31 life skills every functioning adult should master

Flickr / Rainer Stropek

Life is funny.

No one gets a handbook upon turning 18, complete with all the rules they'll need to memorize and competencies they'll need to acquire.

Somehow you're just supposed to know that you should have more money coming in than going out, and you shouldn't wear a fuzzy orange sweater to a job interview.

We've put together our own handbook of sorts, which lists many skills you'll need to survive as an adult in the modern world.

It's based on the Quora thread "What are some of the most useful skills to know?" as well as scientific research and expert opinion.

We can't promise we've outlined every skill you might need, but if you've mastered these, you're off to a good start:

1. Accepting feedback gracefully

"For most of us it is hard to hear how we made a mistake or could have done something better," writes Quora user Pedram Keyani. "An amazing skill (which you can learn through practice) is to set aside your emotional response in the moment and focus on the information presented to you. Some of it will be valid and some of it invalid but let your brain decide that, not your ego."

Depending on what kind of feedback you're receiving, there are different strategies for responding with a cool head. For example, if your boss points out what she thinks is an error and you're not sure she's correct, you can say, "I hadn't thought of that, and I'm going to look into it right away."

2. Apologizing sincerely

To err is human, but to craft a believable apology isn't a universal skill.

The apology "needs to be sincere, not qualified, not quantified, and also needs to outline how X will not happen again," Keyani says.

According to one CEO, there's a six-step strategy for successfully saying you're sorry:

1. Act quickly.

2. Apologize in person.

3. Explain what happened.

4. Show how you are going to avoid the problem in the future.

5. Apologize.

6. Make restitution.

Keyani gives an example of what you might say if you were tardy for an appointment:

I'm sorry I was late for the meeting. It must have been frustrating because you spent a lot of time preparing and got up early. I did a poor job accounting for traffic and didn't give myself enough buffer. That is my bad and I'm going to give myself an extra 10 minutes instead of five moving forward.

3. Managing your time wisely

There will probably never be a time in your life when you aren't juggling multiple personal and professional priorities. Time-management skills are a must, unless you want to feel constantly frazzled.

Perhaps the most important time-management lesson is that you should stick with one task at a time. Research suggests that multitasking is generally counterproductive because the brain expends energy as it readjusts its focus from one activity to another.

You'd be wise, too, to limit the hours you spend working. Decades ago, Henry Ford discovered that productivity started to decline after employees logged more than 40 hours per week. Other research suggests that, after three weeks, 60-hour workweeks become less productive.