8 Essentials They Didn't Teach You in School !

Lately, I’ve been simultaneously using less and less of what I learned in school 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 most valuable skill I learned in college was how to talk to girls (certainly a vital skill for happiness and success, but not what I was there to learn).
The economics classes? Nope, mostly academic mumbo-jumbo that is entirely useless to all but a handful of policy makers. The computer science classes? Hmm, maybe about 10% of that I’ve used, but it’s nothing I couldn’t have picked up with a couple good books, which I routinely do now. The history, English, philosophy, and physics? Aside from giving me a general understanding of the world and making me sound smart at cocktail parties, I can’t think of anything in there that I really use on a day to day basis.
Much of college gave me a bad taste for education. It made learning a real drag. I got through it to get the degree, but it wasn’t until after school that my education really began.
So what are the top skills that should be taught to every man, woman, and child who enters our education system? I’m glad you asked…

How to make people like 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 know about this. I can hear you saying…”I thought some people were just born with it and the rest of us were out of luck! You mean it’s something you can study?” Well, yes!
There is great power in knowing you can reach out to your network whenever you have a problem to solve, to be able to reach key influencers at conferences and meetings, to make an impression on audiences, to project confidence and trustworthiness, and to make friends with other successful people.
The shy folks lurking in the corners at cocktails parties will never reach their full potential as human beings because our school system didn’t place enough value on “being social”. President Bush didn’t get the best grades at Princeton, but boy did he know how to network, and look where that got him.
Required reading: How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships.

How to speed read and the power of audio books

Yes, speed reading and speed comprehension is real. The nominal investment of time it takes to learn pays off in spades for the rest of your life. After all, how would your life be different if you were able to read an extra book each week?
The same goes with audio books. If you spend an hour per day in the car learning instead of cursing at other drivers or listening to Britney Spears, you will have attended the equivalent of an entire semester course. Every major book today comes out on audio book, and you can read (listen to) them all without taking any additional time out of your day. Why wouldn’t you?
Looking at all the “required reading” links in this article might seem a little overwhelming, but I was able to listen to them all on audio books while driving around town. It was actually fun.
Required reading: The Psychology of Achievement by Brian Tracey

How to set goals and manage time

Want to know how to get anything done in life? Our school system doesn’t feel that this is worth teaching apparently, but call me crazy, I think it’s important (I’m probably preaching to the choir on LifeHack.org, but still).
The research that has come out 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 have ever found yourself being busy all day only to wonder what you accomplished at the end of it, then you need to learn this stuff. Understanding productivity will give you such an advantage over other people it’s hardly even fair.
Required reading: Getting Things Done, Eat That Frog, No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs

How to read a financial statement

Robert Kiyosaki is fond of saying that the rich teach their children how to read financial statements and the poor do not. He is right. Schools have never been very good at teaching people how to get rich, probably in no small part because professors are generally poor and wouldn’t know how to teach it.
Yet with 95% of our population retiring at or below the poverty level, the economy in the dumps, and many people losing their homes to foreclosure, I bet plenty of Americans wish their school system had been a little 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 balance sheet and income statement. Nice job school system!
Required reading: Cash Flow Quadrant, or this blog article

How to negotiate, use contracts, and not get taken advantage of

If you want to accomplish anything of significance you’re going to have to work with other people. Whether its contractors, outsourcing, employees, etc…there is a certain art to structuring good contracts with these people, knowing how to find good talent, measuring results, knowing how to fire them, and not getting completely taken for a ride in the process. School teaches you none of this and most people have to learn it from the school of hard knocks by literally get taken advantage of several times.
Required reading: I haven’t seen many in this area but one that comes to mind is Donald Trumps The Art Of The Deal

How to save and invest

Again, people are never taught how to build wealth, which is why we have a nation in credit card debt. Moreover, they are never taught the power of passive income streams and how to really break free from the rat race of working 9-to-5. There is a whole body of literature on this topic which is never even touched upon in traditional education.
Required reading: The Richest Man In Babylon, The Millionaire Next Door, or Ben Franklin’s The Way To Wealth

How to be successful in life

Sounds sort of broad, doesn’t it? Yet some people have devoted a lifetime to understanding what makes people happy and successful. There are the big three: health, wealth, and relationships. People need to find what they really want to do with their life (something few of us ever really think about). We need to figure out how to do scary things that would be good for us, break bad habits, how to let go of bad things in the past, etc. There is a lot to learn here!
Required reading: What To Say When You Talk To Yourself, When I Say No I Feel Guilty, Think and Grow Rich, The Way Of The Superior Man (Ladies maybe you can recommend a relationship book for women in the comments)

How to spread an idea and basic marketing

Finally, I’ll just say that the basics of marketing are something everyone should understand. Even if you don’t think you’re in marketing, you’re in marketing. If you have an idea at work, or want to get a raise, or want to convince your kids to go see a movie then there is something applicable from the marketing world. Even just picking out a good headline for something you’re writing so that it will actually get read requires some basic marketing skills.
Required reading: Dan Kennedy’s The Ultimate Sales Letter, CopyBlogger, The Psychology of Influence

Conclusion

Until the school system comes around, I suppose its up to each of us to take care of our own education. That means reading, finding mentors, audio books, going to conferences, and of course blogs are a great resource.
What did you miss out on in school that you wish you’d learned? Or if you’re an educator do you feel there is a mismatch between what is taught and what’s important? Leave a comment below!

Brian Armstrong is a 25 year old entrepreneur who achieved financial freedom working for himself! Today he seeks to help others do the same as a writer, speaker, and consultant. Prior to becoming self employed, Brian’s work experience ranged from fortune 500 companies, to several small startups with less than 15 employees. In 2001, he ventured out on his own with his first company and was instantly hooked, starting two more in the next five years. Brian currently resides in Houston, TX leading authority on how to quit your job to work for yourself.

Engineering Universities of Pakistan !

There are several engineering institutes in Pakistan but none of them ranks in the top 100 universities of the world ... ever wondered why ?

We study the same curriculum ,from the same books and by the same authors. Leaving ground realities aside, on paper we even have similar facilities and machinery. Yet our institutes lag behind other international universities.

Today in most engineering universities majority of the Professors and other teaching staff have atleast one foreign qualification to their credits yet our situation is far from improving.The number of Phd's in our universities is far greater than it once was but yet the quality of engineers being produced by our institutes remains inferior.

So where does the fault lie ?

The fault ladies and gentlemen lies within us.Yes all of us from teachers to students are responsible for messing up our educational system.

We've forgotten the true essence of acquiring knowledge. Rote learning a few sentences from a book doesn't make one a scholar. It is infact the understanding and the culture that needs to be developed. Those who are responsible for designing our curriculums will have to understand that bombarding students with loads of information does not makes them any wiser, It only adds to their stress level.It is the concepts that will remain with the student for life.

As for students, we've got into the habit of looking for shortcuts. The copy-paste culture is on the rise and its really hurting our educational system.Students do not realise that by copying assignments and test answers they're actually cheating themselves.Most of these students regret once they're on their own in the field.
It is also the duty of our universities to act soon to curb plagiarism before its too late !

Purpose of education ?

We've seen our society advance in terms of literacy rate in the previous years.We've seen new schools,colleges and private universities come up throughout the country.The number of graduates has consistently increased year by year but somewhere along the road all of us have forgotten the true purpose of education.The sole purpose of education has rather become a tool for us to generate a decent income.

The purpose of education is to provide the building blocks for change. Whether that is intellectual, social, financial or whether it is simply a change of skill level, knowledge or attitude from one perspective to another. All education is a matter of change. Education is beneficial to all, however, the education must have a function and purpose beyond itself alone. We must also not confuse equity, the equal right to education with utility, the usefulness of the education!

The purpose of education should be to develop people through that process of change. Like any process of change, it should be challenging and difficult. It should be a little painful because that act of change, like any physical change takes time and effort to shape and complete.

Can we do it ??

For many years now Pakistan has been trying to come up with an internationally recognized research based university. The neighboring India and other regional countries like Malaysia,Singapore,China have become much more academically advanced and that has further increased the urgency to create new universities of international standards or improve the existing ones.
In 2009 Pakistan tried to setup an engineering university with French assistance but the attempt failed due to the law and order situation as probably French professors feared for their lives to teach in a country like Pakistan.
Plagiarism is one of the most important factor leading to declining standards in our universities.Copying others' work and using illegal methods to pass exams is making our educational system inefficient.
Also at many institutes appointed teachers are not up to the mark.A teacher is the primary source of knowledge to students.If the teacher is not competent enough how can students be good ?
Lack of proper equipment in laboratories, lack of funds,corruption in educational institutes are all major contributors that have led our educational system into this mess.
Of course there are certain institutions that are providing quality education such as Lahore University of Management Sciences,Ghulam Ishaq Khan Insitute of Engineering and Technology,IBA etc. But,it must be noted that these institutes are not affordable to all and the number of scholarships are extremely limited.
The country needs at least five to six universities of global recognition within the next 15 years to remain competitive in the academic field,but the question is can we do it ??

Education For What ?

For my entire life i believed people acquire education to gain knowledge but my experience proved me wrong.
I belong to a public sector university that has a really heterogeneous crowd.When i joined the university i was amazed to find that education meant something different to everyone.
To some education is just necessary to get a degree so they can get decent jobs and live a prosperous life.These are mostly people from the middle class and lower middle class who have families to support.Many others believe that a degree will act as a source of honor for them and they will be respected in the society.
There is another class of people who are just there because they were forced by their parents to complete their studies.These are often people who belong to a rich background and will probably join their family businesses once their studies are completed.
Believe it or not some people even attend university just to kill time ...they have nothing better to do at home.These people are generally those who have no goal in life or are confused about their lives.
No matter what kind of background you belong to or what is the purpose of your life i believe that anyone whose acquiring education should do so to gain knowledge.Without knowledge life is like a dark corridor...you'll never know where you're going.