Why do I have to learn this? I'm NEVER going to use it again...

As I waited to get my hair done today I read through some of the WSJ articles I had put aside to eventually read when I wasn't doing work-work, home-work, or involved in some kind of community/volunteering activity!

So among them I came about an article by Scott Adams, the creator of "Dilbert". The article's headline read: How To Get a Real Education. Being I'm in the education publishing business I wanted to read Adam's opinion on education.

Mr. Adam's article question why we had our B students in classes with A students who enjoyed physics, chemistry, calculus and classic literature? Why not have them learning something useful, like entrepreneurship?

Adam's shared stores of his college years with the reader and explained how these life lessons have made him a successful business man.

Important learning points I took away from this article were:

• The importance of interviewing skills. Adam highlights this is what helped him get the job that changed his view of business. 
• If there's a loophole, someone's going to drive a truck through it. And the person who does will get PAID BETTER!
• If you are leading a project, work on your ideas first (create an outline), invite people to give you feedback and then incorporate those people's ideas into your initial outline. People will buy into a project or new procedures when they feel they had some saying in the process. 

As Adam's began to look at the world through an entrepreneur's eyes- he began to see the importance of:

• Combine Skills: Make yourself valuable
• Fail Forward: Take risk! The trick to this is to get paid while you're doing the failing and use the experience to gain skills that will be useful later
• Find the Action: Distance is your enemy! Move to where the action is (in your job or desired career) 
• Attract Luck: You can't manage luck directly, but you can manage your career in a way that makes it easier for luck to find you.
• Conquer Fear: Learn to mask nervousness in public
• Write Simple: Simplicity makes ideas powerful. (Check out Made-to-Stick on this topic)
• Learn Persuasion: Learn the art of persuasion in all its forms; psychology, sales, marketing, negotiating, statistics and even design

Source: WSJ, How To Get a Real Education, April 2011