Keeping your skills sharp is critical for career success. In Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
, Sheryl Sandberg recommends that instead of trying to climb a career ladder, we should do the jungle gym scramble. Any path you take, ladder or scramble, requires that you constantly develop professionally to acquire and update skills to gain an edge over your peers. Keeping your skills sharp is easier today that it was two years ago because of the disruption that is presently taking place in education. You can capitalize on this disruption and access the many free online classes that are now available. This is important as corporate training budgets are being slashed.
I recently completed a series on how to keep your skills sharp, although when I wrote the first post I had no idea that it would become a series. The series evolved out of a personal need that I had. It occurred to me that I should consolidate the blog posts to make it easier for the reader to find them.
Keeping Your Skills Sharp Process
- Free Online University Courses: Where to find and access free online classes developed by top universities.
- Create a Learning Plan, the Key to Structuring Learning and Keeping Skills Sharp: What are your professional development needs? How do you create a plan to develop those need?
- Personal Learning Environment: Choose Your Courses: Now that you know where to find free online courses and know what your learning needs are, how do you choose which courses to take?
- Personal Learning Environment: Keep Track of Your Courses: You have now selected the best courses to keep your skills sharp for career success, how do you create a personal learning environment to manage and keep track of your courses?
- Free Electronic Textbooks to Keep Your Skills Sharp: When you take a university courses, you often have assigned textbooks. For free online courses, you can find free electronic textbooks if you know where to look.
- How to Create Your Own Textbooks: A big criticism of textbooks is that they become dated quickly, learn how to create your personal textbooks.
- How to Improve Learning: Now that you are acquiring new skills and expanding your body of knowledge, you need strategies to improve the learning process.
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Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that's why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people.
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