The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [5]
In one segment, Gladwell compares the lives of two men born with exceptionally high IQs, Chris Langan, known as “the smartest man in America,” with an IQ over 200, and Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project. The brilliance of their minds is comparable, yet one of these men (Oppenheimer) had a profound impact on world history, and another (Langan) has had very little, despite repeated attempts to get his work published.
What is the difference between these two men? According to Gladwell, the main difference is that, in addition to his rocket-high IQ, Oppenheimer also possessed exceptional practical intelligence in navigating his way through the people who could influence his success in the world, “things like knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.” Langan in turn possessed little of this kind of intelligence, and thus was never able to gain much of a toehold in the world of practical achievement.
In his book, Gladwell shows that once a person has demonstrated passable logical, analytic, and academic skills, other factors have much more influence on real-world results—specifically, creativity, innovative thinking, and practical and social intelligence. To the extent that we develop these aptitudes in our lives, we tend to do so out in the real world, not in formal institutions.5
This book is your guide for developing practical success skills in the real world. I focus on seven key skills that will be crucial if you want to succeed in your work and career. These practical skills are not meant to be a replacement for college. Indeed, a classic college education—in its most elite conception—is not meant to teach practical skills at all. That’s not its purpose. You can learn many wonderful things in college. You can be exposed to new ideas, broaden your perspective on life, learn critical thinking skills, and immerse yourself in the great intellectual and cultural treasures of the human mind and spirit.
But, even if you’ve already gone through college, one thing I’m certain wasn’t on the curriculum in school was how to translate these abstract, academic teachings into real-world results in your own life. Yet, this additional education around practical skills is not optional. Learning the skills in this book well is a necessary addition to a college education, if you want to achieve more success in your work and life. This book shows you the way.
I will turn to the seven key skills in a moment. But first, let me tell you a little about who I am and why I decided to write this book.
■ MY SHOCKING REALIZATION
Around two years ago, at the age of thirty-two, I came to a shocking realization.
Not one penny of how I earned my income was even slightly related to anything I ever studied or learned in college.
I was bringing in a very solid income as a direct-response copywriter, on a freelance schedule that many of my friends with paychecks and bosses envied (never at my desk before 10:30 A.M., lots of time for Rollerblading in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, in the middle of sunny weekdays). One could say I learned writing in college, but it is more accurate to say that I had to unlearn the turgid, academic style of writing favored in college, in order to write anything that moved product or made money for me or anyone else.
What’s more, I wasn’t making solid money (somewhere around $75,000 as a freelance copywriter, plus additional money coming in from my own book writing, which pushed me over $100,000) simply because I had become good at writing copy. I was earning money because I had become good at marketing and selling my copywriting services. There are boatloads of good freelancers