I’ve spoken to a few groups of students lately about what I do, what I’ve done, and as part of the process I forced myself to think of 10 bits of advice I’d go back in time and give myself if I could. Some of these points echo another post (9 things I was too stupid to learn at school) but with a slightly different slant.

1. Make stuff you care about
There is a lot of external pressure (teachers, parents, girlfriends, boyfriends) around how you spend your time as a young adult (“How does what you’re doing earn you money?”) and it’s easy to feel alone in a passion, but ‘making stuff’ will help you become more self-aware and develop new skills. It’s also a great way to fail more quickly – the more you fail (well, the more you try), the more you will learn.

If you look at someone like Sydney-sider Natalie Tran whose frequent YouTube videos are watched by millions of people, she simply took a camera one day and started making videos for her YouTube channel – the best sort of CV and networking asset anyone could wish for.

2. Stay curious and restless
Between the new demands of entering the workforce, dealing with new responsibilities (debt, expenses) and wanting to maintain a busy social life, it’s easy for our child-like curiosity and energy to get eroded. Every now and then, I’ll hear someone say “I don’t have time to read books, or websites, or blogs.” Firstly, I find this hard to believe, and, secondly, this is a pretty ignorant state of being to accept. Curiosity is an excellent trait. The more you read, the more you expose yourself to new stuff, the more ideas you’ll have… and every now and then they’ll be good ideas. Stay hungry.

3. Stand out
The world doesn’t need more of the same. Be bold or be overlooked.

4. Network
When I was in the early days of my magazine, I kept coming across this advice of ‘get a mentor’. But, to be honest, I had no idea where to look – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook… these things weren’t around. The advantage of new social networks is you can reach nearly anyone in your field with a bit of research and a well thought-out approach. Do it. But be useful, conversational, specific – don’t communicate for the sake of it. Go to industry events, help put on industry events. Get involved.

5. Stories are key
Humans communicate with stories – re-telling stuff we saw on TV, interesting research, what we did on the weekend… If you define ‘story-telling’ broadly, you’ll find that it’s part of nearly every profession as well: academics explaining their ideas, logo designers, musicians, etc. Be a student of story-telling – it will help you develop relationships as well as communicate ideas.

6. Enjoy randomness
A lot of professions thrive on being able to explain everything, on being process-driven, rational. That’s all good and well, but find a place for personal and professional randomness. It will keep you energised.

7. Don’t just take briefs
Whatever you end up doing, keep an eye on the bigger picture. Anyone can take a brief from a client or a boss, pass the baton and get things done. You’ll become irreplacable if you think about the real issues at hand, offer deeper insight into a problem.

8. Be good to work with
This is tougher than it sounds. We all get drained, we all have different opinions. Just don’t be a douchebag. Life’s too short.

9. Love simplicity
There’s this great Bruce Lee quote (somewhere) that explains his point of view on the journey of a martial arts student. It goes something like this: before you start a martial art a kick is a kick and a punch is a punch; after you’ve mastered it, a kick is a kick and a punch is a punch. His point: along the way every student wants to learn fancy, aerial spinning kicks and complicated techniques, but experience takes the master back to the simple stuff that works. Simplicity is hard – but strive for it.

10. Values first
At any point in time, most people will be able to articulate their values. Your values will change but deciding to take your values to work with you every day shouldn’t. (Read Kate Richardson’s ‘Living a values-based life‘).

Thoughts?
What advice would you pass onto a student about to enter the workforce?

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Buehrer.

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Let’s face it, school years are not the best years of your life, and most of us found our rhythm well after school. So the best thing that school can instill in you – other than basic academic and social skills – is curiosity.

It doesn’t matter how good you are at something, if you’re curious enough you will find a way to become great at it. But without curiosity, you’re just a number in a system.

I have this dream of one day creating a different type of ‘school’.
I used to want to take over my old Thai Boxing gym in Glebe (Sydney) and borrow a leaf out of Bill Gates’ technology school in San Francisco where anyone from the area could apply – a lottery system would get you in. The school would focus on real-life skills but also challenge perceptions of what was acceptable to learn in an official educational environment.

For example, if you were a teenager and wanted to become a boxer, the school would give you real-life, business and sports-specific skills to make it happen then give you a life after competition – and bring in the best in the business to mentor you. If you wanted to become a DJ, an artist, a writer… anything that really is a ‘trade’ but falls outside of the establishment definition of a trade… you could come to this school and do it. A WordPress developer, a politician (the type we need), an application programmer, a lateral problem-solver… interesting, weird stuff that the world needs but can’t find an official place for, I’d try to.

Well, that dream is a long way off (unless you know someone who knows someone), so I thought I’d better put some stuff out there now so you can help me improve my ideas.

9 things I was too stupid to learn at school

1. Chemistry is currency
Confidence and relationships are golden. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, if you’re boring as bat-dung and can’t build rapport with people, your ideas will go nowhere.

2. Randomness rules
Everything about school is so deliberate. But what happens in life often isn’t. The best ideas (in the shower, at the gym, while running), the most amazing bits of nature, who we meet in life – so frequently random. Schools should have a random day randomly once a year just to see what happens and to teach kids that free-falling is sometimes exhilirating.

3. Making stuff you care about for the sake of it is good
Curricula, assignments, projects, exams. So much purpose. So much intent. What if you had a day to yourself to make something? What would you do? Why can’t school be a place for that? Google 20% time leads to their biggest ideas (Google gives employees 1 day in 5 to just think and work at stuff). What would happen if schools did this?

4. Sometimes loners are the most interesting people
A lot of kids feel that they have to stereotype themselves to find a place in the unnatural social ecosystem of schools – even if they’re conforming with the non-conformist group. But there’s real beauty inside so many people – and sometimes the people you’ve got pegged as ‘loners’ (or maybe they’ve typecast themselves as this) either have really bad stuff going on at home and nobody knows about it or they’re obsessed with their own thinking. And often they’re really interesting. I wish I’d spent more time in the minds of more people at school.

5. The playground is not the real world
If only you could play bullrush in the office. The playground comes nothing close to the dynamics of the real world. I don’t care how much someone tries to make the comparison. But, it can have massive impact in shaping our self-perception – baggage many carry for years after they’ve physically moved on.

6. How you think is more important than what you think
Ultimately, whatever profession you enter, a big part of your day is consumed by problem-solving. Doctor, plumber, hairdresser, journalist. The best thing you can get out of education is the rigour and some systems to help you tackle the problem then communicate your solution to people. As mentioned above, curiosity matched with passion, resourcefulness can frequently trump knowledge.

7. Fitting in doesn’t make standouts
Fitting in is so boring. Thankfully, the next decade will see work cultures encourage people to turn up to work and be at work as themselves. Standing out is key to succeeding in a capitalist system. Rote learning, uniforms, and so on, teach us that fitting in is the best way to achieve aspirations. I disagree wholeheartedly.

8. What you know is irrelevant if nobody knows you
Yes, loners can be interesting. Talk to them. Encourage them out of their shells, involve them. But, as for you, there’s no point being the smartest person around that nobody knows. I’m not sure I really took this lesson out of my schooling experience – mind you, I’d have spent a lot less time in front of a keyboard writing if I had!

9. Lateral thinking will increasingly drive economies
I’m pretty sure I’m stealing this thought from Edward de Bono. I believe our educational systems are so focused on the rational, on outcomes, on numbers, that many schools marginalise ‘creative thinking’ into art, pottery, drama, music. This ignores the fact that lateral thinking – as it becomes harder for business and individuals to compete within well-worn labour and economic systems – will increasingly drive our lives. All the menial stuff will continually get outsourced to cheaper labour overseas. All we’ll be left with is our ideas.

Thoughts?
What do you think about this list? Would you add any of your own lessons?

Photo courtesy of Ann Althouse.

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