Ramit Sethi ranks his college priorities: making friends first, then entrepreneurial projects, then schoolwork. He and a fellow speaker argue that perfectionist busywork crowds out the experiences that actually matter.
We've kind of riffed together about people and how they study in college. That's a big deal. You know, what are the things that you look at when it comes to systems?
Yeah. Well, I mean, that's really interesting because that just killed me in college. I was involved in a lot of things and yet somehow always had more free time than all of my friends. And so, you know, you'd want to get something together. You plan this fun night, and then everyone would drop out because they also had to go to the library. And, you know, you'd meet up with them at 1 or 2am you'd say, okay, so what'd you get done? And they're like, well, I wrote a paragraph.
This happened to me all the time. And it was.
It was just. It killed me. You know, if I said I was going to library to work, I would come out with five pages of my essay or I would have gotten something done, or. What hurt even more is my friends who were, you know, so smart and so capable and who would kill themselves over, like, their reading responses that, you know, okay, maybe the fresh is reading them, maybe they're not. Chances are it's a TA who's read millions of these, and really, they don't matter that much, you know? And if you really think you're gonna learn a lot by writing it, great. But doing it for the sake of doing it and spending hours on it was just not where. I mean, considering these people were also doing a lot of really interesting extracurricular activities was maybe not where their time should have gone. And so much of their time got eaten up by these things that didn't actually matter to them that they felt like they had to do, instead of either going into hanging out with their friends, which I would have liked, or into their extracurricular activities, which they actually cared a lot more about.
Yeah. When I was at school, I had three priorities in this order. And I only told my parents this after I was, like, in my third year, which was number one, very clearly, hang out with friends, make new friends, meet interesting people. That was number one. Number two was, you know, my own businesses, my own entrepreneurial stuff. And then three, a distant three was schoolwork and, you know, things have worked out okay, but, like, to sit down on a napkin and write that out, I think it really helps clarify a lot of things before you get in the rat race of very competitive people working on stuff, right?
Oh, definitely. I mean, and I am not someone who did poorly in school. I did put a lot of time and energy into it. And what kills me now, in retrospect, is that there were times when I was really miserable because I wasn't happy with a grade I had gotten or with some, you know, negative feedback on something. And that's gonna happen. It just really is. And what I've learned in retrospect, I mean, I've heard this from people, is nobody ever comes out of college saying, man, I wish I had studied more.
Yeah, no way.
And I really wasn't sure if I believed that.
I wish I went out to bars more.
Seriously. I wish I had, you know, gotten involved in even more things that I had, you know, made even more friends. And so before law school, starting out and articulating the fact that I am not going to let grades dictate my happiness I think will be really helpful.
That's really interesting for a couple of.
Years ahead of me on that one.
Well, I mean, you and I have very similar philosophies on this stuff. It's interesting. I also think going back to what you said about your friends and, you know, spending multiple hours on a reading response is interesting. What I've realized is that I don't have to be the best at everything. In fact, just like with my money, like, I spend extravagantly on certain things, like going out with my friends or traveling, but I cut costs mercilessly on stuff. You know, I don't care what kind of hangers I have. I don't care about what kind of shampoo I use. You know, there are many, many things I don't care about. But I think being able to prioritize what you do care about and what you don't really helps clarify things as you start to have to make choices.
