A Mile Wide or a Mile Deep?
One of my mentors recently related how his early success in school set him up for failure later in life. An over-achiever myself, I must confess that I didn’t understand what he meant at first. How could being good at something be a bad thing? However, after he explained the concept I was floored at how accurately it described my own life. I’ll share my own story to illustrate the point:
I was always very successful in school. The field of academics is naturally suited to my personality, and I always found school to be nearly effortless. I would study for a test the night before (okay you got me, it was the morning of) and get an A. I would do a project at the last minute, and I would get an A. I would do a research paper the night before, and I would get an A. I was one of those kids who graduated from high school with a GPA above 4.0 (my fellow over-achievers will get that). The world of ideas and philosophy always came naturally to me, and I was rewarded for my behavior with A’s. While so many kids around me struggled through classes, I breezed through them. The fact is, I rarely had to apply myself. I was rewarded for my mediocre effort with good grades, which affirmed my behavior to do the minimum required.
Some of you reading this may be thinking, “Gee, what a tough life, cry me a river.” However, let me ask you a question: is it worth it to have an easy couple of years early in life, but be set up for failure when you hit the real world? Said another way, is it better to struggle early on and reap the rewards for life, or to coast early on and then spend the rest of your life never really getting it?
Ironically, my early success in school reaffirmed habits and patterns of thought that were detrimental to experiencing success when I left the classroom. Here are some examples:
I never learned how to fail
As a perfectionist, I always had to have all of the answers. Unfortunately, my natural ability to remember information and correlate ideas affirmed that tendency, and so my goal in school was always to be the guy who had the answer. I always wanted to maintain the façade that I understood everything and that I “got it”. I didn’t know what it felt like to fail at something over and over. I didn’t learn the process of struggle. I was like a tree that was planted in a pot indoors. I looked great, but I never developed the deep roots that come from facing the storms of life. Contrast that to a lone tree that has survived on a rocky crag and is fully exposed to the elements. You can picture it, right? The tree is gnarled and scarred and battle-worn, but its enormous root system has transformed it into an immoveable object. It weathers every storm because of the strength that it developed over years of struggle and persistence.
Failure is simply feedback. It tells you where you are weak or where you are mistaken in your thinking, and then it gives you an opportunity to learn and grow. Working through failure teaches you to persist, and that process of struggle is what instills lasting character. I do not say this to glorify failure, for there are many people in life who are broken by failure and never recover. But when failure is viewed as an opportunity to learn, then it can become a powerful tool in your life. My aversion to looking “bad” in front of others (aka not having all the answers) taught me to avoid doing things that might cause me to fail. After all, I didn’t want to mar my image! Isn’t it sad how our insecurities cultivate negative habits? I avoided failure, yes, but I missed out on a treasure of infinitely greater worth: character forged through adversity.
2. I never learned humility
Part of the failure process is that it also teaches humility. When you get a result that you weren’t expecting – also known as failure – you must come to grips with the fact that you don’t know everything. However, you never learn that lesson if things always come easily to you. I always felt superior to my classmates because I barely had to apply myself to get good grades – and after all, good grades mean you are a smart person, right? (I hope you feel the sarcasm in that) I felt like I “had it all together” simply because I could get A’s on my report cards without trying hard.
What arrogance! I am blessed with a personality that does very well with intellectual and academic challenges, but it’s ridiculous to take that and use it as a form of superiority over others. It would be like a wide receiver making fun of the quarterback because he can’t run as fast, or a linebacker making fun of a wide receiver because he can’t block as well. It’s absurd! We are each given a unique set of talents and abilities, and I believe one of our responsibilities in life is to cultivate our natural skills that we may complement and balance those around us. Instead of lording my strengths over my classmates, I should have come alongside them to help and contribute, and in the process they would have been able to balance my own weaknesses (such as my lack of emotional intelligence!).
3. I learned to value knowledge instead of wisdom
Reading has always been a passion and a strength of mine. Whenever we had reading contests in school, you would be certain to see my name at the top of the list, whether it was for most books read, most pages read, or most time spent reading. That talent served me well throughout my school career because it allowed me to move very quickly through the information we were given.
Unfortunately, I developed the habit of learning information simply to regurgitate it onto a test. There was no attempt to actually master the material; after all, you didn’t have to actually understand the material to get an A on the test, you only had to remember it for the sixty minutes it took to take the exam! The lesson that was instilled into me in school was this: it’s better to approach learning a mile wide and an inch deep rather than go only an inch wide but a mile deep. This was not the fault of the educators, but my own weakness as a “good” student. After all, I was rewarded for my ability to remember dates, names, numbers, and formulas regardless if I understood them.
In life, however, the amount of information that you know quickly experiences diminishing returns. When I entered the workforce, my employers did not care that I knew there were fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, but they did care whether I exercised my liberty of industriousness and perseverance. My employers did not care if I could list off how many pages were in the Employee Handbook, but they did care how deeply I mastered my communication skills with my co-workers and my customers. My employers never once asked me what Avogadro’s Constant was or what Planck’s Constant meant, but they were very interested in my ability to come up with solutions that increased customer traffic or increased sales closing ratios.
For so many years I lived under the assumption that simply having knowledge was enough because that’s what made me a “good student”. It was a subtle script that I followed for most of my life because it was rewarded during my years in school. This same attitude crept in even after I began incorporating leadership and personal development material. I assumed that if I read enough books, listened to enough audio programs, attended enough seminars, and subscribed to enough industry articles that I would be successful. Those things are all great, but they are worthless without one extra step...
...application.
The real world is far more concerned with how you apply the information you have than with how much you know. For example, imagine you were going on a trip and you got to pick your pilot for the flight. Which pilot would you choose: the one who got 100% on his written examinations in school but has no experience in a cockpit, or the pilot who got 50% on his written examinations in school but has 15,000 hours of flight time with no incidences? I believe most of us would pick the pilot with the 15,000 hours of experience, because results speak for themselves. I don’t care if my pilot doesn’t know about everything in the world – I only care that he has mastered his craft.
All of us have habits that limit us from achieving more. For me, ironically, many of those habits were built through my early success in school as a child and young man. I know that many of my fellow over-achievers will find these same habits in their own lives. However, those habits don’t have to define you. There is no shame in admitting them; on the contrary, there is incredible freedom in admitting where you’ve fallen short. Acknowledge them, work through them, and then use them as stepping stones to propel yourself forward.
What did school teach YOU about life?