Bill
Gates' 11 Things You Did Not and Will Not Learn in School
Rule
1: Life is not fair — get used to it!
More
important is how we handle ourselves when life is unfair. Do we let unfairness
change our fundamental beliefs in treating others around us with fairness?
Rule
2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to
accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Whenever
we let our own arrogance win out over putting others first, we will come in
last.
Rule
3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a
vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
The
world is full of people who have been successful right out of high school or
college, but generally speaking the business world pays for experience. The
faster you learn and accumulate experience that translates into better
decision-making skills, the faster you will attain the spoils.
Rule
4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
The
teachers who demand the most from their students do the best job of preparing us
for successful careers. Now, I can look back fondly on the teachers who did the
best job of molding me (plus my parents).
Rule
5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a
different word for burger flipping — they called it opportunity.
Get
past the preachiness here. The important thing is to make every opportunity into
a learning experience … and those entry level jobs that are beneath you and do
not take advantage of your academic training and intelligence are posts you must
pass through with excitement instead of boredom.
Rule
6: If you mess up, it's not your parents fault, so don't whine about your
mistakes … learn from them.
Again
a bit preachy! But when you mess up … please, please, please accept
responsibility, learn from it and move on. One of the greatest lessons in my
life came when my CEO at the time called me on the carpet for blaming others. I
got the wake up call! You will learn more from mistakes than victories.
Rule
7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They
got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you
talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest
from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your
own room.
Okay,
now we got really preachy. Before you get mad, consider what you can learn even
when someone's yelling at you to clean out the closet. I can tell from the
comments many of you are making in this blog that you have lofty "save the rain
forest" visions … don't lose these cause the world will trample on them fast
enough. Along the way, pay homage to your parents who paved the way for you with
years of toil.
Rule
8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In
some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY
TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest
resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
The
point here is that business is cruel. You make a profit or go out of business.
You contribute to that profit or you don't stay employed. There is a win-loss
record and it needs to be pushed to the limits.
Rule
9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few
employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
I
still remember the shock of not getting a month off for Christmas and just a
two-week vacation. My daughters just went through this with every bit as much
shock as I did. There are no time-outs when building a career. I don't know any
successful business person who works just a 40-hour work week. Plus you never
really leave school … constant learning now occurs on top of the 50-60 hours you
put in at work … learning your craft, learning how to deal with people, how to
collaborate, how to use ever-changing technology. It does not stop and it is not
divided into semesters. In a future post, I will share with you more about the
project I am now working on … where I have averaged 15 hour work days for
three-weeks running and two more weeks to go until project launch. It's just
reality.
Rule
10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the
coffee shop and go to work at jobs.
A
bit condescending. What can you learn from it?
Rule
11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
Is
this why they call it the "revenge of the nerds?"
