Two timeless skills to conquer the world

Staying sharp today feels like a full-time job.

With constantly shifting demands—like due to the latest A.I. megatrend—it’s challenging to know which skills truly matter and which are on their way out.

Here are 2 skills that are timeless and fundamental, regardless of what your job description may say.

1. Bringing people together

Everyone likes being part of something. And Everybody at some point in his/her life struggles to find the right context in which to connect with other people.

Some come across an opportunity but are afraid to take it. Others have the confidence or openness to just take plenty of opportunities and get to know people like naturals.

This is something you can work on. And you probably should.

However, an overlooked approach is that you can cultivate and own a social setting, in which you feel natural. In which you enjoy connecting to new people.

This is a new priority for me. I've neglected this in the past.

Cultivating and shaping your own social settings for people to meet in is powerful. Only few take the initiative to host those gatherings, but everybody wants to take part.

It's easier to bring new people into your already established setting than relying on being invited or meeting them in someone else's.

The good thing is, this skill is not limited to a specific domain of your life.

It's just as powerful if practiced in a professional context. Many are looking out for an attractive job. Few are actively creating job opportunities. Few create their own business.

Of course, that's for a reason. It's on you then, to create value for others. You risk that this effort will get disregarded or disliked.

Since the biggest and most meaningful things in life can probably only be achieved by people working together, learning to create and shape those gatherings is essential.

Take initiative while others look out for opportunities.

Ideas I'd like to practice in this context are:

• providing without keeping the score
• keeping relationships consistent
• building relationships when you don't need them

A book that on the topic that I've liked is “never eat alone” by Keith Ferazzi.

2. Meta-learning

Learning is influenced by stable factors like intelligence. Some will learn faster than others.

But one factor just as important is self-efficacy. You can change that.

Carol Dweck, psychology professor at the Stanford University, researched within the field of motivation psychology, what they later called the “fixed mindset” and “growth mindset”.

The distinction between both mindsets comes down to how learners attribute their failures and their successes.

Learners whose mindset leans toward a fixed mindset are convinced that their abilities are static. They contribute their successes to talent, and their failures to a lack of the sames. This has profound implications on how they act.

Learners that feature more of a fixed mindset tend to:

• avoid challenges to protect their self-image.
• give up easily when faced with obstacles.
• see effort as a sign of inadequacy.
• feel threatened by others' success.
• seek validation rather than growth.

In school, I took pride in my physical ability. In sports lessons, when we performed a discipline that I had never done before, I'd rather not give it all my effort. I guess it would have insulted my ego, to give it all I have and still do poorly.

That's a clear sign of a fixed mindset.

But this is not all black and white. Imagine your mindset on a scale from “fixed” to “growth”. Usually, your mindset can be more fixed in one domain and less fixed in another.

Nowadays, I generally like to challenge myself. I am more comfortable failing. But then to this day I avoid mental arithmetic. You got to tackle those one at a time.

This pays off. Learners with a growth mindset believe that that abilities can be developed through effort, strategies, and feedback.

Learners that feature more of a growth mindset tend to:

• embrace challenges as opportunities to grow.
• persist in the face of setbacks.
• see effort as a path to mastery.
• learn from criticism.
• are inspired by others' success.

If you have a hard time learning something, rethink your learning strategy. This is not about learning types. Speaking from a standpoint of cognitive psychology, some methods are more effective than others.

The true benefit of being intentional about what you learn and how you learn it does not lie in increased productivity, but in stacking proof that you can learn any stuff you want to learn.

It's about cultivating self-efficacy.

To learn more about the concepts described, you can read the book “Mindset: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential” by Carol Dweck. It might sound like fluffy self-help, but it's backed by extensive research.

That's it.

If you can learn anything you want and have people supporting you along the way, that's a strong foundation to conquer the world.

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Until soon.