Welcome to issue No. 067 of the Lever

Building a skillset like writing or graphic design outside of your 9-5 can seem overwhelming.

You need time to practice your new skill but your existing obligations make that time hard to find.

A solution that has worked for me is to do a project that benefits my day job while simultaneously practicing the new skill set.

I stack these skills by Layering Projects.

Layer Your Projects

When working to develop a new skill or improve your performance at a given task it is often approached in isolation. However there are many opportunities to incorporate that practice into your daily routine if you will just be if you will just keep your eyes open for them.

For example, you can develop your writing skills while doing the day-to-day writing that you might normally do at home or at work. You can practice your negotiation and active listening skills during your day-to-day conversations with people. And you can improve your handwriting while jotting down your shopping list.

The key is to recognize these opportunities then layer these complementary projects on top of one another.

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How to Choose

The first step is to identify what skills you would like to develop or acquire, that are going to be meaningful enough for you that you will be able to work on them consistently.

For me the core skill is writing. I believe that every single written word has value and I maximize the opportunities to practice this.

Next, you'll examine your daily workflow to identify points where you can easily incorporate this practice.

There are many inflection points during your day where this applies. Writing a grocery list is a great chance to improve your handwriting. Calculate tips in your head to work on your math. Work on your posture while sitting at your desk.

You can see in these examples that the Common Thread is a desire to improve then finding a way to incorporate this into the daily routine so as not to have to make more free time available in order to work on these skills.

If you can find a way to turn everyday tasks that you complete into an opportunity for Learning and Development you'll eventually end up miles ahead of the competition. Whether this takes the form of gaining additional technical proficiency at something, or better utilizing and understanding the various software packages and company processes that you use, this learning will be invaluable.

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Stay in the Moment

The key is mindfulness while completing jobs, not just going through the motions, but to complete them to the you're the best of your ability and to learn something new while doing so.

Think of everything you do as practice then, like practice, you'll work to get incrementally better each time.

And rather than just completing the task at hand, you'll be completing two with minimal additional effort required. This is the secret to getting more done in less time.

Is Project layering something that you've tried before? If so what skills or projects did you layer? And if not, what skills can you see yourself attempting this on?

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