Skill guides
Day 1, day 30, day 90. What do you actually do?
Search "how to learn SQL" and you'll get a hundred results that all say the same thing in a different order. None of them tell you what to do on Tuesday evening after work, or how you'll know when you're done.
A skill guide is the opposite of a syllabus. It's a sequence you can start tonight, with a way to check whether it's working.
Career guide or skill guide?
| Career guide | Skill guide | |
|---|---|---|
| Answers | Should I do this for a living? | How do I get good at this? |
| Scope | A whole job | One capability |
| Example | Data analyst | SQL, Excel, statistics |
| Ends with | A career decision | Something you built |
Most people need both. Pick the career first, then work through the three or four skill guides underneath it.
How a guide is built
What this skill actually is
A plain description, without the buzzwords. Plus what it isn't, because half the confusion in learning comes from people thinking a skill covers something it doesn't.
Do you need it?
Some skills are load bearing for a career. Some are nice extras that people learn because a course existed. We say which one this is, and for whom.
What you need first
Honest prerequisites. If you can't do this skill without basic algebra, we say so on line one instead of letting you discover it in week three.
The stages
Usually four or five. Each stage has a small set of things to learn, roughly how long it takes, and one thing you build at the end. You don't move on until the thing works.
The project ladder
This is the core of every guide.
Skills aren't measured in hours watched. They're measured in what you can make. So each guide has a ladder of projects that gets harder in a straight line, from something you can finish in an evening to something that takes a few weekends and would look good in an interview.
If you can build the last thing on the ladder without help, you have the skill. That's the whole test.
How to know you're actually good
Concrete checkpoints. Not "you should feel confident." Things like: you can debug this without searching, you can explain it to someone else, you can do it under time pressure.
Where people get stuck
Every skill has three or four places where most learners stall out. We mark them ahead of time and say what to do when you hit one, because knowing a wall is coming makes it much easier to climb.
What to skip
The parts of the skill that most guides include and most people never use. Skipping things is underrated. Time is the real cost of learning.
Resources worth your time
A short list. Specific videos, docs, books, and practice sites, with a note on which stage each one belongs to. Not fifty links dumped in a folder.
Skills by area
Programming and development
Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, HTML and CSS, React, Node.js, Git and version control, databases and SQL, APIs, testing, system design.
Data
Excel and spreadsheets, SQL, statistics, data visualisation, Python for data, machine learning fundamentals.
Product and design
Product thinking, user research, wireframing, Figma, prototyping, product analytics, writing specs.
Marketing and growth
SEO, paid ads, copywriting, email marketing, analytics, social media, content strategy.
Business
Financial modelling, business analysis, negotiation, presenting, project management, spreadsheets for business.
Creative
Guitar, music theory, singing, music production, stand up comedy, writing, video editing, photography, design fundamentals.
Academic subjects
Physics, chemistry, mathematics, thermodynamics, engineering subjects, humanities, political science, and other university coursework.
Skills nobody teaches you
Studying properly, reading technical documentation, asking good questions, debugging your own thinking, working when you don't feel like it.
Use the guide, with or without us
A skill guide is free to read and doesn't require an account. Follow it entirely on your own if you want. We'd genuinely rather you learn the skill somewhere else than not learn it.
If you want the structured version, most guides map to a Shattak course. A course is compact by design, around six or seven modules with roughly six to nine lessons each, built around one outcome. You do the assignment, you get certified, and you decide afterwards what to pay. ₹0 is a valid answer.
The other thing a course gives you that a guide can't: a WhatsApp group of people learning the same thing at the same time, with a mentor in it. When you hit one of those walls we warned you about, there's someone to ask.
[Browse courses →] [Join the community →]
One rule for all of these
Read less than you build.
If you've spent three hours reading a guide and zero hours writing code, playing the chord, or making the spreadsheet, you have not started learning yet. You've been shopping.
The guides are short on purpose. Go make something.
Ask for a guide
Missing a skill you need? Say so and we'll queue it. Know a skill well enough to write the guide? Even better, come write it. We handle the editing.
[Request a skill guide →] [Contribute one →]