Sokanu: The Blog

*Note: This is the first in a series of posts leading up to the launch of Sokanu. In this series we will be discussing the core purpose behind the Sokanu vision as well as outline what our product does. For a full list of posts in this series see the left hand column of the blog.

We are generally abie to break life into one of four categories: health & wellness, spirituality, relationships and career & education. If we think about it, what in life does not fit into one of these categories? Health is an absolutely massive topic, and the ways that our bodies work is a fascinating look at our world. I think if we truly knew what was going on in our bodies in order to allow us to even walk we would be amazed every day. The second category, spirituality, is deeply personal and important for many people. It gives people a guiding and binding force that gives them moral values and direction, which is very important. The third, relationships, is quite complex and hard to describe. Not only in a traditional marriage sense, but also in friend and business relationships. 

The last category is where we have decided to ask the question: why? Careers & education, like any of the other subjects, is a massive category that is extremely complex. This is especially true when it comes to the rules and regulations that go along with the education department, with respect to the government. With careers, we tend to focus on problems like: how much do you make as an artist versus an investment banker? Everything is given a monetary value, combined with prestige. The same goes for education. But why?

We have questioned this before, but it's worth repeating again. Why do we educate our children? How do we choose a career? What is the overall outcome? Right now the education system is not about truly "teaching" as it is about producing a measure of economic value. Each of us is a statistic that has passed through a system called education. We all pay a certain amount in taxes over our lifetime (income), live in a certain location and contribute to a sector of the economy. Depending on how well we accomplish tasks live those is how we judge whether education is doing its job. Along the way we test our children to make sure they are correctly along that path. Recently, our test scores have been falling behind, and thus, "education" must be failing.

But this is not the true purpose of education. Education is one of the most amazing gifts that our civilization has been given. If not for the passing down of knowledge, there would be no advancement in technology, no ability to travel and no innovation in our world. One generation would be no further ahead than the last. No, the true reason that education exists is to teach us about the world, open up our minds to the possibilites that exist, and most importantly: help us find our passion in order to translate education into a career.

Right now education is stuck in stagflation, meaning there is very little growth and advancement. Our present generation is no better prepared than the generation before us. This is the first time in history this has happened. The major problem comes in the chasm located between our present education system and the careers available today. Due to the fact that we are not following the "why" of education, we are facing a crisis in the way people are being developed in the education & career quadrant.

In a recent Charlie Rose interview with Amy Chua, Charlie was discussing what made successful people successful. After all, he has had more successful people sit at his table than perhaps anyone else in history. The one thing he mentioned (about 3/4 of the way through the video) is that "finding your passion" is the single most important thing you can do in this world. Why is that? What makes finding this so called "passion" so incredibly important?

We will go into this in more detail in the next post, but the short version is: passion gives you purpose. "What does that mean"? you may be thinking. I don't want to tip-toe into the not-so-honest world of personal development here, but that statement above is profoundly important. Without a driving purpose in our lives, we have nothing. We wander around amelessly, drifting from place to place, job to job, relationship to relationship, with no meaning. We have no boat rudder, no direction and no reason for getting up in the morning. The biggest point we can make here is: without finding your passion, it is almost impossible to find true happiness. This is a difficult discussion to have, but passion and happiness has a very high correlation.

In the next post, we are going to talk about what finding your passion actually means, the four different types of people in careers and why all successful people have managed to find their passion. I hope you join us as we embark on this series of posts towards the launch of our service, Sokanu, in the near future.