You Are Not Your Major
I was recently having a conversation with a friend about what she’s learned about some organizations with which she’s worked. Mostly, I learned the organizations are bureaucratic, disorganized, useless-at-best, harmful-at-worst, and generally bad places for which to work. I could tell she was disheartened from just having to work with these groups. The conversation drifted towards […]
Appreciating Unseen Value
The great French economist Frederic Bastiat once wrote of the unseen destruction imposed by policies based on economic fallacies. We may see the wealth amassed by the industry favored by protectionist trade restrictions, for example, but we fail to see the wealth lost to society when acting on comparative advantage is prohibited. Seeing this unseen cost is essential […]
5 Reasons to Rethink College
Everyone knows you have to go to college to be successful. Sometimes everyone is wrong. Here are five reasons to rethink college as the best path to a fulfilling career and life. (Hint: dropping out of college isn’t such a bad idea!) 1) It’s expensive. Here’s a chart showing college debt and earnings for degree holders. […]
Are You Using Your Weekends to Escape Your Weekdays?
The purpose of the weekend isn’t so we can forget about how much we hate our jobs on Monday through Friday. Free time is for having fun, yes, but what is more fun than taking advantage of opportunities to create a lifestyle that doesn’t require us to wait until Friday night to have fun? Instead […]
Study the Greats or Just Do It?
It’s not uncommon for the most devoted students of personal health, or business startups, or filmmaking, or success more generally to be only moderately successful themselves. We’ve all met people who have read every “7 Ways”, and, “10 Tips” book on the market, yet still haven’t really gotten off the ground personally. So is greatness […]
Your Silence Will Not Protect You
The day I ended my silence Three years ago, I decided to embark on an experiment in personal development by making a one year commitment to writing and publishing a new blog post every day. I wanted to see what would become of me if I forced myself to share my thoughts with the world irrespective […]
Are You Ready to Die?
“When you die, die like I am planning to die. Empty. It’s finished,” -Dr. Myles Munroe This past week, my brother Gerald informed me of a news report that broke my heart: one of my greatest heroes and biggest personal influences, Dr. Myles Munroe, is dead. According to this ABC News report, Dr. Munroe, his […]
Incidental, or Instrumental?
I was listening to NPR’s TED Radio Hour while flying last week, and I came across a really interesting interview with filmmaker James Cameron. Cameron got involved with deep see exploration after filming the opening scenes for his blockbuster Titanic. I always assumed his involvement with submarine exploration was incidental – he made Titanic, and […]
Against the “Work/Life Balance”
The idea of a work/life balance is an attractive one. It helps give us reprieve and meaning when we have jobs we don’t enjoy, allows us to pursue multiple competing ends at once, and permits people to be more than simply their jobs. If one only identifies by the job they have, then failure at […]
Taking a Gap Year: FAQ
We’ve written before on the value of taking a gap year (here and here) and regularly stress the importance of young people not rushing through timely, expensive formal education just because they don’t know what else to do. When you aren’t sure about the path you want to follow with your education, you don’t have […]
How to Talk to Your Family About a Gap Year
Taking a gap year can be one of the best decisions a young person can make when considering the path of their higher education. The benefits are plenty. Gap years provide time to figure out what you want to get out of your education before devoting several years and tens of thousands of dollars to […]
The World Needs More Failure
“If there is one thing I can pass on from my humbling experiences in life, thus far, I will tell you this, the next time someone tells you “the absence of expectations is the absence of disappointment, do not listen. Have expectations. Keep them great. It’ll be a very bumpy ride. You’ll even get bruised, […]
You Can’t “Break the Mold” Until You Question the Mold
Studying philosophy upset my fruit basket. By the third week of study, I admitted to my group (in much less ladylike terms) that this module annoyed and even infuriated me “so many times”. It began to agitate me not because it was boring or impractical, but because I realized I was a lazy thinker. And […]
Two Types of Success in Schools
A diploma is a dunce hat in disguise. — Peter Thiel How can this be true? There are plenty of successful people — including Thiel — who have college degrees. There are entrepreneurs with multiple degrees who run successful, multi-million dollar businesses. There are intelligent, happy, fulfilled people with degrees. How can people who are so successful […]
Becoming Marketable Despite College
This is a guest post by entrepreneur Jeff Till. Jeff is the founder and owner of SAM-Lab, Inc. You can contact him here. After taking five years to finish my Bachelor of Science degree in Art from Western Michigan University, it dawned on me that I would need a grown-up job. I decided that I would […]