Again a toughie Henneke. This took me a long time.
To cut out the flab, I had to Re-read the post again and again and again and then ask:
– what’s the purpose, what am I trying to inform my reader?
– is the message coming through?
– is it succinct enough? Can it be better?
I would then rinse and repeat the above, till the post would be rid of all the gunk and gloop.
Hope I’ve done well. I’m posting below the original blog post and the edited version.
Old Post:
Six Wonderful Skills I’m glad I picked after School, which you can too.
I’ve truly had fantastic teachers throughout my life. Right throughout school, through religious school, during my association with Toastmasters, at my first job at KPMG all in Dubai and right now in Bangalore I’m extremely fortunate to have got highly intelligent, most sincere and extremely dedicated personalities giving their best to me. Issac Newton had once written, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” How beautifully put. I feel just the same. If I’m anything today, it’s because of God, my family and my teachers.
Looking back, here are a few additional skills that I’m really glad I picked apart from formal education. Many of the below skills have had significant positive impacts, some have even been life-changing.
1. GTD
Regular readers would’ve noticed that we regularly write about GTD on this blog. That’s because GTD is a truly phenomenal system that would greatly improve the performance of anybody. Be it a school going child, an office-going executive or a house-wife.
GTD is the ultimate time-management and stress-management system. GTD does that by dealing with issues on focussing your work, procrastination, organising home/work space, identifying priorities and helping you find what’s your purpose on this planet. It’s the true swiss-army knife set of skills that will have you the most prepared no matter what situation you are in. What would have been the result if I had picked-up GTD during my School Days? My grades would certainly be higher and I would have been even more focussed and clear on my goals in life. Any school or college kids reading this, or for that matter even those who’ve completed college many years ago, if there’s just one thing that you want to pick from this list, try GTD. Yes, it does require discipline but it’s fun, quite easy to implement and will propel learning all the below items in the list too.
For resources on GTD, have a look at my earlier blog post here where I’ve listed some resources where you can pick up GTD at the end. Ali has listed his favourite resources towards the end of this blog post here.
3. Critical Thinking Skills
Too many meetings in the Corporate World today simply get carried away and move from tangent to tangent simply because, facts and assumptions are not separated. Thanks to a little practice in Critical Thinking, I am able to distinguish, fact, assumptions, bias, argument and conclusion, from each other more rapidly now. A skill that has saved many hours of avoidable discussions as well as arguments.
To learn more about Critical Thinking visit this link on wikipedia. There are many books on Critical Thinking listed here on Amazon. I can’t seem to find the book I’ve read there, however I’m sure many other would be quite good, probably even better.
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Readability score
Readability Formula Score
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 63.8
Grade Levels
A grade level (based on the USA education system) is equivalent to the number of years of education a person has had. Scores over 22 should generally be taken to mean graduate level text.
Readability Formula Grade
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 8.8
Gunning-Fog Score 11
Coleman-Liau Index 10.7
SMOG Index 8.4
Automated Readability Index 8.7
Average Grade Level 9.5
Text Statistics
Character Count 2,235
Syllable Count 733
Word Count 496
Sentence Count 28
Characters per Word 4.5
Syllables per Word 1.5
Words per Sentence 17.7
New and Improved Post:
Six Wonderful Skills I’m glad I picked after School, which you can too.
I’ve had fantastic teachers.
Be it School, Toastmaster, KPMG, everywhere my teachers/mentors have been the ultimate. They were intelligent, sincere and dedicated. If they saw an opportunity, they would teach, they would train. And when they taught, by God, they would only give their best.
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
~ Issac Newton
If I’m anything today, it’s because of God, my family and my teachers.
However, Further to my formal and professional education, I’ve trained myself in certain skills. Skills that have been life changing. Thanks to this new skill-set, I’m 500% more productive. Sometimes even more. Yes, these skills are really that awesome.
Every single day, I dip into one or more of these multiple skill set depending on the situation and come out just soaring!
Here’s the list of those skills that will transform you into a productive ninja. And if you get these skills as a student, you would be light-years ahead of your peers in the classroom.
1. GTD
We’ve written oodles about GTD on this blog. That’s because GTD is a truly phenomenal system. It sky-rockets anybody’s and everybody’s performance. Be it a school child, an office executive or a house-wife.
GTD does this by:
– First collecting all the unorganised stuff lying around your life.
– Making Concrete decisions what is actionable or not.
– Organising those decisions into leak-proof lists, that your psyche will trust
– Identifying priorities to help decide when to do what.
– In the whole process help you find your purpose on this planet.
Gosh, that may sound like a mouthful, but GTD does all the above in easiest peasiest way possible. It’s the swiss-army knife set of skills that will have you prepared no matter what situation you are in.
If only I had picked-up GTD during School. My grades would have been higher. I would have more time in my hands to do more extracurricular stuff. Most of all I would have been totally focussed on the larger goals in life.
Any school or college kid reading this, if there’s just one thing that you want to take back from this list, it’s GTD. Yes, it does require discipline. But it’s fun, it’s easy and will make real easy mastering all the below skills in the list.
For resources on implementing GTD, have a look at my blog post: 5 Steps to implementing GTD by clicking here.
3. Critical Thinking Skills
So little time, so many meetings. And meetings in the Corporate world today, often end up discussing the same point endlessly. Hours are consumed on purposeless discussions.
Simply because, facts and assumptions are not separated.
Thanks to a little practice in Critical Thinking, I am able to distinguish:
– facts
– assumptions
– bias
– argument
– conclusion,
from each other more rapidly now.
Critical thinking is a skill that has saved many hours of avoidable discussions and arguments.
To learn Critical Thinking have a look at this Amazon list.
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Readability Formula Score
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 72.8
Grade Levels
Readability Formula Grade
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 6
Gunning-Fog Score 8.9
Coleman-Liau Index 10.3
SMOG Index 7
Automated Readability Index 5.2
Average Grade Level 7.5
Text Statistics
Character Count 2,301
Syllable Count 749
Word Count 518
Sentence Count 45
Characters per Word 4.4
Syllables per Word 1.4
Words per Sentence 11.5