Continuing our career development review, this month we are going to review how to take an inventory of your skills.
The definition of Skills, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary is the ability to use one’s knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance.
So, in layman’s terms, your skills are those areas that you excel at and can use to do a great job or help others in some way.
2020 gave us all an opportunity to slow down, but you may have taken advantage of that time to enhance your skills or even learn some new ones. There are so many online courses you can take to learn new skills. Take advantage of them!
Take a moment to list out all your skills, both old and new. Think way back to growing up. What skills did you learn even at that time that you can still use today? We often forget the skills we learned as children, but they can end up being very important for our adult lives too.
What skills have you developed in the last year? List out anything that you can think of. Get creative. Maybe you were baking a lot of bread, so you learned how to master a recipe or create your own for example.
Skills can be learned through life, not just classes. What did this past year teach you that you took the time to enhance? Maybe you started a new hobby and the skills for that can transfer over to your job as well.
Now take a few minutes to think of anything new that you still want to learn this year. Don’t go 10 years out, just focus on the current year. What skills do you want to learn? What do you need to do to learn them? How long will it take you to learn?
All these factors will help you to set a schedule, continue learning and applying your new skills and it will also allow you to have fun. Don’t push too hard or try to do too much. Just do what is manageable. You can always add more if you want to down the line.
If you would like to chat about how you can improve your skillsets and what that could mean for your career, please reach out. I am happy to help!
