I was just over at a self development forum, and was very intrigued by one of the member’s ideas for giving himself a “50 skill challenge,” which sounds like a great way to help set and achieve goals and objectives
This forum member, who goes by the user name of “Mounds” stated, “I can make you a guarantee with this challenge. If you walk into it and learn 50 skills in a year, you will walk out a better, more developed person. How can you not?”
What a brilliant concept! I always temper big goals or objectives with one of my favorite sayings by Carl Schurz (paraphrased):
“Ideals are like the stars. We may not reach them, but like the mariners on the sea, we chart our course by them.”
In Mounds’ case, he talks about some skills being more simple (and therefore easy to chalk off the list) – such as “learn to change a tire.” Certainly not a difficult skill to learn – and also one that would always be helpful to know.
He then mentions adding skills that present a bit more of a challenge, such as “Learn origami.” Or “Learn how to salsa dance,” or “Learn…website related skills.”
This is where I thought about categorizing and prioritizing the skills I might target for myself. Thinking about some of the examples Mounds offered, I could quickly determine that as cool as it might be to learn origami or salsa dancing, I honestly don’t see myself using the skill very often. First, John just simply does not like to dance. 🙂 And, origami might be useful for an art teacher – but, not really for me.
So, I thought about how this type of challenge would work best for someone like me. As I mentioned to Mounds in his thread, I’d probably give thought to what my OVERALL goals are for the year (or whatever time frame I’d consider for this).
What am I trying to accomplish this year?
There are a few things that come to mind right away.
For example, I would dearly love to sell our house – but we don’t know of any realtors who are using the type of marketing that we feel could really help. Putting the house on the MLS is fine – but what ELSE could bring attention to our home?
So, thinking in terms of the goal to sell our home this year, I instantly think of “video marketing” and “social network marketing.” To the best of my knowledge, the agency with whom we had the house listed last year didn’t do any of this. If they did, we weren’t told of it.
So, what skills would be required for me to bring myself closer to my goal? Here are some of the things I came up with that one might need to learn:
- Learn how to sign up for YouTube
- Learn how to record a video on the free “Movie Maker” tool that came with my computer
- Learn how to make a Fan Page on Facebook to market the house
- Learn how to stage a house for photos and showings
Then, once these skills are learned, I could build my objectives (targeted action steps) toward the goal, based on using these skills. For example:
- Prepare each room for photos
- Take photos of each room
- Arrange photos in Movie Maker and add captions
- Complete the movie and publish on YouTube
- Create the Facebook Fan Page and add the video
So, as a result of this exercise where I learned some new skills, I also naturally find myself moving towards my goals.
It’s certainly an interesting concept – and one that I think would be a lot of fun to work on. It’s just a little twist on achieving goals and objectives.
And, at the end of the year, I’d walk away having learned at least a FEW new skills – which is an accomplishment in itself!
In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I really do anything like this to help sell our home!
(2014 Update – the forum I talk about is no longer available; therefore, I removed any links to it)