Improving your personal, professional and emotional knowledge during COVID-19 lockdown

We are all feeling the pressures of life in lockdown. And while it’s important that we make the most of it, what is the most pertinent area to focus on? For those people that are out of work, the most crucial thing to benefit from is improving our knowledge. There’s never been a better time to expand our skillset. Being stuck indoors all day every day isn’t ideal, but this means that we can all make the most of this time so we can either land that dream job or makes life much better for us when the lockdown is lifted. But what are the key areas to focus on so you improve your knowledge, personally, professionally, and emotionally?

Making the most of online courses

This is the most obvious place to start. Online courses are in abundance right now but it’s important to give the pointless ones a wide berth. When you start to think about your ideal career, it might be better to go towards an organization like George Washington University to build upon your current skill set. For others, it may be a case of starting from the very bottom. And wherever you are in your career, you can always learn a new set of skills. For furloughed people with plenty of free time, now is the time to learn what they are good at. Additionally, this includes what they could potentially be great at.

Evaluate your options

Online courses can give you an entryway into a new way of working or a new life. There are so many different options out there. You have the opportunity to dip your toe into a subject matter that has been piquing your interest. Many people that are budding entrepreneurs are running on thin budgets while business loans are hard to come by. Perhaps now is the opportunity for you to do get an online degree in business studies. Many people who try to run their own business have to learn by doing but this is impossible right now.

Make yourself more indispensable in your current career. The more skills you have, the better. Let’s not forget that with current skills, they require plenty of practice. When everything gets back to normal, you might not have the opportunity to do as much learning.

Learning the art of the application

Applying for jobs in the current climate seems futile. And rather than finding jobs to apply for, now is your opportunity to learn the art of applying for them. Applying for jobs in desperation means you’re firing out a resume without thought of quality or quantity. Take the opportunity in learning the art of the application. It isn’t just about structuring your resume or giving it a shiny new font. Moreover, it’s more about learning to sell yourself.

LinkedIn and social media

There are a few strands to applying for your dream job. It’s not just about the resume, but this can take many different forms. You could do a video resume rather than the standard setup. But you should also start to think about your presence beyond that piece of paper. Applying for a job has to do as much with social media as it does with personality and skillset. Set up a solid LinkedIn profile to help you in your job search. It will give you the opportunity to control your image. Social media is one of those areas that we can greatly underestimate. When applying for jobs, we have to think that the employer could potentially look for us online. And if they don’t like what they see, this can be to our detriment.

Consider your work portfolio

You should also think about your portfolio. If you’re trying to apply for jobs where you don’t have the experience now is the opportunity to volunteer. It’s also important to undertake the relevant research into your chosen industry. When applying for work that you aren’t necessarily suited for, the most important thing is to tell a story. A resume isn’t a piece of paper; it’s something that should tell a prospective employer who you are. Many organizations look for people who are good fits rather than someone who purely has the skills.

Finding new skills to enrich your life

While you may be delving deep into applying for the perfect job and improving skills from a career perspective, you should think about helpful skills in other areas. We work for a third of our lives and we sleep for another third. This requires making the most of that time in a way that doesn’t surround a steady paycheck. Learning to enrich your life is about looking at yourself and deciding what makes you happy and motivated. Remember that when we find the perfect job, there will be times when we get bored or demotivated. This is where we have to look outside of our working environment.

Removing financial “necessities”

Learning to enrich your life is about getting rid of financial necessities. Many people learn how to live a minimalist way of life. And people who are struggling with getting the essential goods right now are already learning how to thrive on less. And this is not a bad thing because we have to thrive on minimal resources, and we start to understand our resilience. You may have a lot more resilience than you give yourself credit for. But if you think you don’t, now is the opportunity to look at the emotional areas where you may feel somewhat weak. Learning resilience or confidence is about taking the chance to improve your knowledge and your emotional quotient. We can spend a lot of time focusing on developing our knowledge in terms of subject matter but we’ve also got to learn how to improve our emotional intelligence. 

Emotional intelligence

One could argue that, right now, we are learning the importance of emotional intelligence based on our limited resources. But for those people that are struggling in one way or another, learning resilience in other ways by practices like meditation or mindfulness can help us all to cope with the difficult moments in life. We have to remember that learning skills like mindfulness and being calm is as important as learning a new language or skill for our career.

Taking the opportunity to look at yourself

We may have that temptation to bury our heads in the sense during this difficult time. But improving our knowledge isn’t just about the subject matter; it’s about taking the opportunity to look at ourselves in the mirror and think about who we are. Now is the chance to get rid of the white noise in our lives. You may find that people you’ve been friends with for a long time aren’t there for you anymore. Or you may feel that there’s a lot you can learn about yourself but you’ve been too scared to address these things. It’s not easy to look at yourself in the mirror but there are approaches you can take to start understanding who you are. Knowledge is power and if we have knowledge about the most important subject matter in our lives, ourselves, we will lead a richer life.