Today we’re up to the 8th question in “Tribe of Mentors” by Tim Ferriss (see all previous questions here). Today is:
What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?
We’ll start with a great answer from Annie Duke:
First, seek out dissenting opinions. Always try to find people who disagree with you, who can honestly and productively play devil’s advocate. Challenge yourself to truly listen to people who have differing ideas and opinions than you do. Stay out of political bubbles and echo chambers as much as possible. Feel good about really hearing those who disagree with you. Try to change your mind about one thing every day. The fact is that when two extreme opinions meet, the truth lies generally somewhere in the middle. Without exposure to the other side, you will naturally drift toward the extremes and away from the truth of the matter. Don’t be afraid of being wrong. Because being wrong is just an opportunity to find more of the truth.
Jason Fried gave a great answer, separating the ideas of time and attention:
Time and attention are very different things. They’re your most precious resources moving forward. Just like you walk through the air and you swim through the water, you work through your attention. It’s the medium of work. While people often say there’s not enough time, remember that you’ll always have less attention than time. Full attention is where you do your best work, and everyone’s going to be looking to rip it from you. Protect and preserve it.
Gary Vaynerchuk‘s answer was quite long and I was going to trim it down, but I think it’s worth sharing his full thoughts:
Macro patience, micro speed. They should not care about the next eight years, but they should stress the next eight days. At a macro, I think everybody’s super impatient. I think I’m unbelievably patient in years and decades, and unbelievably sporadic and hyper every minute on a day-to-day basis. I genuinely think everybody’s the reverse. Everybody’s making decisions about, like, “What am I going to do at 25? I better do that. . . .” In years, they’re impatient and making dumb decisions, and then in days, they’re watching fucking Netflix. They’re super worried about 25 when they’re 22, yet they’re drinking every Thursday night at 7 P.M. They’re playing Madden. They’re fucking watching House of Cards. They’re spending four and a half hours on their Instagram feed every single day. This is super important. Everybody’s impatient at a macro, and just so patient at a micro, wasting your days worrying about years. I’m not worried about my years, because I’m squeezing the fuck out of my seconds, let alone my days. It’s going to work out.
Last is a quote from Yuval Noah Harari:
Nobody really knows what the world and the job market will look like in 2040, hence nobody knows what to teach young people today. Consequently, it is likely that most of what you currently learn at school will be irrelevant by the time you are 40.
While I don’t disagree with any of the above, I think the last one was the most helpful. Really, it just needs to be taken further to explain other ways of learning. School is valuable, of course, but finding ways to continue to learn after school will be the key. Fortunately, the world today has so many amazing ways to continue to learn that there are no good excuses not to.
Taking it further, thanks to technology, you don’t have to wait for anyone. Write a book, record a song, create a video. The gatekeepers are gone.
What advice would you give to a student who is about to leave school?
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