Learning a new skill is usually always a good idea – and when you choose carefully, can help you make your work life a bit better.
Helps with your overall wellbeing
People who have hobbies – including learning a new skill – are generally happier, with reduced stress levels and better physical health. Effectively, these people are able to build their resilience through having focuses outside of work. For example, after a high-stress week filled with meetings and looming deadlines, the best thing for a person to do is move into a new headspace entirely.
Also, funnily enough doing this can also make you better at work. Taking time away from your work can actually help you find more creative solutions to challenges at work, as you start to think about things differently.
Complements your workplace professional development
When you decide to learn a new skill, you have the chance to grow skills that will (sometimes inadvertently) help your professional development. For example if you are in a role that works closely with data and reporting analytics, learning the basics of whichever programming language is used to retrieve data.
Knowing how the language works, what limitations it puts on your data-wrangling colleagues, and how complex certain requests are will help you speak with them about the information you need – and more than likely, will also help you get it more quickly than you otherwise would have. As an added bonus, your colleagues will probably appreciate your effort to meet them halfway as well.
Help you find a new career direction
In some cases, the decision to learn a new skill might even lead you to
Louis Fameli 