After a long winter break, I was ready for the first day of class was Monday. “Syllabus week” is typically known for being boring and unsubstantial, but one of my professors said something profound that struck me right away.
The thing with textbooks is that they make it seem like people agree on anything. – Dr. Fox
While this is his rationale for using primary text sources to learn about Indian religion, I saw it as much more than that. Nuance is important and absolutes are overrated. We naturally crave the certainty of knowing something to be true, but it comes at a cost. When you read the textbook, you miss the opportunity to form your own opinion.
If you only read, “The Definitive Guide to Online Marketing,” you won’t understand marketing. You’ll understand tactics, but you’ll be missing the core knowledge behind it all. The textbook and the definitive guide are both shortcuts. They work pretty well, but they don’t help us become better thinkers.
To become great in any field, you have to go back to first principles. You have to rethink conventional wisdom and see the world differently from the establishment.
It may look like everyone in the industry agrees on the “best practices,” but really, people are waiting for your company to come in and change it up. Peel back the layers and you’ll start to see opportunities that others are missing.