Excuses We Give Ourselves for Inaction and How to Respond
There’s an insidious quirk in myself and everyone I know that prevents us from action. Call it “Resistance” or anything else you like, but the result is the same: things don’t get done, and your success suffers for it. For most of my life, I’ve been told the solution is to “buckle down” and just […]
How to Learn Professional Skills More Quickly
Today I’m going to write about learning. No, not classroom learning and not intellectual learning. This post is about highly practical professional learning and how to accelerate it. It assumes a few things: 1. You don’t have time to spend four years studying to see the results you want. 2. Money is on the line […]
3 Common Traps to Avoid when Choosing Your First Job
I remember in college just about the most stressful period of every semester was not finals. It was the time everyone had to choose their classes for the next semester. At the University of Michigan, there were literally hundreds of courses, you could enroll in, and students would become overwhelmed by options. What I noticed […]
How College Made You Hate Learning
My friend (and Praxis CEO) Isaac Morehouse has a fun little experiment he asks people to do in his book Freedom without Permission. In the book he writes “a Google image search for the word [education] results in desks, chalkboards, letter grades, stressed kids, regimentation, classrooms, and kids sleeping or with pained looks on their […]
4 Reasons to Work at a Company Before Starting Your Own
I gave a talk yesterday to a group of students who are interested in being entrepreneurs one day. Many of them were wondering what they could do now to begin preparing. Should they get a business degree? Should they take accounting or finance courses? Should they learn to code? I used to ask myself similar […]
Business Partner Case Study: Ceterus
Ceterus is a cloud-based accounting company based in Charleston, SC. They take care of the bookkeeping for small businesses and franchises, allowing their clients to focus on what they care about most in their business. “I knew there were plenty of tools out there to help entrepreneurs do their books. But tools don’t solve a […]
Forget the Degree, Build A Better Signal
A college degree is a signal. It’s a signal to the world of your value in the market. It conveys information about your ability, skill, and intelligence. There is a lot of noise in the world of work, and it’s hard to figure out who’s worth working with. A degree cuts through some of that […]
Dropouts and Opt-Outs: Steve Jobs
“After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out… So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the […]
Why You Shouldn’t Stress About Your First Job
Doing something is more valuable than thinking about doing the perfect thing. At Praxis, we work with participants to place them in an excellent apprenticeship with one of our business partners. Our number one goal is to ensure an experience that challenges participants, helps them grow, and lets them move closer to discovering and doing […]
3 Strategies for Self-Directed Learning
The most important skill for a young person today is learning quickly and effectively. Since the Great Recession, nobody buys the false impression that you can get a credential after studying for four years, land a job, and then have a career with the same core set of skills over your entire life. Even professional career tracks like […]
3 Things You Won’t Learn in College
I saw an article by a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, the school I attended for two years before dropping out. The article praised the university experience and noted that, “The value of an education from the University of Michigan is rivaled by no one.” It didn’t mention what you won’t learn in college. I […]
Praxis is Now Available in Canada
We’re excited to announce that 2017 brings with it our first international year. Starting today, we are accepting applications for Canadian participants who wish to apprentice with startups in Canada. This international expansion allows us to serve increasing demand from ambitious young people looking to break the mold outside of the United States. If you […]
How to Overcome the Social and Parental Pressure to Go Back to College
Should I drop out or should I stay in school? Most people I talk to will choose unhappiness and boredom over disappointing their family and friends. I was like this a few years ago. Few people know that I dropped out of college for the first time in the fall semester of 2014. I skipped […]
3 Reasons to Be More Ambitious
I talk to a lot of competent, hard-working young people. I do this at our business partners, in Praxis interviews, during speaking engagements, and on social media. The audience I am engaging is better than your average 18 or 22 year old. These are people who actually look forward to working and are excited about the opportunity […]
Throw Your Resume Away: Simple Steps to Developing an Effective Value Proposition
You don’t need a degree. You need a value proposition. This is the central idea of an article I wrote awhile ago. Here’s a summary: credentialism, resume padding, and rising standards of living and education levels, have all led to resume inflation. The resume is becoming an increasingly poor way to “sell” yourself to companies […]