Are You a Master of These Four Indispensable Life Skills?
It is never too late to learn them
Goal: In this article I discuss four life skills everyone should master
Yesterday(10/5/20) I told a story of a powerful rule that a coworker gave me in my twenties. Today I want to share a second bit of advice.
I was single at the time and had a girlfriend. Life was so simple. I was not paying attention to my time or my money too well. My coworker told me that I needed to learn four life skills.
Cooking
He told me that going out to nice restaurants was great BUT it should be done sparingly. One should master how to cook. Since my mom never taught me how, I had to self-teach myself. I have become a very good chef. Notice I used the word chef. Yup… I can cook with the best of them.
My advice for learning how to cook is simple. Pick something you want to learn how to prepare for yourself. WITH A NOTEBOOK AND PEN, go to YouTube and watch 5–10 videos of different people preparing the meal. Take notes on each one and see what the common elements are and try to come up with your own recipe. Buy the items and then execute. After the meal, evaluate what went well and what you could do better in your notebook.
If you learn how to to prepare ONLY 1 new meal per week at the end of the year you would have learned 52 meals. You will be better than most cooks. For second year, do two meals with one of them being one of the original 52.
God bless leftovers!!!
Cleaning
Second skill one needs to master is cleaning. This is where I will use BJ Fogg’s one tooth flossing technique. Pick something so simple that you can do it easily and will be inspired to continue doing it.
Let’s take dishwashing for example. You notice the sink is full and you just don’t feel like washing dishes(and you don’t have a dishwasher). Great! Say to yourself, “Self let’s wash one dish. That is all we will wash. One dish” Go to the sink and wash one dish. After you wash it, give yourself a high five and go back to your couch. (What you will find is that most likely you will wash more than one dish once you get started.) Next commercial, do another dish. Make it a game and give yourself a high five.
You get the idea…
I am a firm believer that most people these days are too dirty in their homes. In the past(before 90s) people used to drop by unexpectedly. People’s homes were kept clean so that they did not look like slobs. Unfortunately this is a habit that has changed and we now rarely invite people to just drop by.
Be bold.. clean your place up and invite people to just drop by and cook them a meal. You will look so put together… LOL
Washing
I am amazed at the number of kids that do not know how to do laundry before they go to college. Mom and dad do the laundry and kids watch TV or play video games. Not all but most.
Divide your clothes into whites, colors that are cotton, dry fit type of materials, and towels/bedding. Read the label of the detergents and wash. I recommend you do a separate load each night while watching TV and put it in the drier until 90% dry. Hang it to finish drying.
Why?
Ironing
Most of us hate to iron. Many years ago I worked at a place that insisted we have ironed shirts, slacks, and ties as a part of our wardrobe. They wanted us to look respectable. Since I did not like to iron, I would put on some dance music and iron one month’s worth of clothes. For every pair of slacks I would iron 4 shirts that went with it. I then hung the pants with the shirts and ties to go along with those. Man after that hour of dancing and ironing I was impressed with my results. With a lot of synthetic fibers our clothes require less ironing BUT I believe that skill is still needed and we should master it. Help yourself by purchasing a good steam iron.
Hopefully you can see logic behind these four skills that you need to master. I believe that all kids need to be able to do these before they go off to school.
Why are these skills so important?
As my coworker advised me, “You want to know how to cook, clean, wash, and iron for yourself. Don’t pick a woman because she can wash, cook, clean and iron for you. Pick your woman based on how she completes you not because she can cook, clean, wash, and iron for you. ” Picking a spouse is probably one of the most important decisions in our lives.
Excellent advice on how to be independent….It is advice that I have followed.
I got to go…my future self alarm went off
Robert Trajkovski is professional with experience in leading people and projects in Steel/ Power, Refining, Chemicals, Industrial Gasses, Software, Consulting and Academia. He has worked for both owners and engineering companies. In addition, he has instructed 73+ courses at several institutions and often offers his courses for free on LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberttrajkovski/
If you enjoyed this article, I strongly urge you to follow the link to my course below and sign up. It is being created and a beta group is being formed.
THE ULTIMATE Time AND Energy Management course is at: https://robert-s-school-b48a.thinkific.com/courses/time-and-energy-management
