Sakib Mahmud Aka Visionary Geek

This great articles has written by Brad McCarty at NextWeb. I’m pretty much impressed with that decision, life really required some rough decision. So, read articles carefully, that makes sense in reality.

You’re 17, 18 or maybe 19 years old. You’ve graduated high school and it’s time to make the decision about which university you’d like to attend. Choice made, you sign up for classes and start going to a school to which you pay an extraordinary amount of money to essentially teach yourself everything that you couldn’t understand in the lecture hall.

Then one day, the question comes to mind — “Should I just drop out?” It’s the same question that many have asked for years before you and many will continue to ask long after you’re gone. Sadly, there’s no true answer in one direction or another, but at least the waters are becoming a bit more clear…or at least that’s the intention, as noble as it might be.

The average public university (in the US) is going to set you back nearly $80,000 for a 4-year program. Going to private school? Up that cost to in excess of $150,000 depending on the school of choice. At the end of that time, you have a bellybutton. Oh sure, you might have a piece of paper that says you have a Bachelor of Science or Art degree but what you actually have is something that has become so ubiquitous that it’s really not worth much more than the lint inside your own navel.

So what can you do to stand out? The obvious choice is that you can pay for more education. Get a Master’s degree, right? How about a Doctorate? Get whatever degree you want, then walk out with your cap and gown and try to find a job. Suddenly the world becomes a lot more real.

In the circle of entrepreneurs, we see stories all of the time about people who have dropped out of school. Those stories of the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are inspirational and they are indeed that — stories. Nobody tells the story about struggles or eating ramen for a month straight while you code until your fingers bleed. Why not? Because those aren’t fun to read and they’re even less fun to live. Everybody wants that big idea that will instantly make them successful but a frighteningly small percentage of us ever have that happen.

The question of education versus experience isn’t always as simple to answer as many would have you believe. Sure, you might be a brilliant generator of flawless code, but does that matter if you’re 18 years old, irresponsible and unwilling to deal with things that you might not find important?

This is the value that is never talked about in school pitches. They’ll tell you about their academic programs, the benefits of the campus and anything you want to know about Fraternity pledge week. What they won’t tell you (likely because many schools fail to understand their own real value) is that you’ll learn much more than what comes from a book.

In 1999, I went back to university after having returned from the military. Aiming for a degree in Information Systems, I had to take a class in “practical” math. In other words, I had to solve the salesman problem and figure out how to draw straight lines. At the time I considered the class to be an absolute waste of my time and money, but I plugged away at it regardless, finding its true value only a few years ago. In reality, the things that I learned in the class I couldn’t tell you about today if my very life depended upon it. But in having the patience and discipline to finish the task at hand, I learned a very important lesson.

The same holds true for the classes that I took when I thought that I might want to be an English professor. I read books that I didn’t care about. I learned grammatical rules that nobody should ever have the need to quote. I studied prose from dead people and crap from others who were very much alive. At the end of it all, I hadn’t learned a darned thing about English.

What I did find were ways to digest more information faster. I learned how to read the important words while skipping the fluff. I should have an honorary doctorate in speed reading, if such a thing were to exist. Again, in years of classes and thousands of dollars, I didn’t learn a thing that they were hoping to teach me, but what I did learn were the things that keep me gainfully employed today.

So what about you? The answer as to whether you should stay or go is probably easier to find than what you’re thinking. Here’s a question for you:

Are you mature, responsible and ready to take on anything that gets thrown at you? If you answered this as a yes, then you’re likely not. Stay in school. In a few years, you’ll realize how unprepared you really were.

The end result of this debate is that there are some people who absolutely need that formal education, even if what they learn isn’t anything from a textbook. There are some who don’t need that structure or lifestyle, but many of us do. So break out the checkbook and fill out another grant application. You’ve probably got some work to do.

Schools today are starting to “get it” a bit more. Some, such as Babson College in Boston, offer degrees in Entrepreneurship. As comical as that might seem, it’s a program full of fundamentals that you’d likely not learn anywhere else, outside of a degree in Business Management. But rather than getting into the deeper workings of business, it’s a high-level overview that should be sufficient for a budding entrepreneur.

Better still? You’re being given the chance to learn your lessons without screwing up anyone else’s business. The first startup in which I was involved? Tanked. Millions of dollars missing due to a shady mismanagement of funds. Was any of this my fault? Not likely. But if the person who was in charge of the cash had taken the time to grow up before growing out, maybe it never would have happened.

So find out for yourself if staying in school is the right idea. If you think it’s not, think again and ask some friends. It probably is. If you’re pretty sure that you could use some more time in higher education, try launching a product first. You might be pleasantly surprised.

After reading a post about Ego, I’m feeling that ego can kill a person’s working productivity, efficiency and making a man fully inactive. Even, a man normally don’t understand wand fell about this matters and but gradually  it is decreasing potentiality and that’s really important and happening inside human being. Don’t you think you should track and keep away from Ego type things.

Written on 9/14/2009 by Srinivas Rao. Srinivas is a volunteer for the Quality of Life Project. The website shares best practices on getting the most out of life from well known types like Richard Branson and Tom Skerritt to lesser known but equally interesting individuals. The mission of the organization is to help people live more enjoyable, purposeful and contented lives. Srinivas also writes at www.theskooloflife.com.

The ego is one of most self-destructive mechanisms of a person’s character and his or her abilities. In fact if you look at some people who’ve achieved massive success only to lose it all at the end of their lives, it’s almost always a function of the ego that results in this. As strange as the following examples might be, drug dealers, and gangsters in the movies are blatant examples of people whose egos have ruined their success. There are two characters that really exemplify this: George Jung (Johnny Depp in the movie Blow) and Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington in the movie American Gangster).

If you have seen the movie Blow, you know that the life of the main character is driven by the desire to never to be poor after growing up in financial dire straits. As a result he chooses a career as a drug dealer. Early in the movie, he becomes quite successful, ending up with a dream home, his dream girl, and almost everything you think would be enough in life. In fact every single time I watch this movie, I think “If he had just quit while he was ahead, then imagine how different his life would have turned out.” But, greed, and perhaps the desire to keep proving to himself that he was capable of more, ultimately his ego, led him to 60 years in prison.

The character of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington in American Gangster) is another example of how ego got the best of somebody who could have quit while he was ahead. Although he was off to a bad start from the get go, even more so than George Jung, there comes a turning point in the movie when the ego of Frank Lucas takes over. In the desire to to keep expanding his operation Frank starts to partner with other people and eventually attracts the attention of the police. What’s interesting to note however is that there is a point in the movie where he acknowledges the destructive power of ego when he tells his younger brother “The loudest person in the room is the weakest.” Yet, he still falls victim to his own ego.

6 Signs That You Are Ego Driven

1. Concern with Approval of others
   In his book Manifest Your Destiny, Wayne Dyer mentions that there are three tenets of self actualizing people according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. One of those is that you should be independent of the good opinion of other people. It’ s easier said than done, but comes with a sense of freedom and liberation that allows you to truly shine. Who you are independent of the good opinion of other people is the most authentic person you will ever be. This is the most attractive quality in anybody, in a world where people are overly concerned with looking good in front of others. Ironically I learned this in a business school class and of all places, the corporate world may seem like a strange place to not concern yourself with the good opinion of others. But if you come from a place of authenticity and hard work, you will be much more well liked by your corporate peers. Self actualization is at the top of the Maslow hierarchy and most leaders are self actualized.
2. Fear of asking for help
   If you are afraid to ask for help, or you don’t want to ask for help because you want all the credit, then your ego is driving you. I made this mistake a few years back when I attempted to launch a job web site for MBA students. In my own bad judgment, I decided to take on the project alone after discussing it with some classmates. The desire to get ahead quickly and launch the site was the work of my ego. Ultimately, it ended up being a failure. If my ego hadn’t gotten in the way, and I had worked with the other students, I would have saved a few friendships and the site might have succeeded.
3. Comparing and Competing
   People who are driven by ego often fall victim to what I call the comparative and competitive disadvantage. Comparing yourself to others is the ego in one of its most vicious forms. It’s a perpetual losing battle because there will always be somebody better and always somebody worse than you are. Even if you are the best in the world at what you do somebody will always be right on your tail. If you keep seeing your life as a competition with those around you, then you will continually be dissatisfied and the ego will drive your life.
4. The constant need for more
   Greed is also a function of the ego. I think if there’s anything our movie characters could teach us, is that there comes a point where you do have everything you could possibly want, and getting more just for the sake of having it is an exercise in futility.
5. Lack of presence
   Ego driven people continually live in the past and always plan for the future. They never live in the moment. They are always thinking of the next great phase of their life, even when this one is perfect. By forgetting to enjoy the present, we set ourselves up to live in an ego-driven limbo.
6. The need to always be right
   This is another one of the ego’s most destructive functions. People who have a need to continually be right are headed for the ultimate downfall. These kinds of people will often get far in life because of their persistence and aggressiveness. But, these are also the people that will fail when they are on the brink of MASSIVE success. Their need to be right will be their downfall and years of hard work can be destroyed in minutes when this portion of the ego takes over. Leaders with this attitude ultimately alienate all those work for them, and eventually stop receiving the kind of input that can propel them forward because they are so adamant about being right.

When you can learn to let go of the ego, the level of success and fulfillment you will achieve will be dramatic.

Only with your ego in check will you have the ability to reach your full potential.

Courtesy for the content and photo for How to Manage Your Ego So You Can Reach Your Full Potential