Posted by Michael Donelly

Read this: To get an idea of important life skills are completely ignored by public education.

Gain: At least the knowledge of what might be missing in your skill set and those of your children.

Cost to you: Nothing except a few minutes of your attention.

I don’t know how many times I have learned something new on my path through life and wished I had known it earlier. Of course that’s what life is all about and we can’t know everything in advance, but some things are glaringly obvious in that someone should have told us about them before. Here are just a few:

• Life is one big negotiation. Life is not fair. How to negotiate properly, both for selling and buying. A real life example.
• The dangers of junk food and how to eat properly. Here and here.
• How to stay healthy and fit.
• How the banking system works and how to protect yourself from it.
• Effective communication. I left school a bumbling idiot.
• You don’t have to work for someone else. Being your own boss is a virtue, not a liability.

Granted, the people who teach in schools today probably won’t know a lot about these topics because nobody taught them either, so the chances are these disciplines won’t make it to the school syllabus.

Academic knowledge is nice to have, but without real life skills you may end up being cheated, overpaying for most things you buy, overweight and unwell, poorly paid and stressed. We tell you how on Anotherway to avoid these pitfalls.

As always on this blog each article is only posted if it has specific recommendations which are worth heeding. If most of the bullet points above had not even occurred to you as important, you probably have some serious self education to do. Each of these knowledge areas is crucial for success. Most importantly if you feel too lazy to be bothered, you can always remind yourself that if you don’t know these things, your kids won’t learn them either.