Topic:

There is an idea that working people should invest their free time for work related skills and
knowledge. For example, an IT person should use free time to learn more about IT skills, or a
sales person should use their free time to increase sales skills and product knowledge.
What is your opinion about this issue? (Write between 600 – 1500 words)

Answer:
It is an opinion that people should spend their leisure to work for which relates to their
skills and knowledge. Although there are many people will stay at the opinion, I will stand
against that opinion. This means that leisure should be spent on learning new skills. The
following essay will take a look at one’s opinion and my opinion towards the statement.
One the one hand, there are some arguments from some authors that people should spend
time for a particular skill. One author claimed that when people set up a strategy or spend time to
learn on what was learnt before, will repeat practice and can make the result become more
perfect, or at least it will be in improvement (Ranjani, 2010). In short of the author's statement is
spending free time to learn deeply on a skill will result in being master-skill in a particular thing.
Some evidences of the author are Einstein’s deep study in physics or Picasso’s immersion in art.
When the skill is comprehensively developed in one aspect, it can be easily formed master or
professional skill. Besides, someone also said learning more skills with no structure in leisure
time would make them like chaos (you can achieve, n.d). In fact, the more things we learn, the
more complicated knowledge we will have. The author supposed that "people set multiple goals,
and think they can multitask themselves to achieve those goals" (you can achieve, n.d).
However, the writer of the newspaper just showed a sad belief that people usually forgot the
initial thing on which they were focusing, when so many tasks come over to achieve. Generally,
people just do not need to invest their free time for other skills, they should spend time for
related skills and a particular field at which they are good, that is the statement of one author.
On the other hand, I believe that leisure should be invested or spent to learn more
different skills in different fields of life. The first reason is that those who learn many skills with
different aspects are easy to accommodate in workplace or society. Obviously, learning various
skills, gives a significant opportunity to individuals to develop soft skills and thus the soft skills
provide a foundation to develop hard skills and vice versa. On the contrary, concentrating on
skills in a particular aspect, not only is more tedious but also is an obstacle to improve either soft
skills or hard skills. Take an example of an IT person in a computer department who spends
almost time to learn more skills related to job like analyzing big data, assembling robots…those
skills are considered in hard skills. But he also spends free time on learning about problem-
solving, good listening skill and build a strong teamwork. Certainly, with those numerous hard
skills and soft skills he has, that worker is able to work in different parts of that company and as
a result, reinforced for self-improvement and higher extraversion in the personality. As the
improvement which enhance his communication, he can be more extrovert to other people in
workplace to contribute knowledge, and share information for others in society. Thus, when
gaining higher extraversion will likely to give him a chance to get higher performance and higher
job-satisfaction. Therefore, learning more skills which are not related to a particular job is also
very beneficial to make people more socialize to others, thus boost relationships and enhance
work efficiency in both workplace and society. The second reason that is worth to be mentioned
is people who like spending free time for many interests or skills in various fields, they will be
more successful. There is a journalist also regards as true that “people who have many interests
are more likely to be successful” (Michael, 2018). For the aforementioned example, when the
worker makes more relationships by sharing a wide-range of knowledge both in co-workers in
workplace or people in society, he can become high-respected employee in that department, by
which learning more skills lead him to a fast progress in goal-setting and become a successful
person in his life. On the particular side, there are so many generalists who not only have many
skills in many aspects, but also are very successful in career paths. In the historical period,
Leonardo Da Vinci who has always been recognized a generalist in many aspects like arts,
sculptures, science, music…The generalist spent a lot of his free time to learn different things.
Although he recognized as a professional artist, but he still contributed for other aspects as
mentioned above like science, music. What is more is a typically successful model in
contemporary life, Elon Musk who has integrated skills such as deep understanding of physics,
engineering, programming, designs, manufacturing, and business, so that he is able to create four
multi-billion companies in completely different fields (Michael, 2018). There is one claimed
that a person who wants to become extremely professional in a domain, they must spend
approximately 10,000 hours of consciousness in order to become an expert by learning more
related skills as deep as possible into one field (Drake, 2014). Nevertheless, modern scholars
believe that building unusual mixture of skills and knowledge beyond a particular field and then
combing them to create breakthrough ideas (Michael, 2018). Shortly, the more skills people have
in various aspects, the more chances they might get to be successful in the comparison to those
who just focus on skills related to their major.
As Billy Graham said “knowledge is horizontal, and wisdom is vertical, it comes down
from above” (Sarah, 2015). Thus, there are so many new things for people to study and discover.
With the more knowledge or diverse skills, the more wisdom people are in their career paths.
In conclusion, though I believe that the more skills people learn in their free time, the
more successful chances they will gain in their jobs, I think that people also first focus mainly on
their major, then spend free time to learn and discover new things when they have time.

References
Drake, B. (2014). New study destroys Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule. Retrieved from
https://www.businessinsider.com/new-study-destroys-malcolm-gladwells-10000-rule-
2014-7
Ranjani, M. I. (2010). Why you should take the time to master a single skill. Retrieved from
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0607/Why-you-should-take-
the-time-to-master-a-single-skill?
fbclid=IwAR2MUX3pGkdCKCJfgGCrUNqDRDX3tsestC8Od1Ks1W8SmAUFsBouO1
4N5pY
Sarah. (2015). Wisdom of life. Retrieved from https://thepricelessjourney.org/wisdom-for-life-is-
released-today/
Simmons, M. (2018). How Elon Musk learns faster and better than everyone else. Retrieved
from https://medium.com/accelerated-intelligence/learn-like-elon-musk-fe8f8da6137c
Simmons, M. (2018). People who have “too many interests” are more likely to be successful
according to research. Retrieved from https://medium.com/accelerated-
intelligence/modern-polymath-81f882ce52db
You can achieve anything if you focus on one thing. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://dariusforoux.com/one-thing/