them do that! Do that by bringing them solutions. In part by developing your skills."
20:03 "Take the opportunity if it will teach you something that you can use for other opportunities.
Because even if it fails - which it probably will - it doesn't matter because you've accrued something of value that you can bring forward to the next situation."

21:21 "Wealth constitutes what you have when someone takes all your money away."
"The way that you build up that sort of wealth is you turn yourself into someone who is competent in multiple directions, and you can be doing that all the time."
"You can learn anything you want whenever you want."

All of this seems fairly obvious to me and helpful to anyone who hasn't thought about it.

[nelsonic]

Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21581361
Top Answer: How to manage your money. 💰 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8i-4HpKlM
I tend to agree; this is the single most valuable thing anyone can do with an hour and yet so few people take the time to master their finances and end up living "paycheck to paycheck" or worse in perpetual dept. 😞

[nelsonic]

Skills Every Child Will Need to Succeed in 21st century (Dr. Laura A. Jana TEDx Talk): https://youtu.be/z_1Zv_ECy0g

[nelsonic]

https://skamille.medium.com/an-incomplete-list-of-skills-senior-engineers-need-beyond-coding-8ed4a521b29f
via: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414443