Doing Over Learning

“You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”

Our parents and grandparents got their hands dirty to give us a better life.

They emphasized the importance of education — as it was the only ticket to a meaningful life other than getting married.

But we now see how pressuring multiple generations into paid indoctrination is wasteful and costly.

It’s became common practice to borrow thousands for an MBA or JD without having a any real desire to practice what you’re “learning”.

So let me ask you: If you wanted to learn how to ride a bike would you read about it?

This post was inspired by a decade old blog post written by Tim Ferriss titled How to Create Your MBA — link for full post

The snippet goes as follows:

Creating Your Own MBA

How might you create your own MBA or graduate program? Here are three examples with hypothetical costs, which obviously depend on the program:

Master of Arts in Creative Writing – $12,000/year

How could you spend (or sacrifice) $12,000 a year to become a world-class creative writer? If you make $50,000 per year, this could mean that you join a writers’ group and negotiate Mondays off work (to focus on drafting a novel or screenplay) in exchange for a $10-15,000 salary cut.

Masters in Political Science – (same cost)

Use the same approach to dedicate one day per week to volunteering or working on a political campaign. Decide to read one book per week from the Georgetown PoliSci department’s required first-year curriculum.

MBA – $30,000 per year

Commit to spending $2,500 per month on testing different “muses” intended to be sources of automated income. For an example of such, see “How I Did It: From $7 an Hour to Coaching Major League Baseball MVPs.”

If you’re interested in experimenting with angel investing, whether as an angel or as a start-up, here are a few of my favorite resources:

AngelList (I’m now an advisor; here is my profile)

AngelSoft

VentureHacks