5 Little Skills That Will Make You Wealthy
How to boost your life earnings.
Karolina Grabowska | Pexels Even if you don’t want to be wealthy, you can’t deny the importance of money. With more of it, you can live where you want, take care of your needs, and indulge in your favorite hobbies with the reassurance that you’ll always have a roof over your head and more than enough food to eat. Money is an incredibly important part of our existence — even if it can’t buy happiness.
This year is on track to being my highest earning year since I took the plunge and went independent. I can tell you about many skills that helped me, like copywriting and coding, but five in particular have been the driving force for my income growth. Learn and become a master of them to see your finances skyrocket!
Here are 5 skills that will make you wealthy:
1. Sustained focus
Technology has been a blessing and a curse to mankind. While it’s possible to communicate with people across the globe, it’s also stupendously difficult to put all these gadgets down. Morden's life exists in a world filled with distractions. At every second of the day, something is competing for your attention. This has messed up our attention span as a species. It’s also created opportunity. Anyone who can focus on a task without interruption for at least 45 minutes distinguishes themselves from 98% of the population. By developing your ability to focus, you enhance your productivity, tap into your creative potential, reduce stress, and develop resilience — all traits required to earn more wonga.
Tips to develop your focus:
Much research has suggested that working in small chunks of time with integrated rest periods is the key to helping with focus. This is because your attention tends to wane after a certain period. Instead of trying to smash everything out in one sitting, start with 15 minutes of deep focus and then take a break before resuming for another 15 minutes. When it gets too easy to do 15 minutes, increase it to 20 minutes — and so on. This method is often referred to as the Pomodoro Technique. It’s a popular time-management technique used to help you resist distractions and re-train your brain to focus.
2. Taking action
Footballers play football every day. Writers write every day. Programmers code every day. What are you doing every day? As the popular adage goes, “We are what we repeatedly do.” The more action you take, the more seeds you plant. This increases your chances of getting lucky. For example, I wrote an article in February 2023 about embedded machine learning. Almost a year later, someone contacted me regarding that article, requesting my availability to work with them on a project. They’re now my highest-paying client.
Tips to become an action taker:
The secret to becoming an action-taker is to have doers around you. We’ve all heard the saying, “You’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” Well, it’s true! Spend time with people who inspire you to be better. It also helps to break your goals into the smallest possible action steps. I knew I wanted to increase my income, but the most important thing I had to do at the time was build a portfolio. Identify what you can do today to start making progress and attack that objective relentlessly.
3. Sales
From the screen you’re reading this on to the clothes you’re wearing and the location you’re at, everything in your life has been sold to you. If you’re not selling to anyone, you’re still being sold to regardless — this is why many people stay broke. You can’t be afraid to sell if you wanna make money. Selling is a massive part of human existence. You must sell people on your character, skills, and more. The better you get at sales, the better your bank balance looks — and your life as a whole.
How to improve your sales skills:
The easiest way to improve your sales skills is to change your perspective on selling. It’s less about convincing and more about understanding. You’re not selling; you’re just solving a problem. If a potential client can’t write one blog post a week, but you can, you’re helping them by offering your services. It also helps to find a mentor who’s cracked selling — they’ll be able to give you a rundown on techniques that are more likely to increase your sales.
4. Communication
Becoming the best version of yourself is about finding the right “Who’s” to help you expand your capacity. For example, getting a job is much easier when someone who works at the company refers you. According to Pinpoint, you’re 7x more likely to be hired when referred than if you apply via a job board. This phenomenon plays out everywhere in life. It’s not just about what you know; it’s about who you know. Who you know depends on your ability to communicate. If your communication skills suck, you’re limiting yourself to what you can achieve alone — TLDR: It’s not much. You must be able to tell people what you need so they can help you. But you must also be able to understand what others need so you can help them. Your ability to communicate impacts all areas of your life.
Tips to improve your communication skills:
The first step to becoming a master communicator is to become an interested listener. The better you are at listening, the better you’ll be at communicating. Allow the other person to be heard. Listening effectively shows you can receive and interpret information, which is vital for engaging in conversations. It also helps to think before you speak — take time to process everything. This enables you to articulate your message effectively and reduce ambiguity.
5. Vision
Success requires consistency. Consistency requires discipline. Discipline comes when you know what you want and the steps to get there. In other words, you can’t be disciplined without a clear vision of where you’re going because it’s a by-product. Anytime you find yourself relying on willpower and motivation to get started, you’ve got a clarity issue. Your vision makes you intentional. All of your actions are filtered through the lens of where you wanna go. The clearer it is, the more intentional you can be. You must have a clear vision if you wanna increase your income.
How to get clearer on your vision:
This is gonna sound incredibly simple… Decide on what you want and stick to it. Don’t allow your current circumstances to determine what you want — think big. When you’ve done that, break the steps down… What can you do today to move you closer to where you wanna go? Commit to doing this daily. Your vision gets clearer as you take more action — you start to realize what’s possible.
Money is a vital part of our existence — you can’t ignore it, no matter how hard you try. It may not be able to buy you happiness, but it can get you security, freedom, access, and more. These five skills significantly boosted my income:
- Sustained focus
- Taking action
- Sales
- Communication
- Vision
Learn them, then master them. Your finances will skyrocket as a result.
Kurtis Pykes is a professional writer and author of the free e-book Don’t Just Set Goals, Build Systems. He's had articles featured on Medium, Nvidia blog, DataCamp, and neptune.ai, among many others.