Have you ever wondered what things are necessary in our life? Which things to learn? Common answer would be ‘I don’t know’. Because no one told us which things to learn. All we did was what our teachers, parents, and society has taught us.
Why should one learn things other than the usual? Because they have a limit. We can apply them everywhere. They will limit you at certain parts. What I am talking about is life changing lessons most successful people on the earth have shared with us.
Lessons that changed the way they looked at life. And brought the impact to entire human civilization. These people are Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and more. If you implement these lessons in your life, you will be walking towards success.
Let us discuss things to learn in life.
Discipline
The most basic thing taught everywhere, discipline. But no one tells you how it is going to impact your life. If implemented it can do wonders. It gives you clarity in life. Discipline helps you manage every day’s work in a positive manner. More efficiently and most effectively.
It brings the best out of your life. Sports players like Virat Kohli, Messi, Neymar, and all successful people follow discipline in their life. It sets a tone. A moment. It helps you maintain a steady pace. It is a repetitive process of doing few things. Its impact is profound.
It boosts self confidence, and creates a resistance towards unproductive stuff. And most importantly it improves your thinking ability. A disciplined mind is sharper, calmer and stronger.
Patience
One of the most precious things in today’s time is patience. People have lost the ability to wait. They want output as quickly as possible. They want instant results. Just like instant cup noodles. Even if you get instant results, they are temporary. A mere completion of a task.
Great things take time to happen. Amazon wasn’t built in one night. It took many years. Apple, Microsoft, Tata, Ford these companies took decades to stand tall. Similarly we as an individual should work towards our goal with patience.
If you are seeking great results. They need time to manifest. Patience will help you in difficult times. You won’t panic in hard times. Your mind will be calmer and can assess the situation better. This is one of the leading qualities of a great leader.
Learn to listen
We listen to many things in our day to day life. We speak more than that. But how much do we grasp from what we listen to? Very few. Because we are only hearing. We don’t pay attention to someone or something when it is not of our interest.
Listening is the ability to pay attention and understand it. A good listener will always stay ahead of others. Why? They know what to do with the given information. In communication, listening plays an important role.
You are attracted to people who listen to you. We make friends on the basis of that. But we do it subconsciously.
Admire but ask Questions
We all have idols. We want to be like them. But there is a line that we can’t cross. We and our idols are different, at individual aspects. We need these things to learn when to stop admiring them blindfolded and start asking questions around their belief.
If we keep on admiring them then we will never become or achieve what we want. We admire someone when they have done something extraordinary. And we hope to do the same. But admiration has a belief that only he or she can do that.
It stops your thinking at that point. But if you question each and every aspect you admire, you will figure out what they have done to achieve. A secret to success is through questioning.
Critical Thinking
In the information age, we get everything on tip of our fingertips. A tiny 6 inch mobile phone holds all the world’s information. And when we want to know about something then we search on the internet. This is an act of spoon feeding.
Elon musk has popularized the first principle of thinking. It is about breaking down the whole things in parts, and then rearranging them in such a way to create something unique and useful. If you take a car and rocket, break them down into parts. Now attach a rocket booster to the car. You will get the 1st car to ever travel in space. The Fast 9 movie did the same thing.
This will help you with critical thinking. Ability of critical thinking helps in innovations, research, and in arts. Look at Apple they combined audio and screen together and created the first ever smart-phone. The rest is history.
Similarly many researchers have helped us with medicine that will cure dangerous diseases like cancer. So work on your critical thinking ability.
Focus
The most underrated power in the world is Focus. Such a great power, one can achieve what they want. All chess players have an immense power of focus. Focus to such an extent that they can predict certain things ahead of the time.
Focus is all about giving your attention to one task. Be it listening to others, learning any subject or understanding any concept of life. A focused mind can take a lot of information, consume it, and decipher it accordingly. A focused mind can finish more tasks than the rest.
There is a formula to it, time * focus = Progress. If you are working towards any project then it takes x amount of time to finish for average people. But a forced person can finish it in X*his focus. Here focus can be counted in speed. Because he or she is getting the same amount of distraction at the time of project. But a focused man says no to these distractions. It will keep on working on the project till it finishes it off. It increases productivity and efficiency. Boosts self confidence. For students this power is a must.
Managing Priorities
Priorities are the tasks you want to finish in your day-to-day life. They hold a certain degree of importance over others. For any students studying is above the scrolling mindlessly on social media channels. Yet many do the opposite. We as humans are always looking for things that give us a dopamine spike. And social media algorithms do the same to you.
So, figure out the priority task in your life. All of us have seen military movies, spy movies, or to say mission impossible by Tom Cruz. We know that they first decide which thing is important in achieving their mission.
Just like that you are on a mission to achieve what you want. All you have to do is prioritize what task you want to do. Which things to do, how to learn things, and which one should be finished first.
Managing priorities is one of the things to learn in free time for students.
Habits are great
Have you ever read the book Atomic habits? If not then go and read it. It is a complete guide to develop any new habits and break all your bad habits.
Habits make us what we are today. If you wake up late in the morning then most of the time you are binge watching or spending time on useless things. A very few are learners at night. Or most of the youth indulge themselves in pleasure.
A good habit will always help you towards a good life. And bad habits will bring you one step down, even if you climb 10 steps forward. So build good habits in life that will take you to the height you have desired.
Personal Growth
Focus on personal growth. It is all about improving yourself everyday to become a successful man. What is success? Things you want to achieve. You should be thinking like this: How can I learn new things in free time?
Honestly speaking, personal growth is a vast topic. There are many personal growth books written on this single topic. Above mentioned all power comes under personal growth. Yet many don’t know about it.
If you are looking for a permanent dopamine rush that will never finish then this is where you have to work on. Bill Gates his sole focus is on reading books. Books that will bring the best out of him.
Recently he has shifted his focus from his company to solving problems faced by many common people. He has become a philanthropist. Personal growth can impact you very differently and positively.
Growth Mindset
Mindset the source of willpower. Source of focus, source of personal growth, source of habit. Without it you are behaving just like an animal does in life. So work on your mindset.
Create the right mindset to achieve what you want in your life. Assume you want to land a job right out of college. Then what should you be doing? First, where do you want to work? Then figure out what kinds of skills it needed for that job, and learn them. Then focus on working on yourself to achieve those skills.
You can only do that if you have a mindset for that. Many people don’t even know why they are learning new skills. They know that it is going to help them out somehow in future. But how, they will never figure it out. This is a major difference between a normal person and growth mindset person.
Learn the art of money making
One of the biggest lessons in life is the art of making money. School and colleges will not teach you this. Only successful people can. Because they have figured out how to make more money. That’s why they are successful, isn’t it?
So learn about how to make money. Robert Kiy0osaki has said in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad, why rich people get richer and poor people get poorer. His sole focus is on learning how to use money to make more money.
But we are taught to work for money. Be dependent on one paycheck to another paycheck. This is also a mindset problem. Change your mindset and start learning more about money making art. There are lots of books out there. But I prefer you read The Psychology of Money.
This book talks about money problems and how to solve them. Start with this. You will discover more as you read the book.
Time Management
Last and not the least. To learn and implement all the above things you should know how much time to give it. Because you, me and everyone have 24 hours a day. No discrimination here. A simple pure power given to all.
If you learnt the art of time management, boy you are on a roll. Believe me when I say this. It is an art of doing things more efficiently and stress-free. If learnt, one can do 10X more work than the rest. That’s the power of time management. Especially for students this is what you should be working on. You can read in detail about it here.
Conclusion
These are the things to learn in your 20’s. Once learned they will stay with you forever. Don’t just believe what everyone says or you read. Remember to always question what, why and how. Idolize but ask questions. Create a growth mindset and focus on your task. Learn time and money management lessons as early as you can. There are many Ted Talks on the above subjects. Go and watch them for more insight. I hope you have learned something new out of this article.
One more thing, you must always keep on learning new things.