Quote-A-Day: Day 183

You can't always be right. But you can always be ready. #QuoteADay #Day183 #edchat #edu #BeReady #Lead #Learn

While I don’t think anyone famous actually said this, it seems true to me that learning is roughly ten parts being right, and ninety parts being ready.  It turns out that it isn’t so much about the information we recall or the skills we can show in a second, but instead, much more about how prepared we are for the myriad of situations we face as leaders and learners.

Life is all about repeated scenarios.  Some we see on a daily basis.  Others happen yearly.  Still others we hope won’t happen more than once.  But, if we look at life as a series of events, we can often see the interconnected nature and patterns that exist.

Therefore, when we boil learning down to a simple idea, it could be that we learn to be ready, rather than we learn to be right.

Being right might be helpful in the short-term, as it showcases a knowledge base that we are comfortable sharing with others.  However, being ready is a long-term benefit, as it exhibits a trait that requires much more work than simply “knowing.”  Being prepared shows an understanding of relationships as well as the surrounding environment, and unlike being right (which is all about us and what we know), being prepared is all about others, and how we can best help them.

So, while we are all on a never-ending quest to keep learning, we should embark on that quest with the goal to learn to be prepared, rather than simply to learn to gain new knowledge. 

Knowledge may be golden, but preparation is platinum.