These are the skills of an obedient worker. The school system was designed in the Prussian era to produce soldiers and factory workers. It was never designed to produce capitalists.” Summary available on the Booklet App 😊
These are the words of Warren Buffet that made me pick up this book:
“Think about your school years. What you were actually trained to do? You were trained to sit still for 6 hours. You were trained to memorize instructions.
You were trained to raise your hand to ask for permission to speak or even to go to the toilet. You were trained to fear failure. Above all, you were trained to complete tasks given to you by a superior authority. These are not the skills of an owner.
Why do people get excited when their social media post receives hundreds of likes? According to the author, Will Storr, all these behaviors may have something important in common. They increase our status. And that brings us to the central idea of this fascinating book.
After all, many promotions come with more stress, more responsibilities, more meetings, and sometimes even less free time. Yet people celebrate them. Why? Or think about this. Why do people proudly mention that they studied at IIT, IIM, Harvard, or Oxford?
A surprising number of your life decisions may have been influenced by one thing. Not money. Not happiness. Not success. Status. Now before you say, “Not me, Amrut. I don’t care about status”, let me ask you a simple question. Why does a promotion feel so good?