Scott Adams—the author famous for his Dilbert comic—has an interesting take on ambition:
I think ambition is a genetic defect. You can’t have ambition unless you think there is something wrong with the way you are. Ambition is a state of feeling perpetually flawed.
Last month an article appeared in The New York Times Magazine praising how-to websites. Now it’s acting as my personal list of how-to websites, helping teach me everything from Chinese dining etiquette to surviving zombie attacks and plating fettuccine Alfredo.
That reminds me, I need to learn how to do the robot.
The Personal MBA is a site dedicated to helping people gain an MBA education without the expense of business school. It’s a self-study guide to advanced business topics and concepts. As Kevin Kelly—the founding executive director of Wired—says:
No matter what they tell you, an MBA is not essential for landing or handling a good business job… Pursue your own Personal MBA in tandem with actual experience doing some kind of business. If you combine study with actually trying stuff, you’ll be far ahead in the business game.
An impressive introduction comes in the form of the Change This Manifesto, and one of my favourite pages on the site is the book list: The 77 Best Business Books.
I’m usually quite sceptical about similar lists, but The Independent’s 20 Things Everyone Needs to Know struck me as actually useful as each list item is authored by a professional who works in that field.
And when you’ve got an article co-authored by the likes of Donald Trump, Jennifer Capriati and Larry King, how can you possibly resist?
This interview between Tim Ferriss and Derek Sivers—the entrepreneur who founded CD Baby—concentrates on The 4-Hour Workweek and provides a good recap and overview of the concepts. The following quote, however, feels more relevant to me now as it was when I originally read the book:
To learn anything quickly, I approach people who did it correctly and say, “I have an idea, but I don’t know anything, so can I buy you a beer and pick your brain? I’m really ambitious but kind of ignorant.” Whether it’s language learning or tango or kickboxing. That’s how I did all of it. That’s how I identified the rules of engagements, so I could deconstruct them.