A Teenagers Guide To The Deep Life

00:00:00.000 | All right, let's do one more question. What do we got?

00:00:01.520 | Okay. Questions from K-man. Do you have any recommendations for my 16-year-old son who is

00:00:08.720 | now reading your books and listening to your podcast? He would like to create multiple

00:00:12.720 | streams of income and enjoy a deeply satisfying life. Let us know. We'll be listening.

00:00:18.240 | Well, I mean, first of all, good for your son. Let that be the underlying piece of this answer,

00:00:27.920 | is just to have someone at that age who is thinking so intentionally about their life

00:00:33.760 | is like a superpower. When you're 35 and thinking really intentional about your life,

00:00:40.000 | it's like welcome to the club. Everyone at that point is starting to think through,

00:00:43.120 | like, "Oh, what works for me? What doesn't? How should I organize my efforts? What do I want to

00:00:46.480 | do?" At 16, almost no one's doing that. Or if you're doing that, they're doing it in a very

00:00:50.400 | simplistic formalism, like the millennial obsession with following your passion, some notion of,

00:00:56.560 | "Well, there's one job I'm meant to do, and my job is to figure out what that is."

00:00:59.520 | Very few people your age are thinking so systematically. So that by itself is going

00:01:04.320 | to yield lots of benefits, irregardless of any particular advice I now give you going forward.

00:01:10.480 | Now, let me provide you, I took some notes on this. I was looking at this question before.

00:01:16.160 | So I want to try to provide some off, relatively rough advice for you as someone who was young,

00:01:22.400 | to lay a foundation of support of sorts that will support a deep life as you enter adulthood.

00:01:30.080 | Now, the main thing I want to say to set up this foundation before we get to these specifics is,

00:01:36.080 | be wary about getting too specific right now at your age at 16 about what your sort of post-schooling

00:01:43.600 | adult life is going to be like in terms of specific sources of income, etc. It's very

00:01:49.360 | difficult as a 16-year-old, for example, to get 23, what your life's going to be like at 23,

00:01:54.480 | to get those details right. Because you're not, you don't have knowledge yet of what you're going

00:01:59.680 | to be exposed to and what opportunities are going to be open to you. So this is really the right

00:02:03.120 | time to be much more laying a foundation for being able to take advantage of opportunities

00:02:08.400 | and build this lifestyle when the time comes as you enter adulthood. So I would say, don't worry

00:02:14.400 | about the specifics yet. Let's work on you right now to make you into a deep life generation machine

00:02:20.880 | so that you, four or five years from now, is going to be well-suited to start crafting a really cool

00:02:26.560 | life. So here's a few things I wrote down. Number one, be 10 times more organized and intentional

00:02:33.600 | about your academic work than everyone else you know. Most students are terrible at study

00:02:40.640 | strategies. Most students are terrible at time management as a student. If you are not, you can

00:02:46.720 | reduce the amount of time it requires for you to perform your schoolwork at a certain level by a

00:02:51.440 | factor of three or four. It really is almost like a magic trick. I learned this from experience.

00:02:56.560 | You start treating your student life like a job, like a 35-year-old would treat their job,

00:03:04.240 | and it becomes significantly easier. Its footprint on your life becomes significantly easier. The

00:03:09.520 | amount of stress it causes will reduce down to very little, and you will be able to perform

00:03:13.520 | academically at the very height of your potential without grinding it out, without overloading or

00:03:20.560 | overburdening yourself. So you know, I wrote a book about this, How to Become a Straight A Student.

00:03:25.600 | That's for college kids. I wrote another book called How to Be a High School Superstar.

00:03:29.760 | If you look at the part one playbook for that book, I adapt a lot of those study and time

00:03:36.240 | management advice from college to the high school context, so you might find value in both of those.

00:03:41.360 | So the Straight A Student book and the part one playbook from How to Become a High School Superstar.

00:03:46.640 | The story I always tell is, I was a reasonable student my first year of college.

00:03:51.840 | At the end of the first year of college, I got serious about my academic strategies. I started

00:03:58.800 | treating the problem of how do you do well as a student like an entrepreneur would treat the

00:04:04.000 | problem of how do I learn how to market, how do I find a new audience, because I'd run a business,

00:04:08.000 | I was used to that way of thinking. I brought that way of thinking to my academic work, and I jumped

00:04:12.960 | from a good student, B+/A- student, to 4.0s starting my sophomore fall, every single quarter

00:04:22.160 | till I graduated, except for one A- in my senior spring. I ended up graduating with a 3.95 GPA.

00:04:28.240 | If I had done this one quarter earlier, I probably would have been the valedictorian of my class at

00:04:33.840 | Dartmouth. I did not get smarter between the summer of my freshman year and my sophomore year.

00:04:39.280 | What made me unique is I was one of the only people on that campus to start experimenting with

00:04:44.400 | what's the right way to take notes, what's the right way to study for a math test, what's the

00:04:48.320 | right way to study for an art history test, how can I manage my time so I don't have to ever work

00:04:52.480 | past 8 p.m. It was much easier than you would think. All right, so be 10 times more organized

00:04:57.040 | and tense about your academic work. Number two, introduce some discipline into your life.

00:05:02.240 | So you get used to the idea of having a disciplined life. There's things that are

00:05:07.360 | important but hard, and you're willing to do that work over time and see the results in the long

00:05:11.440 | term. You probably should have some sort of physical discipline, so some sort of sports or

00:05:16.640 | training, something that you do that will put you in better health or shape than just sort of the

00:05:21.520 | average person you know who's not a serious athlete. You should have some sort of mental

00:05:24.960 | discipline in there built around the reading of hard physical books. I'd probably recommend that

00:05:30.160 | above all else for someone your age, that you have some sort of systematic program of study

00:05:35.360 | involving real books that you read, you have set times you put aside. Have two or three things like

00:05:40.320 | this just so you have a self-image of someone who is disciplined. And again, the details don't

00:05:47.360 | matter because you just need to, when the time comes, you know, when you're 24 or whatever,

00:05:52.720 | the time comes for your discipline is going to unlock something awesome. You want to already

00:05:56.880 | have that tool sharpened. All right, number three, be very wary of video games or social media.

00:06:05.200 | Your time is very valuable right now because you get leverage. Interesting moves or developments

00:06:12.160 | or opportunities you unlock when you're young have the maximum amount of time to actually earn

00:06:17.680 | experiential interest and start generating really cool things. So don't waste your teenage years,

00:06:23.680 | your early 20s, your college years. Don't waste 40% of your discretionary time in Call of Duty.

00:06:29.360 | Don't waste 40% of your time on TikTok. Maybe that's okay for some people, but I can tell

00:06:35.840 | right now that this is a kid who is awesome, is at it, he's on it, he's listening to deep

00:06:41.200 | questions, he's reading my books, he's intentional, he's already thinking about multiple income

00:06:44.640 | streams. So be very wary of those devices. Be the guy who's weird about like, "Yeah,

00:06:48.720 | I just don't really use my phone." Let that be your thing. All right, number four,

00:06:53.040 | expose yourself to bulk positive randomness. That's a term that comes from my longtime friend,

00:07:01.280 | Ben Kastnoka, who wrote about that in his memoir of being a teenage entrepreneur prodigy. So like

00:07:09.440 | starting companies in his teenage years, "The Startup of You" is what that book is called.

00:07:13.840 | And he talks about this a lot. Expose yourself to lots of interesting stuff all the time to see what

00:07:19.120 | clicks, what sticks, what ends up resonating and holding your attention the next day or the next

00:07:23.680 | week. Go hear speakers, read interesting things, go to interesting documentaries, go to conventions,

00:07:28.320 | expose yourself to bulk positive randomness. This is how you get eventually something really

00:07:36.480 | interesting clicking in your life. And now to pull from my book, "How to Become a High School

00:07:41.600 | Superstar," once there is something that catches your attention that you're pursuing, you want to

00:07:48.160 | pursue what I call the failed simulation effect, which is you want to get to a place where that

00:07:53.520 | activity, if you're a young person, where people say, "I have no idea how he did that." And the

00:07:58.960 | way you generate that effect, which is incredibly powerful and opens up all these interesting

00:08:02.560 | opportunities, is you just keep leveraging up. You do one thing that's kind of explainable.

00:08:06.480 | You use that to get access to the next thing. You use that to get access to the third thing.

00:08:11.120 | That third thing you use access to get to the fourth thing. And by the time you get to that

00:08:14.720 | fourth thing, that might be, "I'm interviewing Supreme Court justices for my podcast as a 17-year-old."

00:08:19.840 | That thing seems like, "I have no idea how a 17-year-old does that." But if you look to three

00:08:23.760 | steps before that started with you being exposed to a court reporter at an internship,

00:08:32.000 | the path makes sense, but not when you see the final thing. Maybe that's a confusing explanation.

00:08:37.440 | I have a whole chapter about this in my book. I also wrote about this, interestingly enough,

00:08:43.360 | for Tim Ferriss's blog way back in the day when I first met Tim. So it's on there somewhere.

00:08:50.240 | We're talking 2007, 2008 probably. I wrote an article for Tim.blog back when that was his main

00:08:58.400 | online platform about the failed simulation effect. So you can actually find my article

00:09:04.800 | on his blog. You can probably just search for my name and Tim.blog or something like that.

00:09:08.720 | But anyways, you expose yourself to interesting stuff. When something clicks, you keep going,

00:09:12.480 | keep going, keep going. The first six months you're working on something that's interesting

00:09:16.800 | to you but not to the outside world, you get to a year plus six months, and you might be at a place

00:09:21.360 | now with that interest where people have no idea how you did that at your age, and that's when

00:09:25.280 | really cool opportunities open up. Number five, study character and leadership. Expose yourself

00:09:34.560 | to examples of people who live with great character, who act as great leaders, even during

00:09:40.720 | difficult times. Read biographies, read profiles, watch documentaries, maybe if they have a social

00:09:48.320 | media presence, so maybe like a Jocko Willink type if that resonates. Maybe you're listening to

00:09:52.720 | his podcast and the military professionals he has on that tell tales of valor. Whatever it is that

00:09:59.840 | resonates, you want to be imprinting young a real affiliation or affinity for character and leadership,

00:10:09.120 | especially during difficult times. That is going to be a north star or a guiding light through all

00:10:14.080 | sorts of different ups and downs and competing pressures and diversions you're going to experience

00:10:19.040 | the next, let's say, 10 years of your life. Now's the time to start building up those examples.

00:10:23.280 | And number six, serve people. One way or the other, be doing that now. And it's just setting

00:10:29.600 | the habit of, and it could just be volunteering. It could be this is this cause or online. I go and

00:10:34.160 | I help. I'm in this community just to help these people, whatever it is. You also want that

00:10:38.480 | imprinted into your soul at a young age that serve other people, because that's what you need to fall

00:10:44.720 | back on when the other pursuit you have isn't going well. This company failed and I lost this

00:10:50.320 | job. And I really am feeling down on myself because I had these ambitions that I was going to be

00:10:55.040 | Michael Crichton at 27. And instead I'm at, you know, I'm getting to that age and I'm short on

00:11:00.720 | money and my plans didn't work. You fall back on helping others. Well, you know what? Let me just

00:11:04.560 | put that energy to helping others while I also am trying to figure myself out. The more you can fall

00:11:08.800 | back on how can I serve or help other people, the more emotional and psychological resilience you're

00:11:15.280 | going to have for all the ups and downs that are going to come. It's what's going to prevent you

00:11:18.560 | from ending up instead 26 and bitter and on Twitter and just mad and yelling at people and

00:11:28.160 | medicated seven ways to Sunday and just not even sure what to do with your life. You'll end up

00:11:33.920 | maybe like a, you know, an ideological groupie for some weird whatever and just be miserable.

00:11:38.800 | You don't want to be there. So falling back on serving others as a default is that buffer,

00:11:44.160 | is that protection be useful to the world, be useful to others. Let that also be a guiding

00:11:48.880 | light. All right. So those are my six pieces of advice, but good for you for thinking about this

00:11:52.960 | stuff at such a young age. You do these things. You're going to be a rock star. You can be a rock

00:11:57.360 | star in college. You're going to come out of college and be living a life that you are going

00:12:00.640 | to have full control on the reins of this life. And when you start doing lifestyle center, career

00:12:06.080 | planning seriously, but you know, you really should wait till a little bit later in college

00:12:11.120 | to do so you are going to have options and whatever comes out of those initial lifestyle

00:12:15.200 | center, career planning exercises, you're going to be able to shape your life there,

00:12:18.560 | live a deep life and a useful life. So I'm glad you asked that question. That's my advice.

A Teenagers Guide To The Deep Life

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