In this episode, we discuss the importance of always learning.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista, where my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about why you should never stop being a student. A great quote by Gandhi is that you should learn like you’re going to live forever. If you stopped your education after you finished high school or college, then you’re missing out a lot in life. Plus there are so many soft skills that will improve on that will have a much bigger effect on our success than getting another degree.
I find it ridiculous that some people go get a masters degree and end up getting an extra $5k in annual salary, which is not enough to pay for the degree they just bought and you can probably have to save a lot of time and money by buying books on leadership and management, then getting an MBA degree where a majority of the stuff you won’t use in your career. Only 27 percent of college graduates have a job-related in their field. You can learn some useful things in college but there are cheaper ways to do so.
You can go out and take over 400 courses from Ivy League schools online right now, but you won’t get a certificate from completing the courses. So you need a way to show that you know the material. That can come from having a portfolio of work or having somebody with a connection that can give you a testimonial. But the education system is not built for today’s economy. I feel that most people go to schools for the network more than education, which can be a very valuable thing but if you don’t continue your education after you graduate, then your skills will just diminish.
Plus you don’t need to go to that school to have access to those people, you can join other organizations that don’t require $80k in tuition to join. If you’re a software engineer, a plumber, or an office manager, there are other ways to network to provide yourself with more opportunities. So by reading some books on networking or going to a networking workshop, you probably save yourself a lot of money in tuition and time. Which for me, anytime I can save money or with time, I will gladly take that route.
I heard that 60% of college graduates never read another book again after they finish college, which is scary to me because 80% of the technical stuff you learn, will be obsolete within five years or something close to that. The world is moving at a fast pace and we need to know more to survive the future.
I learned way more outside of the classroom than being in it. The over 200 books that I read on my own, the over 5000 hours of podcast episodes that I listen to, and the countless hours of YouTube videos that I’ve watched have helped me become a better person. That’s how I get so many ideas. It is because I’m going out to learn and if you teach the subject that you just learned, then you’ll be able to retain the information more. And that is true, I’m able to remember a lot of quotes and stats because I’m teaching you the lessons right now with this podcasts and my writing.
So when you learn something, try to go out and teach that lesson to someone else because it will help you retain the information more and if you don’t use it, you lose it anyways. So you have to constantly act like your in school. Research a topic and then use some type of method where you can teach that material to someone else. This is going to help you in this economy. This economy is based on information. Whoever has the information, wins. If you’re trading your time for money, then you’re being a commodity and the price of commodities are always being pushed further and further down.
If your a worker and you know how to do a certain task better than every one else, then you can be an expert in that area and experts don’t get commoditized. You might have to put together many different areas of expertise, but since no one is like you, then people have to accept the price you’re offering. It’s going to take work to reach an expert level but it’s a much better future where you’re a commodity.
If you take this path, you won’t have to worry about that much competition because most people are will do all the things that will cause them to a constant student. The average CEO reads 36 books a year, and Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in the world, reads 500 pages a day. High Performers are constantly learning. I say a stat that 45% of podcast listeners are 45% more likely to have an annual income of over $250k and podcast listeners are 68% more likely to be postgraduates.
Podcasts offer a lot of great tips on how to help you with relationships, business, and in life and I’m a huge consumer of podcasts where I consume about 20 hours of podcasts a week. I listen to my podcasts on double speed so that I can consume 20 hours of podcasts in 10 hours versus 20 hours and I got that tip from listening to a podcast. I’m so glad I learned that tip because it’s helped me learn more things in fewer hours.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode, to summarize it, to prevent be a commodity, you need to never stop being a student. If you have the mindset where you’re constantly learning and doing some type of activity where you can demonstrate what you learned, you will be a lot better off than the person doesn’t do this. The last thing I want to do as a person is to trade my time for money and always being a student is one of the many different skills you will need to have to be successful in today’s economy.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
