The value of education

What is education about?

Is it about reading a book, attending a seminar, reading about an interesting idea in the Wall Street Journal?

It's not.

It's about how good you are at actually using these ideas in real-life. The "Execution" part of Education is critical and completely ignored by most.

You will often hear people say: It was an "interesting" book. Ask them how they changed the way they do business based on their findings and you will get a blank look.

Education is often worthless without the execution part. Education is not about "what's nice to know", it's about "what does this mean for my business?" or "what will I do about this now?". Sometimes, it takes a discussion with a friend or colleague.

Next time you take 5 hours to read a book, take 15 minutes at the end to ask yourself: "what does this mean for me?" and "how can i use this?". Six months later, pick up the book again and ask yourself if it's really been useful - or just "interesting".

Now of course, the long-term value of education should not be discounted. Sometimes, you need to read about a topic a few times and view the situation from different angles to really "get it".

Overal though, the value of education should be judged by results.