It seems to me that the process of creating your own education involves (or ought to involve) answering these questions:
1. What’s the point of education?
Reasonable minds disagree on this, and I don’t have a strong opinion myself, but let’s just assume that the goal is to make yourself into a productive and valuable worker-bee.
2. How do I become a productive and valuable worker-bee?
Two and a half hard steps:
(a) Gain the requisite knowledge and/or skills.
(b) Be employable.
(c) BONUS: Be remarkable.
3a. What are the requisite skills and/or knowledge?
(Circles drawn to scale.)
The Point: The safest bet is to find the sweet spot, those skills and/or knowledge-sets that are at the intersection of rare, valuable, and interesting.
All three matter. Valuable because otherwise you won’t get $$. Rare because otherwise you won’t get much $$. And interesting because otherwise you’ll either hate it or (worse) spend half of your waking hours chasing $$.
3b. How do I be employable?
Probably the trait that matters most to employability is conscientiousness. You’ve got to be reliable, meaning showing up to work when you are expected to and finishing your tasks when you are expected to, but also being reliable meaning doing things with the appropriate attention to detail given only the vaguest of directions or guidance.
It also helps to not be a jerk.
3bii. How do I be conscientious (and not a jerk)?
Good genes and/or a significant other who will whoop your ass.
Good genes and/or a significant other who will whoop your ass.
3bii-part II. How do I find a S.O. who will whoop my ass?
Just stop already, will you? I DON'T KNOW.
Just stop already, will you? I DON'T KNOW.
3c. How do I be remarkable? (Besides reading Seth Godin books.)
Besides reading Seth Godin books? Hmm. I suppose you could try reading Wehr in the World.
Being remarkable typically involves doing things beyond your immediate assigned tasks that add major value to the company. Noticing those things and then pulling them off is what makes remarkable people remarkable.
Being remarkable could mean, for example, being so socially adept that you not only understand and translate the most hard to understand and translate people, but you magically get those people to talk to and understand each other so that, in your absence, the place still operates pretty swimmingly.
4. What does it all mean?
It means that what you choose to study/get good at matters – it’s got to be rare, interesting, and valuable. It’s a hard decision, but it’s one that you ought to be able to make if you devote a day or weekend to it. (Oh the irony of me writing a How To post suggesting that you can figure this out in a day or weekend when I haven’t figured it out after 26.5 years.)
If I were brainstorming a course of study, I would start by making two lists: One of things that I suspect would keep me lastingly interested, and one of things that I suspect will be lastingly valuable. I would then look for even the vaguest overlap between the two lists. The goal is to narrow it down to a few knowledge-sets or skillsets that are likely to be both lastingly valuable and lastingly interesting. Once I had those few things, I’d see if any could be complementary to each other, because complementary combinations are probably the easiest way to achieve rarity. Then the final and most important step is: Get to work. And in particular, get to work at making yourself rare.
That last sentence is important. When people “get to work” they typically focus on becoming supremely good at what they do/know. It’s the 10,000 hours thing. That’s their way of becoming “rare.” But that’s just one way. There are other ways to make yourself rare that don’t involve 10,000 hours of devotion. You can, for example, look for barriers to entry (like admission to med school or passing The Bar), look for tiny niches, look for “new” areas of value, or, my favorite, combine complementary knowledge or skillsets. For example, knowing how to run a multivariate regression is not terribly rare, but you’ve got something rare-ish if you combine it with knowing how to converse with humans. The important part to remember is that the goal is to be rare, not those other things.
I’ve come this far without even using the word “syllabus.” That’s because I think a syllabus is kind of missing the point. This stuff can only be planned to a small extent because you won’t know whether something will be worthwhile or where it will lead you until you get into it. You can use a semi-syllabus for starting points, if you want, but the important (and exciting) part is where you go from there.
One-sentence summary: Choose one or a few knowledge/skillset(s) in the sweet spot and then focus on making yourself rare, but don’t forget that conscientiousness and social intelligence are things that pretty much every productive and valuable worker-bee must have.
Also don’t forget that you are taking advice from a guy who has no idea what he’s talking about.
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Postscript
The primary benefit of a create-your-own-education type of deal, I think, is that you’re likely to be much more thickly in the Rare and Interesting zones than someone who does traditional education, and if you do it well, you could end up with something much more Valuable than the certificate a university bestows upon you after X years and X*(a bunch) dollars. In summary: I think there’s a good argument to be made for Self-Ed over Formal-Ed.
On the other hand, probably the biggest weakness of Self-Ed, and the biggest strength of Formal-Ed, is the (lack of) feedback that comes from being surrounded by smart people. Using a word like “feedback” makes it sound trivial, but it’s probably the single most crucial ingredient in learning. If you think you can surround yourself with smart people who will give you an adequate level of feedback on the stuff you’re learning, then in my mind it’s no contest in favor of Self-Ed, but that seems especially hard to get on your own.
But shouldn’t you be self-educating anyway? The only real question is whether you should be formal-educating in addition. And there is of course no universal answer: It depends on many things, including what skills/knowledge you hope to gain, smart people density, $$, your ability/history of self-discipline, and whether becoming a productive and valuable worker-bee is even your goal, just to name a few.
Speaking of that goal, it seems to me much too simple to have one goal (especially that one) for this mess of a universe. I want to learn things and become better at things for reasons beyond becoming a valuable and productive worker-bee. Other (better) reasons include having relationships that don’t suck, preparing for death, propagating genes (thought I’d throw that here in the middle as if it’s just one goal among many), understand my dust-like status in the universe, appreciate the mess that brought us here, and just because it’s fun to learn (OKAY?!). In other words, don’t think that you need a unified purpose for the things you’re learning. There is no such thing as a unified purpose in this giant mess. (Except propagating genes, but come on.)
