In your mind’s eye, look through the window into a high school classroom.
A college lecture hall.
A mandatory business training.
Speaking only for myself, I see people; falling asleep, doodling, watching the clock, passing notes under the table or taking notes voraciously because they’re going to be tested on it.
I think that’s whack.
The future of education is here, it’s time you embrace it and pursue personal freedom from school.
As I write this, America has just gone into the frenzy that is the return of the school year. With my daughter entering school as a kindergartener, I can’t think of a time that I’ve been more torn with a parenting decision than I am now. That’s for me to deal with, but I want to use this opportunity to call attention to modern schooling and offer you some ways to free yourself from the chains of compulsory education that may be binding you, or someone dear to you.
You Are Interested In Something
I am CONVINCED that every one of us has something that we are passionately interested in. NOT because someone told us to be interested in it, but because we are naturally drawn to it.
I’m also deeply concerned that we don’t encourage one another to aggressively pursue those things that we are genuinely passionate about. Instead we cast them off because pursuing them won’t lead to a ‘successful’ life. Instead, we focus on being well-rounded and knowing a little bit about a lot of things that we, generally, don’t care about.
Case and point, I met someone the other day who just started a 2 year graduate degree studying beetles. Naturally, I asked how she become so passionate about beetles. Well, you know where this is going…she’s not. She’s been convinced that she needs to spend two years dedicating her life to studying something she doesn’t care about because it’s going to make her successful in the future.
This is happening everywhere. It happened to me. It probably happened to you. Thinking back to all the classes you took to get where you are today, how many left a lasting impression?
The repercussions of this forced method of schooling is that many of us reach our adult years without the drive to pursue the things we are genuinely passionate about.
Instead, I welcome you to embrace these messages:
- Pursue the things that actually matter to you
- Encourage those close to you to do the same
- Be accepting toward yourself (and others) when you change your mind
Here are some ways to do that.
Finding Freedom Within Compulsory Education
Look, we’re not going to change the system. If you want to try, I welcome you to get after it, but I’m warning you, it’ll be a lifelong endeavor to find a monkey wrench big enough to even cause a burp in the wheels of the machine.
Instead, let’s look at ways that YOU (or someone dear to you) can serve YOURSELF to achieve a higher level of freedom and reward from the time spent in mandatory schooling.
Mandatory Schooling
For simplicity, I’m treating mandatory schooling as the opposite of voluntary schooling. You may find yourself in mandatory schooling if you’re a:
- Student in a classroom when you’d rather be somewhere else.
- Government or company employee going to general mandated training that doesn’t interest you.
- College student who is forced to become well rounded.
- person in any place considered a learning environment when, if left to your own devices, you would not stay in that location.
If you qualify, you should ask yourself why are you there, and what do you need to do to achieve the necessary objective?
The Minimum Effective Dose
Tim Ferriss speaks frequently about the Minimum Effective Dose, or how to do the least amount to get the effective result. He applies it primarily to physical fitness, but it can apply here as well. If you’re forced to be learning something you don’t care about, and you are uncomfortable with the risk of removing yourself, try to find comfort in doing only as much as is necessary to achieve the desired result.
If you’re a parent, relax on the grades thing. If your kid is a tech geek, she doesn’t need A’s around the board. Give her some leeway and encouragement to focus on what she wants and stop forcing undo stress about the rest.
Hell! Go nuts and tell her you don’t care about grades at all! Instill the idea that happiness and personal fulfillment matter more than grades.
The time saved doing the minimum effective dose can be spent on the things you’re passionate about. That’s how I designed the Applied Permaculture Project. In the meeting rich environment of the military, I kept a satellite view picture of my homestead in my journal and I brainstormed ideas and designs in otherwise wasted time.
Find Freedom From School Before It Starts
I recently learned of a program in a nearby high school that has entry level courses to professions some students think they may be interested in: engineering, cosmetology, etc. If you, or someone you know, expresses an interest in pursuing a career I highly recommend spending some time in that career before committing to years of training for the required license or credential.
If you want to be a dentist, hit up every dentist in the area and volunteer to work there for free, doing anything, just to be familiar with the environment.
If you can’t wait for those workdays to end, don’t commit years of your life and unearned money to pursue that.
However, if you wish the day would never end, and there’s just not enough time in the day to do the things you love, maybe then you’re onto something that warrants such a large investment of time and money.
Freedom Through Alternative Sources of School
Modern technology is forcing the evolution of education at a rate that is hardly comprehendible. The typical systems are becoming more archaic by the day with the introduction of alternative sources of education.
The clear example is YouTube, the place everyone goes to first to learn whatever they want to know about. But there are also more formal classes popping up all over the place. The examples that come to mind first are:
- Udemy – an online collection of professional classes.
- Alt MBA – Seth Godin’s replacement to the conventional MBA.
- EBA – the course I’m taking called Elite Blog Academy to learn how to build a productive blog.
- LBRY.IO – A free, open, decentralized source for content online.
The advantage of many of these is that they can be very specific to what YOU are WANTING to learn and many can be taken at any time and you can take as long as you want to work through them.
The modern version of the test is that there is no test. Life is the test.
Your Resume is Obsolete: Show Your Work.
If you spend your life working on the things you genuinely enjoy you may also find joy in documenting your work. That can be done via a website, a portfolio, a YouTube channel and more.
The future of the resume is not, ‘Let me see your resume’ it’s ‘let me see the work you’ve done’.
A great example of this is the platform GitHub where coders can build a profile of the projects they’ve worked on. If I’m interested in hiring a code writer, they can just point me to their profile. That’s way more valuable to me than a piece of paper with the name of a university on it.
When I hired someone to shingle my roof I looked at the website of each company I was considering. If I were a roofer who loved my job, I’d take a picture of each roof I worked on to build my portfolio.
When I buy food I want to see pictures of the farm and hear about the story and evolution of the operation.
I can’t think of a profession where this wouldn’t be beneficial. If there is one please let me know.
Networking Shouldn’t Suck
I found myself at a Fluids conference once.
While I respected most of the people for the things they were working on, it was clear to me that I was the one that was not like the others.
Conversely, I just attended the Freecoast Festival in NH where I had the most engaging conversations I have probably ever had.
If I attended the Navy Ball this October, I trust I would find myself looking around wondering what is wrong with all these people.
Get in where you fit in, and if you don’t fit in, have the courage to get out. Your people are out there. Use networking in your domain as the litmus test as to whether or not you are pursuing your life’s work.
Spend Your Life Learning What You Love
Every day that you spend your life doing something other than what you deliberately choose is a day lived unfree. Join me in committing to a life of learning, but be deliberate and choose the things you want to learn, and encourage those around you to do the same.
Humans want to learn.
Before I close out I want to point to you Seth Godin’s take on Education where he shares a video of him giving a TED Talk and a viral YouTube video that put me on the verge of crying because it spoke so eloquently and artfully of this message I share with you today.
Keep learning,
NHMan
