The 10 Essential Life Skills

The 10 Essential Life Skills (What)

The 10 Essential Life Skills are a set of abilities that everyone should possess when they venture into the real world, because they are so useful that they can be considered superpowers.

The term “10 Essential Life Skills” is an analogy with the 10 Essentials for wilderness travel. These are ten items that should be taken when venturing into the wilderness for activities like hiking, backpacking, or climbing.

Just as one should carry the 10 Essentials when going into the wilderness, we should equip ourselves and our students with the 10 Essential Life Skills as the minimum preparation for living well in the real world.

Rationale

Here are some reasons why excelling at the 10 essential life skills is worthwhile.

  1. Each is like a superpower.

  2. Minimize the number of things you need to learn.

    1. Most roles’ skills are applications of life skills

  3. Don’t waste your time trying to memorize information. Instead, turn information into knowledge by applying it over and over. Life skills are the backbone of application.

How to Excel at Life Skills

Progressively learn each life skill by applying the method of learning called “Deliberate Practice.”

Continually improve each life skill via reflective thinking.

Listing of The 10 Essential Life Skills

Here is a brief description of each of the 10 essential life skills.

1. Critical Thinking (CT)

This skill equips actors (people or groups) with three interdependent abilities:

  1. Accurate View of Reality (AVR). Figure out what is most likely true and what is not. Gain an accurate view of reality.

  2. Best Actions. Continually figure out the best actions to take.

  3. Justification: Prove or justify your conclusions to yourself and others.

CT is the mother of everything because all good things spring from truth and from taking the best actions.

2. Research

This skill equips actors (people and groups) with the ability to find good information with the least amount of work and the most amount of learning.

Good information is defined by seven criteria: super useful, true, accurate, complete, easy-to-figure out, well-organized, and justified.

Research includes primary and secondary research.

Secondary Research
This skill involves getting known information from books, journal articles, videos, lectures, websites, AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, newspapers, asking others, and so on.
Primary Research
This skill involves getting information by direct means: observation, experiments, calculations, math-models, ethnography, investigative journalism, conducting original historical research, and so on. Doing primary research and publishing the results is one of the primary purposes of universities.

3. Problem Solving

This skill equips actors with the ability to solve problems—especially super hard problems—with the least amount of effort, the maximum amount of enjoyment, the maximum amount of learning, and so on.

This skill can also be described as the ability to 1. Make dreams come true 2. Reach goals 3. Complete projects on time and on budget 4. Get any result that you want.

4. Learning

Learn or teach such that the following criteria are true:

  1. Learning is super enjoyable; basically addictive.

  2. The learner becomes competent as measured by

    1. Good performance; do things well
    2. Deep and connected knowledge

  3. Fewest drawbacks for the learner and the teacher

    1. Least frustration, fear, boredom, anxiety, feeling overwhelmed, and such.
    2. Least cost, time, hassles, efforts, and so on

  4. Most rewards for the learner and the teacher

    1. Most joy, satisfaction, appreciation, peace of mind, confidence, and such.
    2. Most social connections; best relationships
    3. Most external rewards: recognition, status, power, financial rewards, and so on.

5. Communication

This skill equips an actor (person or group) with two abilities:

  1. Send messages such that you maximize your payoffs.
  2. Receive messages such that you maximize your payoffs.

A payoff refers to the rewards minus the drawbacks taken holistically.

6. Collaboration

This skill equips an actor (person or group) with three abilities:

  1. Get the best results for yourself from collaboration.
  2. Be viewed in the best ways possible by those you collaborate with.
  3. Set up cultures that lead to the most effective collaboration.

7. Leadership

This skill equips an actor (person or group) to inspire and guide people to a better future.

That is, to continually create a better future for

  1. Yourself
  2. Your family
  3. Your friends
  4. Your team
  5. Your company
  6. Your community, state, country, and world.

8. Organization

This skill equips an actor to effectively manage everything: time, files, desks, houses, people, projects, tools, workspaces, clothing, and so on in ways that are super simple and super effective.

9. Wellbeing

This skill equips an actor to maximize their wellbeing in all important dimensions:

  1. Spiritual
  2. Emotional
  3. Social
  4. Physical
  5. Financial
  6. Life balance
  7. And so on ….

10. Following Values

This skill equips an actor with abilities to know and follow and continually clarify their moral, professional, group, and personal values.