Why You Should Focus on Skills Development to Achieve Your Goals

So, you’ve set a goal. Now, what?

The brutal truth is most of us stop there. We dream up goals, create aesthetic vision boards, and recite mantras to “manifest” what we want to achieve.

As the badass thinker and author Mark Manson writes in his newsletter Mindf*ck Monthly, “…every year, everyone talks about losing ten pounds or changing jobs or getting a raise. They talk about motivation and identity and belief and persistence and all that crap.

But nobody talks about the skills required to do it.”

Count me guilty of this!

He further notes,

“You can set goals for finding a relationship. But few people think about adopting and learning a new relationship skill.

People say, “I want to meet someone special this year.”

No one says, “I want to get better at connecting with others,” or “I want to learn how to be more vulnerable and own my flaws.”

One of my relationship goals for the year was to “Invest in relationships and build healthier ones.” Such a beautiful thing to hear — yet very vague. So after reading this edition of Mark Manson’s newsletter, I identified two areas where I suck at (in terms of relationships) and wrote the skills I wanted to improve:

1. I like to burrow in my introvert hole and I don’t reach out often. So this year, I will improve my communication skills by checking in on my friends and loved ones every week.
2. I suck at gifting — it’s my last love language. Last month, I set up a stash on Tonik so I’d find it easier to buy thoughtful gifts without worrying and breaking my budget.

How about you? What skills are you planning to improve this year so you can get closer to your goals?

“The beauty of focusing on skills is that it’s never done.” — Mark Manson, Mindf*ck Monthly (January 3, 2022)

This post stemmed from my atomic essay How to Set Goals According to Prolific Creators. You can read it here if you’re interested. Thanks for the claps! 👏