The day you stop learning new things about the world and your work, you might as well go to bed and stay there, because you’re not going to be an innovation leader.

Frankly, the benefits of lifelong learning are so obvious that I’m not going to list them all here. I might as well list the benefits of breathing! As you know, lifelong learning opens your mind, helps you find meaning in your life, helps you adapt to change, promotes self-fulfillment, and increases your wisdom. These alone are enough to paint a convincing picture.

But here’s a benefit that will make even the most blasé reader sit up and take notice: more than any other single thing you can do, a dedication to lifelong learning increases your job security and ensures your ability to become, and stay, an innovation leader.

In other words, it puts money in your pocket.

But I don’t want you to just take my word for it.

More Education = More Personal Income

Statistics relating the relationship between your level of formal education and your income are easy to find.

The United States Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) reports, “More education leads to better prospects for earnings and employment.”

According to BLS data from 2015 and published in 2016, as educational attainment rises, earnings increase and unemployment decreases. Workers with more education have higher earnings and lower rates of unemployment than those with less education.

Here are the BLS statistics on weekly personal earnings:

High school                        $678

Associate degree                $798

Bachelor’s degree              $1,137

Master’s degree                  $1,341

Professional degree            $1,730

Doctoral degree                  $1,623

But this article is about lifelong learning, not just about earning your master’s degree at the age of 25 and then shutting off your brain for the next 40 years. It’s about learning every day, and not just in a formal classroom setting.

Benefits of Lifelong Learning

The EU-financed research project “Benefits of Lifelong Learning” (BeLL), launched in November 2011 and wrapped up in January 2014, was aimed at empirical data-gathering and investigation into the subjectively perceived benefits of participants in educational events in the fields of general, cultural, and political continuing education. The approach was designed to find out how individuals, groups, organizations, and society benefit from continued liberal education (“liberal” meaning broad-based, not politically left of center).

The researchers concluded, “Liberal adult education has a wide range of individual and social benefits. Ten benefit factors were identified during the analysis: locus of control, self-efficacy, sense of purpose in life, tolerance, social engagement, changes in educational experience, health, mental well-being, work, and family.”

Leaders who pursue some form of lifelong learning are conditioned to learn new things, and are therefore more willing to take on new challenges in their work. They engage change and disruption more readily than those who are not continually testing themselves against new subjects and skills.

Here are a few bullet points that will underscore the point that innovation leaders make a habit of lifelong learning.

• Computer innovator Bill Gates, who for years was the world’s richest person until being unseated by Jeff Bezos, reportedly reads a book a week. He also takes a yearly two-week “reading vacation.”
• The most successful investor in history, Warren Buffett, says he invests 80% of his time in reading and thinking about his positions.
• In the White House, former president Barack Obama read for an hour a day.
• “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time. None. Zero.” — Charlie Munger, self-made billionaire and Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner.
• As Benjamin Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
• “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” — Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock.
• “The only thing we could say for sure back then was that much of what the two of us had learned in the 20th century was wrong, and that it was time to start over.” — from How Google Works, by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg.
• The Employee Scholar Program at United Technologies Corporation is one of the most comprehensive company-sponsored employee education programs in the world. UTC pays for tuition, academic fees, and books at approved educational institutions. Since 1996, more than 38,500 degrees have been earned by UTC employees in more than 60 countries.

Lifelong learning: it’s the key to becoming—and staying—an innovation leader!