First, I’ll start off with some definitions:
CQ = creativity quotient
PQ = passion quotient
IQ = intelligence quotient
Now, for the narrative: your creativity quotient plus your passion quotient will always be greater than your intelligence quotient—this is the formula for success in the flat world, the winning strategy on the level playing field.
It’s not always about college degrees any more, as seen in one of Donald Trump’s TV show seasons—Book Smarts vs. Street Smarts. Of course, street smarts won, because college can’t or won’t teach you the harsh realities of the world…at least, not while infested with left-leaning professors and staff. Instructors all want us to land on a bed of feathers while wrapped in multiple layers of bubble wrap. Heaven forbid we learn about competition from people who spent their entire careers cloaked in union protection themselves!
Little guys in the most remote places are eating our lunch these days, thanks to the internet. Through collaboration, globalization, and gumption, a man in Peru now sells his plates all over the world—and to the point that he now has them made in China to fill demand.
I wrote an article a year or so ago questioning the need for a degree at all, given that college raises tuition every time we turn around—and for what? To subsidize union teachers, to spread the soft-and-fluffy liberal gospel, and to encourage us to pay for degrees that aren’t going to pay us back in the end—meaning 30 years of student debt—all to achieve the American dream of home ownership. As we all have pretty much discovered, you don’t need a degree to own a home or even to make sufficient money to afford one. Most of the big-name tech company CEOs are college dropouts, and most millionaires never even went to college.
If we want to succeed in this new flat world getting flatter all the time through technology, free trade, and immigration, we need to get off our collective butts and apply ourselves: through creativity, through passion, and through individual intelligence. Nobody else can duplicate what’s in your heart and in your dreams unless you draw them a diagram first—that means giving the store away. Ideas are what separate man from beast, and one man from another. Not having an idea or two, nor the desire to bring them to life, dooms you to a life of reruns—repetitive drudgery that’s underpaid and underappreciated. There is no glass ceiling on ideas—they can take you as far as you’re willing to go. Just remember that yours isn’t the only idea out there, and there is an equal and opposite idea to yours somewhere.
Opportunity no longer comes knocking, and ideas no longer fall into your lap—you have to go out there and find them both. The “idea trees” have lost much of their fruit over time, but some pieces still exist if you’re willing to look. As for opportunity, it has gone global as well—it seems “idea trees” aren’t restricted to growing in this country, and investment capital has gone chasing the few crops of ideas that are left all over the world.
College can’t teach you how to run in this race—it lost the use of its own legs decades ago. This race is called “entrepreneurship,” and the best man always wins.
Do what you love, love what you do, and find ways to maximize it for profit. This is the only way to survive and thrive in a flat world without wasting time and money on a degree that will become obsolete in a few years. That man in Peru never went to college, I guarantee it, but he’s now well off by selling what he knows, exercising his passion, and following his own intelligence.
Success doesn’t take much, but may take more than you’re willing to give—this is the difference between those who struggle to survive and those who live comfortably. Some of us sit back and wait for someone else to hand us our existence (at great expense to others), while others go out and fight for every dime they make—it all depends on who’s in the driver seat and what their destination is. In a flat world, you should be able to go further on every mile provided you have no flat tires, holes in the road, and minimal drag. Use your IQ to take the CQ and PQ exits as they come up.
Monday, July 24, 2006
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4 comments:
Your arguments are based on very limited assumptions and completely inaccurate generalizations about what college is about and what people get out of it, to say nothing of what a degree means to everyone else in the professional fields.
While creativity and passion are essential to a productive and happy life, there's no substitute for straight-up logical reasoning and memorization abilities. Don't care how creative or passionate you are, if you don't possess deductive skills of Bill Gates, you will never achieve the type of success he achieved.
-Proud college grad.
'Z' is proud, bbut is 'Z' HAPPY? Is 'Z' SATISFIED with what his college degree earned him? Could 'Z' do what he's doing right now for the rest of his life, willing to die at his desk?
Wait 'til you get a little older, and your whole outlook will change--life experience is a real jaw-dropper.
P.S.--I've been to college too, but it didn't do much to help me deduce, reason, or anything else. I came to college with those skills! All college really did for me was poison my mind with liberal Utpoian ideals and give me something to add to my resume'.
If you don't like the math formula, take it up with Thomas Friedman.
unfortunately, wenchypoo, some careers actually require you to go to college to learn certain skills that are necessary to know before entering the workplace, and which aren't accessible anywhere else. Case in point: engineering. architecture. many fields in science. doctors. lawyers. the list could go on. The whole "apprentice" thing went down the tubes years ago, so some of us have to suck it up, take on a loan we may paying off until death, and then live doing something we enjoy.
but clearly YOU have figured out how to rise to the top with your formula, just like Bill Gates! You must be rolling in the brain cells!
...and for being happy, you sure boil your blood at the mere thought of liberals, don't you? better watch that blood pressure.
The formula is actually Thomas Friedman's--author of "The World is Flat." It isn't actually in the book, but I heard him mention it on one of his many interviews about the book. He could go on TV and read nursery rhymes for all I care, and I'd listen to him with rapt attention.
The problem with school vs. real life is that school doesn't prepare you for real life situations--only hypotheticals and what has worked in the past. As rapidly as times are changing, we all need to be taught to think on our feet more than anything else. A static college curriculum (possibly framed around the individual teacher's personal beliefs) definitely won't teach us that! We're supposedly being taught to make a better world, but define "better", and better FOR WHOM? Today's colleges are largely liberal and socialist meat grinders, and have been since hippies got inducted into the CETA program back in the 60's and 70's to become teachers.
As far as liberals go, the same thing applies as to a formal education: hypotheticals, Utopian thinking, and faulty idealism without regard to long-term consequences, with little to no actual worldly experience to back it up. Over the years, liberal thinking and policies have turned our society into an enabler, not a succeeder. This is occurring from the cradle, being upheld and reinforced through our entire education system, and is further aired in politics and policy. Even right now, with the so-called "war on the middle class," Lou Dobbs has every viewer brainwashed into thinking that shared prosperity and shared burden is the way to solve everyone's economic problems--evidently he has forgotten what happened on the other side of the Russian wall. Hayek wrote an entire library on economics and how socialism is the bane to a free, market-driven economy. Lou is just too ashamed to admit that there are ADULTS in this country who are left behind--mostly of their own doing. I certainly didn't do anything to banish anyone to the bottom rung of economic society, and neither did Lou, so why is he eager for all of us to compensate those who refuse to find ways to climb up off the bottom rung? This is equivalent to handouts just like the old welfare system. Lou is shifting the burden from Uncle Sam and the "crime perpetrators" to his fellow taxpayers--this is clearly unfair. Why should EVERYONE be punished for the downfall of a few?
Back to the degree thing briefly: most jobs really don't NEED a degree to be done--it's just a screening tool for employers, just like credit is a screener for landlords. I, with no degree, could do my husband's job easily (a civil service position), but the government says that a Bachelor's is necessary to run a computer, handle health & safety issues, and answer to a navy admiral for a boss. If I cared to read all Hubby's books and seminar/lecture/class literature, I bet I could do almost as good a job---the rest would have to come from OJT, and that's what employers are aiming to cut down on by using this "degree" screener (along with the "experience" screener). We ought to revive the apprentice thing (and we may HAVE to) considering the way college costs are skyrocketing--but alas, we can always import educated workers from countries who value education a lot more than we seem to, and actually plan for education before a baby's born! We could also stop breeding beyond our means, choosing instead to spend our lives improving ourselves, but that would only drive the cost up more due to lack of demand--the price per child of education will rise even more because fewer students will be supporting an outdated educational hierarchy (known as teacher unions and overpaid administrators).
As far as rolling in brain cells, I didn't acquire mine until midlife--when I stated eating right in earnest, taking fish oil caps (to stimulate acetylcholine for the brain), and reading again. When I was younger, the last place you'd find me was curled up on the couch with a thick book. The Head Start program, while largely unnecessary, does have a good point: feed the children breakfast, and feed them GOOD food--but the program principles shouldn't stop at pre-K. Feed kids properly throughout their minor years, and we won't be so worried about a dying middle class, a flat world, a floundering economy, being left behind as adults, and leaving college with a small mountain of debt (smart kids will always have scholarships and grants available to them--smarter kids will have smart parents who actually SAVED something for the day). And on it goes...pre-planning prevents piss-poor performance, or something like that.
We've abdicated our hustle to India and our brains to China (as well as feeding our kids to Head Start). Now we're too busy enjoying daily luxuries to bother getting them back, and all the shrieking in the world by Lou Dobbs isn't going to change that. Funny how he NEVER mentions anything we can do about the "war on the middle class," isn't it? Nothing except to buy his book and read more about it, huh? :) Meanwhile, people like me and Thomas Friedman are telling the world what they can do to improve their situation (read my recent article called War on the War on the Middle Class). There are articles sprinkled throughout last year that dealt with improving one's lot at work, at home, and while out shopping, but you'd think nobody knows this stuff by the way they carry on with bad decisions, bad choices, and bad outcomes. They paint themselves into a corner, and turn to the media to champion their way out of the room--just like Hurricane Katrina victims (don't even get me started!).
We CAN get our mojo back, but it's gonna require overhaul from the ground up--complacency is the FIRST thing that needs to be removed, followed by non-nutritious food and incapable parents. Marketing should also be in there near the top--and in that vein, I'd like to start a "Bring Back Schoolhouse Rock" program, as well as start a TV version of Hooked on Phonics.
I just get so sick of hearing how people have fallen and can't reach their microwave burrito because of some sort of worldwide sabotage. This kind of destructive thinking is now multi-generational, and neither I nor the government can deal with it on such a scale.
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