Do This, Be Successful

My blog is based on a simple idea: you can teach yourself everything you need to be successful.  You don’t need a professor (in a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches) to guide you.  Universities have some advantages, and will exist for many more years.  But the tools for doing it yourself are accessible.

Here are some important points:

• You must motivate yourself.  Universities are better at motivating you (threatening failure grades and loss of tuition paid), so you need a way to motivate yourself.  Turn off the XBOX.  Or sell the XBOX on eBay.
• You must stay balanced.  Studying on your own can cause imbalance, where you might begin to believe the earth is flat (or other nonsense).  As some professors encourage students to embrace fiction as fact, staying balanced is just as easy to do by yourself.  But it is a big task, to be conscious of biased information sources.
• You might need some guidance (I can help with this).
• Remember, not all knowledge is created equal.
• You should focus on developing competencies, not only on accumulating knowledge.  ONE of the competencies we discuss in this forum is creativity.

Teruyasu Murakami of the Nomura Research Institute wrote a paper (almost 20 years ago) about Japan’s future.  He proposed that the world has moved through four revolutions:

In the Conceptualization Age—the Fourth Wave—we enter the “Age of Creative Intensification.”  The source of national power in this phase is not political or based on military, but cultural, Murakami proposed.  Economies with more creative people will thrive.

We live in a new world.  Increasingly, economic winners are (1) creative and (2) able to collaborate with other creative people.  Good news: these skills can be learned, even in middle age or old age.  You can develop neuroplasticity.  That is the most important thing you can teach yourself.  Let’s talk about how, here on these pages.

What are you trying to learn?  What are your struggles?  What issues would you like me to address?  How exactly can I help you?  Either leave a comment, or confidentially contact me at Brock@BrockStout.org.