Develop These Skills Early

Some skills are worth investing in early in your life, they propagate well into different areas, and their benefits compound over time.

 Learn to learn

Don't treat learning as a means to an end but as a commitment to a lifestyle of continuous growth. Stay hungry for more, be curious, and set goals towards the knowledge you need.

• Incremental learning stretched out over time give better results
• Land what you need to learn when you need it, have a plan, and don't over-invest (know where to stop) - usually, Conscious Incompetence is good enough for exploration
• Measure the value of knowledge by its real-world impact, if it does not propagate to your hands (Deliberate Practice) then it has little value

Do what is needed, not what is reasonable or desired

Our brains are wired for short-term benefits, usually, this comes with long-term side effects. Don't trust your feelings or what you want to do. Exchange short-term discomfort for long-term gains.

• Ask yourself what is the right thing to do and walk the path less traveled by
• Push yourself to think further in the future when making decisions (Time Perspective)
• Life is not fair and you should not expect it to be or it will be riddled with disappointment
• Even with odds stacked against you and no guarantees you can make choices that improve your chances of success (Internal Locus of Control) don't fall into a victim mentality

Train your fast intuitive unconscious mind

We have two systems of thinking, a slow conscious mind, and a fast near-limitless unconscious mind. Most people do not intentionally train their subconscious mind, a critical part of increasing your value and effectiveness.

• We are what we repeatedly do, we can repeat what we want to be to become that
• Build consistent habits with conscious effort around repeatable patterns so that they can be assimilated and become embedded behavior
• Build break-out triggers to leverage the conscious mind when needed. Use IF THEN patter I.e. IF I feel pressured to buy anything immediately then STOP and carefully evaluate with the slow brain.
• Build a healthy mental framework for Critical Thinking that runs continuously, train against biases, reasoning fallacies, and a building up a trusted personal body of knowledge

Learn to hold opposing views at the same time

Life is not binary and our mutually exclusive clarifications are usually just different perspectives of the same thing. The truth is usually an elusive contextual mixture, as the Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant.

Heuristics, stereotypes, and classifications are useful and you should build up an arsenal full of them. Just never believe them to represent the full picture. They are stepping stones to get to the answer, and should not be seen as truth without being contextualized first. 

• Do not trust people when they claim things with absolute certainty and don't claim absolute knowledge yourself
• Don't get trapped by the "fools choice" believing that there is only an either/or choice, synthesize better options by considering both
• Use specialized mental models. Don't use philosophy to figure out how electricity works, don't use science to find meaning in life. In a similar fashion approach religion, psychology, etc. for a balanced life. The right tool for the right problem or type of thinking that is required.

The irony of learning is that the more we learn the more we know we do not know. It is both humbling and comforting that the world is conceptually endless and limitless.

What skills do you think people need to invest in early in their career? Drop it in the comments.