At various stages in human history, productivity was determined by outside forces. Sometimes it was simply a function of who owned the most land. That King was the most productive as far as getting you to give him all of his crops. And that made someone productive, simply owning lots of land. Industrial Age it was who could put the most capital towards building the biggest factory. That's what decided.
Then other times it involved government licenses if you could capture the most licenses for the most TV networks and TV stations that would make you productive. Modern World is different. It's no longer about who has the most land, who has the most money to buy infrastructure. Although money never hurts. Right now, the biggest productivity tool The human brain once you realize that it changes your perspective on so many things productive people realize this because your brain is the biggest productivity tool. What that means is the most important thing you can ever do is to keep learning as long as you keep learning, you can make yourself more productive.
Most of human history is not been like that, once you were 18. And your father taught you, your mother taught you everything you need to know about farming, and planting and sharing the sheep. You just had to keep doing that until you died at around 30 or 35. Today, it's not like that. First of all, we don't want to die at 35 we want to live to 8090 100 or more. I certainly want more.
And the key is constant constant. Learning because learning is what creates for improvement. more innovation, and more productivity. So productive people don't look at learning and say, check out my high school degree or check. I got my college degree or check, check, check. Wow, I got three degrees from Harvard and a PhD.
I'm done with learning now. productive people realize that in the modern world, the ultimate tool is your brain. The second you stop learning, you can become irrelevant like that. You can become obsolete instantly. So you have to keep learning. Also, it's fun.
It simply makes life more interesting to keep learning. So one thing I've noticed with wildly productive people is they never stop learning. They may go to a beach occasionally, but their typical ideal vacation isn't sitting on a beach and just drinking a pina colada for two weeks. Maybe that's two days but the rest of the time is learning New hiking skills or backpacking skills are spelunking. So they're constantly learning. new things are constantly reading new books, constantly looking for new sources of information.
So that's what this section is going to be about is how learning is really different in the 21st century in this modern age for productive people and what you can do about it