List of courses never used: build your ledger.
A list of courses never used is a record of intentions, each dated by a receipt. You write every paid item, its cost, and what it was supposed to let you do. Then you mark every act still undone.
How to write the list of courses never used.
Write every course, book, programme, webinar, template pack and subscription you paid for. Then put the cost beside each, and stop looking at that column. Instead, track what each purchase was for in your own words. Finally, mark every act that still has not happened. That becomes your list of courses never used.
Four ways the page goes wrong.
First, you will want to write what each item taught you, so leave that out. Second, you may start defending each line, so write "defending" in the margin. Third, one act may have happened, so ask whether the purchase caused it. Fourth, you may decide you are not a course person.
But half-read books, paid newsletters and conference tickets count too. Also, free learning still counts, so put hours instead of money. This is a self education spending review of intentions, not of waste.
The last line on your page.
At the bottom, name one thing that produced a payment or a reply from someone free to refuse. If that line stays empty, leave it empty. Don't fill it with something you nearly did. Then your list of courses never used tells the truth.
Start your list of courses never used tonight.
Name the most expensive thing you bought for this idea and what it was for.
Write beside it whether that act has happened yet, yes or no.
From the book.
What if your page comes out empty because you've never paid for any of it? Then your ledger still exists and it is the same exercise. You've been teaching yourself from free material for four years, so put hours in the cost column instead of money, and I would guess the total is worse rather than better. Free is not cheap. Free means nobody ever had to justify it to you.
I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start, chapter 6: The course that never ends
Questions about list of courses never used.
What goes on a list of courses never used?
Every paid course, book, webinar, template pack or subscription, with its cost and intended act.
What if I never paid for anything?
Your ledger still exists. Put hours in the cost column instead of money.
Should I note what each course taught me?
No. That column feels comfortable, but this page is about what the learning was for.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 6, “The course that never ends”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Certificate but no customers: the week after the course.
- 02 MOOC completion rates: what the edX data shows.
- 03 Do business courses actually help: the data's limits.
- 04 List of courses never used: build your ledger.
- 05 Does business training work: what Uganda showed.
- 06 Francis Bacon ant spider bee: stop collecting.