What Is Literacy?

There is a common belief that those who can read or write are literate.  This is perhaps the reason why we come under the influence of the fallacy popularly known as the Lake Wobegon notion, according to which those who possess high academic qualifications or read or write well have great skills. But if you look around, you will come across several successful people who have not attended Ivy League educational institutions or do not have high-sounding college degrees. This forces us to rethink and redefine literacy. 

Even those with high qualifications seem to love non-challenging, normal environments. If they are subjected to challenging environments, they panic. In other words, when the question of facing challenges arises, they are just average. On the contrary, illiterates or even laymen may tackle tough situations with ease. This is not to undermine the importance of acquiring high qualifications or skills.

So, the question now is: What is literacy? If you face a tough situation and run away from it despite your high qualifications or skills, do you deserve to be called a literate?  So, to the question "what is literacy?" the answer is: Literacy is nothing but acquiring a clear understanding of the situation that confronts you and finding suitable and viable solutions.

What is the constraint?

The constraint, according to researchers who have made an in-depth study of successful people, is not a lack of ideas to solve issues. But it is the lack of initiative to take timely action. If you have brilliant ideas, it is not enough at all to succeed. You have to take the required action to implement them. Not only that, you have to take timely action. Even brilliant ideas will fail if they are not put to use on time.

So, the new definition of literacy is finding suitable solutions and putting them to use on time. As James Altucher suggests, you should think of 10 different ways to do a task. Of course, this process should be punctuated with an appropriate SWOT analysis as well. You should analyze your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats regularly. This is what is known as self-knowledge. So, the new definition of literacy is knowing fully well about your abilities and putting them to optimal use and on time. Improving your abilities or skills does form a part of the process of taking action.

To summarize, those who succeed need not have high skills. On the contrary, those who have clarity over their skills and use these skills on time and appropriately are the real literati, and they can only succeed.