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4 min read

#18 | Wise Sayings | How to Learn New Skills

Personal:

I keep a collection of wise sayings that guide me in my work and personal life. These lessons, tips, and wisdom have accumulated "over the years", and I wish I had known them at the start of my career.

Some may be helpful to you now, while others may not apply. That's okay. Whether you're just starting out, planning a big change, or want to do better in your current job, I hope you find something helpful.

  • Success takes time. Be patient and continue working on your project. Success will come sooner or later, and you should be prepared. As with any project, it always takes longer to reach the goal than you initially predicted. That's Hofstadter's Law.
  • Success comes after you've put in the work and built a strong foundation.
  • People are mostly focused on themselves. This means your worries about "what will everyone think of me" are not as important as you might think.
  • No one wants you to succeed more than you do. So, never blame those around you for a lack of help. Instead, go and ask for assistance and invite people to join you on your journey. Explain why it's important to you and make them your allies.
  • There's no real competition in life. As Peter Thiel once said, “Competition is for losers.” Seeing everyone as rivals is a losing game. It's mentally tough and distracts you from focusing on yourself. Discover what makes you unique. Compete with yourself and turn rivals into partners. Life is much better this way.
  • Great CEOs and leaders help their team members to grow and influence those around them. Their success can be seen through the accomplishments of those they've trained, mentored, and inspired.

App:

Skillshare: Offers online classes for creatives and entrepreneurs. I recently discovered this platform while browsing the Internet for some photography classes (I’ve got a new camera!).

Other classes that caught my attention on the platform:

And many more classes (including productivity ones) to make you more creative and develop new skills.

Media:

5 Movies for Entrepreneurs.

I am a big believer that you learn much faster by doing, or by watching how others have done it. You also get inspired along the way and start thinking bigger :)

Here are my 5 favourite movies to watch. These movies offer business insights within an hour or two. Learn how Wall Street operates, explore the stories of famous founders and investors, or discover that even criminals can run successful businesses (until they go to jail).

The Big Short
  1. If you want to learn how to prepare for an economic downturn and what happened in the 2008 financial crisis,  The Big Short. It would be like finding out what happens in Wall Street before you make any investment and learn about economic terms.
  1. If you’re interested in the financial markets: Trading Places (to me, it is the best film about financial markets ever made). Little did I know about finance when I was 5 y.o. watching this film for the first time😄 but the plot stayed in my head. The Wolf of Wall Street is a great one, too.
Fyre Festival
  1. If you want to learn about planning and management: Fyre Festival. This is a great entrepreneurial movie because it highlights that planning is key to everything. But more importantly, it shows that in life, it's not enough to have the desire and passion to achieve something great, you need to work hard and smart to succeed.
Glengarry Glen Ross
  1. If you want to learn more about the “hard sale” mastery and how to work in a high-pressure environment, Glengarry Glen Ross
Moneyball
  1. Moneyball: A great movie about the sports business. It shows how great results can be achieved with a combination of risk-taking and creativity - but only if you know what you're doing ;)

Learnings:

How to Type: Free typing lessons, typing practice, and typing tests.

I haven't heard much about touch typing, but there are actually many benefits to it.

Touch typing means using all fingers to type without looking.

  • Save time: Imagine how fast you could finish your daily emails. The time saved adds up significantly over weeks and months.
  • Boost concentration and writing flow: Looking for keys breaks your focus. Touch typing enhances your flow as you won't be interrupted as much. Faster typing leads to smoother writing as you don't have to stop and think about each keystroke.
  • Reduce tiredness: Typing for long periods is tiring for the mind and body. Touch typing lessens this fatigue as you can focus solely on what you want to type, not the typing itself.

Typing Speed Test HERE.

I'm Yana, crafting this awesome newsletter every Sunday in my spare time. Support my writing by becoming a paid subscriber here for the price of a coffee ($5).

I'm always excited to hear your feedback:

Published by:

Yana Abramova