{"id":4126,"date":"2020-11-15T00:46:03","date_gmt":"2020-11-14T22:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/?p=4126"},"modified":"2020-12-13T15:43:14","modified_gmt":"2020-12-13T13:43:14","slug":"knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/2020\/11\/15\/knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Knowledge Has Become Useless – Learn This Instead"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Tl;dr: in an economy where information is free, one should focus on learning a skill instead of studying knowledge. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was 20, I made one of the worst decisions<\/a> of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went to study communication at university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, I valued much more the voice of other people than my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

School had taught me that whatever I thought about myself was wrong and that I should follow other people’s advice instead of my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mainstream advice back then was “go study” (which in itself, is not especially good advice), and more specifically, it was “go study something you like”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I quickly discovered once I entered the job market, that was terrible advice<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time I had understood it, it was too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making a Living Is Hard <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Making a living is hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The period of steady economic growth is over and AI will soon make many people redundant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As such, getting a job is not about doing “what you like.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is about solving a problem for someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founders build companies to fix problems and hire employees that spend their days solving their companies’ problems and receive a salary in exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make a living in this world, you need to be able to solve problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bigger the problem, the more value you’ll deliver, the more money you will make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As such, the biggest misconception that students (and sadly, their parents) have about the job market is that people are hired for what they know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this isn’t true at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are hired for what they can do<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an information-based society where any type of expertise about anything is virtually free, knowledge is simply not that valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not about what you know anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather, it’s about what you can do with what you know.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As such, the number of people earning a salary based on what they know is actually very small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They usually work in research and manage to make a living off their knowledge because it is new, innovative, or very complicated to grasp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowledge matters less and less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some months ago, Google declared that it would no longer treat university graduates and other candidates differently when applying for jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s because Google knows that whatever you know does not nearly compare with what you can do practically. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you don’t need university to learn how to do.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forget About Knowledge – Learn a Skill Instead<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When you’re choosing a knowledge-based study, you’re doomed to fail at job searching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Communication, history, art history, philosophy, political science, sociology, psychology, international relations, and law are studies that do not lead anywhere because they don’t teach you how to do anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They teach you knowledge, something you get for free off the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the contrary, careers such as computer science, engineering, health-related degrees, all manual studies (construction worker, barista, carpenter, plumber, electrician, technician, butcher, baker, fisherman, farmer, bus driver…) are in high demand because people occupying them are producing something concrete. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you don’t believe me, round up a sociology graduate and an electrician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ask them to create something of value that they learned during their studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2 Questions Anyone Should Ask Themselves Before Learning Anything<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are two questions you should ask yourself before learning something. The answer to these questions will help you decide whether you should study it or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First question: can I practice<\/em> whatever I am about to learn?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Example: can you practice SEO? Sure, you can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you practice communication? No, you cannot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not the way they teach you to at university, at least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you can’t practice <\/em>it, don’t learn it. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second question: are people with the skill I would like to learn currently highly valued in the economy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To verify that, all you need to do is a quick job search. Often, unemployment offices publish critical skill sets that lack in the economy so that you can have an idea of what to study next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anything that is neither a skill nor highly sought-after should be ignored, and not learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waiting tables is a skill, but it is not highly sought-after. As such, you don’t want to study to become a waiter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“BuT wHaT iF tHiS iS mY pAsSiOn?”<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Passions are passions because you treat them as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s say your passion is driving and you elect to become a cab driver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 2 years or so, you’ll hate driving and will have lost your passion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making a job out of a passion is a guaranteed way to lose that passion. Indeed, passion is an activity you practice when you want to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A job needs to be practiced, whether you want it or not. Furthermore, all jobs come off with negative aspects that you’ll have to deal with anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You don’t want to pollute your passion with these types of obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it would be better if you had a slight interest in what you ultimately elect to study, it definitely should not <\/strong>be the main aspect to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Do what you love is a lie”, nobody actually does what they love.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you should seek to learn instead is a skill that will teach you to deliver high value to people and companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Jordan Peterson once said, “a job is something you get paid for because you wouldn’t do it voluntarily”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A job is not nice. A job is not fun. It’s something that needs to get done and for which one needs a special skill set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So next time you’re thinking about learning something new to make money with, do me a favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t learn knowledge. Learn a skill instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo by Chevanon Photography<\/strong><\/a> from Pexels<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tl;dr: in an economy where information is free, one should focus on learning a skill instead of studying knowledge.  When… Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bornmillennials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/91.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornmillennials.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}