I've got a question for you.

Which of you was always top of the class?

All your life, top of the class?

Right.

--Liar (Laughter)

Well, in precisely 9 minutes and 30 seconds, 
I'm going to make you proud

that you weren't always top of the class.

(Applause)

You're going to go home tonight 
and tell your partner, your children,

your friends and relatives:

"Hallelujah, thank God, I wasn't always top of my class!"

In 2007, when I started blogging, I began studying
the lives of several people

who were successful in their lives.

And each of them was successful in their field,
each one succeeded in a different way.

But there was one thing all these people shared,
just one thing

which intrigued me, and this was the fact

that these people, these characters --
none of them had been really successful at school.

And some of them had even cut short their education

and others didn't even make it to school

for long periods of time.

So this was a little worrying and frustrating for me
when I remembered

all those years in which parents and teachers

told us, you must work hard, you must get the best marks,

you must be one of the best 
to get into the best higher education establishments

and in the end, I note that the reality is this:

all those who have been successful at the school of life

were not necessarily those who were top of the class.

So this meant we needed an answer to the following question:

Why isn't it necessary to succeed at school in order to be successful in life?

Or even: why is there no direct link between success at school

and success in life?

Because, to mention people you know very well,
such as Steve Jobs

or Bill Gates who have businesses - 
they employ people who were top of the class.

But when did they leave school?

They both dropped out

during their fresher year at university.

So how come, then, that we, who try to be top of the class

end up working in businesses for people who

perhaps don't even know how to read and write?

So that's when I started looking, and luckily

I took the right approach right from the start, so I couldn't - or I didn't have to - look very hard.

I started looking by identifying the qualities these people share

which have allowed them to be successful in life.

And I found 5 of these.

Next, I tried to see these qualities in the education system

all over the world, how are these qualities developed?

Or at least appreciated or accommodated in the education system?

And I was shocked to find I had discovered that these qualities --

not only are they not developed within the education system,

but they are even punished in the education system.

In other words, if you are unlucky enough to possess one or even several of these qualities

you can be absolutely sure that you will be unable to succeed in the education system.

And when you get to the workplace, you will be needing these qualities.

So the first of these qualities is about being passionate.

Just imagine this discussion with Einstein:

you meet Einstein and you say to him:

"Now, Einstein, it seems that you love physics, right?"

And he says to you: "No, I hate physics. 
You know, I'm only doing physics

because my parents made me do it.

I hate it...but hey, Hamdullah, I've been lucky,

I've discovered a few theories, got a Nobel prize, and all that...well, I've been lucky."

Or it could be that you could talk to Bill Gates, and so you say to him:

"So, Bill Gates, it seems that you're turned on by computers?"

And he says: "Nah, it's just destiny that pushed me to get into computers.

Well Hamdullah, it's really taken off!"

Can you imagine this type of discussion?

It's impossible because we know that these people are passionately enthusiastic.

So, what is passion?

Passion means having an emotional and sentimental approach

to a job.

And if you are unfortunate enough to have this quality as school, you are going to fall in love

with certain subjects, and you will work hard on those.

And you'll hate the other subjects, and you won't work as hard on them.

And as soon as you get to secondary school, you'll discover what we call the subject weightings.

The subject weightings - the head will never come to you at the beginning of the year and say:

"So, what do you like? You like maths? Ah! Let's raise its weighting.

You don't like physics? We'll bring it down."

It will never ever happen like that.

The weighting is already set.

If you're good at maths, physics and languages, we take the highest weighting.

If you like geography and history, and you work hard at those but you hate maths

then you'll never get a good mark, or never the top mark, in the exam.

Which means you'll be hearing this sort of thing all the time:

"He's a hard worker, in certain subjects, he really is very, very good.

But in other subjects, he really could do better."

That's what they're passionate about at school: it's someone who could always do better.

And that's why those at the top of the class have no feelings.

They have no passion. They work at everything!

They work hard in every subject!

And they are good at all the subjects.

And this creates a big problem for those at the top of the class.

Because later on, they can apply to study medicine, law, and accountancy.

They can do it all.

At the outset, they are impressed by their abilities.

But later, when you get to work, they'll say to you:

"No, no, no: Stop!"

If you want to succeed, there are two things that are very important, primordial in life.

If you want to achieve happiness and excellence, you must be passionate about what you do.

But without passion, you can't succeed at work, nor even in your personal life.

Yet at school, we've always been forced to take compulsory subjects, rather than follow our passion.

Second quality: curiosity.