All people sometimes want to learn something new – to play the drums, to speak Spanish or master effective self-defense techniques. Here are 10 of the most desired skills and options for self-study.
How many times have you said to yourself in various circumstances that it would be great if you could do something? But then life went along as usual, and you forgot about your desire to acquire a useful skill.
With a huge amount of knowledge that is available to you online every day, the only reason why you still have not done something is because you have not considered it seriously. Maybe it’s time to do this?
10. Fix something at home
If you have a desire to get engaged in manual labor, learn how to repair household items or create objects of the interior with your own hands. This is an especially nice skill because you can use the results of your work immediately.
Where can you learn it? Millions of videos are offered on YouTube and Videojug. There you will find a lot of videos on how to repair something in the house or in the yard, how to fix something without a plumber or an electrician.
For complex repairs, you will still need to be a professional, but some small manipulations can be performed on your own. In any case, you will realize that you always have a choice – to call a qualified specialist or to try and do it yourself.
9. Develop creative skills: drawing, illustration, photography
Despite the fact that these skills are unlikely to help you earn a lot of money, they are very attractive as they give you an insight into the process of creating something beautiful.
You’ll have to find inspiration and objects for your creative activity independently, but developing skills in a selected field depends only on the technical ability and practice.
If you want to learn how to draw people, get a book on anatomy and learn how to draw different bones and muscles. Drawing grids on photos will help you get acquainted with the rules of perspective.
Of course, it’s not as easy as it sounds, but drawing some objects, such as flowers or human hands, will give you an understanding of how it works and how it looks from a certain angle; it will also add more hours to your practice.
If you decide to master the creation of computer illustrations, there are many online tutorials for this.
The main thing is to spend from 15 to 30 minutes a day mastering the selected skill. Whatever you decide to study – drawing, creation of illustrations with the help of special software, photography, or even sculptures made of hamburgers – you need to split the study into many smaller steps and deal with each of these steps every day.
It’s a great way to relax and have a rest at the end of the day; besides, the hours of your practice will slowly but surely be accumulated.
8. Learn some self-defense techniques
If you do not want to be beaten during a surprise attack, you need to master self-defense. Some of the techniques can be learned from the instructional videos and worked out with friends. Here are some more video tutorials on self-defense techniques demonstrated by MMA fighters.
It would be nice if you never had to use these skills in real life, but anyway you will feel more confident when you have to return home late at night.
7. Develop your knowledge of design and develop a sense of style
Design is not an exact science because tastes differ and change over time, but there are some general principles that will make your job, house, or something else even more aesthetic and attractive.
If we are talking about classic design, we must first learn the basics of types and combinations. These are the skills that you can improve in your daily work to make it look more attractive.
This may seem to be a useless skill because, for example, you will not assess tables by their beauty; but if something looks good, it is always appreciated more. Aestheticism will always benefit your work.
A sense of style is important even in such things as, say, choosing wallpapers for the room or creating a clean and efficiently organized desktop on your computer.
6. Master any subject that you lacked at the university
This could be science, finance, mathematics, humanities, law, or something else. If you were unable to master this subject at the university, you can get online training.
What is great about this training is that you are only driven by your motivation. There are no exams, tests, and nerves. You learn as much as you want and just become a little smarter as a reward.
5. Create and alter the hardware
We all love modern technology, and the more the technology can give us, the greater our love of it is. There may be no technology that fails to be improved, but first we must acquire some skills.
Learning how to assemble a computer is a great way to start. You will need welding skills and the basics of using Arduino, with which you can create some really interesting things.
The best way to learn this is to start a project and learn all the tricks in the process of working on it. Who said that it is only for men?
4. Play a musical instrument
There are plenty of sites for learning to play musical instruments online. Of course, YouTube is very helpful too.
3. Cook like a chef
There are many websites with recipes and tips on cooking different dishes on the Internet. Everyone can be a classy cook without any special education!
Try different recipes to develop a “sixth sense for the dish”, subscribe to culinary YouTube channels and just have fun cooking.
2. Learn a foreign language
If you ask the people around what they want to learn, the most popular answer would be “a foreign language”.
You can start with a free app on your smartphone and a video on Youtube. Most importantly, you need to spend enough time to acquire the basic knowledge of the language which will help you cope with all the subsequent themes.
Besides, you will find sites for practicing various methods, you will come across the strategies of learning a language in a matter of 90 days, as well as the tips for those who want to quickly learn many languages and become a polyglot.
1. Create a website or an application or simply learn how to write the HTML code
There are many useful resources for those who have never been involved in programming, but always wanted to try it. On the Internet, there is a bunch of sites with paid courses and teachers, as well as free resources for the study of different programming languages.
Just keep in mind that the lessons of programming can be really boring if you’re not working on a specific project. If the theoretical knowledge is constantly reinforced by practice, you are more likely to keep going and achieve success in programming.
And what skills do you want to learn?