When people see that brilliantly successful people drop out of school, many infer that education had nothing to do with their success or was even an impediment. However, that is far from the case. All of the breakthrough innovators I studied invested heavily in self-education. They were avid consumers of knowledge, but they followed their own rhythms rather than an instructor’s pace. They went deeply into a topic or broadly across topics they chose rather than following the path of a syllabus. They were fueled by intrinsic motivation—a true love of learning—even if they had no love for school.
