BetterLearningBetterEarning™ | Get Better Work & Income - Teach Yourself Higher Paying Skills

You probably realize that to get a better job and income, you’ve got to learn new skills. But you can’t afford to quit your job to devote time to education, can you? How can you maintain your full time employment and still learn things to advance your career? You can do both at the same time!

How do you feel when someone’s copied your ideas? And not given you credit? I’ve become a little suspicious – even paranoid – that some of my articles here have been the inspiration for some recent A-list bloggers’ posts. So what if they have. A smart little man has helped me to realize that the Internet and especially the blogging world are community oriented. Do you have a great, unique idea that may make you rich? Well, don’t blog about it.

Learning more depends on expanding your vocabulary. Words serve as building blocks to:

• Express yourself better
• Understand others better
• Create new concepts and ideas
• Help you win Scrabble
  

Several years ago, a mentor of mine recommended a habit that has helped increase my vocabulary immensely. Want to learn the secret?

Family get-togethers turn strange when relatives ask, “So, what is it you do for a living again?” I reply, “I’m an Instructional Designer!” Without fail, the next crack is something like, “Don’t they make some type of pill that will cure that?” My Grandpa-in-Law is still convinced I make comic books for a living – a far cry from the interactive computer-based training I develop. Learning the basic principles of instructional design can help you teach yourself more effectively and master higher paying job skills.

The three topic options for a term paper in my freshman philosophy class didn’t interest me at all. I looked over the requirements for our term papers – we wrote four over the course of the semester – and thought that it doesn’t explicitly say I had to write on the assigned topics to get an A grade. Knowing that the paper with the lowest grade got dropped from the calculation for our final course grade, I took a risk. I wrote a paper in flawless logic proving that, “Students in Philosophy 110 don’t have to write on the assigned topics in order to get an A on their term papers.”

Does your resume fail to get you phone calls and interviews? Why do people ignore your emails and blog posts? Copywriting is the art of persuading people through written words. Even if you’re not trying to make money online, developing this ability will improve many facets of your professional life. How do you learn copywriting skills to get better work and income?

When was the last time you were “forced” to learn something? Did you have to attend a training session for your job? Have to complete an online course for school? Required to complete job hunting workshops to maintain unemployment benefits? The fact is we don’t learn very well when we feel the “education” is against our wills. Pink Floyd phrased the sentiment well when they sang, “We don’t need no education…we don’t need no mind control!” The more liberated you feel, the better you’ll learn.

Has the fad of blogging died out yet? I – like Darren Rowse of Problogger.net – hate the term itself. Sounds like some bodily indiscretion: “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go blog.” However, publishing through the Internet offers great opportunities to improve several important abilities. You’ll sharpen your marketable skills, make some new friends, and possibly bring in some extra money as you start sharing your ideas through blogging.

As of now I've got about 52 followers on Twitter. Oh wait...53! I haven't employed any tricks to get thousands of people to auto-follow my profile so that number's relatively low. I hope my "tweets" provide some value to followers. I use the application primarily as an Internet bookmarking method. However, that's not why I continue to post. Twitter has much more value to me as a learning tool.

Diagnosed cases of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) continue to rise hand-in-hand with TV, Internet, computer game, and portable media use. Marketers compete viciously to get your attention. It takes louder noises, brighter lights, and extreme headlines to pierce the wall of media’s onslaught. All these tricks leave your mind numb and unable to focus on your work, creativity, or studies. As you fight back and recognize the battle going on for control of your mind, you can increase your attention span and improve concentration.

If you want to get new skills for a better job, to make more money, improve your business, or all of the above, your 2010 goals must include some type of learning. But what should you learn? The marketable skills today may be worthless tomorrow, so focus on abilities that will offer value for at least a few years. I’ve put together this list of 10 things that I personally feel will do you and/or your business a lot of good in the coming year.

You don’t have enough time to go back to school and get another degree that’s more marketable in today’s economy. In fact, if you did go back for a more relevant degree, it may be worth little four years down the road. You’ve got to learn fast, effectively, and inexpensively to secure skills that yield better income. You need to know how to teach yourself. People that teach themselves are known as autodidacts. Becoming autodidacts may best guarantee career success in our unpredictable job market.

The time it requires to enroll for and complete a formal computer software course or class may not be fast enough for you. Many free tools can help you learn highly-valued computer software skills that you need to increase your earning power. Here are a few suggestions:

How can you keep all your bookmarks, notes, and links in one place when you work on a different computer at home, school, the library and at work? A great web-based service called Evernote enables you to copy and paste from any computer or mobile device (including iPhone) to your own evernote account. No need to write on scraps of paper or synchronize files. It's not just convenient, it's a great learning tool also. Did I mention that the basic account is FREE?

Various versions of files, documents, shortcuts and links swamp the hard drives on each of the three computers I use. My thumb drives contain a web of duplicated files, text and shortcuts. And my wife laughs at the ever-expanding stack of my notes scribbled on note cards, business cards, receipts, or junk mail envelopes. I need all my bookmarks, text copied from electronic sources, and downloaded files available in one place, accessible from any computer I use. Enter Evernote.

Many public and university libraries have proactively adapted to the changes in how people exchange information. You'll find many free, up-to-date tools and resources to increase your knowledge, skills, and income potential.