Deciding What You Want to Learn

If you’re convinced that you need to continue your education and keep learning new things to add to and complement your present skillsets, the next step is to determine in which areas you want to further your education. Since you can only focus on a limited number of things at any time period, it’s important that you choose wisely. Generally, I would look for things that:

• Will solve an existing problem
• Bridges an existing gap in one of my present skills
• Can improve my existing income streams
• Can save me either money or time in the long-term
• Will improve one of these areas of my life: finances, health, and relationships.

Once I identify those things that meet the above criteria, I use my next and most important filter:

• Will I enjoy doing this?

The way I see it, I’m an adult now and the days of studying things for the sake of studying them like we did in school is over and done with. Anything that doesn’t add value to my present moment experience is a huge step back in the wrong direction. More importantly, learning just comes many times easier when you can actually enjoy the process.

After this is taken care of, I can start prioritizing which ones to focus on first. This is determined by the following criteria, in order of importance:

• Long-term impact. How valuable is this in the long term? How much money will this potentially make me? How much time do I stand to gain from this? How much improvement will I expect this to create in my relationships? How much more comfort and peace of mind will this bring?
• Time required. How long will it take me to learn?
• Urgency. Is this something I am in dire need of at the moment? Or is this something I can afford to not to learn for now?
• Short-term gain. What do I stand to gain from this as soon as I learn it? What results await me a month after I learn and implement this?

I always make sure to focus on items that will make the biggest long-term impact because these are the ones that will serve me years beyond its immediate value. For example, those writing courses back in high school continue to serve me to this day in my technical consulting duties. I write the clearest damn technical explanations for programming solutions my clients can ever wish for.

Time required is also a big concern. If something will take me five years to learn then chances are big that I will pass it up for other, shorter studies. While urgency plays a factor, I’ve never really encountered it so much. Anything that appears you will need to learn right now, you can always hire someone else to take care of while you focus your attention on things with greater future relevance. I put short-term gain at last because learning something for a quick fix right now without any foreseeable future gain is plain short-sighted and not the best use of time and resources.

Generally, I like to learn things focused on three areas:

• Software Skills
• Social Skills
• Online income

I’ve found these three things to be the most beneficial and enjoyable for myself. In doing so, I’ve had to marginalize learning on other areas I like and have dabbled in as well (like martial arts and competitive shooting) largely because the former provide the biggest long term benefit for me. Likewise, I have totally ignored other things I have fancied learning in the past like flying planes or playing a stand-up bass.

I have many more years of learning and in time, I may get to attend to them all, but for now, my focus is laying the pipeline for the rest of my life and efficiently managing continued education will help me in that process just as it can help you in your own future goals.

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