One of the most essential tips to move forward in your career is lifelong learning. The world is constantly evolving. New technologies emerge, industries shift, and the skills needed for success are constantly changing. Lifelong learning allows individuals to adapt to these changes, stay relevant in the job market, and thrive in a dynamic environment. Continuous learning can lead to career growth and increased earning potential. New skills and knowledge can open doors to new opportunities, promotions, and higher salaries. Learning new things keeps the mind sharp, boosts confidence, and provides a sense of accomplishment. It can also lead to personal growth, allowing individuals to explore new interests, discover hidden talents, and develop a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them. Learning new things can spark creativity and encourage innovative thinking. By exploring different perspectives and ideas, individuals can develop new solutions to problems and come up with creative approaches to challenges.

And if you don’t know where to start, we have gathered 5 Free Coursera Courses that can help you boost your skills. And all of them are free!

1. Decision Making - How to Choose the Right Problem to Solve

Decision fatigue is a real thing. And when it comes to work, there are so many problems to solve but so little time. Making informed decisions is not a piece of cake, especially when many stakeholders and others depend on you. For this reason, it’s essential to know which problems are significant, how to choose and prioritize the most important ones, and how to make more informed decisions to help you and your team move forward. This course is an excellent start to doing so since it will guide you on how to evaluate personal skills for problem-solving and describe how problems exist in broader contexts. You will also learn how to develop an idea to approach a real-life situation, explore methods to minimize risk and turn ideas into plans. Also, it will help you explain the importance of the broader impact when proposing solutions and produce a plan that persuades others your solution will work. On the pros, it only needs 10 hours to be completed, and you can learn at your own pace!

2. Create a Professional Online Presence

Whether we like it or not, having an online presence is interconnected with our ability to network, learn new things, be up-to-date with industry trends and news, and find career opportunities. However, how will you stand out from the crowd among the millions of people online? This course will provide you with all the necessary tools to do so. You will learn how to evaluate your online presence, improve your personal and professional presence, compare different platforms to analyze their suitability for your needs and improve your online communication skills, which are essential soft skills for everyone. In only 7 hours, you will gain many insights.

3. Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills

Thinking of asking for a raise but lacking arguments, and you believe you won’t pull it off? Well, you may miss some negotiation skills —which are extremely useful if you want to progress in your career. This course is offered by the University of Michigan, and you will learn all the necessary skills for successful negotiations, such as how to negotiate like a pro and how to win arguments. It provides some real-life examples that will help you better understand the essence of negotiation and will guide you through preparing a negotiation analysis to make your negotiations more effective. It’s easy to listen to and enjoyable and you will get valuable tips to prepare you for success!

4. Creating Tasks and Goals for a Project in ClickUp

If you are working as a freelancer or project manager or aspire to manage people in the future, then this course will give you an idea of how to do it right. ClickUp is a great project management tool that can be used for individual projects as well as among teams, and many organizations already use it to streamline their tasks. In this course, you will learn how to set project goals and track each goal's progress. You will also learn how to generate customized tasks to support project workflow, delegation of tasks, and team communication by gaining hands-on experience solving real-world job tasks. Everything a manager needs to know! It’s a very short course, only 1.5 hours long, and will give you some great insights about project management and team coordination.

5. The Science of Well-Being

If you wonder what well-being has to do with your career, it has to do a lot. Improving your well-being and learning techniques for cultivating happiness are potent techniques for succeeding in your job. When we take care of ourselves, we are more productive, our relationships with the people around us get better, and we can make better decisions. This course will teach you how to overcome your biases, will clarify some misconceptions about happiness, and will teach you how to cultivate gratitude. You will also have the chance to learn how to manage expectations and not get discouraged by obstacles, skills that can not only help you balance your life but also help you boost your communication skills and be a better person. All it takes is some hours of your time and some practical strategies you will be taught to change your life and career for the better.