Ronan read The Lessons School Forgot - so you didn't have to...
Fast Facts
Week: 10
Title : The Lessons School Forgot
Author: Steve Sammartino
Rating: 8/10
Adapted from Ronan's LinkedIn newsletter 22/03/2023 -
Books I've Read For You
Summary
Some wonderful insights into what’s becoming abundant and scarce and simple practical ways to increase your value in the world and ride the tides of change rather than getting swept away by it.
One Key Takeaway or Insight
Abundance
Everyone can, but most people won’t. Doing less than you can always messes with your ego. People invest in your habits more than anything else. The stronger our brand (our promise) the more trusted we are.
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Introduction
What you learned in school no longer applies. Success today isn’t about wealth or formal education but about personal fulfillment and effort. Investing in yourself boosts self-esteem and improves your personal economics, signaling to others that you are committed to growth. Intelligence now means using available resources to achieve your goals, not adhering to outdated standards.
As technology disrupts traditional jobs, adaptability and problem-solving become essential. Building a strong personal brand and developing unique skills ensure you remain valuable and irreplaceable. Consistent, meaningful actions and strong relationships are key to long-term success. This book offers practical strategies to help you navigate change, emphasizing the importance of effort and personal growth.
What you learned in school no longer applies.
Here’s why….
Strange things happen when we invest in ourselves.
We gain a great deal of self-esteem and our own economics improves because we know, and others sense, we are the kind of person to make an effort.
Scarcity vs Abundance
Previous generations struggled with hardships and so money was their yardstick for success in life. We’ve since found that money doesn’t come close to guaranteeing happiness, especially in a post-scarcity society.
Subconsciously society arranged us in a hierarchy. The more schooling you had, the higher up the ladder you’d be placed. Your potential and expectations would be a function of how far you rose in the pre-work system.
The one thing people need during times of dramatic societal and economic change, is exposure to different possibilities and an open mind to a variety of disciplines, especially when previously siloed industries and worlds start to intersect, as they are today.
Definitions really matter.
Most people are walking around with incorrect definitions of both “successful” and “smart”
Success is an internal measure. We can only ever measure success against the objectives we set for ourselves.
Success is more about effort than anything else.
People so often confuse daily deadlines and forgettable tasks with slow, consistent behaviours, which have a bigger impact on improving our lives.
Being smart is about using what’s available to you to achieve your own objectives in life, not someone else's.
Your Job Is Already Gone.
The future of work is not a job. We should be teaching children the core skills of adaptability, flexibility and tackling society's real problems, not simply training for jobs.
All jobs are eventually displaced or changed by technology.
Most new jobs are learnable, mostly for free.
Creating Value
During this time of technological upheaval we will have to change our mindset on where value will be created. Our personal brands, market awareness and ability to assess the change in skill requirements will be key to our success.
It’s hard to create new value, and be seen as irreplaceable if we merely implement and follow instructions. If we only follow the rules that someone else has established.
The more routine your job the higher the risk of you being replaced. Raise your potential economic value. The more skills we have the more value we create.
If a system is broken - and we know it is broken if there seems to be no valid alternative - we carry on as if everything was okay and pretend to ourselves that the status quo is acceptable.
Life changes when we change. Life gets better when we get better. We ought to stop wishing things were easier and start ensuring we have more to offer. Until we do, how can we expect anyone else in the market to invest in us?
The stronger our brand (our promise) the more trusted we are.
Formula for Misery: Spend more than you earn
Formula for Happiness: Spend less than you earn
Saving doesn’t make anyone rich but you. This is why almost every advertisement you've ever seen provides advice on spending.
Doing less than you can always messes with your ego.
People invest in your habits more than anything else.
Our relationships will outlast the companies we work for, so look out for each other.
Abundant and cheap: All information, entertainment, news, transport, fast fashion clothing, mapping, intelligence (AI), computer screens, consumer goods, shipping and logistics, manufacturing (labour, 3D printing etc) electronic data.
Scarce and valuable: People’s attention, our privacy, physical space, access to nature, face to face contact, personal service, curation of valuable content, craftwork, filtering of data, making sense of data points, human performance, art, and creativity.
The Law Of Relatively
Everyone can, but most people won’t. Your success will depend on the effort you put into compared to others.
If we continue to show up at a place where certain things happen, the place itself teaches us what we need to learn to be successful at that thing. Frequency is more important than depth.
Physical interaction always beats virtual. LinkedIn is for amateurs.
Through being more, you’ll know more, and people will notice.
Understanding the impact of new technology will be more significantly important than knowing how that technology actually functions.
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