25 Neat Sites To Make You Clever

1. Become an Excel expert. Chandoo is one of many gracious Excel experts who wants to share their knowledge with the world. Excel excellence is one of those skills that will improve your chances of getting a good job instantly, and it will continue to prove invaluable over the course of your career.

2. Learn how to code. CodeAcademy OR EDX.org There are a lot of places that offer free or cheap online coding tutorials, but I recommend Code Academy for their breadth and innovative program. If you want to try a more traditional route, Harvard offers its excellent Introduction to Computer Science course online for free.

3. Make your own site. IWantToLearnRuby OR RailsForZombies You could use a pre-existing template or blogging service, or you could learn Ruby on Rails and probably change your life forever. Here’s an extremely helpful long list of free Ruby learning tools that includes everything from Rails for Zombies to Learn Ruby The Hard Way. Go! Ruby! Some basic programming experience, like one of the courses above, might be helpful.

4. Make a mobile game. FutureLean If you’re not interested in coding anything other than fun game apps, you could try this course from the University of Reading. It promises to teach you how to build a game in Java, even if you don’t have programming experience!

5. Start typing faster! TypingTest

6. Start reading faster. Spreeder is a free online program that will improve your reading skill and comprehension no matter how old you are. With enough practice, you could learn to double, triple, or even quadruple the speed at which you read passages currently, which is basically like adding years to your life.

7. Learn a language. Babel With Babbel you can learn English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, Dutch, Polish, Indonesian, Norwegian, Danish & Russian.

8. Pickle your own vegetables. SkillShare Tired of your farmer’s market haul going bad before you use it all? Or do you just love tangy pickled veggies? You too can pickle like a pro thanks to SkillShare and Travis Grillo.

9. Improve your public speaking. Intro To Public Speaking You can take this University of Washington’s Intro course for free online.

10. Learn some statistics. UC Berkeley put a stats intro class on iTunes. Once you know how to understand the numbers yourself, you’ll never read a biased news article the same way again.

11. Psych! Knowing the basics of psych will bring context to your understanding of yourself, the dynamics of your family and friendships, what’s really going on with your coworkers, and the woes and wonders of society in general. Yale University has its Intro to Psychology lectures online for free.

12. Learn how to play guitar. Justin Guitar is a fine and free place to start learning chords and the basic skills you’ll need to be able to play guitar.

13. Learn how to negotiate Let Stanford’s Stan Christensen explain how to negotiate in business and your personal life, managing relationships for your personal gain and not letting yourself be steamrolled. There are a lot of football metaphors and it’s great.

14. Real World Math If you struggled with math throughout school and now have trouble applying it in real-world situations when it crops up, try Saylor.org’s Real World Math course. It will reteach you basic math skills as they apply IRL.

15. Start Drawing All kids draw —so why do we become so afraid of it as adults? Everyone should feel comfortable with a sketchbook and pencil, and sketching is a wonderful way to express your creativity. DrawSpace is a great place to start. (I also highly recommend the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain if you can drop a few dollars for a used copy.)

16. Make your own animated GIF. HERE without photoshop.

17. Learn how to Appreciate Jazz Have you never really gotten jazz? If you want to be able to participate in conversations at fancy parties and/or just add some context to your appreciation of all music, try this free online course from UT Austin.

18. Learn all about Journalism

19. Get better at using Photoshop. Tutorial Videos OR Udemy.com

20. Take decent pictures. LifeHacker Learn how your camera works, the basic of composition, and editing images in post-production. If you finish that and you’re not sure what to do next, here’s a short course on displaying and sharing your digital photographs.

21. Learn How To Knit Instructables has a great course by a woman who is herself an online-taught knitter. You’ll be making baby hats and cute scarves before this winter’s over!

22. Learn how to invest stocks. Investopedia

23. Clean your house in a short amount of time. Unfuck Your Habitat has a great emergency cleaning guide for when your mother-in-law springs a surprise visit on you. While you’re over there, the entire blog is good for getting organized and clean in the long term, not just in emergencies. You’ll be happier for it.

24. Start practicing yoga. Yogaglo OR YogaTailor

25. Tie your shoelaces more efficiently It’s simple and just imagine the minutes of your life you’ll save.