Learning New Skills As An Adult
One of the best parts of working in nonprofit, as opposed to in management consulting, is the staggering increase in free time. For all you management consultants out there (no hate, I am very pro-consulting!), I assure you there a world exists in which you needn’t work 60+ hours a week. What’s that you ask?
“Can you really go for a date or a dinner or a drink on a weekday?”
“Can you really sleep 8 hours a night?”
“Can you really dedicate an hour or two a day to developing other skills?”
YES YOU CAN.
A huge percentage of the gratitude I’ve felt for this year is attributable to the ability to engage in what I rather pretentiously describe as ‘self-development projects.’ These pursuits have ranged from sober and productive to downright self-indulgent, and include:
• Applying to business school (let’s not talk about it)
• Making friends
• Eating my way through every Mumbai-based restaurant on CNN’s list of top 50 restaurants in India
• Properly investing in my yoga practice
The most fun of these has been starting a Udemy web development course, taught by Rob Percival. I was looking for a way to develop more technical skills to be able to better pursue a long-term career in digital product development, and came across this article written by a fellow Brown alumnus (hi, Cliff!), and promptly registered. It coincided with my project at work (the launching of a digital retail platform to raise funds) and also the launch of my website, so my motivation couldn’t have been higher. It’s been slow going, but also an incredible amount of fun – I highly recommend it!
In case you’re thinking that the course is only for CS majors, take a look at one of my first websites ☺
A work of art, I know. Feel free to leave a comment with all freelance hiring inquiries.
My hope is to be able to better prototype products for ideas, and also engage in some freelance web development work. I know so many talented folks with great ideas, and I’d like to help them execute and design websites to make their ideas tangible. Also, some spare income would be great – I could use it to continue to reinvest in other ‘self-development projects.’
It’s still early days for me, but I’ll write another post to do a before and after and share the lessons I’ve learned through this course. In the meantime, I hope you’ll join me in taking the course or let me know what projects you’re working on – I would love the company!
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(Update, May 2018):
- I’m currently training to be a Yoga Alliance Certified Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT 200)
- I’m still working on web development! I also completed my first site as a freelance web developer. I plan to continue with this, you can keep tabs on my work here
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