RPF0120-Scott_Young

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00:00:17.520 | topic of education, your own education? How possible is it to achieve great success in life

00:00:25.440 | without a great education? In my mind, education is huge, hugely important.

00:00:35.440 | And so today we're going to explore that subject with Scott Young. He's most well known for

00:00:41.680 | essentially hacking an MIT computer science degree. This is known as the MIT challenge,

00:00:49.040 | in which he put four years of MIT-level learning into one year for $0 out of his pocket.

00:01:15.440 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and today is Tuesday,

00:01:19.600 | December 16, 2014. Today on the show, we're going to talk about education, not schooling,

00:01:27.360 | education. And we're going to explore some ways for you to become more highly educated

00:01:34.880 | so that you can move your success forward more effectively.

00:01:40.160 | [Music]

00:01:48.560 | My guest today is Scott Young and he's most well known, I think for his TED Talk was where he

00:01:53.600 | achieved some wider internet fame. But I know that, as I found out in the course of this interview,

00:01:59.520 | he's been around for a while, he's been doing things for a while. I think you'll really enjoy

00:02:03.360 | today's show because we bring together many themes, both education and financial independence.

00:02:09.760 | But through entrepreneurship, Scott has been earning his living through online

00:02:13.120 | writing for a very long time. And even just the topic of education, however, is very

00:02:20.000 | pertinent to your own personal financial planning. If you're going to set out to improve anything in

00:02:26.720 | life, you're going to need to become educated about it. And so one of the most important skills

00:02:31.520 | that I believe that we can focus on and develop, which can help us in every area of life, is the

00:02:36.960 | ability to learn. Here's Scott. So Scott, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I appreciate

00:02:44.720 | you being with me today. Yeah, thanks for having me.

00:02:47.280 | So I brought you on, I've mentioned your story a couple of times on the show myself.

00:02:51.840 | But then I thought, well, I need to go ahead and reach out to you. And I did,

00:02:55.440 | and you agreed to come on. So I'd love for you to start by sharing with us the story of

00:03:02.160 | the MIT challenge, as you called it. What is the MIT challenge?

00:03:06.960 | Right. So I was trying to come up with a name for this, because I'm pretty sure, to this date,

00:03:13.200 | I'm not sure anybody else has done it before. And at the time I'd done it,

00:03:16.640 | nobody else had done anything like this before. But basically, I graduated from business school,

00:03:22.320 | and I wanted to learn more about computer science. Now, the option to me, the sort of traditional

00:03:30.160 | option would be, well, if you want to get an education in computer science, you've got to

00:03:34.720 | go back to school, got to enroll, you got to spend a bunch more money on tuition, got to wait at

00:03:39.440 | least maybe two years if you're doing a matrician. Sometimes you can skip some of the prerequisites.

00:03:45.360 | If you're doing the full curriculum, then again, that's another whole four years of your life.

00:03:49.600 | And that didn't appeal to me at all. But I still wanted to get the knowledge, I still wanted to

00:03:54.480 | have that, those skills and that knowledge. And so around that time, I was playing with

00:04:02.480 | some of MIT's OpenCourseWare courses. So this is basically MIT, and other universities do this too,

00:04:09.120 | but MIT is one of the big ones, would take materials from their actual courses. So these

00:04:15.280 | aren't courses that were prepared for the internet, these were actual MIT classes.

00:04:18.960 | And they would record the lectures for some of them, they would, for some of them, they wouldn't

00:04:24.080 | record the lectures, but they would tell you what textbook they used, which readings they did,

00:04:28.160 | and they'd have photocopies of the assignments and the solutions, and the exams and the solutions.

00:04:33.520 | And I had done one or two of these courses before. And I was thinking about it, and I was like,

00:04:38.240 | well, you know, I think these courses are really good, I think they're quite useful.

00:04:41.920 | Would it be possible to not just do one or two courses, but to do the entire degree that MIT

00:04:49.920 | teaches for computer science? And because these exams that they cover, these assignments,

00:04:55.680 | these programming projects, they weren't designed for an online course, they were

00:05:00.800 | just literally stripped from whatever class was actually being taught. You could say that there

00:05:07.680 | is some relevancy there, there's some connection to what an MIT student would actually learn.

00:05:12.800 | And so I was thinking about this for about a year, just would this be possible to do?

00:05:17.200 | And I did the research, and there were some modifications I had to make, I wasn't able to

00:05:22.960 | perfectly replicate the curriculum. But at least with the core computer science classes, I could

00:05:28.400 | do all the classes, I could at least go through and do all of the final exams for the classes,

00:05:33.440 | which is a major part of any sort of heavy math and science-based curriculum. And so I set that up.

00:05:41.200 | And then I sort of tried to make it a little bit more interesting, to discuss sort of the

00:05:44.960 | ramifications. I gave it a name, and I had this goal of trying to complete it in one year.

00:05:51.120 | And I did that, and I finished it on time with maybe a week to spare. I was documenting it for

00:05:57.920 | the year. And I think it's not something that's for everyone. But I think it is an outlier example

00:06:03.920 | that can maybe show you, you know, you want to learn something in depth, it's no longer the case

00:06:09.840 | that you have to go to school to do it. Was the MIT computer science curriculum,

00:06:15.760 | was it 100% focused on computer science? Did you just not worry about anything? I don't know,

00:06:23.280 | if there was any, are there any readings in the humanities that you ignored those classes?

00:06:26.960 | Or was this the full degree program? No. So I did the full degree program because I felt

00:06:32.080 | it was very important for me to at the very least match the volume of something an MIT student would

00:06:40.080 | learn. Because of course, I'm making kind of a bold statement saying I'm learning in a year.

00:06:44.640 | So it's a heck of a caveat to say, yeah, but I only did half the classes. Like,

00:06:49.200 | I don't think that's really fair. So what I did do was I made sure that the number of credit hours

00:06:54.400 | were exactly the same. Basically, my program is exactly the same as an MIT student would do.

00:07:00.480 | But there were a couple exceptions. Like, there were some laboratory classes, which I couldn't do

00:07:05.920 | in there. So I just switched those for more theory classes. And there were some, actually

00:07:11.440 | some humanities and arts classes, which I wasn't able to find the material online for. So I

00:07:19.040 | substituted those for economics classes. So it wasn't necessarily like every single class was

00:07:25.840 | exactly what you do if you were at MIT. But the volume was the same in terms of the amount of

00:07:30.640 | information you would be learning was the same. And the computer science component of it was

00:07:38.000 | basically exactly how it was taught. They have a lot of material for computer science online.

00:07:42.880 | So I was lucky there.

00:07:43.840 | When do you have a did you track how many hours per day it took you to do the reading and the

00:07:49.840 | homework and the projects?

00:07:50.960 | Right. So I was working pretty intensely. I also write about learning more quickly and

00:07:57.680 | sort of efficient studying techniques. So there's sort of a dual purpose in doing this.

00:08:02.240 | And I would say in the beginning, I was probably putting in about eight to 10 hours a day,

00:08:08.000 | five days a week. And then near to the end, it was probably more like six to eight hours a day.

00:08:15.120 | And I in the beginning, I did a couple classes over about like a week to 10 days per class.

00:08:20.880 | But once I finished the first few classes, once I sort of established that, okay, I figured out

00:08:26.800 | the procedure for doing the classes, then I switched to doing three to four at a time. So I

00:08:32.560 | would do about a month or so with maybe four classes. So I'd be like January and I'd have

00:08:38.880 | four classes and it would be January and the first week of February would be those four classes.

00:08:44.480 | And that there's a lot of research that shows that, you know, spacing and interleaving the

00:08:48.960 | practice you're having is better for long term memory outcomes, especially considering I was

00:08:52.800 | learning it under such short time constraints that became more important.

00:08:56.000 | So it's shown that it's probably superior to be taking multiple classes at once instead of one

00:09:01.040 | at a time?

00:09:02.000 | That seems to be the research that I've found is that, well, the spacing effect,

00:09:05.760 | which is the idea that if you do not mass your practice, so the opposite of cramming,

00:09:10.800 | if you spend five hours, but you spend one hour a week versus five hours in one sitting,

00:09:15.200 | that's robustly shown to have a better long term memory performance. So if you learn something over

00:09:23.360 | a week, you're much more likely to forget it than if you learn it over a year, even if you spend the

00:09:28.080 | same amount of hours studying it. So that's true. And also there is some research showing that

00:09:34.720 | interleaving, which is switching the actual tasks that you're learning, has some benefit for memory

00:09:40.800 | because possibly you have to sort of unload whatever you were learning out of your working

00:09:46.080 | memory and reload it. And that sort of reloading it into your memory seems to make it better.

00:09:50.800 | That's another theory. So obviously doing it in one year in that compressed time frame probably

00:09:56.400 | hurt me a little bit in terms of long term comprehension over someone doing it in four years.

00:10:00.240 | But I think this was also mitigated a bit by these kinds of techniques as well.

00:10:05.040 | And you got a lot more publicity doing it in one year than anything else.

00:10:08.480 | Well, there's constraints, right?

00:10:10.160 | Is my memory correct that you were actually offered a job after completing this by

00:10:16.880 | a computer firm of some kind?

00:10:18.720 | Right. So I'm not going to name the firm because the person who was working for there didn't want

00:10:23.040 | it to be public. But he found me that there's a link to some Reddit post.

00:10:29.280 | And it was very interesting to me because the Reddit post got some popularity of me saying

00:10:34.960 | I finished it. And there were lots of comments of people saying, well, but he didn't get a degree.

00:10:40.160 | He didn't get an actual piece of paper. So therefore, no employer would take him seriously.

00:10:44.880 | It was accomplished. It would be meaningless. And that is a fair critique. I would say that

00:10:49.120 | having official paperwork is better than not having paperwork. But what was interesting to

00:10:54.400 | me is that in the follow up comments, that in the comments as replies to those original comments,

00:10:59.760 | there were people, there were HR managers from tech companies that were saying, no,

00:11:05.200 | I don't know what you're talking about. This is exactly the kind of person we want to hire.

00:11:08.640 | Someone who has sort of the initiative and intelligence to put together a computer

00:11:12.400 | science curriculum and finish it in a year. This is exactly who we want to hire. And I actually got

00:11:17.360 | a private email from someone who found that and he worked for a large tech firm, which I won't name.

00:11:22.800 | And he was sort of feeling whether I'd be interested in interviewing to get a job opportunity. And,

00:11:30.720 | you know, I'm a writer. That's what I do for a living. And learning is sort of the vehicle by

00:11:35.520 | which I write about things. So computer science for me has always been something that informs

00:11:42.320 | my writing and also helps me run my business, but not necessarily something that I would

00:11:46.240 | work another full time job at. So I did turn that offer for an interview down.

00:11:52.000 | But I thought it was interesting because it seemed to break the assumption everybody had that

00:11:56.880 | it would be impossible for people to take you seriously if you had this kind of experience.

00:12:04.800 | Did you blog your way through the project?

00:12:07.200 | I did. So I not only was writing during the project, probably with a little less frequency

00:12:13.280 | than I'd like, but I also maintained a video journal, which every week or two I would make

00:12:20.000 | an update, sort of sometimes giving studying tips and sometimes talking about sort of the

00:12:24.880 | progress and the challenge. And so anybody who wants can see that. And those were all done

00:12:29.440 | throughout the actual project because I felt like this kind of project is something that I wanted

00:12:37.520 | to show how I was thinking about and doing it while it was happening rather than just in retrospect,

00:12:43.840 | oh, yes, it went really well or it didn't go well. So I felt definitely there was some pressure

00:12:49.760 | because, you know, I was saying I'm going to do this in one year and I hadn't done it yet. So

00:12:54.720 | there's obviously a lot of negative feedback for people who are waiting for you to fail.

00:12:59.840 | So I definitely felt some pressure to keep up with it.

00:13:02.560 | Right. To me, that was what was the most interesting about it, because as I've thought

00:13:06.240 | about higher, so-called higher education, college, there are various reasons and uses of college

00:13:12.800 | throughout history, just like there's various reasons and uses of primary school and secondary

00:13:18.480 | school. But one of the, at least in our modern society, it seems to me like college is much

00:13:23.760 | more of a social sorting mechanism than anything else. It's not necessarily based upon how much

00:13:31.440 | you learn, although this would vary in my mind, it would vary greatly from field of study to field

00:13:36.960 | of study. But it's largely a sorting mechanism. And essentially, especially in the world of

00:13:42.880 | employment as an employer, if you're looking for an employee, you're essentially transferring some

00:13:50.000 | of the work to a college administration process and passing process. So you're saying that by

00:13:56.720 | the time, if you say, if you require a college degree for your job, you're essentially saying,

00:14:02.560 | I'm going to weed out all the people who just did the minimum of going to high school and

00:14:06.800 | graduating from high school. I'm going to take those people who are at least achievers enough

00:14:10.560 | to apply to a school, go through that process, get out of that school. They learned something at that

00:14:16.240 | school because often it's not relevant how much what you actually learned is applied to your job.

00:14:21.120 | This would vary, I think, in things like mathematics, engineering, architecture. I mean,

00:14:24.720 | there are exceptions. But at least my observation, many times it doesn't matter what the field of

00:14:28.320 | study was. So the employer is essentially just saying, we're going to let the college do this

00:14:34.320 | vetting process. And then if the prospective employee has gotten through it and has graduated,

00:14:41.280 | now we know it's at least this type of person who's able to go and get a college degree.

00:14:46.160 | The so the problem is how do you demonstrate knowledge? And some fields, I think this comes

00:14:51.440 | easily. I would imagine that in let's say you had a field of video production, or you wanted to be

00:14:56.880 | like a director of movies or audio production or something like that, in the or drawing or

00:15:01.840 | architectural work in many in those types of scenarios, you can look at your portfolio can

00:15:06.000 | say, look, here's my portfolio. In programming, I would imagine that if you can say, here's the

00:15:11.360 | portfolio of projects I've done, that's much more important than is the college degree. And kind of

00:15:16.560 | what I see is what's unique about what you've done. Self study has always been possible and

00:15:22.080 | probably more important than formalized study. But now with the ability to quickly and easily

00:15:27.360 | communicate your progress, you can create a portfolio of work. And you can demonstrate with

00:15:32.880 | diary entries, video journals, screen flows, screen captures, projects, things like that,

00:15:37.760 | you can show the process of learning. And you can show the final product for an expert to review

00:15:43.360 | your computer program and say, is this well written? Is this creatively expressed? It really

00:15:49.040 | allows people to manage their own image and to demonstrate that look, yes, I can,

00:15:54.880 | I don't have the certification from the provost of the university. But I can demonstrate to you

00:16:00.320 | that I have a comprehensive understanding of the issues involved. I think I think you've,

00:16:05.600 | you've brought up a really important issue. Because I feel like in the current climate,

00:16:10.720 | like this is very new technology. And the job market, especially with respect to education,

00:16:18.400 | is very conservative, where we're still teaching people largely the way that Aristotle taught

00:16:24.240 | people, we sit in big classes and listen to lectures. And I don't think it's fair to say,

00:16:30.480 | well, right now is what I did the equivalent, is it a substitute for having a degree from MIT? And

00:16:37.200 | I would say no, it's not. I don't think I don't think a reasonable person could say that. However,

00:16:42.480 | I don't think it needs to be I don't think that that needs to be the benchmark, it must succeed

00:16:48.320 | that if, if you were to do this, instead of going to college, and now you're worse off, therefore,

00:16:55.680 | you know, this the project's meaningless. That's not really the point I'd like to make. Because I

00:17:00.160 | have another degree, I have a degree in business, that's the background that I have. And if I were

00:17:06.320 | to do this, this is something that supplements that official process. So I have this official

00:17:11.520 | degree from official institution that says that I'm at the very least college graduate material.

00:17:16.240 | But then I have this other project, which is, which showcases different things, it signals

00:17:21.680 | different things about me, it shows that I have initiative, it shows that, you know, I'm good at

00:17:25.840 | learning things. And it shows whatever content was in the knowledge of whatever I learned from

00:17:32.160 | those computer science things. And I think that what you're going to see is a lot more people

00:17:37.280 | who are not the people who are, I would say, the best market for the MIT challenge is not 18 year

00:17:44.640 | old high school graduates that don't want to go to college. I think the best market is 35 year olds

00:17:50.160 | that already have a degree in x, and they want to learn why but they can't quit their job, they

00:17:56.240 | don't have time to go back to school. They can't do the things that they would want to do for that.

00:18:01.360 | But they learn that new subject. And these new tools are coming out that allows them to document

00:18:06.800 | it and keep track of it in this sort of portfolio way. And that is something that shows the person,

00:18:12.880 | okay, I'm applying for a new job in maybe a slightly different field that yeah, my formal

00:18:17.600 | education is this, my work experience is here. But I've just done this, you know, this new learning

00:18:23.280 | experience learning this in this slightly different area. So I'm well equipped to, you know,

00:18:28.800 | navigate that change or navigate whatever promotion that I want to get. And so I think that really

00:18:34.240 | what we're looking at is seeing this is one of the tools in a whole sort of array of educational and

00:18:42.560 | training options you have for improving your job market opportunities or your career opportunities.

00:18:48.560 | And so I don't really like to think of it as you know, if an 18 year old who skips out on college

00:18:53.120 | does this, and they have a harder time getting a job that it fails. I think that's the wrong way

00:18:57.280 | to look at it. Do you think I don't disagree with you? Because sure, there, I can still see many.

00:19:04.000 | I think we're in a process of evolution as far as the college environment, and it's going to change,

00:19:11.040 | at least just my guess from observing it. I think it's going to change. And instead of being so

00:19:18.320 | generalized, it's once again going to be more specialized. And instead of learning being

00:19:23.760 | gathered around a specific institution, learning is going to be gathered around those institutions

00:19:29.360 | who have a high concentration of experts in their field for the synergy of connection,

00:19:34.320 | or learning is going to be, you know, concentrated around a world class expert.

00:19:38.400 | When I think of something like I have an interest in the humanities, so I want to spend more time

00:19:44.560 | reading in myself in classic literature. But when I think about, okay, I can just read it,

00:19:51.520 | but I need a group of people with which to engage with it, just because I can sit and read it and

00:19:57.200 | journal my thoughts, that doesn't replace gaining the experience from a world class master of

00:20:05.200 | classical literature who can teach me and who can ask me questions and cause me to think more

00:20:11.440 | deeply about what I'm reading. But that interest of mine is not necessarily connected to anything

00:20:18.000 | economic, and I can see a way where that world class master can create around themselves a,

00:20:23.840 | essentially a school. And you mentioned Aristotle, almost in the way that they did,

00:20:29.200 | that you go and you seek out and say, I have an interest in this very niche topic,

00:20:34.160 | and so therefore I'm going to go and find, whether that's virtually or virtually and in person,

00:20:38.320 | or kind of a combination of the two, for actual learning, I don't think you can replace the

00:20:42.160 | in-person environment. But so much of college is not based upon actual learning. It's about

00:20:47.840 | getting the degree, and it's about kind of getting this wide array of knowledge. And it seems to me,

00:20:52.880 | I guess the trend that I see is more of a customization. Instead of this idea of,

00:20:58.960 | if I just simply go to school and punch the ticket and get the degree, then everything's

00:21:02.480 | taken care of, there's more of a customization where more options are becoming available for

00:21:07.280 | people to explore. So I want to push you on that point you made earlier about requiring

00:21:12.560 | interaction with a teacher or an expert or a master to facilitate learning. Because that to

00:21:20.640 | me seems, it seems like grad school often works that way, that you work with an expert, you're

00:21:26.800 | not just learning what's in the classes, you're sort of absorbing their worldview of how to think

00:21:32.080 | about scholarship and research and whatever the focus of your study is in grad school.

00:21:37.680 | Now, I've heard this often applied as sort of a seemingly valid critique of what I was doing at

00:21:44.320 | the MIT Challenge, being that like, well, but you're learning on your own, right? You know,

00:21:49.040 | maybe that works for you, but a lot of people don't need that. I don't know what undergrad

00:21:53.760 | programs these people are going to, because I had very little interaction with any professors.

00:21:59.120 | And I was in there for four years, and I feel like I went to a good school that had decent

00:22:02.640 | classroom sizes. So I don't know what fantasy these people are living in where you're getting

00:22:07.440 | hand coached by professors. I would be lucky if they would reply to an email briefly, when I was

00:22:13.280 | doing that and give two sentences of critique to a project that I worked on for two weeks.

00:22:17.440 | So we're not talking about, if we're talking about grad school, or we're talking where you're

00:22:21.360 | working in a department where there's like six of you in a graduate program, yeah, I think you're

00:22:25.520 | probably right. There is a great deal of apprenticeship there. But if we're talking about

00:22:29.040 | replacing Calculus 1, there honestly, I don't think that there's any difference between doing it

00:22:34.640 | through watching the lectures, self-study. Some of the new courses, these MOOCs now,

00:22:39.760 | have forums with TAs in them and other classmates. So I just think it's disingenuous to draw the

00:22:46.480 | distinction between what that's the fundamental distinction, because I've done a lot of these

00:22:52.320 | MIT classes and I can say, doing them, even though they were presumably "on my own", I thought that

00:22:58.800 | they were much better in terms of facilitating my education than a lot of classes that I went

00:23:04.560 | to in person when I was in university. So I think that mastery and apprenticeship is very important.

00:23:10.160 | But I think that we are setting ourselves a little bit of an illusion if we think that that

00:23:14.640 | plays a really large factor in the typical undergraduate education, at least in North

00:23:19.920 | America. I 100% agree with you. Because that's exactly, if I had a son, I have a one-year-old

00:23:27.280 | son at the moment, if I had an 18-year-old son or an 18-year-old daughter, at the moment,

00:23:31.440 | based upon what I see, who knows where the world will be in 18 years. But I would tell them,

00:23:36.000 | "Listen, you need to punch this college degree ticket as quickly and as cheaply as you possibly

00:23:40.960 | can. And that means do a ton of AP classes, do a ton of CLEP classes, do the rest of it online,

00:23:47.920 | total cost is going to be $4,000 or $5,000. Punch a general studies college degree from an

00:23:53.120 | accredited university so that you just simply can check the box for all the things that

00:23:57.440 | require the college degree that, yes, this is done." Then, in concurrent with that or in addition

00:24:03.760 | to that, probably for a reasonably bright, I know lots of home-educated, bright young kids

00:24:12.240 | who have been able to finish that by the age of 18. So maybe that's a year or two-year project,

00:24:16.880 | depends on how rigorous their preparation at an earlier age was. Then, set out the course of study

00:24:23.680 | for yourself in the same way that you've done and figure out what do you want to really focus on and

00:24:29.040 | master and design the education plan. The problem I was trying to solve, that I'm trying to solve,

00:24:36.000 | is not throwing away the idea of having physical interaction. I'll give you an example from one

00:24:42.000 | of my self-learning projects. I'm interested in a subject called permaculture, which is essentially

00:24:48.080 | the idea of holistic ecological design for the needs of human living. That includes a lot of

00:24:55.040 | agricultural work, a lot of ecological agriculture, a lot of sustainable design, certain things like

00:25:00.240 | that. So this is an interest of mine. I think I get more value from watching lectures. There's a

00:25:06.160 | man in this field who's one of the world leaders named Jeff Lawton. He has a course that I've taken,

00:25:12.720 | which is, I don't know how many hours, it's hundreds of hours of video instruction,

00:25:17.040 | of video lecturing. I've gained a ton from that. But what I've recognized is that I reach a certain

00:25:23.920 | point at which I don't know what I don't know. I need a master to understand what I don't know and

00:25:32.880 | to instruct me in what I actually need to focus on next. Also, with that specific topic, it's such

00:25:40.080 | a hands-on topic. It's different than maybe something like writing a piece of software.

00:25:44.160 | It's such a hands-on topic that I've recognized that if I were truly to become a master in this

00:25:48.720 | area, what I would need to do is to build this solid foundation through self-study, distance

00:25:55.360 | learning, video instruction, and book instruction, and then apprentice for specific periods of time,

00:26:00.560 | hopefully with other students, with one week, two weeks at a time with other students.

00:26:05.520 | Then the masters in the field could say, and hopefully with different masters, those masters

00:26:11.360 | in the field can say, "Here's where you will really have a solid understanding, but you've

00:26:16.080 | kind of missed some basic concepts over here, or here's where you need to guide your perspective."

00:26:22.000 | And that's the role I see for a teacher in person, is to get that feedback about where you're strong

00:26:26.960 | and where you're weak. What do you think? Oh, absolutely. I meant to say in my previous

00:26:32.160 | comment, I wasn't meaning to disparage actual apprenticeship master relationships. I think

00:26:39.200 | that those are very important. I think for the things that matter to me in my career,

00:26:43.040 | a lot of knowledge is network-based. I've learned, I would say, maybe more than half of the things

00:26:50.560 | that are important for my current career, I never learned it from reading something. It was someone

00:26:57.520 | having a conversation with someone who knows more than me, who they can see the errors in my

00:27:02.080 | thinking, or they can see how my approach is not leading me on the right path. And they don't even

00:27:07.440 | need to tell me, just having that conversation allows me to discover it for myself. And I think

00:27:11.600 | that's incredibly important, and that's important regardless of what your career is. So I think that

00:27:15.520 | it is very important to cultivate those relationships with people that you respect their

00:27:20.720 | thinking, and you can learn from them. I don't doubt that at all. I just maybe question whether

00:27:28.320 | the current undergraduate college environment does actually provide that. It doesn't. It doesn't.

00:27:33.840 | For the vast majority of people, it doesn't. When you look at the reasons that people go to school

00:27:39.200 | and they send their kids to school, learning is in there, but it's often, I didn't go to college

00:27:44.240 | because I wanted to learn something. I went to college because I knew that I "needed a college

00:27:50.320 | degree," and I wanted the college experience, and I felt like it was what society expected of me.

00:27:57.200 | And I didn't have the courage to go a different way, nor did I have the vision to go a different

00:28:01.680 | way. But that's changing in our society. People are waking up to it. I've always been weird.

00:28:09.680 | For a long time, I was in the minority about talking about, "Look, college is not the thing

00:28:15.600 | it was in our parents' generation." But now what I've been shocked at is just how widespread this

00:28:21.760 | thought and belief has come of the criticism that mainstream college has undergone. And so I'm

00:28:28.800 | fascinated at how widespread it is and how quickly things are changing in the industry.

00:28:32.880 | Definitely. And I think you brought up a point earlier, which I think is very important,

00:28:38.000 | the signaling value of a college education, that often what employers are looking for is

00:28:45.440 | they're not really looking for anything particular that you learned in school,

00:28:49.120 | but they are looking for the category of people that could graduate from college,

00:28:53.760 | which is different, perhaps, than the category of people that were too lazy or unintelligent or

00:29:00.960 | for whatever reason they didn't do it. And so that does mean that people who,

00:29:06.400 | maybe they could have done college, but they did something else, sometimes they get miscategorized,

00:29:11.120 | and that's unfortunate. But I do think that part of the difficulty, part of the thing that people

00:29:16.640 | don't realize when they're seeing it is that the more ubiquitous college education becomes, the

00:29:20.560 | more everybody gets a college degree, and especially with how expensive it is, the less meaningful it

00:29:26.000 | is. And I think that means that doing things like radical self-education, doing these kinds of

00:29:33.360 | projects which distinguish you, particularly if you're like myself, if you already have some

00:29:38.480 | formal credentials in X, which maybe aren't extremely impressive on their own, but then

00:29:43.360 | you add to that this other thing that you've done, and that's unique, and that showcases,

00:29:48.960 | that puts you in a smaller category of people, then that's how you get ahead of the competition.

00:29:53.120 | And I think that there is definitely an element of that. There's an element of people getting

00:29:59.520 | more and more college degrees, and the people that they want to have college degrees haven't

00:30:04.480 | changed, so it just means that you're having more and more competition.

00:30:08.800 | So let me ask you a question about how to actually design, what you learned from doing this and from

00:30:14.960 | talking and writing about how to design a program of personal study. And I'll give you some areas

00:30:20.800 | of interest of mine that I've struggled to figure out how to design a system for myself, because I

00:30:26.960 | haven't been able to find the guide, and I haven't been able to find the resources yet that would

00:30:30.800 | help me to understand. I have an interest in, I'll give three things I have an interest in. I have an

00:30:38.320 | interest in classical literature, theology, and law. And each of those things I would like to

00:30:45.680 | become more knowledgeable about the subject. I don't have any interest in working in any of those

00:30:54.720 | fields. It has nothing to do with economic motivation of trying to get a job, so I don't

00:30:58.240 | need to prove anything. I just want to learn to try to make the world fit together, and I want

00:31:04.000 | to become a more well-rounded individual. But I don't know enough about any of those areas to

00:31:10.800 | actually design for myself the project and source the resources. So how would you advise somebody

00:31:19.920 | like me if I'm trying to put together a self-learning program in one of those areas? How

00:31:24.880 | would I go about it? So I'll tell you what I did for the MIT challenge, because I think it's very

00:31:30.240 | relevant. And I want to stress that I believe that my task was harder than your task, because

00:31:37.600 | for me it wasn't enough to be, "Well, I want to learn a lot about computer science." It was, "No,

00:31:43.040 | I want to try to get this sort of almost unreasonable facsimile of the MIT education

00:31:48.880 | so that I can tell people that I'm making this facsimile of it." Whereas if I were just

00:31:53.440 | interested in computer science, it would have been a lot easier, because if I can't learn

00:31:57.440 | this specific class X, I could find a book about that and read that. So what I would recommend,

00:32:03.520 | because this is how I started, is I would first find a university that you respect that teaches

00:32:10.640 | that topic. So if you've sort of come up in your research that, let's say, Cambridge does really

00:32:16.320 | good scholarship for theology, or Harvard, their classics program is really good, or something

00:32:23.040 | like that, then what I would do is I would try to figure out what is their undergraduate program

00:32:28.560 | look like for someone who majors in that? What do they have to study? What are the things that are

00:32:33.040 | on that list? And some of those things are going to be general requirements, which you can eliminate,

00:32:37.360 | but you should have a core list of about maybe a dozen courses. And I think what you'll find is it

00:32:42.960 | depends on the specificity of the topic, but a lot of courses are the same in every program.

00:32:49.440 | Like if you're doing engineering, you will always take calculus, you will always take

00:32:57.600 | differential equations, you will always take linear algebra, you will always take mechanics.

00:33:02.400 | Like there are certain courses that it doesn't matter which university you cover,

00:33:06.560 | they will teach that course. And that to me is a good key that, okay, this is a topic that's not

00:33:13.360 | a detail. This is a core thing that anybody who is working in this field would have to have this

00:33:18.480 | knowledge. Whereas perhaps there's some electives, some sort of fancier classes, which someone who

00:33:25.280 | studied this may not have actually studied. So I would try to figure out, okay, what is in the

00:33:30.080 | curriculum and then what of that is core? What is that, what is sort of the core mental disciplines

00:33:36.080 | that you need to have in order to sort of be equals with someone who studied that?

00:33:41.600 | And then what I would do is I would try to look online and there's a lot of resources,

00:33:46.800 | I actually even have a video explaining how to find some additional resources through MIT's

00:33:51.200 | OpenCourseWare, Harvard, Yale, these websites have not only courses online, but they have these

00:33:58.000 | semi-public course websites, which lists the textbooks they use and the reading lists and

00:34:03.600 | all of that material. And I would go through and I would try to find those courses and I would

00:34:09.360 | figure out which book should I be reading, all of this material, because that will give you the

00:34:14.480 | skeleton of the actual curriculum you need. And I think that's part of the real difficulty in

00:34:19.600 | making a curriculum with this kind of breadth is that, like you said, you don't know when you're

00:34:24.400 | reading classics, whether you're reading to the depth that you need to be reading to be equal to

00:34:29.200 | someone who studied it. You don't know whether, oh, I'm just reading the light sort of superficial

00:34:34.240 | stuff, I'm not reading the actual detailed pieces, or I'm not learning the particular kinds of

00:34:38.960 | mental tools that someone has learned in that discipline. And you can skip that problem

00:34:43.600 | by researching the curriculums online, figuring out what courses an actual student would take,

00:34:48.640 | trying to find those courses. And even if it doesn't have full lectures, exams, assignments,

00:34:53.200 | whatever, you can at least look at what textbook they use and what readings they had,

00:34:58.720 | and then you just have to go to your library and look for an intro library alone if they don't have

00:35:02.960 | that particular book, or a university library if it's some specific documents, and just go through

00:35:08.880 | it and read it yourself. And then at least you're going to be doing a first approximation covering

00:35:13.200 | what an actual student who studied classics in Cambridge actually was reading.

00:35:17.280 | In many fields, I know there are different schools of thought. So in economics,

00:35:23.760 | the question would be, am I going to study Chicago School of Economics or focus on Austrian

00:35:29.680 | economics? Or if in the classics, I'm sure there's its own debate. Or maybe I think from reading your

00:35:37.520 | website, I think you're an atheist, I come from a Christian theistic perspective. So obviously,

00:35:45.200 | if we look at certain big questions, whether I'm going to study ethics or whether I'm going to

00:35:50.000 | study some aspects of life, there's going to be a different perspective depending on who the

00:35:57.200 | teachers are. Do you have any thoughts around how, if you're a novice in a field of study,

00:36:02.960 | to actually sit down and understand which school you should focus on? So for example, if I take

00:36:10.800 | Chicago School of Economics, I'm going to have a very different perspective of life than if I

00:36:14.800 | study with the Mises Institute from their perspective of economics. How would a beginner

00:36:19.840 | figure out what school to align themselves with? Well, it's an interesting question. I think

00:36:26.480 | a lot of these schools of thought, at least in—let me preface this—in a discipline that I would say

00:36:34.080 | is mature, that has some body of actual knowledge, which is more or less uncontroversial. There are

00:36:42.800 | definitely fields where, you know, maybe literary critique or something like that, where there's no

00:36:48.880 | real resting point. Well, everybody agrees on this at least. Whereas economics, you know, there is a

00:36:54.400 | difference in the Austrian School of Thought or Keynesian or Chicago School, or these different

00:37:01.280 | figures and philosophies. But if you do an intro economics class, that's going to be the same,

00:37:08.320 | regardless. It's probably even maybe until your fourth year of economics undergrad that now you're

00:37:14.160 | starting to get to a point where you're seeing a real clash of worldviews. And I would say any

00:37:18.880 | respectable institution would, to a certain extent, teach the controversy. So if there is,

00:37:24.960 | you know, people who think macronomics is, you know, mostly monetary policy or mostly fiscal

00:37:31.200 | policy, that if you read an honest textbook, even if it is written by someone in that school of

00:37:36.320 | thought, they will present both viewpoints. And it will only be really until you're getting into a

00:37:41.440 | quite advanced area where you're kind of developing a paradigm that's around, this is the right way of

00:37:47.520 | thinking of it, and those other ways are wrong. And so I think that probably viewpoint or school

00:37:53.680 | of thought is less important than most people think, at least if we're talking about a domain

00:37:59.680 | of interest where there is kind of some foundation for the scholarship. There is some kind of, okay,

00:38:05.840 | well, we do agree, we have a consensus on this, and then we're arguing about some higher level

00:38:11.200 | detail. So, you know, Keynes, Hayek, and Friedman, they all agree that like supply and demand exists.

00:38:19.840 | Like, that's not into question. That's not something that we're, you know, it's not like

00:38:24.080 | there's some other school of economics that doesn't use supply and demand, but they use some other

00:38:29.120 | concept or some other model. So if you're learning it, I think that you can go a long way before

00:38:35.120 | you're into the zone where schools of thought really are very important. And by then, you should

00:38:41.440 | have enough sophistication within the topic that you would at least understand what the schools

00:38:45.520 | of thought are. So if I'm studying philosophy, then it's going to be a while before I'm really

00:38:51.600 | pushed into, okay, should I be studying analytic philosophy or continental philosophy or something

00:38:57.840 | like that, right? Right. You recently gave yourself another learning project, which you titled

00:39:05.040 | "The Year Without English." What was that, and what did you learn from that experience? Right, so

00:39:11.520 | year after the MIT challenge, I started this new project with actually a friend of mine. So this

00:39:17.680 | was a partner project. It wasn't me doing it alone. And this friend of mine, we had talked a long time

00:39:25.360 | about traveling. He was going to go off and do his master's, and it was a good opportunity for that.

00:39:30.080 | And somehow the idea of us traveling and learning languages came up, because I'd learned French

00:39:37.040 | before I lived in France, and I really found living in France through French, through the

00:39:43.760 | language, being just such a completely different experience. And this idea came up of, well, what if

00:39:50.080 | you went to four different countries side by side, three months each, and the goal would be to, as

00:39:57.040 | much as possible, not speak in English. So we wouldn't speak in English to each other. We wouldn't

00:40:01.600 | speak in English to anybody we met. We would just be speaking in this language that we're learning.

00:40:06.320 | How would that change the experience of travel? How would that change our ability to

00:40:12.320 | understand these cultures and these very different worldviews? And that's what we did. So we went

00:40:17.840 | to Spain for three months, then Brazil, China, and then finally Korea. And China and Korea were a

00:40:25.280 | little bit harder to maintain the no English rule. I did pretty good in China. My friends

00:40:31.120 | struggled more than I did. And in Korea, we both struggled with not speaking English. We definitely

00:40:37.360 | had some moments where we spoke some English. But for the most part, it was basically a year without

00:40:43.040 | English. And it was through this lens of every place that we go to, we're trying to interact

00:40:48.720 | just in that language of the country. And I think it gives a very unique perspective

00:40:54.480 | on travel that maybe you wouldn't get if you were just hanging out with other tourists or

00:40:58.320 | other people who speak English. Did you take any kind of external

00:41:03.360 | tests or exams in order to kind of get a gauge of your proficiency after three months in each place?

00:41:10.480 | Right. Well, originally, the plan was not to do tests. Originally, I discussed it with my friend.

00:41:15.920 | Because doing a test, it is very different, in my opinion, than social immersion. Because

00:41:24.080 | writing a written paper test requires different skills. And we didn't want it to morph into

00:41:28.800 | a studying activity where now we're not trying to interact with the local culture and experience it

00:41:34.400 | that way. We're trying to pass an exam. So I originally, I was not going to do it. But then

00:41:39.360 | when I was in China, I felt confident enough that no, you know, I put in a lot of effort here, I do

00:41:45.520 | want to know sort of where my place is on sort of a more formal scale. So for Chinese, which would be,

00:41:51.680 | I would say, given the difficulty of the language and the time constraints, the one that I put the

00:41:57.600 | most effort into, I did write an exam. The Chinese exams for foreigners are divided into six levels.

00:42:06.240 | And so I wrote and passed level four, which would be, according to them, an upper intermediate.

00:42:11.200 | That's great. I think that in some ways, it's funny, I'm pretty much passionately anti-tests

00:42:20.080 | as far as the way that they're often done in our society. But they are useful for, I think,

00:42:24.880 | for a mature learner who understands what they're trying to do to gauge their progress. I remember

00:42:29.280 | years ago when I took a Spanish exam, and they, I don't remember the level now, but they gave me an

00:42:33.840 | advanced fluency level. And I thought, oh, wow. Okay. So now when people ask me, are you fluent?

00:42:38.240 | I can say, yes, indeed, I am. I passed this external measuring benchmark that shows me that

00:42:45.600 | at least I can answer that in an honest way. Because I know how much I don't know and how

00:42:50.640 | much I don't understand and how much work I need to do. But at least it gives me a little bit of

00:42:54.720 | confidence that at least by somebody's external standard, I have a way of measuring my progress.

00:43:00.000 | Oh, I completely agree. And if I had gone back, I probably would have done another one for Spanish,

00:43:05.600 | because I probably, I don't know exactly what my level would be for Spanish, but it would be,

00:43:10.160 | in terms of actual proficiency, my Spanish is better than my Chinese, but

00:43:14.480 | Chinese is a lot more difficult. But I feel like part of the reason, it was maybe a little bit of

00:43:21.840 | an error not to do the exam for Spanish, but Portuguese and Korean, I wasn't studying as

00:43:26.480 | intensely. But the thing is, another advantage is that if you have a test, then for someone who

00:43:32.960 | doesn't actually speak that language, they can get a reasonable assessment of what you're doing.

00:43:37.440 | Because the other way we were documenting it was through making a lot of video and a lot of

00:43:42.400 | recordings. But the problem is that if you don't actually speak that language, pretty much anything

00:43:47.920 | sounds fluent. Whereas you hear someone speaking English and their English is not very good,

00:43:52.560 | you know immediately because you speak English well. Whereas if you didn't speak English,

00:43:56.320 | then just listening to someone seem to speak English is almost the same thing, right?

00:44:01.120 | Yeah, absolutely. Right. How do you make a living?

00:44:06.640 | So, after I graduated from business school, at that point, the income from my blog and my website

00:44:16.160 | was enough to go full-time. And I've been full-time-ish ever since, although I've had

00:44:20.640 | these sort of projects that become my full-time work while I'm running the business. And basically,

00:44:26.640 | the business I have is that I sell eBooks and courses, mostly related to personal productivity

00:44:33.040 | and teaching people how to learn better. So, after I did the MIT challenge, I have a program

00:44:37.360 | called Learn More, Study Less, which is a condensed version of a lot of studying tactics that I've

00:44:43.840 | learned for how to learn things better, how to remember things better, how to take notes better,

00:44:47.360 | that kind of thing. And I offer those to the people who read my blog, and that's enough to

00:44:52.960 | support me. But you were actually able to set that up while you were in college?

00:44:57.040 | Yeah. I was always, when I was starting, I was always very interested in business and especially

00:45:02.640 | this sort of new online entrepreneurship. And so, even when I was getting into blogging,

00:45:06.960 | I was leaning in that direction. I wasn't one of these people that was just writing and then,

00:45:11.520 | "Oh, I just accidentally made a business out of it." That definitely didn't happen that way.

00:45:15.920 | But I did, when I was in university, I was writing and I was experimenting with different models for

00:45:22.800 | how I could get paid for that. And I don't really like ads. I don't really like making money

00:45:32.400 | as commission off of products that maybe aren't my own because it just depends on how much I want

00:45:38.320 | to recommend them. And those were sort of the dominant strategies when I got started. And then

00:45:43.120 | more recently, people have been offering their own courses. And I really, that resonates with

00:45:47.440 | me because I feel like that's the purest expression of what I'm doing. So, if you like the blog, then

00:45:52.960 | you'll probably like what I have to say in more detail and with more sophistication on those

00:45:58.000 | topics. That's neat. I wish, one of the things that I, I don't want to say regret because that

00:46:07.600 | implies, I don't really regret it. But looking back now, it seems like I wish I'd had the

00:46:14.160 | foresight. I spent a lot of time in working to pay, excuse me, in college to pay for college.

00:46:19.520 | And looking back on it now, I wish I'd used that time where instead of working so that I could pay

00:46:24.720 | for classes, I wish I'd spent more of that time investing into my own business. And I always had

00:46:31.040 | ideas about business, but I was so busy working jobs to earn money to pay for school so that I

00:46:36.880 | could go and get a job. I feel like I wound up, you know, six, five, six, seven years behind

00:46:43.760 | what I could have done if I'd had a different vision at the time. And it sounds like,

00:46:48.960 | I think it's neat that you came out with an ability to at least make a starting income off of

00:46:55.120 | your online activities. I don't, I don't deny that in any of my ratings because when I look at the

00:47:02.080 | sort of, you know, there's the prior probability when you're going into something like this. And,

00:47:06.880 | and I remember looking at, you know, okay, what is the amount of blogs that are out there? And

00:47:11.120 | then like how many of those have this sort of threshold audience to be making an income? And

00:47:16.160 | at least when I was getting started with this, which was eight years ago, that was a vanishingly

00:47:20.800 | small number. So I don't think that what I did was necessarily the most financially prudent thing,

00:47:26.720 | but I do think that it did work out in my case. And I do have to say this because I know a lot

00:47:32.640 | of people that, you know, especially people I know personally, because when you know someone

00:47:36.400 | personally, the example's a little more salient, who see what I'm doing with blogging and stuff

00:47:42.080 | online and they're like, yeah, I should be doing that too. And I say, well, that's great. But from

00:47:46.560 | the moment I had the idea to the moment I was doing it full time was eight years. So if you're

00:47:50.800 | not willing to put in eight years, it's maybe not something you should even really think about too

00:47:55.520 | much because freelance income, for example, is not nearly as glamorous, but you can, you know,

00:48:02.640 | get a decent income doing freelance work. Maybe not writing, writing is a little bit harder to

00:48:06.720 | do freelance right now, but for a lot of skills you can do go from zero to decent freelance income

00:48:13.200 | in, you know, six months to a year, depending on the skill that you have. So certainly not eight

00:48:17.680 | and certainly not eight with a vanishingly small probability of success.

00:48:21.520 | Right. One benefit, I think there are other benefits in addition to income though, one of

00:48:28.560 | which is especially salient to me now. I started this show full time about four months ago. And so

00:48:35.440 | prior to, thank you. And the growth has been great, but, but switching to this side of the,

00:48:41.520 | instead of being a consumer to actually being a producer of, of online content.

00:48:45.440 | One thing I've learned is the VAT that I never appreciated before is the value of an online

00:48:50.640 | presence. And I always knew it intellectually, but because I previously worked behind the rules of

00:48:56.160 | the financial services industry where I wasn't able to freely publish and publicize my ideas

00:49:02.480 | and thoughts, I didn't, I just kind of ignored it and figured, well, I'll get to it when I can.

00:49:06.240 | But now in the process of finding and vetting guests, if you don't have an online presence,

00:49:13.680 | you don't have an ability to reach a much greater, broader exposure than

00:49:20.000 | you're hurting yourself if you don't have an online presence.

00:49:24.320 | Oh, I completely agree. So I want to add to that because I mentioned with you right now,

00:49:30.240 | my business model, which is that doing this, these courses and eBooks, which is very good

00:49:36.080 | because I have a lot of control. But the interesting thing is that I think, which is

00:49:41.360 | worth stating is that if you have an online presence, particularly if you have a larger

00:49:45.680 | online presence, so if your readership for, if you have a particularly niche topic that is relevant

00:49:52.160 | to your professional ambitions, then, you know, in the thousands, or if you have a more broad,

00:49:57.600 | sort of less professionally oriented website, like my own, maybe in the tens of thousands,

00:50:03.040 | the amount of opportunities that people will send in your inbox every single day is just astounding.

00:50:08.560 | And I'm, I think about, you know, when I was getting started with this, that I often don't

00:50:13.440 | even read emails that would have been like the highlight of my week eight years ago. So I know

00:50:18.400 | that having an online presence, especially having a blog where you are publishing your thinking on

00:50:27.120 | something, how you think about the world and your worldview is very powerful because first of all,

00:50:33.200 | most people are too lazy to do that, or they're not, they don't have enough interesting ideas to

00:50:37.440 | do that. But if you are someone that is, if you do have a lot of interesting ideas, you do read a lot

00:50:42.480 | of books, you do want to share that with people, how you think about things, and you do have the

00:50:46.400 | discipline to actually execute that on a regular basis, then not only are you in a minority there,

00:50:51.280 | but you're also, it's also functions as a resume. So anybody who comes and sees your website,

00:50:57.280 | will know whether they resonate with what you're talking about. And if they do resonate with what

00:51:00.560 | you're talking about, it's so much more powerful, I think, than, you know, just whatever your cover

00:51:06.480 | letter is. And we were talking about the MIT challenge. And someone said, well, yes, but you

00:51:11.360 | like have a large blog. And so that's also part of the reason that you were going to get exposure on

00:51:15.600 | Reddit. And also, you know, people might offer you a job opportunity. And I say, yes, that's,

00:51:20.000 | that's exactly the case that, you know, me blogging about it and building an audience around what I

00:51:24.400 | was doing was huge for, for increasing exposure to the ideas, but also to put me in contact with

00:51:31.280 | people that could facilitate those goals. I've received more business opportunities

00:51:35.200 | in the last four months than I could have believed. And it's amazing to me how many

00:51:40.800 | opportunities and you don't need the idea that everyone is going to go out and create a blog

00:51:45.840 | with 400,000 readers and sit back and make money just from their writing, I think it's silly.

00:51:51.680 | Some people can't, and that's great for those, but just, but, but having one person, the right

00:51:57.680 | person read and notice your work is so valuable. And the compound effect over time, when I think

00:52:04.480 | of the writers and podcasters, because I'm in the audio space, but when I think of the people whose

00:52:11.600 | ideas and thoughts I've consumed over the years, how those ideas and thoughts have stayed with me

00:52:16.560 | for years, and now I'm in a situation where I'm public, you know, I'm publicizing their ideas and

00:52:22.320 | I always give them credit. Well, I know for a fact people go, because I mentioned their work,

00:52:27.440 | people go and check them out. People go and buy their books and people go and consume their

00:52:31.680 | content. And there is a compound effect that from every success, like you said, eight years for you,

00:52:39.680 | I've not found a successful content publisher who hasn't had that same growth curve.

00:52:46.640 | Definitely. There's a huge amount of exponential, like there's an exponential factor to the growth

00:52:54.880 | there that the thing is about having an online presence where you are producing content. So as

00:53:02.080 | opposed to having like a social media profile where I guess Twitter and Facebook, you can be

00:53:06.960 | writing status updates, which can be perceived as content, although it's a little bit lower entry

00:53:12.240 | barrier. But if you have a blog or a podcast or a YouTube channel, you know, something that requires

00:53:17.760 | a little bit of effort to maintain regularly. One of the advantages is that it extends your

00:53:25.200 | networking power so greatly because it is always in the background networking on behalf of you.

00:53:32.080 | It's always making new connections, making new friends that you don't have to even interact with

00:53:37.520 | directly. And so I think that's really powerful. And for a lot of people, I think especially if

00:53:42.880 | you are wanting to go for superstar status in your career, that you're not just wanting to go for,

00:53:48.160 | you know, an okay job at a middle level tier, you want to be in the elite, then I think having a

00:53:54.320 | blog where you publish your thoughts is really powerful, even if it's just once a week, a short

00:53:59.040 | post once a week is really powerful because it just networks for you behalf in the background

00:54:05.440 | at all times. And I think that's, you know, it doesn't happen in one year. It takes about maybe,

00:54:10.240 | probably if you're not taking it super seriously, maybe a decade. But that's a decade where this

00:54:15.840 | sort of vehicle is just working for you in the background, generating opportunities.

00:54:19.360 | The last question I want to ask you is about reading. I would love to ask you about learning,

00:54:24.960 | but you have an entire book on it. I don't know how you would summarize a book into a few minutes.

00:54:29.840 | I think I'm going to buy your book and read it because at least from the table of contents,

00:54:32.800 | it looks very interesting to me. But I want to ask you about rapid reading.

00:54:36.320 | I think I read pretty quickly, but I've never formally, I mean, I read a lot and I read

00:54:43.120 | quickly. I haven't tested it to see how fast I can comprehend, but I've never formally studied

00:54:48.240 | speed reading. And I think that you have. Do you have some lessons, experiences,

00:54:53.200 | learnings and thoughts that you could share on the topic of reading more quickly?

00:54:56.640 | So you've caught me at an interesting time, actually, because I'm just in the process of

00:55:01.680 | doing a major research piece, updating my thoughts on speed reading and gathering the relevant sort

00:55:07.760 | of science and that kind of thing. And I feel like there is some benefit in what I'll call

00:55:14.880 | intelligent skimming and scanning. So being able to know what you're looking for in a target

00:55:21.280 | document, approach it in a focused way and not necessarily just read everything at the same speed

00:55:28.960 | because you have to just get every single piece of information. So I do think that there's some

00:55:33.040 | benefit of that. And that's largely how I've been from the perspective that I've been teaching

00:55:37.680 | speed reading methods in my courses. But my original work on speed reading, I think

00:55:43.360 | there is a sort of idea that everybody wants to read faster. And I think most of my research has

00:55:50.000 | turned up the idea that you can make some speed gains, but certainly not when people say things

00:55:56.960 | like 20,000 words a minute or you can flip through it like a phone book. That just doesn't square up

00:56:02.160 | with the scientific understanding of how people read and how we actually process things on a

00:56:07.120 | physical level. But I do think that there's a lot of gains that can be made by increasing fluency.

00:56:12.960 | So fluency means your ability to quickly understand sort of the basic concepts in a document. So if

00:56:21.360 | you're reading a journal article in psychology and they're using a lot of jargon words that you

00:56:25.680 | don't understand, that's going to slow you down. Not only is it going to slow you down, it's going

00:56:29.600 | to make it harder for you to skim. It's going to make it harder for you to detect, is this something

00:56:33.600 | worth reading or not worth reading? And I've recently been shifting a lot more to what I call

00:56:38.880 | active reading, which is this idea of improving fluency, improving the ability to detect what's

00:56:44.640 | important in a document and what's not important and always be focused on that. And I think that

00:56:49.840 | if you're good at that, that can be a good substitute to speed reading. If you're good at

00:56:53.600 | the ability to sort of understand the basic concepts in your field, and if you don't understand them,

00:57:00.080 | have a systematic process for learning them quickly. And that allows you to process a lot

00:57:04.000 | more information. And when I look at people who process just huge amounts of information,

00:57:08.880 | this seems to be the way that they're doing it. Speed reading techniques are less popular

00:57:15.360 | amongst the sort of elite rank of information processors. It seems to be more a case where

00:57:22.240 | people have really high degrees of fluency, so they can take a book, understand where it's coming

00:57:27.760 | from, either read what's important for them in a short period of time, or if they do go through

00:57:32.720 | and read everything, they're not getting slowed down by some of the ideas. They're able to quickly

00:57:39.040 | process it and put it in the right framework. That's super helpful to me, because I've never,

00:57:44.080 | I haven't taken tests, but from, so I can't say I read at such and such rate, but I feel like my

00:57:49.840 | reading rate changes depending on the material. I can read an 800 or 1000 page Tom Clancy novel in

00:57:56.640 | a day on vacation, a day or two, just because it's just pure fluff. I'm just absorbing the story,

00:58:03.760 | and I can go through that very quickly. I'm very fluent with financial concepts, so I can read a

00:58:09.440 | mainstream personal finance book, and by read I mean figure out what the book is about and what

00:58:17.680 | it's saying. I can read a mainstream personal finance book in 15 minutes at Barnes & Noble,

00:58:21.840 | because I just look at it and say, "Okay, this, got it, yeah, skim, it's heading, okay, I see the

00:58:26.400 | point, got it, I figured out what he's saying." But if I sit down with a financial journal article,

00:58:32.720 | or if I sit down with something that's meaty, I do it with a highlighter and a pen, and I re-read,

00:58:39.360 | and I go through, and if I sit down with something in a new field, and I have to figure out like,

00:58:43.680 | "What's this? I don't know this word. What is this word?" and I'm trying to figure out,

00:58:48.400 | and what's the context here? And so I often look at the, never having formally studied,

00:58:54.240 | I look at the books, and I was like, "I don't need to know how to put a pen on a paper and read fast,

00:58:58.400 | because I can do that." But sometimes if the information is incredibly dense,

00:59:03.120 | I don't want to read fast. I need to highlight and underline and do a calculation and challenge

00:59:09.280 | something. So it helps me feel better about myself and my learning ability, if you're saying that's

00:59:14.480 | what other people have found. Well, I think so. And I think, like my sort of analogy to draw is

00:59:20.480 | that even though English is more or less one language, there's a relationship between how

00:59:29.040 | you would learn to read a foreign language. So you mentioned that you have a decent Spanish

00:59:33.840 | ability, but I imagine your Spanish ability is less than your English ability. And so if I were

00:59:40.160 | to give you a Spanish text, now you said you were at NAD's Flitzy, so I don't really know

00:59:44.000 | whether reading Spanish is also a breeze for you, but if I were to give you a book in Spanish,

00:59:49.200 | it would probably take you longer. Maybe you'd understand it, but it would take you longer

00:59:53.600 | because you'd pause more at some words familiar to you. You'd be like, "Oh yeah, what does that

00:59:57.680 | mean again?" And I do this too, so I'm saying the same thing. And use that analogy within English.

01:00:05.280 | So use that to, "Okay, I'm reading these financial documents." It's a little bit like reading

01:00:09.680 | Spanish, that they're using words, they're using sentence structures, they're using patterns of

01:00:15.360 | dialogue and argument that are not familiar with you. And so it requires more of your working

01:00:20.240 | memory to process. You're more likely to go into dead ends of thinking, thinking that they were

01:00:24.560 | talking about this, but they're actually talking about that. Or you're unable to get a sufficiently

01:00:30.480 | vivid mental picture, so they'll be talking about some concept and you are on some level

01:00:37.520 | understanding everything, but not vividly. They're just talking about abstractions.

01:00:41.680 | And the more fluency you gain with that, so the more you break those concepts down and you

01:00:47.280 | understand it, the faster you can read those documents, just like you can read the personal

01:00:50.960 | finance books. Has anybody talked about the connection between memorizing information

01:00:58.480 | versus not? Because I know for me, I made a decision. I don't have to try to memorize stuff

01:01:05.280 | because oftentimes I would slow down to try to memorize stuff and I realized, "This is hurting

01:01:09.920 | me. I'm an adult. I don't need to regurgitate something on a stupid test to show that I

01:01:14.400 | memorized this number. All I need to know is where to find the information." And so I just

01:01:20.400 | completely quit memorizing information and just focused on, "Okay, here I recognize this is...

01:01:26.560 | So I look, here's the chart. I know what the chart's saying. I don't need to try to memorize

01:01:31.760 | anything. I just need to remember, oh, if I ever need that chart and I ever, ever need that

01:01:35.600 | information, there's a quick search function." And I feel like this is a skill, to me, that was

01:01:40.160 | helpful. And in a world where you have the almighty Google at your arm's length at all times,

01:01:48.960 | I feel like this is a skill that we need to learn and teach, that it's not about the recall of

01:01:54.640 | information. Information is immediately accessible to all of us, but it's about the organization

01:02:01.280 | and the synthesis and the conceptual framework of information. Is there anything in the research

01:02:06.000 | on that? So that's very interesting, too, because I have exactly the same perspective you did,

01:02:12.080 | both with the research I've done and without it. One of the things that was interesting to me

01:02:16.400 | in doing more research on how learning works is that memory is important, that when you say

01:02:23.920 | someone, it's just about how to be able to reason between things and not have a lot of knowledge.

01:02:28.960 | They actually, if you look at experts on pretty much any topic, they have huge volumes of factual

01:02:34.880 | information about those topics. So memory is important, but I think that what you are saying

01:02:40.240 | about it is right, that it's not about shallowly memorizing lists of facts the way that we had to

01:02:46.000 | do in school for tests. That's not really the way of doing it. What I like to think of it is that

01:02:51.680 | if you read something and you really understand it, then you're probably going to remember it

01:02:56.240 | a lot better. You're going to remember a lot of the details a lot better than if you didn't

01:02:59.440 | understand it. And so what I try to emphasize in my courses and in my writing is performing those

01:03:05.200 | self-checks on your understanding, performing those self-checks so that you're not just reading

01:03:09.040 | something not in your head, but you wouldn't be able to explain it to another person. You wouldn't

01:03:12.960 | be able to follow that up and test yourself on that. So what I recommend in my courses, so if

01:03:19.280 | you're going to take notes on a book, you mentioned highlighting as an example, and highlighting is

01:03:24.080 | probably not the most effective way to read a book because you can highlight without really

01:03:29.120 | understanding. Whereas if you had to read a page and you had to either out loud or on a notebook

01:03:35.760 | paraphrase what was the main point of this page and you had to summarize and paraphrase it,

01:03:40.400 | if you had to do that, then that requires a certain level of understanding. And I think that

01:03:46.720 | if you are doing that, then as a result, you're going to be thinking about the material more

01:03:50.400 | deeply. You're going to remember it and thus you're going to have the same effect. You're

01:03:54.480 | going to have a lot of factual knowledge and memory to build that expertise, but you're not

01:03:58.480 | going to have it in a shallow, unconnected way, which is sort of how they encourage people to do

01:04:04.240 | it in school sometimes. Super interesting to me. I'll look forward, if you're publishing it,

01:04:09.680 | I'll look forward to reading what you write when you synthesize your research on it.

01:04:13.120 | Yeah, yeah. Anything else that you would like to mention? Take a moment and mention anything else

01:04:18.080 | that you'd like to mention as we close and make sure to plug your books and mention what they're

01:04:21.760 | about. So, sure, sure. Check them out. Well, yeah, if anyone wants to check out my blog,

01:04:27.680 | like I do have books, I do have courses, but I highly recommend that people just go to scottiech

01:04:32.320 | young.com/blog and I have tons of articles there. There's also a free newsletter that just basically

01:04:38.640 | just once every two weeks I send out some of my more recent articles. And if you sign up for that,

01:04:44.000 | I also give a copy of a smaller rapid learning ebook. So this is a smaller free ebook that I

01:04:50.400 | give out to people who join the newsletter, which explains some of the kinds of stuff that we're

01:04:55.040 | talking about here, how to learn more quickly. And I also include a list, like sort of a condensed

01:05:00.960 | digest, which is basically the best writing I have on various topics. So if you did enjoy this

01:05:05.840 | conversation, you did sit through however long this podcast was and thought it was interesting,

01:05:10.240 | go to scottiechyoung.com and get that because I honestly, I don't try to sell anybody anything

01:05:16.720 | unless they're completely convinced about all the free material I have. And I have over a thousand

01:05:20.800 | articles on the website. So I really just, I want people to benefit from this kind of information.

01:05:26.880 | It's fantastic. Scott, thanks so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate it.

01:05:29.680 | No problem. Thanks for having me.

01:05:31.040 | Now, here's my question for you. What is your plan for your education this next year?

01:05:39.520 | What is it that you would like to study? What are you going to focus on?

01:05:43.040 | Many times people this time of year would like to set out some resolutions for themselves for

01:05:50.720 | next year, and that's great. But any resolution that you set or any goal that you have personally

01:05:56.800 | needs to be accompanied by a few things. One of those things is a plan of education.

01:06:02.240 | It also needs to be accompanied with a plan of action. But one thing is a plan of education.

01:06:09.440 | So I would encourage you to do something with the content of today's show. Think about what

01:06:14.720 | you're interested in learning and try to sketch out at least a rough outline of how you're going

01:06:18.880 | to approach that subject. I've got a few areas that I'm focusing on for this next year. Some of

01:06:24.560 | them are business related, some of them are not. All of them, however, require me to step up my

01:06:30.880 | level of education. And in a world where information is increasing dramatically, exponentially every

01:06:38.640 | single day, we need to learn and develop and practice the skills of being able to deal with

01:06:44.080 | that information, pulling out what's useful to us, discarding what's not useful in order to build

01:06:50.960 | knowledge and wisdom over time. So I hope the content of this show today was helpful for you.

01:06:59.040 | That's it for today's show. I thank you guys so much for listening. If you'd like to get in touch

01:07:03.440 | with me, feel free to email me joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, twitter @radicalpf,

01:07:08.400 | and facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Thank you for those of you who've been joining the

01:07:13.280 | membership program. I appreciate each and every one of you. I am in the process of revamping that,

01:07:17.920 | working on some behind the scenes content, working on some technical stuff. That's my major focus.

01:07:22.960 | I would encourage you, I've decided, I mentioned this briefly on yesterday's show right at the end

01:07:26.560 | as I was running out of time. If you're interested in joining that program, I think I'm going to be

01:07:30.880 | adjusting a few things. And because I have so much more behind the scenes content planned,

01:07:36.880 | and I'm also going to expand the ways that you can support the show, that I'm going to raise the

01:07:40.800 | price on that membership program. But I am of course, assuming I can get the technology squared

01:07:46.800 | away, which I will, I'm going to give special attention and accommodation to my founding

01:07:53.840 | members. Those of you who have signed up at the beginning here with really nothing behind the

01:07:58.320 | paywall. So I'm going to be raising the price on the irregulars program and building out the content.

01:08:03.360 | I'll be building out the content first before I raise the price to make sure it's worth it.

01:08:06.960 | But if you are interested in supporting the show, that is the way that I have designed for you to do

01:08:11.120 | so. And it may be in your best interest. If you're interested in good deals, it may be in your best

01:08:16.320 | interest to join now. So thank you for considering that. I hope you all are having an awesome December

01:08:22.160 | here. I am going to be here for the next few days, and then I'm going to be shutting the show down

01:08:27.040 | for two weeks. I will be releasing some interview shows during the week of Christmas and the week of

01:08:32.080 | New Year's. So I plan to do that and release some interview shows for those. Tomorrow I'll be back

01:08:37.280 | with a show on some end of year business and tax and investment planning ideas. Some things that

01:08:41.600 | you can do here at the end of the year to square away and lower your tax bill when you're doing

01:08:46.480 | taxes next year. So stay tuned for that. Thursday will be an interview with Jim Rawls. Friday will

01:08:50.720 | be your Q&A. Call in those questions on the voicemail line. I love to get the questions on

01:08:55.520 | the phone. I give those priority over email questions. So if you have a question for me,

01:08:59.920 | go to the website. You can pull it up on your telephone or on your computer. Leave me a

01:09:03.520 | voicemail, and I will do my best to answer it on a Friday Q&A show. I love doing those shows,

01:09:08.400 | and I know many of you really enjoy listening to them. I hope you like that kind of variety.

01:09:13.120 | Thank you guys, each one of you, for listening. I really value you. Have a great day.

01:09:16.640 | Thank you for listening to today's show. This show is intended to provide

01:09:24.320 | entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment. Your situation is unique,

01:09:32.000 | and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you. This show is not,

01:09:39.600 | and is not intended, to be any form of financial advice. Please, develop a team of professional

01:09:49.280 | advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy, and consult them because they

01:09:57.680 | are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific

01:10:04.720 | answers to your questions. Hold them accountable for your results. I've done my absolute best to

01:10:11.360 | be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person, and I make mistakes. If you spot a

01:10:17.120 | mistake in something I've said, please come by the show page and comment so we can all learn

01:10:22.080 | together. Until tomorrow, thanks for being here. With Kroger brand products from Ralph's, you can

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RPF0120-Scott_Young_Interview