Following up my article on investing in yourself it occurred to me that I should share some practical things one can do to invest in themself. What better way to do so than give ones that you don’t have to spend any money on. That’s right, these will cost you no money at all. They will get you started on or deeper into your self-investment journey. Give them a try and see how your life improves.

Free online courses

And before you complain about how it actually costs money to get online I just want you to remember that you have no problem getting online for YouTube or Instagram. There is a multitude of free courses available online in a variety of disciplines and most likely your discipline is covered too. To be honest, in order to do this fairly it would need its own article entirely. You can look at resources such as Coursera and this TechZim article.

Free books from the library

While public libraries in the nation are not in the best of states education institutions fair better. So for those enrolled in an education institution, those libraries should give you access to a wealth of titles. In addition to libraries, there are great book swap clubs that give you the opportunity to access many books.

Free workout videos

Taking care of your body is important and working out constitutes a very good way of doing so. A whole host of resources are available online that provide free workout videos and yes that includes YouTube.

Eat healthier food

I too am aware of the whole myth that healthy food is more expensive, not so. At least if you know what you are doing. There’s a couple of ways to approach this but my favourite are cookbooks (which you get in book swap clubs or libraries). You’ll tend to find that what is mostly referred to as healthy is fresh, natural, organically grown food which Zimbabwe already has a lot of. You can switch to healthier eating patterns without a change in your spend on food.

Organise your home/workspace

Being organised improves productivity, don’t listen to the messy desk crowd. Even if your mind works just fine in a chaotic environment finding your pencil or calculator a minute faster means you work faster and likely with much less frustration. Organise your spaces and while you’re at it let go of some of the things you don’t need.

Contact one new person per week

Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was any good network. Even the connected were at some point not connected. Growing your network should be important to you as it is really a solid investment in yourself. If you religiously added one connection per week to your network that’s 52 in a year. If those 52 are in relevant, adjacent or useful fields to yours that’s a very strong network. In 5 years that 260 connections, assuming the growth is linear which in networking it often is not.

Have a weekly goal setting day

Taking a day a week to set goals is also a great self-investment method that costs you nothing but the benefits are incredible. It’s not just goal setting that happens in this time. If you’re on a weekly cycle, which I recommend, you also use the period to review the week gone by, make adjustments to long term goals for new information and plan accordingly. This will boost your achievement easily and will also help keep track of the other methods mentioned in this article.