My Thoughts on Going to College

Author

Jay Yang
June 25, 2023

Read time: 10 min

Welcome to The Sunday Storypreneur, a weekly newsletter where I deconstruct the strategies I’m using to build my creator business. where this week I’ll be taking a lil detour to share unsolicited career advice with myself.

The idea that you should know what you want to do with your life by the time you’re 18 is absurd. Yet time and time again, uninformed teenagers are asked to make the biggest career decision of their lives.

Truthfully, it takes me hours just to figure out what I want to eat for dinner. So deciding whether I should go to college — and what I should major in — intimidated me to say the least.

But someone wise once told me:

A great mental model when seeking advice is to ask yourself, “What advice would I give myself if the tables were turned?”

That’s what this week’s deep dive is about…

What career advice would I give myself?

✍️ Deep Dive ✍️

“What should I do with my life?” is a question that’s played over and over in my mind like an old cassette tape.

I didn’t have a clear answer, so I turned to the people I admire.

After hours of researching, collecting, and curating the best advice, 7 lessons consistently showed up…

Lesson 1: Learn how to make effective decisions

“Few things will change your trajectory in life or business as much as learning to make effective decisions.” — Shane Parrish

Everything in your life — good or bad — is downstream of a previous decision you’ve made.

I’ve found that the highest performers have a set of mental models or principles they use when making important decisions.

How do you become a better decision-maker?

  1. Read a lot

  2. Experience a lot

  3. Reflect deeply

Now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have to live through a ton of failures and mistakes to become a clearer thinker.

What’s the cheat code? This next lesson…

Lesson 2: Be a student of history

“Learning from history is a form of leverage.” — Charlie Munger

“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” — Winston Churchill

“Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.” — Confucius

Are you seeing a common pattern yet? Nearly every high-performer I’ve studied has said to study history.

Why?

For two reasons:

  1. You learn from the mistakes of others so you don’t have to make the same mistakes to learn the same lesson.

  2. You tie the lesson with a story which solidifies that lesson in your brain far better than memorizing it from a self-help book.

Not an avid reader? I have two resources for you:

  1. The Founders Podcast - Learn from history’s greatest entrepreneurs

  2. How To Take Over The World - Learn from history’s greatest leaders

But reading books and listening to podcasts will only take you so far. Next, you have to apply lesson three…

Lesson 3: Get in the arena

“You learn to swim by jumping into the water and swimming, not by sitting in a classroom studying aqua-dynamic theory.” — Jed McKenna

Reading books but never taking action is like watching basketball highlights all day then walking on the court, shooting an airball, and wondering why your jump shot sucks.

At some point, you have to go out into the world and build real-life projects.

  • Watch a lot of YouTube videos? → Create a blog summarizing what you learn.

  • Super interested in coding? → Make your own website. Then help other people make websites.

  • Not sure what you want to do with your life? → Write a newsletter about not knowing what you want to do with your life. 😉

As Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Battle-test your ideas, explore your curiosity, and build real-world projects. Inevitably, you’ll start to learn what you’re naturally talented at.

And when you find your differentiator? Go all in…

Lesson 4: Exploit your edge

“A good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses.” — James Clear

I used to think the harder the project the more useful it would be. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The projects that came easily to me?

• Growing a Twitter personal brand
• Writing a weekly newsletter
• Building a digital product

Those actually provided more value to others than the projects that were more difficult for me:

• Growing a music promotion YouTube channel
• Learning how to code a website
• Starting a podcast

As Naval Ravikant says, the goal is to find work that feels like play to you, but looks like work to others.

Do you think Shakespeare was like, “Oh damnit, I have to sit down and write another play!”? Of course not. He LOVED it.

Was it hard work? Sure, but it was hard work he was willing to suffer for because that’s what he was meant to do.

But let’s say you don’t know what your edge is. What do you do then?

Lesson 5: Stack foundational skills

“Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix.” — Scott Adams

Foundational skills are skills that will amplify whatever career path you choose: corporate job, solopreneur, building a startup, etc.

These include:

  • Thinking

  • Learning

  • Writing

  • Speaking

The more skills you stack, the more valuable you become.

Here’s Scott Adams on combining multiple skills:

“Take two things. Take three. Combine them. Now you are the best in the world at the intersection.” — James Altucher

Lesson 6: Be a learning machine

"I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, but they are LEARNING MACHINES.

They go to bed every night a little wiser than when they woke up." — Charlie Munger

I know we just talked about learning skills, and “always be learning” is cliché as clichés come. But I can’t stress enough how important being a multi-dimensional thinker is.

Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger are known as two of the best investors in the world. Yet their greatest investment wasn’t in a particular stock or bond… it was in themselves.

Study:

• Physics
• Arithmetic
• Economics
• Persuasion
• Psychology
• Programming
• Neuroscience

Be a learning machine. But most importantly…

Lesson 7: Maximize today

“Often when you get distracted by where you want to go, you don’t take advantage of the spot you’re in.” - Ben Thompson

It can get overwhelming thinking about your future. And when that happens, I encourage you to zoom in.

Ask yourself, “What actions can I take TODAY to make progress in the right direction?”

The best way to prepare for tomorrow? Maximize today.

Okay, I have 3 case studies from 3 inspirational friends I’ve met online.

Each of them is in high school or college. And each of them, I believe, is doing an amazing job of applying the 7 lessons I just shared.

Case Study #1: Niti Sarran

Niti is an 18-year-old who just graduated high school a few days ago. She had some of the highest grades in her class and got a full-ride scholarship to university.

But get this. She did all that while earning $76,000 in online profit from her Instagram content creation agency and coaching program, and building a 150,000 online audience.

Niti and I had a conversation a few months back about why she wanted to go to college. She said:

“If you go to college, they’ll tell you you’re wasting time and money.

If you don’t go to college, they’ll say you’re going to end up broke with no future.

Whatever path you choose, don’t let society shame you for it.

Everyone’s journey is not the same.”

You can learn more about her story here.

Case Study #2: Brandon Zhang

Brandon is an incredible example of leveraging the internet to accelerate your career.

In 2020, Brandon started a podcast and interviewed people like James Clear, David Perell, Jack Butcher, and Anthony Pompliano.

Brandon leveraged his interview with Jack, and cold-emailed him ways he could help Jack grow his business Visualize Value. In short, Brandon got the job and became Jack’s apprentice.

Then in March of 2021, Brandon joined On Deck as head of their social media team.

In the Spring of 2022, Brandon joined Maven, an internet startup that helps creators teach live cohort-based courses.

Then right after, on September 28, he joined Shaan Puri’s team to help with research for My First Million.

On November 7th, Brandon then joined Contrary Capital as a Venture Partner to help with investments and management.

Then in 2023, Brandon joined Atomic, a VC firm dedicated to helping founders and operators grow their startups.

Oh, and not to mention, while doing all this, he was at Columbia University studying history and business.

His advice?

“You’re not paid based on how hard you work. You’re paid based on how hard you are to replace. Keep this in mind when building your skillsets and curating your experiences.” — Brandon Zhang

A portfolio of proof > A resume.

Case Study #3: Abhishek Shah

Abhi is a Junior at Northwestern University studying psychology and entrepreneurship.

Last Summer, Abhi interned at Beehiiv, a fast-growing newsletter platform, to help them with growth.

He then leveraged the lessons he learned working at Beehiiv to grow his own newsletter (Psychology of Marketing) to 24,000 subscribers in 9 months.

What’s more, he then SOLD it for an undisclosed amount.

1 exit under your belt before college graduation ain’t bad, eh?

Abhi’s currently working at Hoox with Nik Sharma and running a highly-vetted DTC event with a few friends.

I show those examples not to discourage you with all the great things they’re already doing at a young age — but to inspire you to know what’s possible if you step into the arena.

And to show that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. It can be both. School and business. Hustle and fun.

As for me? The plan so far is to go to college while building my online business on the side.

I know that if I follow the 7 lessons in this deep dive, and optimize for optionality and serendipity… things will work out just fine.

One last reminder…

❝

"The world is a malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.” — Marc Adreessen

That’s all for this week.

I’ll see you next Sunday,

Jay “Get In The Arena” Yang

🔥 Jay’s Picks 🔥

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here's how I can help you:

1) Get access to my full content multiplication system to create 6-12 pieces of high-quality content each week

2) Get an audit of your Twitter account, clarity on your direction, and a personalized plan for building and monetizing your audience with an audience accelerator call.

3) If you want actionable resources to accelerate your online journey, check out my free and paid courses (2,588+ students)

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