In school, I hated biology with a passion. And once I decided to pursue engineering, I thought of the subject as a waste of time. But I was wrong.
Today, for my startup HabitStrong, as I research neuroscience, psychology, and human behavior, I am learning the same biology topics that I once called ‘useless.’
You can’t predict which piece of knowledge will come handy at which point. But is that all there is to learning? A small chance that you might need it some day?
I don’t think so. Take another example – during my engineering degree, we had a course on statistics. Even though I never worked as an engineer, during my MBA, I found that you can’t truly understand finance or operations without statistics.
But the real value of learning statistics went far beyond that – it helped me understand the world.
E.g., in the police, people would take credit for a small decline in accident cases. But nobody talked about the variance and whether the decline was statistically significant!
From the cost of developing your medicines to the time Amazon takes for delivery – everything requires an understanding of statistics.
Knowledge has immense tangible value. But its biggest value is intangible – it helps us make sense of the world.
No knowledge goes waste. What you know changes how you understand the world. What could be more valuable than that?
– Rajan