What’s the best return you ever got from investing in yourself?
Maybe it was improved confidence, a new career path or even a promotion.
I love the quote “no other investment yields a greater return than the investment in education”, and I couldn’t agree more.
But what are those returns?
This post could probably have been titled “50 benefits to come from investing in your education”, because the reasons are basically endless, but here’s what I believe the top 5 reasons are:
5 reasons to invest in your education
1. Improved confidence – one of the biggest comments we get in the post data from our Effective Manager Program is around having improved confidence. When you invest in yourself, you build your skills, knowledge and capability, which leaves you feeling more confident within your role and more capable to deal with unique challenges that will inevitably arise.
2. Better career opportunities – education creates opportunities; simply put, the more confident and capable you are, the more career opportunities you will have.
3. A competitive edge – education can be the thing that separates you ahead of your competition. Whether it be for a promotion, a new job, or even stepping up and taking on more responsibilities in your role, the more you’ve invested in your education, the better your chances of being chosen over someone else.
4. Better salaries – education improves capability, capability improves performance, better performance = better salary opportunities (plus, organisations appreciate people who are willing to invest in themselves and their continued education)
5. Enhanced life – aside from all the benefits listed above (which would most definitely all enhance your life), investing in education doesn’t just benefit you, it benefits your life and those in it. The more you learn, the better you understand life, the more likely you are to find a path that is meaningful and fulfilling.
Here’s a bonus benefit for managers who invest in their education – not only are you modelling to your team the importance of continued education, but you’re building your capability to get the best out of your team. This means better performance, productivity, retention, teamwork, culture, engagement…. the list goes on.
1 reason not to invest in your education
While I’m all for learning, I don’t think learning because you feel like you have to is a good enough reason.
Now, that might sound counterintuitive based on what I said above, but hear me out.
If you’re going to spend precious time, money and effort on learning something, doing it for the sake of it is not going to get the returns you’re after. You need to want it.
This means you need to find the right type of learning for you. It needs to be a topic or area you truly want to learn, in a format that works for you.
What would you add to this list?
On the topic of learning…
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