Notes from Prepared by Diana Tavenner

How I discovered the book and what made me read it? 

I learned about the book from Bill Gates’s blog and was quite interested in it because I have always felt that growing up I was studying to pass exams. I only started learning “how to learn” after finishing college.

I also thought it would be interesting if I am able to extrapolate the learnings into my daily work of managing a team and helping them grow.  

P.S on a personal note I was also motivated to read the book because one of my closest friend were expecting their first kid at the time.

My takeaways

1. Project based & self-paced learning enables us to learn more - I learned a lot more after I finished college and more with more depth.

2. Traditional education set up could be limiting because it can hurt the natural curiosity and can build foundation which is not solid

3. Key skills to learn as a kid- i) how to learn ii) reflective

4. Failing is only productive in 2 instances i) when you learn something from it and motivated to try again ii) failure doesn’t close future doors (rare cases)

5. fulfilled life > materially successful life

A quote which I found quite interesting “textbooks, a newer invention, were used to standardise knowledge. Bells, inspired by factory life, were meant to keep everyone on schedule, industrial lockers housed all that was personal, test were given one time and one time only to sort and rank students.” - bells, textbooks, tests are universal experience that most of us had regardless where you have grown up. 

Original post in Twitter from 2020
Amazon: Prepared: What Our Kids Need to Be Ready for Life by Diana Tavenner