There are many skills that one could master in a life term however, according to Naval Ravikanth, these 5 skills are considered basic and important that may not directly make money but in the long term these skills will keep you adaptable and gives you the basic tools needed to excel at anything.
1) Reading
One of the primary means to expand knowledge. By dropping your readying skills after school, you are inhibiting your ability to gain further knowledge. Depending on which stage of life you are in, If you compare your school or college days and the present, you can easily acknowledge that your reading ability has been going down consistently as we age. This is because there are only so many situations that force you to read. With declining reading ability, your skill to learn new knowledge is going down as well.
Not all is bad news. You can re-acquire your reading ability and in extension, your ability to expand knowledge by repeating regular reading. Start off with your favorite books or novels. Being a Harry Potter head, I would recommend starting with those book series if you haven’t read them it. I cannot fathom the number of teens and kids who have indulged in reading as a hobby after the HP books. Once you develop a habit, without even realizing you will regain your ability to read and your thirst for new knowledge will only keep going upwards.
2) Writing
Writing sets off your thought process which is the most basic and abstract form of expression. Every individual’s thoughts works in unpredictable ways and writing is the mean to discover your serendipity. With the digital age, writing is an underrated skill that you would need to leverage.
Although we write a lot at schools and office, that doesnt help you with the thought process as those are more contextual writing addressing a question or a task. Instead go online and start small. Leave your written expression as comments on online portals like Facebook or YouTube videos. Write reviews about how you felt after watching a movie or after dining at a restaurant. Then turn to personal blogs and writing like this one. You will be surprised at your new gained ability to build a castle in your thoughts and express it in words. An additional benefit of writing is it will help you establish a more connected thought process which will also help you to speak more thoughtfully.
3) Persuasion
After arming yourself with knowledge (through reading) and thought process (through writing), the next necessary skill is the ability to speak and persuade someone. It doesn’t mean to manipulate someone, but to clearly explain your decision and influence other people.
Persuasion or even call it negotiation depending on the situation is a life saver skill in multiple situation, be it office, social or domestic environments. There is a fine line between being influential and coming up straight off as argumentative or stubborn. A good persuader should be ready to be persuaded if the other party has enough information which brings up a great point. To be able to be a good persuader, you not only have to express yourself meaningfully but also be an excellent listener.
You can start practicing persuasion skills with your friends on random topics like why you think you should go to New York for your long weekend or why you think you all should go to the cheese cake factory for dinner. You should be able to make meaningful statements and let the listener arrive at their own conclusion which should be in your favor.
4) Arithmetic
Arithmetic ability or Math is another basic life skill to master. While knowing algebra or Fourier series is one thing, the ability to make purposeful Reflective judgements through Math are the skills you gain by expanding your arithmetic skills. Math gives you a lot more skills than you think – from interpretation of a problem, self regulating the process based on various formulas/methods you learnt, evaluating the best strategy, inferring the results from the strategy and finally explaining how you got the results are extensive skills that goes with arithmetic ability which cannot be understated. The ability to resolve problems could be applied to any other system or construct in life.
To gain more arithmetic ability, start off with your domain knowledge and relook at where Math is possible. Almost every field relies on some form of Arithmetic and if you start looking you will find it. From data collection (statistics) to cyber security (hashing) etc, Math is really used in our every day lives.
If you are still not convinced, you can go around the internet and connect with People who are extremely passionate about Maths. Math is like magic where you can theorize something on paper and see it in action in real life. No wonder so many people are passionate. The internet back in the days when I was in college or school were limited to wikipedia and some basic online sites. But nowadays, there is online content on any subject including Math. Some of my favorite are Khan Academy and 3Blue1Brown YouTube Channel. There are a ton of other online and MooC courses available which could help rekindle the Math in you.
5) Computer Skills
This is a basic skill because from the available jobs today, computer industry is the one where you have the least effort to income ratio. You don’t have to spent a lot of time or except any form of physical labor to earn money through your Computer Skills. With the ever increasing Global digital footprint in our lifetime, there would always be a job offer for a computer skill. With a ton of free Youtube/Online & MooC courses, you are never far from learning Computers or Coding Skills. Another point to remember is, with the ever changing industry, there is no one programming language or skill that will consistently keep you employed in the industry. You would just learn the constructs of that language and apply your logical reasoning to a different computer language.
Some of my favorite places to acquire computer skills are Udemy, Udacity, CourseEra, LinkedIn Learning, YouTube, etc etc. You can never run out of free online material for the computer skill you are trying to learn. As the computer industry is a dynamic one, it is never too late to start picking up a computer skill even though you have never worked in the industry before. Trust me, as with other industries, the preparation upto the work takes up the majority of the time than the actual work itself. So if you are thinking about switching industries into computer or IT, it is never too later.
These basic life skills identified through Naval’s Tweet storm and expanded upon my own experience. In my opinion, if you haven’t got these basic life skills already start small and be consistent. You will truly reap the benefits of these fundamental skills as soon as you get them started. Good luck!
Cognitive Scrawls 
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