microISV had posted a link to Advice from an Entrepreneur by Harry Newton. After talking about how much better off he was than the rest of his class, he then provides some advice to their children and to everyone else.
It is always great to see nice, bulleted lists of things you can do. My favorite is “Learn a new skill every six months”. Steve Pavlina will periodically talk about how investing in yourself is the smartest investment you can make. When you improve your skills, you improve your ability to create value. Hey, it makes me feel better about buying software and game development books every month! Joking aside, I know that every time I learn something new, I am adding a new key to my collection. It opens a path to learning more new things and improving my ability to create and be productive.
When you learned how to read, you paved the way to learn how to write. When you learned how to write, you paved the way to learn about writing well. Now you can write letters, blogs, IMs, emails, books, pamphlets, and many more things. And those things will probably allow you to learn about something new, such as how web servers work or what is involved with publishing. And so on and so on.
To be more pragmatic, learning a new skill every so often prevents me from stagnating. It keeps me competitive.