How to Turn Dropping Out of College Into Your Competitive Advantage
You have a chance to do something different.
Dropping out of college is romanticized. It’s the non-conformity of this generation. We look at heavy hitters like Bill Gates and Richard Branson and use them as our justification.
The delusion is the idea that you don’t need an education. Bill and Richard may not have finished their formal education, but they are extremely well educated.
Richard Branson doesn’t have formal education past secondary school. No one would blame you for not thinking much of him for this, but Richard believes this adversity played a massive role in his success. Looking at education as an outsider, he developed a different view of how our education system affects the youth.
“Many children are set up to fail by a system that only cares about exam results” — Richard Branson.
Is it wrong to value people based on their exam results? Maybe there’s not a better way to measure performance on a large scale. Then again, a system built for efficient scaling of education isn’t an effective tool for your education.
A 14 year-long study of academic achievement by Karen Arnold found 2.9 is the average GPA of millionaires while 3.15 is the average GPA in the nation. So if you are a millionaire, you’re probably a below-average student.
Not fitting into the formal education system isn’t a reason to ditch your education. Branson’s lesson is to take control of your education.
We treat education like buying a new car. Our main concerns usually revolve around the brand. The actual level or effectiveness of the education we’re getting is a secondary thought for most people.
If you want a valuable education, and you should, you need to take on the task yourself. You can’t count on anyone else to provide it for you because nobody can educate you as well as you can.
What can people like Richard Branson, Benjamin Franklin, and Bill Gates teach us about taking our education into our own hands? Through their interviews and published work on the internet, I found a few tactics you should implement.
The First Skill You Need to Learn
Do you feel like you know how to learn? It’s not something schools teach you. Instead, they teach you how to take in (mostly) useless information, memorize it, then fail the test anyway (at least in my experience).
Actual learning is much different. It’s a skill. Like any other skill, there are tactics, best practices, and you suck at first.
When you set out to learn a new skill, you might Google “how-to” articles/videos, read a “for dummies” book on a subject, or find a teacher.
Those aren’t the wrong things to do, but if you don’t have the right strategy from the start, you end up like me trying to pick up playing the guitar: with a dusty guitar and down $300.
How does someone like Benjamin Franklin learn how to write articles and books that inspire the world, the art of high-stakes diplomacy, invent the lightning rod, harmonica, urinary catheter (lol), bifocals, and swimming fins? Is Franklin’s extreme capacity to learn learned itself? Tim Ferriss, a self-proclaimed human-guinea pig and polymath, thinks so.
“It is possible to become world-class in just about anything in six months or less. Armed with the right framework, you can seemingly perform miracles, whether with Spanish, swimming, or anything in between.” — Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Chef
Ferriss is a best-selling author and angel investor in startups like Shopify and Evernote. His side hobbies are even more impressive. He taught himself Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, German, Spanish, kickboxing (he won the Chinese national kickboxing tournament), and tango (he was a world championship finalist).
He proved through himself, and again through his readers, that learning and acquiring skills is itself a skill.
Learning how to learn sets you up for success in any field you decide to enter. It takes away your limitations and makes you limitless.
Today, there’s information on everything you could possibly want to learn. You can google anything, watch instructional youtube videos, or buy one of the thousand books on any given subjects (for just a few dollars if you like ebooks). That’s helpful, but if you don’t develop a framework for retaining and applying that information, you might as well waste your time and money at college.
Fortunately for you, there are a lot of resources on how to learn:
The 4-Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss
Build a Second Brain
At the beginning of the COVID stay-at-home order, I came across a Read to Lead challenge by Daily Stoic. I was a big reader before taking this challenge, but this put me on another level.
It pushed me to read books I wouldn’t have read, and it taught me the most important practice I have ever incorporated into my life: building another brain in the form of a Commonplace book.
A commonplace book is a way to store, organize, and re-reference everything you learn. Writers use it for managing research on their projects, but it’s useful for anyone who takes their education seriously.
Hermann Ebbinghaus pioneered a study called The Forgetting Curve on memory retention in 1880. His research shows you forget 56% of what you learn within the first hour of learning it.
That’s a lot.
You lose 66% of what you learned after the first 24 hours, and 75% by day 6.
A commonplace book cures us of our brain's forgetfulness.
If you don’t use one, you won’t retain what you learn. If you don’t retain it, you can’t apply it. If you can’t apply it, it never mattered.
Here are some resources to get you started on building your commonplace book:
How to Keep a Commonplace Book — Masterclass
How and Why to Keep a Commonplace Book — Ryan Holiday
The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read — Ryan Holiday (This is the system I use)
Read. Plain and Simple.
Now that you’ve uncovered how to learn and how to retain and organize what you learn, you need to read.
“A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.” — Mark Twain
“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” — Harry Truman (a presidential college dropout)
“I just sit in my office and read all day.” — Warren Buffett
“Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today.” — Mark Zuckerberg
“Drink deeply from good books.” — John Wooden
“My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.” — Abraham Lincoln
“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” — Walt Disney
“Reading is still the main way that I both learn new things and test my understanding.” — Bill Gates
“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.” — Napoléon Bonaparte
Are these quotes enough to drive this point home?
Nearly every legendary world-changing person you can think of is an avid reader.
A good book is worth its weight in gold.
Not all reading is created equal. If you don’t look for gold while you’re reading, you’re never going to find it. While your commonplace book will help you store your knowledge, there are some reading best practices to help you get the most out of each book.
- Always keep a pen/highlighter ready. Underline everything you find interesting in the books you read. Write thoughts in the margins. Mark that sh*t up.
- Remove distractions from your environment. The point of your reading is to learn. Reading to help you fall asleep at night isn’t going to cut it. Create time for yourself to read for long periods without distraction. Read with purpose.
- Read slow. Speed reading is a big trend right now. Don’t do it. You won’t retain and if you don’t retain it doesn’t matter. Go back over the sentences you don’t understand. Think long and hard about what you’re reading and what it means. That is how you get the most out of every book.
If you’re not sure what book to start with, read this:
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
Last Thing
You’re not educated until you’ve invested (a lot of) effort in your education. Nobody can invest it for you, you can’t buy it. You can buy materials and teachers’ time, but not education.
Dropping out of college is a chance to create your own curriculum. For a much lower cost.
