The more different and unusual skills one can learn in a single lifetime, the richer and more interesting your life will be.

People who are seen as “fascinating” or “eccentric” are those who have spent their lives living, absorbing experiences and skills that all add to who they are.

What makes you better at bridge?

Learning, and living.

Learn small skills, and read about unusual topics. Throw yourself into the deep end, or do something that you never imagined you would. These things are enriching, good, and can all impact what you do with your mind at the table.

Writing has provided me with some of these experiences.

Even though this might not be the time or place to tell the full stories, I’ve been lucky enough to interview politicians, media professionals, reformed people, and traditional healers in the same week.

I’ve learned things about plumbing, sales, automotive manufacturing, and the eating habits of cats – also all in the same week. These are all experiences and things that I never imagined I’d know (but I’m glad I do).

I hope that I have more good experiences to come.

So should you, if you want to play better bridge.

Here are 4 skills you can learn (that could make you better at bridge).

1. The rules of other games

I think it’s fair to say that an excellent bridge player will usually play at least one more game other than bridge. If not regularly, they should at least know how to play several games.

Learn how to play chess, know your way around five-card stud or canasta. Try Monopoly, Dungeons & Dragons, or Magic: The Gathering if it feels like unexplored territory for your mind.

All other games you learn where strategies are used, could be useful to your bridge game.

2. Languages other than your own

I speak more than one language, although not as many as I would like fluently. This is an everlasting quest that will probably continue until my last breath, and I’m okay with that.

At least once a week, I try to absorb a word from another language. Even if I can’t speak the rest of the language, that one word could add just that little bit of richness to what I know.

Did you know that Japanese has a word that refers to eating when you are lonely?

I didn’t, before someone showed me.

Every language has these words. Find them, and enrich what you know at the international online bridge table. As an added benefit, it also boosts your memory.

3. Cooking at speed (& with patience)

It took years to learn how to make decent scrambled eggs, and I had to go through several phases of life to learn it. When they finally ended up the way they meant to, it was a good moment.

Next, I picked up more complex cooking skills – albeit slowly.

I’ll still learn more with time, and so should you.

Time in the kitchen can be calming, enriching, and it can teach you an incredible amount of patience (or the opposite, to hurry up before you mess up the sauce three times in a row).

Learn to cook with patience, and then learn how to cook like a short-order chef on a knife’s edge. Both skills help your life, better your diet, and might better your bridge.

4. Speed reading

Speed reading is a skill I’ve been working on since I was young. Once I saw that the world is a vast whirlpool of information, I also saw that it would take reading at faster speeds in order to take all of it into memory.

Thus, I learned speed reading.

At the time, I eventually exceeded the speed reading trainer’s capacity to several hundred words a minute (and tested well enough on comprehension after).

I still practice the same skill today, and often.

Speed reading helps you to assess a faster hand, and see better moves without having to glance at the table for too long.