Four lessons I learned from paying for knowledge for 5,000 yuan in the past two years

I know so many things, but I still can’t live a good life. Always paying for other people's ideas, isn't life like this?

01

On the second day of the 618 e-commerce promotion , I was sharing my shopping experience with my colleagues, and I told them that I bought books worth more than 400 yuan. They looked surprised: I haven't bought a book worth 400 yuan in a year!

Because my colleagues often collected the books for me, I realized that something was wrong in the past two years compared to their shopping for clothes and cosmetics, or my focus had changed.

2016 is known as the first year of paid knowledge . Apps like Get and Zaixing have stirred everyone’s knowledge anxiety. In 2017, this trend has become stronger and stronger. Apps like Zhihu Live and Himalaya paid courses have made everyone feel: It turns out that I just haven’t seen the knowledge that can change my destiny yet!

In this wave of paying for knowledge, I also brought my wallet and kept up with the pace. But I am not a creator at the top, but a consumer at the bottom. Of course, this does not prevent me from moving forward. I pay the fee while singing:

"Why is it that the stronger the wind, the more my heart flutters..."

Of course, in the end, the waves behind push the waves in front, and the waves in front die on the beach. I don’t know how I’ve been doing these past two years, but I still did some calculations. From January 2016 to June 2017, I spent:

• I bought 46 lectures on Zhihu, which cost about 1,500 yuan;
• Bought 21 lectures on WeChat , costing about 500 yuan;
• I attended a writing training course, which cost about 500 yuan;
• Buying a course on Getui costs about 300 yuan;
• Participated in two early-to-bed-and-early-rise check-in groups, spending 100 yuan;
• I bought several courses, which cost about 2,000 yuan.

The total cost is about 5,000 yuan.

This does not include the paper books and e-books I buy every year. You know, I am also crazy about this.

Of course, I cannot deny all these courses, at least they are very useful in some aspects. But the biggest result these lectures or courses bring to me is: since I spend money, I will naturally spend time on it, and each lecture lasts at least one hour. Some of them I would listen to two or three times, so in total my time cost was about 300 hours. 300 hours is enough to write a book.

There is a popular word nowadays, called IQ tax, which means the tax you pay for your low IQ. If so, this is the biggest IQ tax I have paid in the past one or two years.

02

So in fact, I was afraid when writing this article. I was afraid that I would see it and others would see that I have a low IQ.

Looking back on the time since I purchased the course, have I become smarter?

It seems that nothing in my life has changed except for a few more white hairs, a few more wrinkles and a few more bags under my eyes. My quality of life has not improved, my salary has not increased, and my dream of traveling has not come true...

So when no one was around, I finally started asking myself:

Why do I spend so much time, energy and money on these courses? Are these paid courses really worth it?

03

I used my brain that "I am so confident using Rejoice" to think for a long time and found that the root of everything was my lack of independent thinking ability, which led to a lack of judgment.

The lack of independent thinking ability is the IQ tax I paid for 5,000 yuan.

After carefully looking through these paid courses, I found that most of them are about how to manage time, read and write, and work efficiently. However, I still have bad habits such as procrastination, and my writing and reading skills still need to be improved.

But if there must be gains, the most important thing is to learn four lessons:

Lesson 1: The only shortcut in this world is diligence.

If you look at the titles of these courses, you will find that most of them are words like "Build in One Hour", "Learn in a Week", "Fast", "Turning Point", "Change", "Destiny", etc. For example, "Ten Great Tricks for Ordinary People to Rise Quickly" by Biaohan Yijiemao, "Build Your Reading Operating System in 1 Hour" by Li Xiaolai, and "How to Master a Skill in a Short Time" by Scott Young.

But after you listen to it with great enthusiasm, life will not change quickly. As an ordinary person, I still cannot rise up, I still cannot build a reading operating system in an hour, and I still cannot master a skill in a short period of time.

And why am I so keen on listening to these things? Isn’t it just because I want to take a shortcut? Isn’t it just to know the secret of other people’s success in a short period of time?

In fact, even if someone tells you the secret of success, you still won’t be able to absorb it quickly. There is a lot of effort behind this that you cannot see. You can't see the efforts behind a tough cat. Li Xiaolai taught English at New Oriental for many years and went through many trial and error before he became famous. Scott Young also said in his "How to Learn Efficiently": It took two years to master these skills.

Therefore, there are no shortcuts in this world. If there is a shortcut, it is diligence.

Lesson 2: Spend time reading classics, don’t pay for ignorance

The biggest inspiration I got from reading The Poor Charlie's Almanack. Before reading The Poor Charlie's Almanack, I saw many terms, such as thinking patterns, scale thinking, system thinking patterns, compound interest effect, etc. I thought they were very new, and then I bought courses like these as soon as I saw them. But after reading "The Poor Charlie's Almanack", you will find that many theories come from it.

As long as you study this book thoroughly, you don't need to spend a lot of time and energy listening to these courses, because these courses only explain a certain point here.

Later, I found that many lectures by Cheng Jia, Zhang Hui, Li Xiaolai and others were based on this book.

And I only spent 4.99 yuan on the electronic version of this book.

This is the case with this book, but what about the others?

So instead of listening to a large number of fragmented courses, it is better to make an effort to read the classics and build your own knowledge system .

As I said, there are no shortcuts in this world. The laziness you have shown will be made up for in another way one day.

Lesson 3: Many truths have already existed. Don’t be blinded by new terms.

With the emergence of paid courses, you will find more and more new terms, such as:

The concept of "critical knowledge" proposed by Cheng Jia in "How to Achieve Explosive Growth through Knowledge Management" is actually the same as Charlie Munger's "universal wisdom" in a new bottle.

Zhou Yongfan’s “Keeping a diary, a powerful tool for a niche growth”, doesn’t niche growth mean that it is used by a relatively small number of people?

Lan Qichang's "How to Use a Growth Mindset to Achieve a Transformation in Your Life", growth mindset is a proactive thinking mode.

Why are there so many new terms? Of course it is for marketing purposes. People are curious and like new things. If it is exactly the same as before, why should I listen to you?

There is nothing new under the sun. Many truths in this world have existed for a long time and will not change. As long as you grasp a few core points, it will be enough for you to survive in the world for decades. Of course, you can also do thorough research on your own and put the old wine in new bottles to fool new consumers.

Lesson 4: Don’t become a knowledge hoarder, become a knowledge doer.

When you see an article, save it immediately; when you see a course, buy it immediately. When it comes to knowledge, we may be afraid of missing it, just like seeing a discount or promotion. Even though I don’t have time now, I will think about reading it when I have time: this is knowledge that may change my destiny!

Because it is knowledge, we feel less guilty buying it than buying clothes.

But precisely because it is knowledge, buying too much will make us more confused and anxious.

Now when I open the densely packed courses on Zhihu and WeChat, I can’t even remember what each one was about. But I did spend some time and energy listening to it!

Only then did I realize that even if you listen to so much knowledge, it is completely useless if you don’t put it into practice. In fact, it’s not that these courses are useless. Every principle or methodology is the lecturer’s summary of experience, and it has taken them more than ten years or even a lifetime to summarize these experiences. It’s not possible to change your destiny by just listening to them for an hour.

You must act accordingly .

• Only by taking action can you break out of your comfort zone.
• Only by taking action can you change your knowledge anxiety.
• Only by taking action can you create your own truth.

I know so many things, but I still can’t live a good life. Always paying for other people's ideas, isn't life like this?