365QOD- Day1097

Useful Advice

“Now I want you to remember this.”- a parent’s urging to a child

My blog is my way of fulfilling my creativity.  It allows me to capture ideas, thoughts, and stories.  I freely share those with the world.  However, my ultimate desire is for my own kids to read and learn from the blog posts.  Selfishly, they are the ones that I want to help the most.  I often ask myself if what I am writing would be helpful to them. 

The other day I read an article by Dharmesh Shah which struck a note with me.  It is titled, 12 Things I want to Teach My Toddler About Work.  I think that his 12 ideas are great and will add a label ‘for my kids’ with which I specifically will identify as advice that I want to pass on to them.

The first advice that Mr. Shah offers is

“1. Gather knowledge... but also gather knowledgeable people - You can't know everything. But you can know enough smart people that together collectively know most of what you need to know. Work hard on getting smarter. Work harder on getting smart people on your side. Together, you will be able to do almost anything.”

I believe that we often focus on and tell our kids to gather knowledge too much in their lives.  It is the old ingrained belief that by simply going to school we will land that impressive job that will be our security blanket for the next 40 years before we retire. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I do believe that school is important but not for that reason.  It is important if you focus on learning how to learn.  By learning how to learn you will become very secure in your future.

The advice in the quote is to also focus on the people part.  I completely agree with him.  Working with people who are smarter than you will force you to raise your level and improve the problems that you together can solve.  Never be afraid of having people around you who are smarter than you.  As a matter of fact, join new groups if the people around you are not smarter than you. 

The words of caution I want to raise is not to ignore practical people.  Practical people are often execution driven and might not seem as ‘smart’.  Their smartness is in being able to take theoretical ideas and make them practical so that they can be executed.  I would modify the quote into, ‘gather knowledgeable people- both smart and practical’.

Today’s question is:

“Do you gather knowledgeable people around you?”