Apart from the hard skills that you acquire through formal education, there are a lot of other skills that are not obligatory, but which multiply your possibilities and distinguish you from competitors at the job market and colleagues at the jobsite. When you are still young, you can easily learn many skills. Since you as a young person do not have many commitments, there is enough time to learn as many of the skills as possible. Many people wait until they are adults and then notice, what skills they could make use of.
Learning as an adult is more difficult. Moreover, standing in your job and adding your private responsibilities to it, will leave you with little time in future to learn new skills. You may ask, why you should learn skills that you may never need in life. I strongly advise you to learn a skill. Having a particular competency may not cost you any energy or money, it does not disqualify or discriminate you in any way, but has the potential to lead you to a fulfilling professional and private life. If you learn a skill and do not need it, no problem. You may need it in 15 or 20 years. Then you just need to reactivate what has been sleeping in you. It is worth noting that any one of the skills you learn has the potential of becoming a profession that will make your life. In learning the skills, you get in contact with them and will in the course of your life always know what it means doing any of the things as a profession. If you choose a profession and things do not work out well, you could get back to a skill that you know to develop it fully into your profession. For me, just knowing what else I could do to survive was a kind of security during my professional training.
During my formal education, professional training and along my professional career, I observe the following extracurricular skills as being very advantageous. The more skills one masters, the better. One is not expected to learn all of them at the same time.
Typing
In the digital world, typing on a touch screen or computer has become normalcy. Many people waste a lot of their valuable time, because they type very slowly (with two fingers at times) and are not acquainted with the keys. If you learn to type with 10 fingers, this will safe your enormous time throughout your life. There exists courses on typewriting. One can also purchase books or software to teach himself how to type. I recommend perfecting this skill to every youth.
Reading extensively
When you read extensively beyond your scope during education and professional life, it is obvious that you understand the interrelationship between things. You understand the world better and better your chances of dealing with almost every situation in life. Through reading you gather knowledge about people, places and things you may never come across and learn a lot from the experiences of others. This enrichens your life.
Doing presentations
As early as in nursery school, children should be taught the skill of presentation. You may have the best ideas or skills. If you cannot tell people about them in a very competitive world in which we live, no one will come searching for you and you may die without every using these ideas/skills to earn a living or in contribution to development of your society. In learning presentation, you occupy yourself with the theory of it, but you must practice in order to perfect this skill. Look for opportunities of preparing and presenting anything and seek to develop this skill with time.
Self organisation
People who succeed do not wait for things to happen. They learn skills of self-organization. With these you plan your activities/life and work time-consciously to achieve the goals. With perfect self-organization you increase your effectiveness and efficiency, leading to more progress and satisfaction in life. Never stop evaluation and optimizing your self-organization.
Keeping animals
Having an experience in taking care of animals (cats, dogs, goats, sheep, pigs, guinea pigs, fowls, rabbits…) teaches us a lot. We learn to take responsibility (for the lives of the animals placed under our care. Moreover, we know what animals go through, understand the relationship between human beings and nature in a way many people would not do. In taking responsibility for animals, you develop your personality in ways that you will only come to understand as you grow up.
Gardening
Like keeping animals, gardening will also keep us in touch with nature, of which we human beings are a part. You learn about the seasons, plants, cultivation specificities, the cycle of sowing, taking care of, harvesting, preserving, processing to food and/or selling. In this chain, there is much that you learn and will apply in future, maybe in a profession that does not deal with gardening. Knowing the work involved in cultivation of crops, you will in a special way value the work of farmers.
Wood works
Wood is a natural material. At home there are many things made out of wood. Having the experience to work with this material opens you up to a vast spectrum of potential professions. You learn basic skills that you may later on use to do at least simple wood repairs and construction at home. This may become a hobby or profession.
Metal works
In the world around us, there is much made of metals. Learning some basic skills in metal processing will open up a world of professions and hobbies. We learn also to appreciate the works of this branch of industry in our setting.
Cooking
We must eat to live. If we learn to cook, we make ourselves independent. No matter where we are, we must not fear to die of hunger, because there is no one to cook. After leaving your parents to stay somewhere, we could buy food, if we are not going to cook, but in fact, this will be more expensive than cooking for yourself. It also would keep us dependent on someone who cooks for us to buy. Some people learn to cook, only when they must (after moving away from home for the first time to live alone) Then they start cooking by making all the mistakes any beginner would make without guidance. Knowing that we grow up at home (men and women), where cooking has been done daily, it is obvious and the best thing to learn (for free) from our parents and brothers and sisters to cook. While still living at home or during visits, we could opt to cook to relieve the mother of the individuals who always cook.
Singing
Life becomes livelier with music. Music is an international language. There are songs for all conditions in life. Singing releases emotions, energy and gives us joy in life. When we grow, there are many opportunities to learn singing by joining others during religious services, in school, at home, during celebrations to sing. This gives us a sense of togetherness. We are conveyed a part of our culture, which we are expected to hand over to coming generations. Some who sing to perfections can make a professional life of being a singer. No matter where we are in this world, we would always feel at home or be grounded by singing the songs we learnt and sang in childhood.
Playing an instrument
Part of our human value is our culture. We can learn to play a traditional or modern instrument. In order to do so, we should not wait for a music teacher. There is much free time in our youth that we can use to learn an instrument on our own. What we need is exposition to the instrument, the interest to learn and the hard work and patience to persevere until we accomplish our goal. Once you captured an instrument, you will in your life always be able to recount this skill and use, where necessary. While learning an instrument, we automatically acquire skills that we need elsewhere in life: Concentration, Focus, Patience, Hard work, Coordination, Training of the brain and Discipline.
Writing
While the skill of reading broadens our knowledge spectrum, we receive and learn from what others have brought forth. The skill of writing (not only what we are expected to write in school) gives us the opportunity to actively contribute to the said spectrum of knowledge for others to learn from our experience. Being the individuals we are, with our specific and unique background, there exists no other individual who would express whatever we produce in writing, just the way we do it. Putting things in our own words, being who we are is a present we make to the world. Do not ask yourself, who will be interested in what I am writing? Even if you are the only one reading what you write, it is part of developing your personality. You may write something that interests no one today. This may be relevant in 30-50 years. The fact that it is written (documented) makes it available to mankind for centuries. What you only think or say, disappears the moment you finish thinking of saying it. Some professional writers started by writing simple essays on various topics and later on became stars. Even if you have a fulfilling profession, writing can still be a source of additional income, which costs you almost nothing, but helps to develop your personality and bring you wealth.
Learning to learn
It is important to make out the difference between reading and learning. Many people go through their educational career without ever knowing how to learn effectively, because they only read. Learning to learn and optimizing this skill all through your life will ease many things and make your learning efforts more successful.
Patience
Patience is a skill that we must exercise every day of our life. A majority of the people worldwide do not accept this fact. Not being patient increases your stress in many daily activities. Once you learn patience, this reduces your stress level, giving you the full cognitive capacity of decision making and effective accomplishment of tasks. Those who are patient will succeed faster, when learning new things and being exposed to new situations in life. If one is not patient, life will not only be a stress but at time a source of frustration.
Hard work and determination
If you are not determined and find reason in what you engage in, why should you succeed? When a goal is set, the best way to accomplish it is to allocate adequate resources (time, energy, concentration/focus, materials and finances needed) and be consequent on it until the goal is achieved.
Empathy
This is the ability to understand and share feelings of others. Human beings are social beings that need each other and interacts with them all through their lives. Often, people are judged by others who do not know them well and what they are going through. In dealing with human beings in society harmoniously, empathy is a vital skill. Having empathy makes a difference. To learn empathy, we need to be open, avoid prejudice, listen to others and place ourselves in their situation and try to see situations from their perspective. Once we have done so, we should learn to avoid emotionally falling in their situation. With an objective view of their situation, we can then develop an opinion about their situation, showing understanding, but not just being emotional and crying with them, but looking forward to what we can contribute to make their situations better (in cases of challenges) or staying relatively calm ( in cases of extreme ecstasy).
Being open
In my observation, there is nothing that we can from first sight conclude to be impossible. All what we can think of exists or has existed in human history. It is important to note that what we as an individual think, is not 1/1000.000th. of what humanity has ever thought. With this knowledge in mind, being open means first of all allowing all what we experience/perceive without categorizing or judging it. In a case where two or more parties are involved, take time to listen to everyone’s version of the story. After perception is finished, we analyse the information, establish facts out of what we perceived, compare with our values and formulate our opinion before making it known to anyone. This way, our positions will always be moderate and reflect what is right in our real opinion.
It is important to observe people judging others without this prior analysis. There is too much discrimination, prejudice and immature voicing of opinions and positions in the world. If we learn to avoid joining the choirs of the biased minds, this contributes to our health, peace and harmony and our personal development.
Having and showing gratitude
When someone does anything for you, even if you paid for the service or good, always appreciate their efforts and express this to them directly. Many people yearn for something and put in all their efforts without success. When someone helps them to realise their dream, it become nothing special to them anymore. They act as if it was the obligation of the person, who helped them. Many move on without even saying thank you. This is a bad habit.
Honesty
Honesty is a vital moral character of an individual that entails being straightforward, adhering to the truth, thinking, acting and interacting fairly, denying lies, theft and all acts of corruption, including cheating. Nursing honesty in society is an investments that would bring forth success of this society. Nowadays, genuine honesty is rare. Distinguishing yourself from others by living honestly may sound naïve at first glance, but promises sustainable success with time.
Cultivating your specific personality
Being an individual, you have already a personality. Being a random personality (common individual) is not difficult, but does not make you special. Important and successful people worked to build their personality. It is but very important go give your personality a specific structure by defining your values and working to be the person you define for yourself. If one does not make thoughts of his personality and work for it, the random development will be determined by your environment and may lead to a result you never wanted to be.
Sports
There is a vast range/variety of sports. As a human being, we need exercise to keep a healthy body, besides food, shelter, satisfaction of other basic physiological needs. Apart from these advantages sports activities could become a profession or hobby. Moreover, there is much social learning, when we do sports in groups. We learn the following traits: Discipline, perseverance, consistency, hard work, positive spirit, team spirit, solidarity, motivation of self and others, setting and attaining goals etc.
Travelling
When we travel with opened eyes and receptive senses, we learn a lot from what we experience and observe. This enriches our personal development and widens our scope of knowledge. Travelling does not only entail covering long distances. Even when we visit neighbouring villages/towns, we get to know our environment and interact with the people we see.
Observing
Children always learn by observing what others do and trying to do the same thing. They do so several times before they master the skill. When human beings grow up, this skill gradually becomes insignificant. However, there is much to learn through observation and reflection on what we observe. Being curious and interested is what we need to be able to observe. All what we learn through observation adds to our spectrum of knowledge and experience and enrichens our personality development.
Networking
Human beings are not islands. We live and must interact with others in order to succeed and make them too succeed. We have the choice, whom we are interacting with. If we do not make this choice, we spontaneously find ourselves interacting with people, who pull us for their benefits into circles, that may lead us astray. It is important to choose, depending on your dreams and values in life, with what kind of people you would like to interact? Learn how to create contacts, cultivate the habit of keeping the important contacts lively and know how to specifically use the contacts (networks) for the achievement of your goals. With a consciously created network, many things in life become seemingly easy as the networks facilitate things you could never dream of.
Positive thinking
It is very important to always see the good things in everything. Make it a habit to strive to discover the opportunities that a condition has got for you to make something good out of it, no matter how desperate the situation seems to be. We, human beings are all brothers and sisters. If we assume that our counterpart is principally having good faith, this renders us open to at least give him/her the chance to present themselves. When our presumption does not come true, it may be because the counterpart is facing a challenge, that makes them think/act the way they are doing. Stepping back from the first presumption, we could find out, what opportunity lies in the new setting, knowing that our counterpart may have a bad intention. Being positive does not mean that we should be naïve or that we must give everything to make something good out of every situation. Healthy positive thinking includes being cautious and putting security first. As said under being open, when our systematic analysis shows us that the counterpart does not mean it good with us, it is time to quit for security. We must not seek to solve all problems in the world.
Concentration
For any activity to be fruitful, we need concentration. The world of today is full of distractions. We perceive some of them. A lot more accompany us every minute of our life, without us noticing them. In order to accomplish tasks effectively, you need to train being concentrated and make an environment that promotes being concentrated on a particular activity. Many people think they do not need the “full concentration” and can take on multiple tasks at the same time (multitasking). No matter how good you are in this, the quality of results and the time efficiency in accomplishing the tasks will be poorer than when you focus on each of the processes and takes one at a time.
Humility
We are blessed with human dignity, which objectively is equal to that of other human beings. Objectively too, every individual deserves the same human rights according to the UN-Human rights charter. (It is important to read and know the human rights charter). Objectively, we are not given more rights, dignity over other individuals on earth no matter where they live. Moreover, most of the privileges we enjoy are not our rights and/or matter of course over other individual. No matter our age, gender, religious orientation, social/political and sexual orientation, each and every one of us is one out of 8 Billion currently living on earth. We are part of a society and nature, which with we should live in harmony. With this in mind, we should learn to be humble. This character may lead to people mocking at you. In the long run however, it will gain you the respect in society, that no one could dream of. Be consistent and focused. When walking, walk with your feet on the ground! not on people presumably lying under your feet.
Trust
According to Erik Erikson, the development of trust begins with basic trust. This is developed between birth and the age of 18 months. During this time, babies learn to trust themselves and their immediate environment. The mother (in most cases) or father and siblings are persons referred to as immediate environment. The accomplishment of basic trust occurs, when the physical needs[1] of the infants are satisfied. In this environment, babies develop basic trust. Those babies that do not develop this basic trust find difficulties building trust in their future lives. If, however we notice in our youth that we never had a conducive environment to develop basic trust, there are many ways of learning to trust. If we are not able to do it ourselves, it is vital to seek for assistance in this aspect.
Trust is a very important value that we as human beings need in order to thrive. If our life is founded in mistrust and pessimism, then all our endeavours are bound to suboptimal success at their best.
When we have developed the value of trusting and find people misuse our trust, it may disappoint us, but we learn from it. We must however not loss trust in humanity because of one disappointment. If we are positive and develop a solid personality, we would always overcome such disappointments and keep going.
[1] Derived from the physiological needs according to Abraham Maslow (1943); The physiological needs include those that are vital to survival. Some examples of physiological needs include: food, water, breathing, homeostasis (warmth), shelter, clothing, medical care, love and protection from harm.