Ensure your child’s success? Warren Buffett says, “Invest in yourself”

As parents, we hope our children could eventually live up to their fullest potentials and become successful in their lives. While time and skills-to-acquire are typical investment decisions that parents must make on behalf of their children, one has to agree that no one in his or her lifetime has the luxury to learn all trades. It then becomes a decision to be made – what then should parents prioritize on their list? “One easy way to worth 50 percent more than you are now at least is to hone your communication skills — both written and verbal,” said Warren Buffett (The Economics Times, 2019).
Warren Buffett is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and is ranked third among World’s Billionaires by Forbes in 2019. Celebrating his wealth of life experience at almost 90, he has shared his number one tip of success with The Economic Times: “Invest in yourself”. When he was younger, he was terrified of public speaking. He took a Dale Carnegie course on communication skills which not only helped him overcome this fear but has become life changing for him.
By “investing in yourself”, and more specifically, investing in the right skills, people like Warren Buffett have managed to reap the fruits of success in life. Having the right skills has become the “global currency of 21st century economies” as asserted by Andreas Schleicher (OECD, 2012) in the global skills strategy.
As we are fast marching into the “second machine age” (2018) as described by two MIT Sloan researchers, Professor Erik Brynjolfsson and principal research scientist Andrew McAfee, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) will be increasingly transforming and interconnecting the ways we live, work, play and learn in a world of cyber-physical systems. The disruptive impacts of 4IR on our children’s education today and the work of future have contributed to the dominating global discussions among key stakeholders, including parents like ourselves who shouldered the primary care responsibilities for our next generation.
“From the recent report by the World Economic Forum (WEF, 2019), parents can “immunise” our children from the global “Skills Crisis”, through “investing in” and equipping our children with both “digital” and “human” skills. These skills are in critical demand on our children in the Future of Work. Indeed, learning from Warren Buffet’s first rule to success, it is imperative for us as parents to start investing for our children, both wisely and as early as we can.
If you want to find out more, get in touch with us. Mind & Hand is an EduTech platform that partners both educational industry players and private sector business employers to offer our students programmes that keep pace with technological change and that are relevant to the industry. We hope to empower our students with the skills, confidence and perspective to navigate the global skills crisis and prepare them for a workplace of the future.

By Jonathan Lee –
Jonathan is a proud parent of two and he is a fervent advocate of future-ready education

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