What does a life degree look like?… 2019 Version
Last week in our discussion on “Advice I would give myself back when I was starting university” with Scott McKeon, we discussed the idea of a “Life Degree”.
This was brought up when discussing how to make the most of the years that typically follow school, when many transition into tertiary education. Rather than trying to select and commit to a career path at a tender age with limited world experience, the idea was to look to university, college and other tertiary courses as only one portion of your ‘life degree’.
Instead of studying and developing yourself in only one relatively narrow subject area, where the outcomes are decided for you by others, curate your own holistic degree, with the outcomes and objectives that matter to YOU.
The difference is, the academic component will only account for maybe 50%, 35% or 20% of your degree. Of course, university might not be necessary at all. Whilst untested, I do believe this simple exercise puts individuals in the driver seat of their young, immature lives, rather than following standardised paths proposed by others. They are the pilot, and not the passenger.
The Life Degree — Where you are a pilot, and not the passenger
One of the biggest challenges with tertiary education and the transition from high school is the step up in responsibility and independence. You are less likely to be guided by others at this time.
So let’s get proactive, rather than reactive, and try and make the steps easier here.
Where would we start? Well by mapping out the areas we could include in a Life Degree… the below are my own thinking, there could be more or less depending on your own priority mapping and goals.
- FINANCIAL
- CAREER — VOCATION
- SOCIAL
- EXPERIENTIAL
- MINDFULNESS AND SELF-AWARENESS
- SPIRITUALITY AND BELIEF
- HEALTH
- TOPICS OF INTEREST
So the above are a good place to start. Notice I make an important distinction between 1) FINANCIAL and 2) CAREER — VOCATION. In my thinking, financial education, sustainability and goals are very different to the idea of a career. FINANCIAL refers to funding lifestyle and goals, whereas CAREER-VOCATION really refers to what a meaningful use of one’s time can be put towards, especially one that contributes to our overall economy of things.
This idea is very Four Hour Work Week of course, and forces you to consider that the main source of your income does not have to be the main consumer of your time.
Now for many or most people, the way money is earned (FINANCIAL) can be combined with their ideal vocation or job (CAREER VOCATION). This is obviously an ideal scenario, whether you are a professional athlete, musician, builder, baker, retailer, entrepreneur or whatever- if the thing you enjoy doing most can be used to fund your lifestyle then that is fairly straightforward.
But there are major exceptions. There are people who run their own businesses to improve their income but maintain a job somewhere else that they love. Others bridge this gap over the long-term through investing — in either case, an individual would have to allocate time outside of work and regular study to learn these skills. (This might be a good time for a shameless plug, as I have a free course on property investing and purchasing available through Sydney Listings).
SOCIAL — what could this part of a life degree look like I wonder? How do you plan for its development?
Obviously this is determined by what you value, whether it be time with family, meeting new people, or dating and finding a significant other. The goal might be to build a meaningful network within one’s career and their industry. For others, it can be about having a friendship base quite outside of one’s professional network.
When planning this part of a life degree, we must think about the circles we are placed in and what sort of interactions that will create. For example, I have begun targeting meetups in areas around my map of interests — writing, property investment, and business for example, so I can meet more people to stimulate these interests as well as potentially collaborate with in future. I have also recently enjoyed travelling via AirBnB to stay with superhosts in different cities around the world, to fulfil one of my ambitions of having friends across the globe. I also enjoy regularly travelling to Nepal to maintain relationships built through From the Ground Up.
More specifically, you can build these things in a way that develops your social skills and quality of relationships over time. This is by careful design — for example, I am not one typically involved in cold approaching others. This is why I look to structure interactions in a way which places me in warm situations with people I’m already aware of who have similar interests.
EXPERIENTIAL is the category of “things I want to do” particularly if they are involved in growing oneself, of which travel is a great example. It is easy to travel in a way that confines oneself to their comfort zone, by making conservative choices around accomodation, eating and activities. For example, travelling to Asia only to stay in a Western style hotel, shop for Western brands as an activity and eat burgers and french fries for meals instead of branching out into the new culture.
I’ve grown up very used to the comforts of home, and so I’ve embraced the challenges of a camping tour of Europe or time spent in Cambodia and Nepal really mixing it up! Solo travel, done right, can also be a massive opportunity for growth and personal expansion. I think it’s very useful to consider what experiences are of value, prioritise, and map them into a life degree.
For example, time spent in Nepal for me has had a massive impact on my MINDFULNESS and SELF-AWARENESS, by the exposure to another culture so different from my own. A lot of people, young and old draw the same value from immersion in vastly different cultures, away from touristy hot-spots and expat communities. This is something that Stripe Co-Founder Patrick Collison is very endorsing of. It would be great to see more people planning not only their growth through experiences, but their growth in mindfulness and self-awareness.
For me, this is driven by discussion formats like this blog and podcast, talking with certain groups of friends, and talking to one or two mentors. In the same way, SPIRITUALITY AND BELIEF can be built into a degree. No one should take a stance on belief and spirituality simply because they inherited it. On a post-school retreat one of my favourite teachers reinforced the point that it is “healthy to question one’s faith” (or lack thereof). I therefore prescribe myself frequent reading, discussion and exploration about these ideas also, particularly on my own state of spirituality and belief. I think there is certainly value for others in doing so too.
This is very much validated by a well articulated thought in Jordan B. Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life where he reflects on (to paraphrase) “outgrowing the naive Christianity of my youth”. Dissecting this position, it makes sense that mechanisms of meaning be presented to us in a simplified version when we are young and infantile. After all, we are poorly equipped to handle more sophisticated abstract thought. Why then, should this childhood version not be teased out and explored more robustly over time, the same way our education of literacy and mathematics evolves over time, built on year by year. Why should this ever stop?
HEALTH is also a massively important area for each individual to explore. We are alive in a time where there are so many opinions and divergent voices on health. As such, I strongly feel that each individual needs to do their own exploration on what does and doesn’t work for them. Unlocking the best possible state of health helps us work more proficiently and pursue important goals, as it underpins performance and energy. For me personally, this looks like keeping active in team sports, gym routines, bike rides, plenty of sleep and generally healthy eating!
For anything not pertaining to the professional, the financial, experiences or one’s outlook, I identify the vague TOPICS OF INTEREST for anything else left over. For some people there are areas of curiosity that they must scratch that relate in no way to their professional or vocational pursuits; psychology, economics, biology, modern affairs, politics, and the list goes on.
For me I reflect on reinvesting time into learning French again, which I begun at school, as well as returning to piano classes.
It may not be that we can do all these things at once — we rarely can I feel. But when thinking through them all, we must run our own prioritisation. For example, looking at how much I value writing, travel, learning French and piano, I know that I cannot work every hour of the week on my business for the rest of my years. I must think about the structure which will enable me to balance this across the immediate to not-too-distant future.
The Results and Performance in a Life Degree
I’ve heard of some who adopt a ‘life mentor’ or ‘personal advisory board’, taking these useful concepts from business and applying them to a much more important domain of performance: life itself. I’ve also heard of high performers who rate themselves on a weekly basis across the 8–10 important categories in ‘life’, so as to keep accountability.
I think this is a fantastic concept, and a much better mark of performance than an academic transcript offers alone.
I feel that if we don’t have a system for regular self-assessment and priority checking, we risk neglecting one of these important areas and wasting the valuable time we are gifted with.
Thanks for Reading! Nothing makes me more excited than people reading my stuff, this has always been one of my dreams… to write! It took me a while but hey, I’m still a young guy!
I also hang out on Instagram and LinkedIN. In case you don’t find me boring :)
