Boring but Important Skills You Need to Work On – Compound Your Efforts

If you’re not improving, you’re falling behind!

If you compete in the digital marketplace, you must be competing globally. Whether you’re a one-person online agency, a YouTube creator, or a freelancer, you must constantly learn and improve.

But how? Where do you find the time?

There are only so many hours in the day, and you’re barely treading water trying to break through.

The key is to start carving out time in your day to work on personal improvement. Learn to sacrifice the time you could record your next podcast or send that email.

It hurts. It feels wrong. I know, I’ve been there.

You feel guilty for not spending every waking moment working on your business. You think that if you just put in more time, you will reach the next level of success.

This is the type of toxic thinking that leads to burnout.

Success is not about working hard but learning how to compound your returns through systems and processes.

How do you outperform your competition? You put in the same effort but 100x or 1000x your returns.

So, where should you start? Leadership, communication, time management, marketing, sales?

These are critical skills, but this isn’t where most people should start.

Most people overestimate their ability and skip the basics.

It is about understanding how you spend your time daily, taking advantage of some basic skills you already use, and improving them.

Be forewarned; these are not the sexy skills you plaster all over your resume to impress the next hiring manager. They won’t make you an overnight success, but they will help you become more effective in your daily life and are critical to success.

Why Are Basic Skills So Important?

The basics are essential for several reasons.

First, they are the foundation upon which all other skills are built—a weak foundation, a weak building.

Focusing on the basics is a great place to start if you’re not getting the results you want.

Second, we use basic skills all the time. Getting better at the basics has a ripple effect on all other areas of life. For example, improving your communication skills will help you in your professional and personal relationships.

Lastly, mastering basic skills can give you a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced and ever-changing world. With so many people striving for success, having strong basic skills can set you apart from the rest and make you more effective in achieving your goals.

How to Use This Guide

Let’s break down how you should use this guide.

1. Read through the guide and choose one skill/area to focus on.
2. Set aside 30 minutes daily: I prefer first thing in the morning. It gets me moving when I wake up; if I leave this to the end of the day, it never gets done.
3. Identify training resources that will help you learn that skill, such as Youtubers, courses, programs, etc. I’ve included some below.
4. Consistently show up every day and work on the fundamental skills.
5. If you miss a day, who gives a shit. Come back and try again the next day.
6. If you miss multiple days, there is a problem, and you must re-assess your priorities.

Warnings

Here are a few pitfalls to avoid. It’s human nature.

Don’t Use These Skills as an Excuse To Not Start

You have to start somewhere, and it’s more important to screw up and make mistakes early and fast. These skills are not something that stops you from starting. These are skills you learn concurrently as you grow your online business.

Don’t Overtrain These Skills

These are basic skills that take time to hone and improve. Don’t spend all day on them. This isn’t a university final; cramming these skills doesn’t work. It takes time. Spend 30 minutes a day maximum.

4 Boring but Important Skills

Here is my list of fundamental skills that you should focus on.

1. Learning
2. Reading
3. Communication
4. Typing

1 – Learning

Learning is a skill. The faster and more effectively you learn, the faster you will outpace your competition.

In a world driven by algorithms and LLM AI models, the skills and knowledge you have today may be irrelevant tomorrow.

The good news?

This is as true for you as it is for everyone else. Your ability to learn effectively will put you ahead of the pack.

Engage Deeply With The Material

The more actively you engage with what you learn, the more you retain it. This simple principle makes intuitive sense.

This will date me a little, but I remember when teachers started using PowerPoint to teach at a university. Classes went from several handwritten slides to hundreds of PowerPoint presentations per class.

The result was more material, faster pace, less engagement, and less learning. Even taking notes on a computer left me feeling like I didn’t retain as much material.

I retained a hell of a lot more material in physics and math, subjects that required handwritten notes.

Handwritten notes increase your engagement with the material and help you learn faster.

If you can engage emotionally with the material, it sticks better. This is part of why doing what you are learning is more effective than watching someone else do something.

You must also actively force yourself to do the work. I like to think of my memory as a muscle I have to work out in the gym. Whenever I successfully recall or pull something from my memory, it strengthens the connection to that memory. If an emotion is attached to it, it strengthens the connection further.

Effective Note Taking

• The book Take SMART Notes.
• Consider creating a second brain.
• Use spaced repetition systems for recall.
• Write handwritten notes
• Use storytelling to increase your emotional engagement with the material.
• Use the material or teach what you learn to others.

2 – Reading Speed

I did not call this speed reading on purpose. Scientific research supports the fact that speed reading doesn’t work.

In 2016, Rayner et al. reviewed speed reading research comprehensively and concluded that no scientific evidence supports claims of dramatically increased reading speeds without comprehension loss.

Personally, I had a massive drop in retention when I started trying to “speed-read.”

That doesn’t mean you can’t increase your reading speed. It just means there is no silver bullet to getting there.

The goal is retention first and speed second. Why read a book twice as fast only to have to read it two or three more times to achieve the same retention?

Sounds like a great way to waste your time.

So, how do you increase your reading speed?

It’s going to sound boring, but you have to read varied texts regularly. The more often you read and the more exposure you have to different sentence structures and words, the faster you can read.

Most people can read between 200 and 400 words per minute with high comprehension levels. As speed increases above that, comprehension tends to drop off.

However, Professional readers with advanced reading skills can read up to 1,000 wpm with 85% comprehension.

TL;DR: Read regularly to improve your reading speed!

3 – Effective Communication

Communication is the backbone of any successful business. Whether you pitch to investors, collaborate with a team, or engage with customers, your ability to communicate clearly and persuasively is crucial.

I’m an introvert, and my standard mode of communication is not to communicate at all. I prefer to sit and wait. If you’re like me, you have to get over this. You must be willing to put yourself out there and communicate with others.

Pick a medium and practice it daily. For introverts like me, writing is an easy one.

I also recommend communicating in a forum with a strong feedback loop.

What do I mean by that?

You need to know if your communication has had the desired effect. That means you need someone or something to tell you whether the message got through.

Social media is fantastic for this. It gives you real-time feedback on your output.

• Likes = I agree.
• Shares = I want others to see.
• Comments = You made me think.

Social media algorithms are inherently designed to give you feedback on how well you engage with your audience. It’s the best teacher there is.

The faster the feedback loop, the better. Set up a consistent communication practice, and then review the results. The more you communicate and listen to the feedback, the faster you will improve.

4 – Typing Skills

Faster typing speeds increase productivity, help career advancement, improve time savings, reduce fatigue, and improve writing flow. I type anywhere between 70 and 80 WPM. Honestly, it’s not overly fast, but it’s a big improvement on the 40WPM I started at. The time I spend improving my typing speed is invaluable.

When I type faster, everything I do on the computer flows better, and I get more done in less time.

My ideas flow better when I write because I don’t have to wait for the words on the screen to match my thoughts.

How to get faster?

Here are some free resources I use to help me improve my typing speed:

1. Typing Club – Start here if you are new to touch typing
2. Keybr.com – Use this to start increasing your speed
3. Type Racer – Use this to keep sharp and show off your skills

Improving your typing speed is a process. Take it one step at a time, spend 10 – 15 minutes daily on this, and you will see slow, continual gains.

Conclusion

The hardest part about getting better at something is that you don’t have a genuine handle on the basics. You’re either lying to yourself (knowingly or unknowingly) about where you are now, or you just haven’t spent enough time on them.

Every professional athlete spends time working on the basics. Olympians still train basic movements daily and weekly despite being top performers in their field, and professional pianists practice scales.

There is a reason why you need to focus on the basics.

Look at the four skills above, be honest with yourself, and identify your weak points. Spend 30 minutes a day working on that skill, and you will see considerable gains in a year.

1% a day adds up! Do the work!