So what are the highest skills that ought to be taught to each man, woman, and child who enters our education system? I’m glad you asked.
Lately, I’ve been simultaneously using less and fewer of what I learned in class while discovering more and more skills that are vital to success which were never even offered in school!
If I were to be 100% honest, probably the foremost valuable skill I learned in college was the way to ask girls (certainly an important skill for happiness and success, but not what I used to be there to learn).
The economics classes? Nope, mostly academic mumbo-jumbo that’s entirely useless to all or any but a couple of policy makers.
Hmm, maybe about 10% of that I’ve used, but it’s nothing I couldn’t have picked up with a few good books, which I routinely do now.
The history, English, philosophy, and physics?
Apart from giving me a general understanding of the planet and making me sound smart at cocktail parties, I can’t consider anything in there that I actually use on each day to day basis.
Much of school gave me a nasty taste for education. It made learning a true drag.
I got through it to urge the degree, but it wasn’t until after school that my education really began.
So what are the highest skills that ought to be taught to each man, woman, and child who enters our education system? I’m glad you asked.
Topics Covered
How to make people such as you and network
For a skill so essential to success that affects every area of your life (from dating, to family, to work) it’s amazing how little people realize this.
I can hear you saying”I thought some people were just born with it and therefore the remainder of us were out of luck! You mean it’s something you’ll study?” Well, yes!
There is world power in knowing you’ll bend your network whenever you’ve got a drag to unravel, to be ready to reach key influencers.
At conferences and meetings, to form an impact on audiences, to project confidence and trustworthiness, and to form friends with other successful people.
The shy folks lurking within the corners at cocktails parties will never reach their full potential as citizens because our college system didn’t place enough value on “being social”.
How to speed read and therefore the power of audio books
Yes, speed reading and speed comprehension is real. The nominal investment of your time it takes to find out pays off decidedly for the remainder of your life.
After all, how would your life vary if you were ready to read an additional book each week?
The same goes with audio books.
If you spend an hour per day within the car learning rather than cursing at other drivers or taking note of Britney Spears, you’ll have attended the equivalent of a whole semester course.
Every major book today comes out on audiobook, and you’ll read (listen to) all of them without taking any overtime out of your day. Why wouldn’t you?
Looking at all the “required reading” links during this article might sound a touch overwhelming, but I used to be ready to hear all of them on audiobooks while driving around town. It was actually fun.
How to set goals and manage time
Want to understand the way to get anything wiped out in life?
Our college system doesn’t feel that this is often worth teaching apparently, but call me crazy, I feel it’s important.
The research that has begin lately is groundbreaking.
Everything from eliminating multi-tasking, using blocks of uninterrupted time where phone and email are off, prioritized to-do lists, urgent but unimportant vs. non-urgent but important tasks, etc.
If you’ve ever found yourself being busy all day only to wonder what you accomplished at the top of it, then you would like to find out these things.
Understanding productivity will offer you such a plus over people it’s hardly even fair.
How to read a budget
Robert Kiyosaki is keen on saying that the rich teach their children the way to read financial statements and therefore the poor don’t.
He’s right. Schools haven’t been excellent at teaching people the way to get rich, probably in no small part because professors are generally poor and wouldn’t have the skills to show it.
Yet with 95% of our population retiring at or below the poverty line, the economy within the dumps, and lots of people losing their homes to foreclosure, I bet many Indians wish their establishment had been a touch more focused on money.
After leaving college my friends could tell you the symbolic meaning behind the Brother’s Grimm Fairy Tales, but they couldn’t tell you the difference between a record and earnings report .
Nice job school system!
How to negotiate, use contracts, and not get taken advantage of
If you would like to accomplish anything of significance you’re getting to need to work with people.
Whether it’s contractors, outsourcing, employees, etc there may be a certain art to structuring good contracts with these people, knowing the way to find good talent, measuring results, knowing the way to fire them, and not getting completely taken for a ride within the process.
School teaches you none of this and most of the people need to learn it from the varsity of adversity by literally getting taken advantage of several times.
How to save and invest
Again, people are never taught the way to build wealth, which is why we’ve a nation in mastercard debt.
Moreover, they’re never taught the facility of passive income streams and the way to actually break away from the routine of working 9-to-5.
There’s an entire body of literature on this subject which isn’t even touched upon in traditional education.
How to achieve success in life
Sounds kind of broad, doesn’t it? Still there are some people who devoted their lifetime to understanding what makes people happy and successful.
There are the large three: health, wealth, and relationships. People got to find what they actually need to try to do with their life (something few folks ever really think about).
We’d like to work out the way to do scary things that might be good for us, break bad habits, the way of abandoning bad things within the past, etc. there’s tons to find out here!
How to spread a thought and basic marketing
Finally, I’ll just say that the fundamentals of selling are something everyone should understand. albeit you don’t think you’re in marketing, you’re in marketing.
If you’ve got a thought at work, or want to urge a raise, or want to convince your kids to travel see a movie then there’s something applicable from the marketing world.
Even just picking out an honest headline for something you’re writing in order that it’ll actually get read requires some basic marketing skills.
Conclusion
Until the varsity system comes around, I suppose it’s up to every folks to require care of our own education.
Meaning reading, finding mentors, audio books, getting to conferences, and in fact blogs are an excellent resource.