Blog #3
I’m reading three books concurrently: Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance, A Storm of Swords by G. R. R. Martin — its my aim to complete ‘A Dance with Dragons’ before the last episode of Game of Thrones airs — and one other book from the Law of Attraction app a friend sent to me. The one thing I’ll always be grateful for concerning my upbringing is the development of a reading habit. As many introverts would agree, nothing feels good like curling up in bed and getting lost in a good book. As a 10 year old, I loved going on adventures and solving mysteries with the characters from the Famous Five and The Hardy Boys series. They definitely contributed to my analytical thinking personality.
I have since consumed loads of books — both fiction and non-fiction. Considering the fact that the amount of time suggested to attain mastery in any given field is 10,000 hours of practice (according to Malcolm Gladwell), or 10 years (according Robert Greene), I guess its safe to say that I’ve gotten pretty good at reading. No, I’m not able to read a book a day like Tai Lopez — if you call what he does reading a book— I wish I could though.
Coming from a culture where reading “storybooks” was considered almost feminine and “boring as hell”. Some of my high school mates wondered with amusement why I chose to read for entertainment. I guess in their minds reading was only for learning the usually boring text book materials — its no wonder many today in Ghana consider it a form of drudgery.
As much as I am excited that the love for reading, desire for knowledge and the ability to learn is a huge advantage in this age of information, I’m saddened by the masses of people — including university graduates — who doze off after reading a few lines of text unless it’s gossip or entertainment news.
Education is not just about going to school and getting a degree. It’s about widening your knowledge and absorbing the truth about life. — Shakuntala Devi
The rise in MOOCs and cheaper forms of learning is proof that the formal education system is broken and the era of paying huge sums of money in tuition fees just to learn to copy and paste a bunch of facts from textbooks unto exam papers in order to earn a certificate for a job — and then close our minds to learning anything new unless we want a promotion — is on its way to extinction.
In an era where Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning will replace many careers involved with mindless repetition of activity or processing of data, a number of skills for promising career paths are popping up — a couple being digital marketing skills and programming. What’s great about this is you can find free resources online to learn them and you’ll find yourself offering value to the many firms who are in desperate for individuals with these skills.
The not-so-down-side is that the landscape of these careers is constantly changing and this is where the ability to learn quickly and retain new information becomes a plus because you’ll have to keep pace with the latest trends — a situation I personally find exciting and mentally stimulating.
In conclusion, I think the future is exciting and filled with quite a number of changes as technology gets smarter and those who aren’t able to adapt, or also change in response to change, will find themselves at the wrong side of technology. To succeed in the age of information we’ve got to do the obvious — keep our minds open to new information.
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