The Fourth Industrial Revolution
The future is here. How do you plan to thrive in 2020 to 2022? Based on the World Economic Forum’s Outlook, if you combine the results of its last two future jobs report, there are 14 career skills to learn. But the number 14 doesn’t sound very sexy to me, so I added another skill that’s personal to you. So, learn a skill that would be a game changer in your life. This will take some thought.
List of Skills to Learn in 2020 to 2022
- Game Changing Skill
- Complex Problem Solving
- Critical Thinking and Analysis
- Creativity, Innovation, Ideation, Originality, and Initiative
- People Management
- Coordinating with Others
- Emotional Intelligence
- Judgment, Reasoning, Analytical Thinking, and Decision Making
- Service Orientation
- Negotiation
- Cognitive Flexibility
- Active Learning and Learning Strategies
- Technology Design and Programming
- Leadership and Social Influence
- Systems Analysis and Evaluation
If you’d like a process to learn the key skills that’s already been created, Join the Performance Accelerator Plan Today, click the link to buy now! Start learning the skills the World Economic Forum says you need to thrive in 2020 to 2022. Use this unexpected downtime to benefit your career.
Most of the skills above are soft skills. And they’ll become more valuable over time. How many of them are new skills to learn? Which of these 15 skills do you already have some knowledge of? And how many of them have you already mastered. You can’t go wrong learning these skills. That’s if you’re strategic about how you learn them. You can learn these skills by yourself if you're a self-leader. But if you need a little help from a friend, join my Performance Accelerator Plan.
Most subjects are related, so it makes sense to group the skills when learning them. For instance, problem-solving, critical thinking, decision-making, and creativity are related skills. In fact, there are several books that cover all four skills.
They’re skills that you can immediately apply while you’re learning them. You’ll always encounter problems in work and life. And you make countless decisions every day. Creativity allows you to find creative solutions to problems and make better decisions. And critical thinking will help in the process.
Decide how you’ll group the skills when learning them. This is about you and not me. You may see groupings that I wouldn’t think of.
Is learning the 15 skills enough to accelerate your career? It could be.
But I want more from you and for you. I want you to think about a higher purpose and becoming more socially responsible. It’s doing the extra that will help you to stand out from your peers.
There are many problems in the world that need solving. They include: Global poverty, world hunger, homelessness, climate change, access to clean water, gender parity, affordable education for all, and much more. It's important to read books to understand the issues. And if your cause is climate change, take the time to learn about another issue such as poverty because it may give you some unique insights into solving the problem. You may be thinking that you cannot make a difference. However, there are countless ordinary people who have accomplished extraordinary things.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead
Reading the Right Books Will Help You to Learn These Career Skills
Luminaries such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Mark Cuban read with the intent to learn. So why not you?
They’ve mastered the art of learning from books. There are no guarantees that you’ll achieve what they’ve achieved so far. But a little intentional reading to learn will go a long way. Simply reading books will not make you a success though. You always have to apply what you learn. But to succeed when you’re learning the 15 skills, you also need to analyze and synthesize the information from the books you read to get a much deeper understanding. Doing this helps you to see what other readers might miss while reading the same text.
Before I expand on how to analyze and synthesize the information from the books you read, you must make sure that you’re reading the right books. Reading a bunch of bestselling books to learn the skills won’t cut it. Because a book is a bestseller, doesn’t mean it’s a great book. It could be, but it could be a bestseller because the publishers had the right promotion engine behind it. This is something for you to seriously think about.
Note Taking While Working through the List of Skills to Learn
Since you’ll be learning some of the skills in groups, note taking is a must. This allows you to make connections among the books when you review your notes.
“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” Steve Jobs
When you make notes, write the information in your own words. And only write down information that’s essential to your understanding of the text. This may sound mysterious, or even challenging to do. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Essential information to make note of is any information that aligns with your purpose for reading a book. You’re reading books to learn career skills. And when learning a skill, you have to understand its history, so that you have a place to hang the new information. What system is the skill a part of? And what systems are a part of the skill? Understanding the history will enable you to answer these questions.
Other essential information in a book include: information that solves problems, cuts cost, makes a process more efficient, and so on. I’m sure that you could come up with other essential information now that you have some examples to work with.
Learn New Skills: Haystack Method to Evaluate Information
You have 15 skills that you want to learn that will make you more marketable. One of your aims is to learn the skills in groups. Another aim is to make sure that you're also reading books across multiple disciplines. Why? Take a look at Elon Musk and Mark Cuban. Both these men operate in multiple industries. Musk, especially, has dominated several industries.
First choose the books you intend to read to learn the 15 skills as well as books that will give you an understanding of current events shaping the world. Choose books at varying levels of difficulty to read. Make sure that they're diverse by gender, generation, where the author was born and so on. You want diverse perspectives as well as topics.
Career Skills to Learn: 5 Components of the Haystack Method
Going through the five stages of the Haystack Method will allow you to see what others miss while reading the same books. What you'll be doing is taking your reading to a higher level.
Gathering: This is the information you make note of while reading the books.
To get a cursory understanding of a skill, you need to read five of the best books on the topic. That means you’ll be taking notes while reading the five books you choose. You’ll be collecting ideas from the books you read. And make note why you find the ideas interesting.
If for instance, you want to learn problem-solving, critical thinking, decision-making, and creativity, you could read Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure
, The MacGyver Secret: Connect to Your Inner MacGyver and Solve Anything
, The Art of Thought
, How to Get Ideas
, and The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools
. The five books are not as diverse as they could be. But they're good books.
AdaptThe MacGyver SecreThe Art of ThoughtHow to Get IdeasGuide to Critical Thinking
Aggregating: Take individual ideas and disconnected thoughts and group them together based on bigger ideas.
You want to group the ideas to identify a broader theme. Add meaning to the ideas you find. Do the ideas describe a broad group of demographics? What is the underlying human need? What makes the ideas interesting?
Elevating: What interests you most about the idea? What is below the surface? What is the bigger picture?
Identify underlying themes that align a group of ideas to describe a single bigger concept. Connect smaller clusters of ideas into potentially more powerful ideas. In doing this, you’ll discover breakthrough ideas. This activity will allow you to grow in your career.
Naming: This is a process of describing a collection of your powerful ideas in a memorable way.
Will others be able to resonate with your ideas based on what you name the collection?
Proving: How can you validate your ideas?
Are you noticing things as you read books across multiple disciplines? And are your ideas unique enough to stand out?
Can you now see how your learning is much more proactive? In the Lifetime Learner’s Guide to Reading and Learning
, the author, Gary Hoover, says there are five ways to learn.
Five Ways We Learn
Study: Traditional way to learn. And reading books comes under this category. The best study is taking action. The Haystack Method makes it easier for you to take action.
Conversation: You can learn something from everyone. There are a couple of options here for you. You can either learn the skills with someone. Or you can teach what you’re learning to cement the information in your long-term memory.
Observation: When working your way through the Haystack Method, you’ll heighten your senses of what’s going on around you.
Experimentation: You’ll be doing this as you work at combining and clustering ideas.
Thinking: When you review your notes, you have to think about the information to be able to connect the dots and group your ideas into clusters.
15 Career Skills to Learn to Succeed in 2020 to 2022: Pulling it Together
As I’ve mentioned before, you’re participating in a proactive, hands-on way of learning. You’re learning by doing. Now it’s time to make sure that you've taken action and implemented the ideas. How is your life changing? If you’re an autodidact, this process may excite you.
But you may be someone who needs a bit more direction. If that’s you, I invite you to join my Performance Accelerator Plan. You’ll learn the 15 career skills you need to thrive in addition to develop intercultural awareness. Furthermore, along the way, you’ll learn other skills that will set you apart.
If you’d like a process to learn the key skills that’s already been created, Join the Performance Accelerator Plan Today, click the link to buy now! Start learning the skills the World Economic Forum says you need to thrive in 2020 to 2022. Use this unexpected downtime to benefit your career.
How Avil Can Help You!
If you do not want to gamify your reading, I invite you to Join the Performance Accelerator Plan that walks you through the process of learning key skills and more. You’ll be reading books to build skills and develop intercultural awareness. Get more reading and learning tips here.
In December 2020, I published two books on Amazon. I would greatly appreciate your support if you bought my two short e-books Read 30 Books in 30 Days Like Francis Bacon and Performance Accelerator Plan: Guide to Learning and Mastering Key Skills for the Future.
Read 30 Books in 30 Days Like Francis Bacon is not about speed reading. It’s about approaching every book differently and reading only the sections that align with your purpose.
The Performance Accelerator Plan book is a stripped-down version of the paid reading challenge of the same name. Obviously, you won’t get all the resources that come with the program that I sell on my website. But if you are a self-directed learner, it will help you tremendously.
If someone clicks on a link and buy something from Amazon, the company will pay me a small commission.
