How new skills can maximise your potential

As humans, there are always new skills and talents to learn and develop to better ourselves and maximise our potential.

Credit: Unsplash

As many of you readers know, I'm an aspiring author. To be a published writer of novels has always been my dream for as long as I can remember. I nearly took a detour and became a doctor, channelling my inner Meredith Grey, but realised that that wasn't the right route for me.

Instead, I returned to my passion for writing and decided to pursue that. But it wasn't easy.

When COVID-19 hit and the United Kingdom went into lockdown, I was two months away from sitting my A Level exams. Being told that all exams were to be cancelled and there was nothing I could do was frightening, to say the least. On top of that, I was supposed to decide which university to attend.

During lockdown, my friends and other people I know had one of the most relaxing summers. Whereas I decided to ponder my future, expand my experience and develop skills.

I wasn't certain about going to university so whilst we were all stuck inside, I completed online course after online course, all with a focus on writing.

In the end, when it came to results day, I declined my uni offers because I had found something better and something different.

However, now, after three years of studying for my part-time degree, I have a little break before July due to logistics with my university.

But when it comes to having a break or time to relax, I struggle...despite having lots of things I want to do away from work. So since submitting my final coursework for my previous module, I have kept busy.

And one of the things I've done is complete a Freelance Journalism Diploma with the Centre of Excellence.

Credit: Centre of Excellence

It was whilst completing the diploma that I had the idea for this blog post.

During the final section of the course, there was a part on being a freelancer in general and how we can maximise our potential and become better freelancers. However, I feel the tips it provided can apply to anyone about anything.

Maximising our potential

In our modern society, a job doesn't just require one specific skill. A multitude of skills and talents can be required because you never know what you may encounter.

And it doesn't matter what industry you work in. For example, a swimming teacher has to be able to swim well, but they also have to have good verbal communication, patience, and be able to teach others how to swim, sometimes without even getting in the water. And a businessman has to have knowledge about the business industry, have good verbal and written communication, have good computer skills and so on.

So when my online course mentioned making yourself more marketable and versatile, it really stuck with me.

There are always more methods of improving our skills, honing our talents and learning new things. For example, because the course was focused on journalism, it suggested a good thing for a journalist to do is to learn and practice a new skill including:

• Editing

• Photography

• Video-making and Video-editing

• Social Media

Doing online courses in any topic whether it be sign language, computer skills or health and wellness, will help maximise your potential because it gives you another skill to pull on and use.

It is very difficult nowadays to get the job you want and to even get experience. So trying to learn new things and develop those you already have can never be a bad thing.

So what's a skill you'd like to learn but never got around to doing so?

Until next time...