5 Productive Skills That Pay Off Forever.

Episode 3: What skills are you bringing to the table?

Hello fam! Happy Sunday and welcome in advance to Monday ( our mutual enemy).

Today we are going to talk about five skills that always pay off and they're free to learn on the internet. there are so many things today that you are able to learn on the internet and you don't actually need a formal education to incorporate these skills into your curriculum or your set of skills that you use for your own personal goals. so without further ado, lets start with number one.

1. Building and using spreadsheets

The first learning how to edit, create, format and use spreadsheets both for personal use as well as for work. Spreadsheets nowadays have so many different uses you can use them to; track progress on goal, on projects, you can also use them for your financial plan like creating a budget, managing your portfolio, tracking expenses and so forth also if you are a business owner using spreadsheets can help you track clients bills you to pay, business related expenses, orders and so on . there is just so many things you can do with spreadsheets and you can basically organise every single thing and because there are so many different uses and because the software is so widely available you can basically learn everything for free regarding spreadsheets nowadays

For instance, you can use Microsoft excel or you can use google spreadsheets (my personal favourite) to practice and then you have so many different courses available online for free that can actually get you a certification on this software without forcing you to receive formal training. allison.com has the google sheets course that is free although you can then pay for an official certification and Trump excel has 12 plus free excel training videos that can help you get started on the fundamentals.

Finally, I also recommend skillup.com which has an introduction to Ms Excel for free that takes around just 7 hours to complete and will help you get through all the basics such as functions, dashboards, data analysis, conditional formatting and more .

2. The next skill is Project management

Project management is the process of planning, executing and monitoring a series of tasks in order to achieve a specific goal. this process typically includes; setting deadlines, assigning roles and responsibilities and ensuring that progress is being made.

Personally I think nowadays project management is something that is basically used in every single job even if you're not a formal official project manager, you're going to use project management principles in most jobs independently of your area of expertise so it is really important for you to know the essentials.

Know how to plan a project, how to manage a team in the context of project planning and you'll realise that most of the principles that you're taught in a project management course will also be applicable to your own particular situation.

Again alison.com has a free course with 28 modules that you can take online and there's also great google project management professional certificate you can learn on coursera.com and while this is a paid course, there is financial aid available that you can apply to and there's ussually around 10 available spots

( you might be one of the lucky ones to get access so take advantage of this).

3.Another in demand skill is technical writing.

Technical writing is basically the art of simplifying speech by communicating complex information to anyone who needs it . It basically requires you to deliver to a targeted audience a set of instructions or information that theyneed about a topic they do not master. And in an era of information, its something that's becoming more and more important nowadays. It is closely related to transcription but here you go a step further to make the information as simple as possible for others to understand.

Categories of technical writing include scripts, demonstrations, instructions, knowledge based articles, websites, process workflows, proposals, product catalogues and packaging. Google developers has free technical writing courses for instance that have self-paced online pre-class materials and virtual live sessions. There is also general technical writing course on Wick University for level 1 and level 2 which I will highly recommend.

4. CODING

And of course another skill you can learn for free and is becoming more and more relevant is coding and there are so many different resources available for you to learn how to code right now.

The first platform I will highly recommend which is also very popular now in Africa is alx_africa . They offer a free software engineering course which lasts for 1 year and many other coding related courses like data analytics etc. Also there is something called the Odin project and that is a free open source coding curriculum you can take online. they curate online tutorials, blogs and courses that help you build a portfolio full of projects that can ultimately help you get hired and also Harvard's free CS50 course also offers a well explained introduction to computer science.

There are so many different platforms that teach you how to code and it's definitely something that is becoming more and more prominent in different areas of expertise nowadays even if tech is not specifically your area of expertise, learning how to code is a great add-on for any curriculum independently of your area of studies or your speciality in your workplace.

5.Then of course we have digital marketing being our 5th and last skill in this article.

digital marketing is basically the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. This include not only emails, social media, web based but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel . The career Foundry digital marketing short course is a five-day self-paced course you can take online.

There is also fundamentals of digital marketing class that is part of the University of Maryland's digital marketing professional certificate that is also self-paced and takes around 4 weeks to complete. and of course we have a google course for this to begin a level for free and it takes around 40 hours and covers 26 modules and it's called fundamentals of digital marketing.

And that brings us to the end of today's episode. These are just a few of the numerous skills you can learn online for free so take advantage of all the resources stated above as your first step to gaining a skill online.

The truth is we can learn all we want but without application, we will get no where so as you learn these skills, make an effort to apply it by offering your services to others for free and after they give you a recommendation in return if they like your services, that will open new job opportunities for you.

I really hope you learnt something from this and you've enjoyed today's episode.

If there's something I did not add please feel free to add that or your opinions in the comments section. Also have you taken any of the above courses mentioned above, what was your experience? Share in the comments section lets learn from eachother.

Have a wonderful new week and see you same day, same time next week.

Bye!!!!!!