Aim to Develop these 3 Skills in 2023.

In a field where everyone has the same hard skills and degrees, soft skills make them better and worse than each other. If you look at the superstar of your field, he might have these soft skills that other bottom players wouldn’t have. I compiled here 3 soft skills of that superstar that you should aim to develop in 2023, which will help you with your career and life.

I will ignore soft skills like communication and time management because they are already talked about a lot(which doesn’t mean they are unimportant). We will talk about skills many people lack, and you might be lacking too. Let’s go on toward our three skills you should develop in 2023.

Develop these 3 Skills in 2023

Here I wrote down 3 soft skills that many overlook and others that don’t—overtake overlookers smoothly. Having these skills in the first months of 2023 will help you throughout the years to reach your goals, overtaking people who overlook these.

Each skill below is explained along with some easily actionable steps to develop the skill as you read, so you can start today and now. With this, let’s go over our first skill of doing deep work.

1. Deep Work

The skill of doing deep work is a skill of having an immense focus on your task and eliminating all distractions. For example, studying for a set period of time with no changing task or subject eliminates all the distractions. The brain is merely into study until the time period ends.

Deep work is one of the most beneficial skills; I don’t see why one wouldn’t start developing it. It yields more quality work in less amount of time. It is the key to high productivity.

According to the net law of productivity;

Quality of work = (Time Taken) x (intensity of focus)

Batching the difficult but important intellectual work into long, uninterrupted stretches is the key to productivity. If you notice the best of the best in any field. It is what they do; they do their work in batches of 1 to 2 hours, in which they immensely focus on work with no distractions.

How to Perform Deep Work

You should; you must have this skill if you don’t already. For your assistance, here are some steps for you to start performing deep work.

Divide your daily tasks into two categories, deep work and shallow work.
- Deep work should include the most important tasks that require the most energy, attention and focus and gives the most result.
- Shallow work should include tasks that don’t require much energy, such as emails, reports and meetings.

Schedule time for your deep work—choose the time you have the most energy. For instance, my first deep work sessions go around 6 to 8 in the morning.
Optimise your workspace for zero distractions.
- Such as cleaning your desk; nothing else should be there other than the requirement of the task you are performing.
- Leave your phone out of the workspace.
- Clean your desktop home page; nothing distracting should be there.
- You should have only one window on the Pc that you are working on, or you should only have that book you read in a deep work session.
- You should have nothing around you for the session, or it will distract you.
When everything is ready, start the timer and take a deep dive into work and don’t surface until the timer goes off.

Do multiple deep work sessions in a day until you finish your tasks, take big breaks between these sessions and perform your shallow tasks in these breaks.

Performing deep work is not easy; you will get distracted and ruin your sessions too. Don’t give up; stay consistent with the deep work sessions daily, and you will slowly develop it as a skill.

If you want to learn more about deep work, I advise you to read this article: Deep Work: How to Develop the Most Valuable Skill of the 21st Century

2. Learning Fast

Most of us have that one friend who understands and learns new things very fast, and I used to think it was a god-gifted ability. To my pleasure, I was wrong. Learning new skills and knowledge fast is a skill you can acquire like any other skill.

Learning fast becomes another quality of a person, which helps him acquire new skills much faster and with quality. This skill will help you to develop other skills you aim to learn in 2023 faster. It will enable you to reach success faster with your faster way of acquiring knowledge, as learning is the way to the top of any field.

Here is how it is done

There is no question that you should or shouldn’t develop it. It’s an essential skill, and overlooking it will cause you to lose to people who have it.

Here are some things I like to do when learning something new, which helps me increase my learning speed.

Taking an interest in what you are learning. Many times whatever you are learning is not interesting to you, but it is necessary to learn. Make it interesting by focusing on what that skill makes you and linking the learning of that skill with your goal. For example: learning communication skills to communicate well with your crush makes learning it interesting.
Getting the right definition of skill. If you observe, a person who is a master in a skill defines it very differently than people who are learning it. Seek the definition of the master—the only correct definition. It will help you to learn the right thing faster.
Become practical. Do whatever you learn as you learn. Learning is not learning if you are not implementing it practically. It is just like watching guitar tutorials but not playing the guitar. Practically exercising skills make them more interesting—a bonus.

Don’t go for perfection—go for completion. Get it! You will not get perfection in any skill anywhere near in future. You will waste time pursuing perfection in your first application of skill, which will slow down the learning process. Just go for implementing, performing and learning it imperfectly.

Learning fast doesn’t mean mastering skills fast. Mastering something is time-consuming, and it should consume time. Learning fast is to get things fast and keep the knowledge with you so you can use it to master it. For example, you can learn to deep work today, but it will take 2 or 3 weeks to be good at it. Mastering it is at another level.

Just get started with a skill you are interested in and focus on learning it and improving it while practically practising it.

3. Emotional Management

Emotions management is a must-to-have skill. A person who can’t manage his emotions gets controlled by them. A person who is in control of his emotions is weak. If someone influences his emotions, he is in others’ control. You don’t have any control over yourself if you can’t manage your emotions. The drawbacks of not having these skills make this a must-to-have skill.

The skill of emotional management is about having control over yourself and not letting emotions control your actions. Your actions should be what is necessary rather than what feels better.

An emotionally intelligent person is always aware of his emotions and never puts himself under control of his emotions. He always does what is necessary than what he feels to do. On the other hand, a less emotionally intelligent person gives value to his emotions and does what he feels is right rather than what is right.

For example, a low emotional intelligence person skips work when he feels anxious, stressed or tired. In contrast, the emotionally intelligent person does work regardless of how he feels and overtakes others because he manages his emotions better.

Here are some signs that you might be lacking this skill.

You procrastinate and make excuses for yourself.
You skip work or gym when you are not in the mood.
Being happy, sad, angry, stressed, anxious or in any other emotional state affects your routine.

Your routine changes with your moods and emotions.

Its the time

If you have never considered managing your emotions, 2023 is the time to develop this skill.

Here are some points that will help you develop better emotional management skills.

Instead of “I am angry”, try “I feel angry”—beware that it’s just an emotion.
Do the exercise of staying aware of whatever you are feeling. Whenever you have a prominent feeling, take one minute and think about what emotion you are feeling.
Do meditation for at least 10 minutes daily.

Whenever you realise that you are being controlled by emotion, take a piece of paper and write down whatever you feel. Such as, “I am feeling sad because of blah blah.” the more you write, the more you get aware of it, and the more you stay in control.
Consider learning more about human emotions—read articles and watch podcasts on the topic.

Again, it is not easy to not be affected by your emotions, it requires self-discipline, but with consistent practice, you will be able to master it. This skill will make you unstoppable.

Tip: stay observing your emotions.

Conclusion

Above here, I wrote about one of the most useful skills of all time for you. If you do not already have them, I sincerely advise you to work on them; they can change your life and career. Here is a quick summary of what we have learned on this page.

Aim to develop these three skills in 2023.

Develop the skills of deep work—Deep working is the skill of working with immense focus on the task, which boosts productivity.
Develop the skill of learning fast. If you learn fast and efficiently, you will succeed fast and efficiently.
Develop the skill of managing your emotions. If you don’t manage your emotions well, your emotions will manage you, and it will never be a good outcome.

What other skill is that people lack and should be on this page? Let’s discuss this in the comments.