Month: March 2016

Traits for Leadership

A friend emailed me the following question yesterday:

“What are the most important attributes of leaders?”

I thought about it for a few minutes and sent this reply.  This was off-the-cuff, so don’t hold me too tightly to it.

Patience, impatience, perspective, morally neutral disposition, and a sense of humor.

Patience is pretty self-explanatory.  You can’t be frustrated with everyone all the time and pressuring them.

Impatience is equally necessary.  When you have a vision, you have to be unable to sleep until you make progress on it.

Perspective allows you to weather the bad stuff.  I lost a customer early on and was feeling defeated.  My brother (a successful entrepreneur) asked me what the big deal was.  “So What?” he said.  “Cornelius Vanderbilt had steamers sink and people died.  Yet he was able to continue on and create value for millions.  What if he had quit?  You don’t win everything.”

Moral neutrality doesn’t mean you have no morals.  It means you approach other humans with a rational choice lens.  You assume their actions are taken not out of goodness or evil, but rational self-interest.  This helps you understand how to change the incentives they face to get cooperation, instead of being bitter at what you think their motives are or what they “should” do.

A sense of humor is the only thing that keeps it fun, and if it’s not fun it’s hell!

Public Speaking Tips and a Workshop!

Two snippets from posts about public speaking:

How to be an Awesome Public Speaker

A great public speaker is not one who has tons of side-splitting jokes, or makes you cry, or delivers amazing ideas, or beautiful turns of phrase, or follows all those rules about signposting and structure from debate or forensics club.  None of those things really matter in the end.  Neither does your personality, voice, physical appearance, or whether you use your hands, a podium, or slides.

A great speaker is one whose ideas and heart are transmitted directly and clearly to the audience.  A great speaker is a genuine person whose unique perspective and personality isn’t obscured by nerves or ticks or anything else.

To be a great public speaker is to allow who you really are to come through.

What Public Speaking Can Teach You About Work

…

He asked me what are the most helpful things for me when it comes to reducing nerves and getting in the zone as a speaker.  I told him the two most important things for me are:

  • Lots of Practice
  • Unique Content

Practice is obvious.  Public speaking, like digital skills, social skills, bike riding, creativity, or confidence, is not one of those things you can become great at by studying.  You have to do it.  A lot.  There simply is no substitute for doing it when it comes to gaining comfort and skill.

The second point is not actually about the content in any objective sense.  I don’t think there are right and wrong content decisions, topics, formats, tones, or structures that will consistently lead to success and enjoyment as a speaker.  When I say content matters, I really mean crafting a talk that is unique to you.

Over the last decade or so I’ve had the pleasure of running public speaking workshops for hundreds of people of all ages.  Praxis participants go through them, and I’ve even done them for some seasoned CEO’s as a last minute prep for a pitch or big presentation.

I’m just putting the finishing touches on a digitized version of the workshop, thanks to the help of Mitchell Earl and Derek Magill.  It includes not just the content of the workshop in terms of tips and techniques, but actually allows participants to give their own speech and submit it for feedback, then do a second take and walk away with some concrete tips unique to them.

We’ll be using it for Praxis participants across the country, but I’m going to open it up for 10 people outside of Praxis to go through it as well, as a kind of test.  If you’re interested, enter your info in the form below and you’ll be notified when it’s open!

[ninja_forms id=9]

Episode 59: Taylor Pearson on the End of Jobs

Is accounting the riskiest career?  Is entrepreneurship the safest?  Today’s guest says yes, because the world is changing and “jobs” are being replaced by the ability to adapt and create value outside preset rules.

Technology has dramatically reduced transaction costs when it comes to education and employment. Taylor Pearson, author of a bestselling book The End of Jobs, joins me to talk about risk and antifragility when it comes to jobs and occupation.

Beyond entrepreneurship, we discussed the ongoing democratization of tools of production and creation of new markets.

Visit his website taylorpearson.me

If you want more than a job, check out show sponsor Praxis for a one-year apprenticeship with an entrepreneur and life-changing projects and challenges.  discoverpraxis.com

This and all episodes are also available on SoundCloud, iTunes, YouTube, and Stitcher.

It’s Much Easier Than You Think to Live the Life You Want

Maybe not “easy”, but entirely possible.

I recently listened to an episode of The World Wanderers Podcast where the host discussed working at a Cafe in a great city that a lot of people would love to live in.  She mentioned how, had she not moved to this cool, exciting city, the job she had would have made her feel like a loser.  In your hometown working retail after getting an expensive degree seems pretty lame.  Up and moving to a destination city and working retail to support the lifestyle seems kind of adventurous.

Back home, she would have dreaded seeing an old friend come in.  “Oh, so you’re working here?”  In the new city when someone she knew came in the question was more like, “Wow, so you’re living here?”

Just a few days ago I talked to a guy who’s biking across the country and loving it.  He spent several months in beautiful Missoula, Montana waiting for the weather to improve so he could continue his journey.  He worked at a grocery store while there and it provided everything he needed to live the lifestyle he wanted and get back on the road in time.  What would his resume look like when, several years out of college, he had “Grocery bagger” listed?  Not great, except when put in the context of, “Spent two years biking across the U.S., paying my way through with odd jobs and blogging about the adventure.”

I thought about this phenomenon more in Mompiche, Ecuador a few weeks ago.  We found a little place with a sign for American-style pancakes.  A welcome breakfast after days of fruit and cereal.  The breakfast nook was run by a twentysomething woman from the Ukraine.  She fried up pancakes on a small griddle and served them with coffee for breakfast and lunch in the tiny Bohemian surfing village.  She lived in a neat little house right above the pancake joint and spent the rest of the day as she pleased.

Imagine this ambitious young woman back home responding to the common, “So, what do you do?” with, “I make pancakes for a living.”  Likely her friends and family would be a little worried and ashamed and think something wrong with her.

Contrast that with the same answer to the same question but with a change in geography.  “I moved across the world to a tropical surfing village in Ecuador where I opened my own business.”  Wow.  What an enviable life, right?

There’s something weird about staying in your hometown.  It severely limits the definitions you accept for what makes you successful.  Oddly, most of the hometown definitions of success have nothing to do with happiness.  They have to do with becoming what everyone in your past expects or desires given who you used to be.  It’s a sort of tether to a past self that no longer exists.

When the expectations of back home no longer apply you can ask better questions and make clearer connections.  What kind of person do you want to be (vs. what job title do you want)?  What kind of people and surroundings do you want to be immersed in (vs. where do you want to work or live)?

Many people would probably love to be the master of their own schedule, be in a beautiful outdoor setting with interesting people from around the world, seriously pursue a hobby with lots of their time, and be challenged in new ways daily.  Yet most of those same people would be horrified at the idea of playing guitar on the street for money, flipping pancakes, or doing freelance odd-jobs online, any of which might be the very means to achieve the life described.

Most people have this idea that you have to work a boring job in a boring house in a boring city for a few decades, and then if you play your cards right and all kinds of things totally out of your control (like the stock market or real estate prices) do the right thing, you can have some kind of two week vacation cruise or retire in a place where you enjoy good weather and leisure.  The weird thing is, all those “someday” goals are available right now with relatively little difficulty.  You can afford to live in a cool bamboo house in a beach town just by making pancakes for lunch and breakfast.  You can (as was one guy I met) travel the length of South America living entirely off the cash you make playing guitar outside of restaurants.

I’m not claiming this kind of life is for everyone.  Not at all.  There is nothing wrong with a 9-5 job and life in the suburbs if that’s what really resonates with you.  There’s nothing inherently noble about traveling or working some low wage odd job.  The point is that it’s too easy to choose things based on an artificially limited option set.  It’s too easy to define your life by stupid things like college majors or giant industry labels or titles that will make Aunt Bessie proud at the family reunion or salary levels.

The last one is especially dangerous.

It’s a weird habit to measure your success in life only by the revenue side of the equation.  Who cares if you bring in $100k a year if it only buys you a crappy apartment that you hate in a city that stresses you out with friends that don’t inspire you and a daily existence you mostly daydream about escaping from?  Your costs exceed your revenues and you’re actually going backward.  You very well could get twice the lifestyle you desire at half the annual income.  Like any business, the health of your personal life should be measured using both revenues and costs.  On the personal level, neither are not just monetary.

Only you can know what kind of life you want.  But getting off the conveyor belt of the education system, getting out of the home town expectations trap, and opening your mind to measures of progress beyond salary will give you a much better chance of crafting a life you love.

Here are a few articles to chew on:

Why You Should Move Away from Your Home Town

Why You Should Get Off the Conveyor Belt

Why “Escapism” Isn’t a Bad Thing

Why It’s So Hard to Exit a Bad Situation

Do You Need to Do Work You Love to Be Happy?

Stop Doing Stuff You Hate

Focus on What You Don’t Want

Do What You Love, or Have it Easy?

 

Ecuador Trip By the Numbers

  • 5 weeks (one more remaining)
  • 3 complete changes in plan
  • 2.3 times over budget
  • 3 languages (kind of) spoken
  • 8 exotic fruits we’ve never heard of ingested
  • 7 colds
  • 3 sinus infections
  • 3 foodborne illnesses
  • 1 sprained ankle
  • 1 (probably) broken nose
  • 1 ear infection
  • 1 visit to the doctor
  • 4 cities stayed in
  • 9 cities visited
  • 3 climate zones experienced
  • 9 power outages
  • 14 books read (between my wife and I)
  • 2 visitors from back home
  • 1,000,000 (rough estimate) hours swimming
  • 28 hours spent driving
  • 30 or more videos streamed on Amazon/Netflix
  • 2 houses lived in
  • 4 flights (by the time we’re done)
  • 3 dollars spent on the best lunch ever experienced
  • 2,374 miles from home
  • 1 hell of a good time!

Episode 58: Beyond the Business

This episode is an interview that I gave to a local radio station on their weekly show, Beyond the Business. The show is about entrepreneurs in Charleston, their story, and what influenced them to do what they do today.

The hosts asked some good questions and we talked about growing up in Michigan, my education, and the work experience that I had prior to starting Praxis.  We also discussed how Praxis came about, some things I would change if I were launching Praxis today, and the Willing-To-Fail test for whether you are ready to dive into entrepreneurial waters.

This and all episodes are also available on SoundCloud, iTunes, YouTube, and Stitcher.

What You Can Learn from NFL Coaching Trees

If you look into the origin of head coaches in the NFL you’ll find something pretty amazing.  There are only a handful of head coaches past from whom all current head coaches come.  If you want to get really crazy complex, check out this WSJ article and visualization.

The NFL isn’t unique among sports in this respect.  You’ll find a similar phenomenon in college and pro basketball and other sports as well.

This is not the result of rigid rules or imposed design.  It’s the spontaneous order that emerges from the demand for certain very hard to identify and cultivate skills.  Coaching is incredibly nuanced and you can’t tell who will be good at it from a resume or a few interviews.  Those who come up under great coaches and absorb the lessons, gain the trust of players and other coaches, and build a reputation through continued tests of greater and great responsibility end up with head coaching jobs themselves.  Then those that coach under them end up with HC jobs, and on and on.

Not all of them succeed of course, but that’s not surprising.  What’s suprising is how powerful the network and legacy of a single great coach can be.  Today’s NFL is made up of 32 head coaches who are the understudies of just three or four retired HC’s.  It’s pretty crazy when you ponder it.

I think there’s something to be learned from this on a personal level.  I’ve never seen a great coach in sports who does not spawn many apprentices.  I don’t think it’s possible to lead at that level in such a complex organization if you don’t have a cadre of trusted up and comers, many of whom will go on to leadership roles themselves.  If you are trying to build something or be truly great at something you’ll need other people.

Look around you.  Probe your close personal network.  Are the people in it likely to go on to greatness?  Will a family tree of leadership spring from your associates?

If not, you might need to do a gut check and ask why.  Are you too obsessed with controlling or micromanaging everything?  Do you surround yourself with low caliber people?  Do you only follow and never lead?  Do you demand to take credit for everything, swallowing up all the opportunities for those you work with to grow and possibly surpass you?

I can’t think of a more fulfilling legacy in sports that to not only be a champion at the highest level, but to be the progenitor of generations of champions.  I think the same is true outside of sports.  It’s a kind of immortality.

You don’t need to live vicariously or obsess over the success or failure of those in your network.  It’s got to be a loose, spontaneous thing.  But if you’re doing leadership right, you should see other leaders emerge from your circle of influence, and then other leaders emerge from under them.

The Two Great Secrets of Higher Education

  1. Tuition is paid for one reason: to buy a signal.
  2. That signal is not worth the investment compared to what you can create elsewhere.

These two great secrets are known to almost nobody.  A few people know secret number one, but falsely conclude that the signal is still the best option.

A small but growing number of people partially understand what’s behind secret number two, but because they do not grasp that the product universities sell is a signal, they compare only alternative social and learning experiences to universities, not alternative ways of creating a signal.

The combined understanding of both of these secrets will completely revolutionize the way people think about and engage in education, career preparation, work, and life.

The Signal Secret

  1. Tuition is paid for one reason: to buy a signal.

A small number of economists and thinkers have identified that higher education is valued because of its signalling power.  That is, the college experience does not form people into more valuable or learned individuals capable of doing good work, but it sorts people into groups and attaches degrees to those who were already capable.

Signals are not bad things.  They are very valuable.  Employers need a way to narrow the pool of applicants and weed out the least likely to succeed.  There is a correlation between completing college and being a better worker on average.  But there is no causation.

Harvard doesn’t make you more likely to succeed.  The type of person who gets accepted into Harvard is already more likely to succeed.

Almost everyone objects to calling the product universities sell a signal.  They claim it’s a big bundle of goods.  It’s a social experience.  It’s a network.  It’s knowledge.

It is indeed a bundle of these things and many more, but these are all fringe benefits.  None of them are the core product being purchased.  When you pay to get your oil changed and the waiting room has coffee and magazines it’s a nice perk, but it’s clearly not the service you are purchasing.  If the auto garage didn’t have these comforts you might still go, but if they only sold coffee and magazines without oil changes, you wouldn’t.

College is the same.  Whatever other activities and benefits students may derive from their experience, none of them are the reason they are paying to be there.  They are paying for the signal, period.

It’s easy to prove this point.  List every other element of the higher education bundle.  Sports, parties, talks with professors, lectures, books, living with other young people, etc.  Now ask which of these would be possible if you never paid tuition?  All of them.  Move to a college town, sit in on classes, join clubs, go to events, read books, and live the college life to your heart’s content.

When you take away the credential at the end, it becomes clear how easy it is to get all the other aspects of college for free or very low cost, and often better.

This is also evidenced by the fact that everyone is happy when class is cancelled.  What other good do people pay for upfront and then cheer when it’s not delivered?  It’s because the classroom lectures and tests are not the good being purchased.  They are an additional cost that must be borne in order to get the real product, which is the piece of official paper.  The signal.

Young people may or may not enjoy some or all elements of the college experience.  But the reason they go and pay is because, in their minds, they have to.  They have to to get the signal, because without the signal you can’t get a decent job or be seen as a decent human being, so the prevailing narrative goes.

The signal is the product.  Until that is understood, no amount of tweaking or reforming or innovating any of the other parts of the higher education bundle will matter.

And it turns out, you don’t need the signal college sells after all.

The Alternatives Secret

  1. That signal is not worth the investment compared to what you can create elsewhere.

Everyone is thrilled to show you charts and graphs and statistics about the correlation between degrees and earnings.  None of that matters.

It doesn’t matter because aggregates are not individuals and because data can never show causation.

What happens to the average of some aggregate does not determine what course of action is most beneficial for an individual.  The average Ferrari owner earns a lot more than the average Honda owner.  No one assumes this means buying a Ferrari is a great way to improve your earning potential.

To the individual, the question is not whether college is a good investment for all young people on average.  The question is whether you can build a better signal with less than four plus years and five plus figures.  Turns out, that’s a pretty low bar.

The degree signals that you are probably a little above average for someone your age.  Maybe not even that as degrees proliferate.  This means if you are average or below average in ability, creativity, or work ethic, the degree signal may help you get a better job than you could without it.  (Though it won’t help you keep it.)

If you are above average in ability, creativity, or work ethic the degree signal sells you short.  It makes you blend in with all the lower quality people coming out of the same institution.  (Not only that, the college experience itself tends to foster habits that make you less able, creative, and hardworking.)

Young people today have at their fingertips tools to create signals far more powerful than generic institutional credentials.  Consider the impact of a tailored website that demonstrates the value you have created?  Better yet, a website or product that demonstrates to a company the value you will create for them?

Consider the value of working alongside a successful entrepreneur or industry leader for free or low pay for a year or two and parlaying that into a full-time gig?  Companies hate the searching and hiring process.  They’d always rather promote someone within who has a proven track record of value creation.  Compare the cost of low wages for a year or two to the cost of no wages and huge debt for four.

Businesses need value-creating employees.  They use degrees as an early proxy to eliminate some chunk of applicants (though even this practice is declining for big and small companies alike), but they only use them in absence of a better, clearer, more powerful signal.  When one exists, it trumps the academic credential.  When you realize all they want is proof of ability to create value, the world begins to open up.  How many ways are there to prove that you can?

It’s not only about getting hired.  Professors are quick to tell you that wages are not the only thing that matters when it comes to happiness and success in life.  They are correct.  Yet chasing the degree as the only signal often leaves people with debt that requires a relatively high wage to service, thus cutting off options and opportunities to explore and experiment.

Not least of these explorations is the wonderful and growing world of entrepreneurship.  It’s easier and cheaper than ever to create your own product or launch your own venture.  It’s also more and more valuable.  Machines and software can do rote tasks.  Humans’ greatest value add is creative problem solving and innovation.

The ability to freelance for a living, launch a micro business, or create a major enterprise is expanding every day.  There is no benefit to the degree signal in the world of entrepreneurship.  There are no HR departments wading through resumes looking for checklists.  Here, in fact, the college experience can be more of a detriment than a benefit.  It tends to restrict the imagination to known methods, restrict your network to same-aged people, restrict your financial flexibility and risk-taking, and cut into many of the easiest years for trying something bold when the cost of failure is lowest.

A 20-year-old who launched a KickStarter campaign, built an app, created a website, apprenticed for a small business owner, read 50 books, or even just has an amazing online presence signals more value creation potential than a 22-year-old with a BA and a 3.7 GPA.  Yes, you can supplement the college experience with these other things, but classes and obligations (not only time but financial and parental) get in the way of fully unleashing your independent signal-creating potential.

The Real Revolution

The real revolution in higher education will not come from better delivery mechanisms for lectures, or new platforms to sell the same signal.  It won’t be disrupted by online versions of the brick and mortar establishment.

The real revolution will look as varied as the people participating in it.  It will begin when people understand the two secrets of higher education.  When it is realized that college is selling a signal and that signalling your ability to create value can be done far better in myriad other ways, the world will bloom with alternative methods of getting young people from where they are to where they want to be.

Instead of 16, 17, and 18-year-olds stressing about how to get into colleges, they should focus their energy on how to begin building a better signal.  Instead of 19, 20, and 21-year-olds stressing about majors and minors and GPA’s, they should focus their energy on creating value and building a way to prove it.

What are you signalling?

———————————————

Want more?  Check out Praxis, a one-year apprenticeship + professional development + coaching educational experience for young people who want more than college.

Episode 57: Thaddeus Russell on the Launch of Renegade University

Thaddeus Russell comes back to the show to talk about his upcoming project called Renegade University.  RU will be a combination of online lectures, readings and interactive seminars based on his book A Renegade History of the United States and an attitude of individualism and free inquiry.

We also talked about where Thaddeus sees renegades today and how culture changes over time so that black market activities become legal and accepted. We cover his upcoming book that deals with US interventionism abroad and the blowback that ensued, as well as the vastness of pop culture influence, along with what he thinks is wrong with modern universities and current protests over racism and diversity.

Check out more about Thaddeus and the Renegade University at thaddeusrussell.com

This episode sponsored by Praxis and the Foundation for Economic Education.

Apply to Praxis now!

Check out FEE seminars to learn about economics and entrepreneurship this summer!

This and all episodes are also available on SoundCloud, iTunes, YouTube, and Stitcher.

 

 

Let Your Kids Suffer

I’m convinced one of the best things a parent can do is let their kids suffer.  It’s also one of the hardest.

I don’t mean suffer from imposed deprivations, scolding, withholding of affection, or physical illness.  I mean suffering from the things that are inevitable parts of life and without which no happiness can come.

Mastering a skill.  Learning social dynamics.  Resolving conflict.  Choosing between two good (or two bad) options.  Discovering who you really are and how you fit in with the world around you.  These all involve some level of suffering, sometimes a great deal.  Yet none of them can successfully happen if a parent swoops in to circumvent the hardship inherent in the process.

When your kids are fighting with other kids, or getting hurt feelings over misunderstandings, or in agony over inability to achieve a digital or physical feat it can be brutal to observe.  Every fiber of your parental being wants to intervene and stop the struggle.  Maybe at least offer to buy them a food they really like to ease the pain a bit.  But such interventions rob kids of the growth that comes from learning to adapt and discover their own unique method of achieving their goals and finding happiness.

Even boredom can be hard to watch a child suffer through.  But if we rush in to entertain them and ease their boredom with reams of suggestions and exhortations we short-circuit their process of learning to be interested and interesting.

One of the best parenting tips I have stumbled on, and one I remind myself daily, is simply to do less parenting and let my kids do more living.  Even when it’s not all rainbows for them.

The Economic Argument Against Immigration is Pretty Gross

The economic argument against immigration is especially disgusting.

You might think cultural arguments about keeping a country “pure” or safety arguments claiming all immigrants are criminals are more offensive.  But let’s examine what the economic argument against immigration really means.

The idea of forcibly preventing individuals from crossing a border in order to give an economic advantage to those on the other side of the line is barbaric when you ponder it.  Immigration restriction for the purpose of “protecting jobs” really means the violent prevention of people born in certain places from trying to earn a living.

Imagine you want a certain job.  So does your neighbor.  Would you slash his tires to keep him from getting to the interview?  Would you build a wall around his house preventing him from leaving because he might compete with you in the market?  Would you shoot him if he tried to scale it for the chance of landing the job?

If you knew a person living in horrible conditions, whose children may well die of an entirely preventable disease, and they just need a decent job to be able to afford better environs for their family, would you feel proud for sending armed thugs to follow that person around and ensure they never left their crappy neighborhood to apply for jobs elsewhere?  Even if it meant grinding poverty and possible sickness and death for the family?  Would you cheer and say, “Yeah!  I’m protecting my job opportunities!”

If you support immigration restrictions that’s exactly what you’re doing.

Economies are best served with open competition.  No one thinks forcibly shutting down competitors or collaborators is a good move or morally permissible…unless those competitors and collaborators happened to be born in certain places.

Can you think of more blatantly bigoted behavior?  The belief that certain individuals should be violently prevented from even trying to get certain jobs or live in certain places based purely on the piece of land on which they happened to be born is no less reprehensible than Jim Crow, Apartheid, or any of the other universally condemned forms of legal economic oppression.

Leave aside the fact that immigration restrictions are bad for the economy as a whole, and that far more people in the restrictive country are harmed by being unable to hire or buy from vast swaths of humanity.  Even if it were true that immigration restrictions made native born citizens better off they would be no less disturbing and morally bankrupt.

If I paid armed agents to keep every potential competitor for jobs or customers under house arrest you wouldn’t forgive me if I could prove that the practice helped me economically.  You’d call me a cold-hearted psychopath.  Even if border patrols gave you an edge by keeping some potential competition behind barbed wire it wouldn’t make your advocacy of them honorable.  “Hey look, I can get ahead by keeping this poor person from trying!” is not the cry of an honorable person.  “People who weren’t born where I was shouldn’t be allowed to apply for jobs!” isn’t a belief to boast about.

All arguments against the free and peaceful movement of people are bad.  Arguing it’s to protect your economic interests reveals a level of moral bankruptcy that is truly unsettling.

Episode 56: The Art of Selfish Learning, with TK Coleman

One of the downsides of formal education is that it fosters learning for the sake of satisfying a person in authority instead of learning in order to satisfy one’s curiosity.

Schools generally offer praise and avoidance of pain when learning rules are abided, which is still externally guided and not connected to our curiosity and goals.

TK Coleman comes back on the show to talk about the importance of selfish learning – approach that helps you achieve your goals and improve whatever it is that you see as valuable.

Learn selfishly!

This episode sponsored by Praxis and the Foundation for Economic Education.

Apply to Praxis now!

Check out FEE seminars to learn about economics and entrepreneurship this summer!

This and all episodes are also available on SoundCloud, iTunes, YouTube, and Stitcher.

What You Master in 15,000 Hours

If Malcolm Gladwell is right then it takes 10,000 hours to master something at the highest level.  I guess that means after the 15,000 hours a typical kid spends in public school they become a master and a half.  But at what?

Certainly not geography, or history, or math, or English, or any of the other arbitrary slivers of factual knowledge called “subjects”.  The learning is too fragmented, inconsistent, and lifeless.  If it’s not the subjects themselves what is the predominant trait or skill that happens consistently throughout that entire, nearly life-consuming 15,000 hours of schooled childhood?  What do kids master?

Seeking permission.

Children master the art of being permission seekers.  They lose the ability, to borrow from James Altucher, to choose themselves.  Each of those 15,000 hours share in common the absence of choice.  Students aren’t free to explore or follow their curiosity outside of incredibly narrow bounds, both metaphorical and cinder block and barbed wire.  Permission must be sought to speak, go to the bathroom, or do anything differently than the officially sanctioned authority figure has prescribed.

Is it any wonder people stick around in unhappy jobs and relationships?  Is it any wonder people numbly obey sometimes absurd and immoral laws?  Is it any wonder people don’t deviate from the education, career, and life path that was explicitly pushed on them?  Is it any wonder people don’t believe in or take pride in themselves or others in the absence of external rewards and badges and credentials?

Sometimes people say that anything other than 15,000 hours in school is radical.  I’m all for radical, but I can’t help but find it an odd way to view not sending your kids to school.  As John Taylor Gatto said,

“Is there a more radical idea in the history of the human race than turning your children over to total strangers who you know nothing about? Having those strangers work on your child’s mind, out of your sight, for a period of twelve years?”

15,000 hours.  Let’s hope Gladwell is wrong.