#020 - How College Students Can Rapidly Achieve Self-Awareness

Welcome to the hackiversity podcast where your host, Kyle Whiney deconstructs higher education inside the new economy. Get ready to learn how students can hack their way to the best results before, during and after college. It's hacking time.

What's up everybody? Kyle Whiney here on the Hack Adversity podcast and I am in the process of mixing up the podcast right now. So we're experimenting with different types of podcast events. The last podcast we had on a policy guru Mickey Baines in the education arena. And this week we are experimenting with a sort of self podcast. One where I kind of give my thoughts about the education arena and I don't have on another guest, it's just me. So what I'm going to do for this podcast is I am going to read a little snippet from my book the Secrets to Achieving More by Doing Less in College. So I am really pumped about this book. It's hard to believe it's been around a year ago since I published and launched it. But what was so humbling about that experience was within eight hours of me putting the book on Amazon and publishing became a number one new release. So really awesome accomplishment. I was really moved by that. But then eight days later, people on the Internet started talking more about the book and suddenly I had this big explosion of sales on Amazon and I went from a number one new release to a number one best seller on Amazon only eight days after I published my book, Hackiversity. So I was just so relieved and so humbled to see people turn out the way they did to buy my book. I spent around two and a half, three years writing this and it's filled with some personal anecdotes that were just really hard at the time to kind of go through. And what I also do is I interview around 45 recent college graduates who just crushed it right out of the gate. And I kind of deconstruct the reasons why. Why were they able to succeed so much and why were they able to have so much success? And so all of that is summarize and distilled into my book Hackiversity, which largely shows students what not to do in college. And we learn that through some of my hardships and trials that I have personally, but then also what to do at college. And we learn a lot about that through these 40 some odd folks who recently graduated college and did really, really well in the new economy. So what I'm going to do today is I am going to read a snippet about self awareness so before we get down into the actual snippet that I'm going to read, I just want to preface this by saying, you know, everyone is so obsessed with getting great grades, with internships. Actually, they're not obsessed enough about internships. And they're also really, they talk a lot about where they're going to go to college, what school, but what they don't talk about is why they're doing it. They don't talk about how they can use their college experience to drive where they want to go in life in general, mainly because they have no idea. I mean, most students in College are 18 years old, and like every 18 year old, they have no idea what they want to do. And so this is such a foundational element of the college arena, of the college game. You have to know where you're going. Everyone wants to go to kind of step number two, which is how to execute. Now, I completely agree that execution is very, very important. I mean, it's half of my book talk about how to execute at college in an optimal way. But that is step two, and that has to be kept in mind. Step one is figuring out what to do and why you're doing it. And that is something that so many college students just completely forget about. They skip over. They're in a rush to do step number two. And my kind of call to action here for this podcast is don't be in a hurry to get to step number two. You must slow down and do step number one. And that is the self awareness idea. So let me dig in. I'm going to start reading the prelude to the self awareness section in my book, Hackiversity. So here we go. Stop me if you've heard this before. Actually, just keep reading. A college student spends thousands of dollars on tuition, locks himself in the library for hours each week, attends every class, and generally commits years of his life in every respect imaginable. Then, upon graduation, the student discovers all the effort, money and time failed to deliver a job he likes. This can't happen. All too predictably. Students without a clear college game plan are destined for difficulty. Take it from my sister in middle school, I traveled to the Dominican Republic, where I saw so much poverty that stirred within me a desire to help people in my career. That's why I majored in Spanish. Unfortunately, aside from teaching, there are not many job opportunities for Spanish majors. But I knew that I didn't want to teach Spanish. In fact, I didn't know what I wanted to do after college in general. I didn't have a college plan other than to graduate with a Spanish degree. Graduation was a real awakening. I had a Spanish degree but no job and lots of bills to pay. I didn't know what to do, so I interviewed with a temp agency. They placed me in a job where I process customer orders by entering the information into a computer, much like a secretary. I don't use my SMASH degree at all. I've come to hate my job. I hate sitting behind a desk all day. So this is me again. That was my sister sharing her snippet about her college experience. And again, we have around 45 recent college graduates who share their experience. Almost all of them are how to achieve. But stories like this highlight the downside of playing by the conventional rules of doing what everyone says really matters. So here's me again. A lack of college strategy caused Andrea to land a low paying, unfulfilling job despite her college degree. Andrea's my sister the remainder of the self awareness cornerstone provides the fundamental principles students need to know in order to overcome this problem, determine what to do in college, and position themselves to take action. So what's the solution to ensure that college students, much like Andrea, don't land a job they hate after graduation? The answer? Self awareness. Simply put, self awareness is the understanding of who you are and how you are similar to or different from others. Self awareness is so powerful that studies have found it serves as the strongest predictor overall success. In other words, neither brains nor brawn can determine success as accurately as understanding the extent of your brains or brawn or lack thereof. Peter Guber, co owner of the Golden State warriors basketball team, framed the importance of self awareness like this. In my four decades of experience as a leader and entrepreneur in diverse industries from entertainment to sports to new media to education and the hierarchy of factors most important to career success, I would rank self awareness as number one. I wish I knew this at age 22. Despite the extraordinary benefits of self awareness, Today, less than 30% of people are self aware, meaning that the majority of individuals mistakenly believe that they possess certain personal characteristics that they actually don't. For example, 70% of high school seniors believe they have above average leadership skills, even though it's impossible by definition for more than 50% to be above average. It's no surprise, then, that college students repeatedly wander aimlessly through college, much to their misfortune. By developing self awareness, students can simultaneously minimize the financial and economic disaster, discovering all too late that a particular major industry or even college altogether was a bad decision, while maximizing the opportunities to land in a lucrative, meaningful job. Next section, how to Best Achieve Self Awareness Experimentation Imagine if a professor tried to teach you how to ride a bicycle in the same manner she teaches any other subject. Most likely you would stay up late at night memorizing the names of various bike components. You would be marked down on tests and lose self confidence for misspelling derailleur. Under this system, you might excel or you might struggle, but you would never ride a bike. That's a problem. I just want to take a second here to give a shout out to Tony Wagner for this for this little analogy. I love this analogy. I got it from one of Tony's books. Tony is a real leader in the education world and he also recommended my book Hackiversity. So Tony, thank you for the little analogy here. Similarly, in the college arena today, it's the absence of doing that causes students difficulties. That's why students routinely find themselves trapped during college and after graduation. They never actually ventured out to see whether they found their job, industry or career path enjoyable in the first place. Fortunately, there is a different approach, one used by cutting edge startup companies located in Silicon Valley. It's the process of launching an unfinished product with the intention of receiving immediate feedback and tweaking to meet customer demands. Entrepreneurs call this the minimum viable product or MVP approach. The MVP approach can be effectively applied to people too, because but because people aren't products. I call this process experimentation. So in general, there are two ways to receive feedback from experimentation. The first way is what's called the steering wheel feedback loop. Here's why we call it the steering wheel feedback loop. The steering wheel feedback loop offers responses that are instantaneous, cheap, and reliable. Consider how the feedback between the driver and steering wheel is so immediate and automatic that we often don't think about the many turns we take while we drive. The second type of feedback is what's called the rocket ship feedback loop, and this is where responses are delayed, expensive and unpredictable. Consider how the feedback from launching a rocket ship first requires millions of dollars for construction, assembling a team, and conducting sophisticated calculations all before the rocket ship makes it to the launching pad. It's only after years and millions of dollars that you discover if the launch is even successful. So to maximize the likelihood of a successful college career, students must embrace the steering wheel feedback loop. In doing so, students can easily and quickly correct errors and assumptions that they made regarding their college careers. Using the rocketship feedback loop, however, is like the college graduate who spends four years in school graduates and then works a few years in his desired field only to discover he hates his job. And how many people do we know like that? I personally know so many of my friends, of my family members who fall into this category. Again, this can't happen. Alright, back to the script. Each of the self hacks within the self awareness cornerstone are designed to mirror the steering wheel feedback loop and provide students with personalized feedback as cheaply, quickly and reliably as possible. The following section represents the three step process involved in unlocking the magic of the Steering wheel feedback loop and provides a framework for how students can best use the self hacks. So the self hacks just let me deviate here in regard to kind of explaining my book. The self hacks are the step by step processes for unlocking self awareness. But before we kind of get to the self hack part where it's that kind of tactical application of doing what we're talking about here, we need to kind of provide a conceptual framework for how this fits into everything. And so let me just kind of give a high level view of what the framework is for experimentation. First, you need to define your assumptions. So defining your assumptions is step number one. Let me just kind of read from my book a little bit about how that works. So through the experimentation process, students play the role of scientists investigating themselves. And as a scientist, the first step to conducting an experiment is to create a is to create a hypothesis of what is expected to occur. More specifically, for our purposes, you must define your assumptions in regard to your proposed college career track. Ask what has to prove true in order for me to realistically expect that my proposed college track is a good one. To get you started, here are some examples which are broken into two categories. So I kind of break down some starter questions into success related assumptions. So you know, do I assume that I kind of like to work in a particular manner or I assume that I have a particular analytical style. And the second category then are what I call personal fulfillment assumptions. So you know, I assume that I am motivated by this particular thing or I assume that I am motivated by money. To this extent you just write down those assumptions. So that's kind of step number one, defining your assumptions. Here's step number two, and that is to test. So every assumption from step number one must be tested. And I mean every assumption. Perhaps the most effective way to test assumptions is by immersing yourself in your projected environment. Internships, job experiences, volunteering, and even gap years are several of the many ways to accomplish this. No matter the environment, students must get out of the library and into the real world. So here's a good example of one of the recent college graduates I interviewed who crushed it out of the gate. So his name is Zach, and he graduated from James Madison, which is located in Virginia. And here's what he says. He says that during college, I interned at a local bank every Christmas and summer break. My internship wasn't really related to technology, which was the focus of my major, but I eventually moved over to the technology side in general. My banking internships helped prepare me for Accenture, the consulting company where I now work. Just putting on a suit and tie, being in a professional environment, and working 40 hours a week showed me what I was getting into. Lifeguarding, for example, wouldn't have prepared me for that. So again, Zach is working at a premier consulting firm, which is Accenture. They're based in Washington, D.C. largely because he had this kind of experimentation process occurring early in his college career. So he. He got out of the library, he thought he was interested in technology, and through his internship, he managed to get more of a technical role, and he was testing his hypothesis about whether or not he was actually, in fact, interested in technology. So step number two is to test. And that brings us to the final step of this experimentation framework. That is step number three, which is draw conclusions, repeat the cycle. So let me read from the script here. The final step in the experimentation process is to revisit your assumptions in light of your testing from step number two. Which assumptions were true, which were false? For example, in our earlier accounting hypothetical, and that's one I gave in my book, the assumptions were, I assume that I'll be comfortable conducting advanced calculations, and I assume that I'll enjoy working by myself. So these are kind of assumptions that are related to the accounting industry. As part of your experimentation, suppose you intern at an accounting firm. Did your internship confirm these assumptions? If you worked independently, did you enjoy it, or did you want more teamwork? How easily were you able to complete the task assigned to you? If your experiment confirmed your assumption, perhaps accounting is a fitting career track. If, however, the experiment invalidated your assumptions, there's a good chance it's time to head in a different direction. The key to step number three is to not stop after you draw your conclusion. Repeat the whole cycle. This is why it's called a feedback loop. Your whole college career should be one major loop that tests, retests, and then tests again the assumptions you've made along the way. One final note. In step three, students frequently think of an outcome as good or bad, depending on the end result, that's a mistake. Why? You don't know what's going to happen in step number three before you experiment. That's why you experiment in the first place. You can only make decisions based on the information you have in the moment. Instead, view the feedback from step number three as the ammunition necessary to retackle step number one. But more informed than before. Experiments are fact finding missions that over time inch scientists toward greater understanding. And that's a quote from Ed Catmull, who is a former president of Pixar. That means any outcome is a good outcome because it yields new information. So like I said at the beginning of this podcast, experimentation is really step number one in the college arena. Students must figure out what makes them tick, they must figure out where they want to go, and then everything else is driven by that answer. And that includes where to go to college, that includes where to intern, that includes what grades you need to get. Everything that people typically associate with doing college right is only step number two. And it's all underpinned by this idea of self awareness. Students need to focus on self awareness. They need to develop a sense of it as early in the college arena as possible. I just laid out for you the three step framework for how to do that. My book then goes into what I call these self hacks, which are the tactical ways to kind of unlock self awareness within this framework. So you can pick up the book on Amazon, of course, like I said, it was it, you know, it did really well and it's still, still out there, of course. Hackaversity.com check it out. You can download a free chapter if you just kind of want to experiment with that and see if it can provide you value. So anyway, let me know what you think about these self podcasts. I'm happy to do more of them if you find them valuable or if you don't find them valuable. If you want to hear more from guests and what they think, let me know that too. I want to make sure that, that the hackiversity podcast is providing you guys with a ton of value. And so let me know what you like. Cool. That's it for now. Happy hacking, as I always like to say. And I'll catch you guys next time.

If you want more Hackiversity and our optimized approach to hacking college. Subscribe to this podcast on itunes or grab the book on Amazon. For the show notes and the latest on Hackiversity. Check out Hackaversity.com don't forget to follow Ackiversity on instagram Twitter and Facebook. Until next time, happy hacking.