College Archives

Choosing To Get the Education I Deserve

August 23, 2024September 16, 2024 Nik

It was one of those weeks where one and one just add up to three.

First, I woke up at 5 AM one morning. Groggy, unable to sleep, I dragged myself to the couch and opened a new fantasy novel. I struggled with a phrase on the first page. Then another on the second. I read and read, and by page 24, I was scratching my head so hard it started hurting: “Is it just me, or is this written so badly, it’s barely comprehensible?”

Between the multi-paragraph sentences, needlessly verbose descriptions, endless adverbs, and backwards unwinding of the action, I gave up on The Atlas Six right then and there. I confirmed with several friends that the writing was indeed atrocious, and after some googling, I found out why: It’s a self-published book that became a bestseller because the 15-year-olds on TikTok are all over it. Now, I’m not too old for a Booktok recommendation, but I am too old to read bad, unedited writing. Aren’t we all?

A few days later, my friend Franz sent me a list of the top 100 literary classics, aggregated across a decade of rankings. “How many have you read?” he asked me. I did a quick count. The answer was five. Ouch! Here I was, a writer with ten years of experience, apparently wasting my time on TikTok drivel, yet having read almost none of the all-time greats of English literature. “What the hell am I doing?” I thought.

In that moment, something clicked — and then so did I. I proceeded to Amazon, loaded my shopping cart like a kid on Christmas with an unlimited budget, and hit “Order.” Over the next week, box after box arrived, and while I watched them pile up, I finished two early birds — Albert Camus’ The Stranger and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Turning those pages felt like taking a big breath through my nose after stepping outside for the first time in days. “Ahhhh! That’s better.”

I’m currently enjoying J. R. R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion, and while I do feel like my literary train is finally heading in the right direction again, the whole incident made me reflect: How can someone who writes for a living cruise right past the most important works in their industry for a decade?

If You’re Not Valued, You’re in the Wrong Place

March 8, 2021August 10, 2024 Nik

When she graduated high school, the father told his daughter: “I’m proud of you. Soon, you will move out and go your own way. I’d like to give you a going-away present. Follow me.”

The father walked to the garage and pressed a light switch the daughter had never seen before. A single light bulb lit up and revealed: Hidden in the back of the garage, there sat an old car. It was dusty, dirty, and clearly not in good shape.

The father smiled and revealed a set of keys: “I bought this car many years ago. It is old, but now, it’s yours! I only have one request: Take the car to the used car lot and ask how much they’re willing to give you for it. I’d like to know.”

30 Lessons Learned in 30 Years of Life

February 18, 2021February 28, 2024 Nik

Yesterday, I turned 30. When I was 18, I thought by 30, I’d have it made.

My 20s were a long, slow grind of realizing “made” does not exist. “Made” is past tense — but you’re never done! The only finish line is death, and, thankfully, most of us don’t see it until we’re almost there.

Instead of the binary made/not made distinction, I now see life as round-based. You win some, you lose some, and different rounds have different themes. There’s a carefree-childhood season, a teenager-trying-to-understand-society season, an exuberant-20-something season, and so on.

At 30 years old, I’ve only played a few seasons, but each round feels more interesting than the last. If that trend persists, I can’t imagine what one’s 60s or 90s must be like. By that time, you’ve seen so much — and yet, there’ll always be new things to see.

Most seasons last longer than a year, and there’s plenty to talk about with respect to the important, defining decade from 20 to 30 alone, but today, I’d like to do something different: I want to share one thing I’ve learned from each year I’ve been alive.

Sooner or Later, You’re Going To Be Yourself

November 9, 2020August 5, 2024 Nik

I don’t know if it was the American air or my stats professor going on about Tim Ferriss, but one day while studying abroad, I decided I would start waking up at 5 AM simply because I liked it.

I love the quietude of early mornings. The world is asleep, and there’s peace in knowing that alone. But it’s also a great time to read, to learn, and to get things done. There are no distractions. You can be slow and focused at the same time. There’s no rush, and by the time everyone you know has breakfast, you’ve already accomplished a good chunk of what you want to do that day. A half-done to-do list at 9 AM is comforting. Bottom line? I love waking up early.

There’s only one problem with it, and it’s the same problem with everything you enjoy that 99% of the world doesn’t: It’s weird. Not because it’s actually strange but because by not doing it, the masses have deemed it so.

If you don’t follow the herd, sooner or later, the two of you will clash. You will get confused looks for adjourning to your chambers at 9 PM, tough questions for choosing sleep over parties, and nasty whispers behind your back for either, which, luckily, you’ll rarely find out about.

Sooner or later, you’ll stop being invited, and your socially conditioned mind will ask you some devious questions: Do you really want to give up socializing? Don’t you love the company? Would it hurt that much to blend in a little?

When your brain shows up with those questions, it’s important to ask equally uncomfortable but more important ones: Who am I really? What do I want? Am I regressing, or is this a true step towards being my most authentic self?

If you determine that you are indeed living more in sync with yourself, and that your mind is mostly trying to trick you, it is your duty to shut the voice of doubt down. Stomp it. It needs to be as flat as a piece of cardboard about to go into the trash. Jump on it. Don’t give it another chance to inflate. Clutch your newly found piece of the self-puzzle, and hold on to it for dear life.

Lying there in the glowing red of the dawn, I learned an invaluable lesson: Sooner or later, you’re going to be yourself — so what’s the point of waiting?

The Only 2 Things You Must Get Right for a Great Career

October 28, 2020July 31, 2024 Nik

The more you think of your career as the massive, complex, ever-changing pool of options it actually is, the harder you’ll find it to commit to a job you like — and the less happy said commitment will make you once you’ve made it.

You’ll constantly worry about which gig to choose next, and you’ll constantly feel anxious about whatever gig you’ve chosen. In other words: You’ll be right, but you’ll be miserable.

On Wait But Why, Tim Urban shares a great analogy about how our career landscape has changed in the past century: dots vs. tunnels.

He says traditional careers weren’t 40-year tunnels, but at the very least, they felt like it. “You picked your tunnel, and once you were in, that was that. You worked in that profession for 40 years or so before the tunnel spit you out on the other side into your retirement.”

Modern careers, on the other hand, are “long series of science experiments,” Tim says. We are the scientists, and each next job is a new dot in a connected, yet oddly shaped line of points. Referencing Steve Jobs’ connect-the-dots speech, Tim suggests our career paths look “more like a long series of connected dots than a straight and predictable tunnel.”

Seeing your career as a series of dots isn’t a mental trick to help you make decisions — it’s an accurate depiction of what’s actually happening. And seeing your career as a tunnel isn’t just unproductive — it’s delusional.

Everything Tim says is correct. There is incredible freedom in knowing not just that there’s an infinite number of great roles out there but also that, if you’re creative, you can make up your own. It is important to truly understand and deeply internalize this fact — and yet it is equally important to not remind yourself of it every single day, because if you do, you’ll never get anything done.

The human brain thrives on shortcuts. It is an incredibly complex machine, capable of computing the most intricate details — but if that’s all it does, it’ll forever spin its wheels. Imagine we had to direct conscious thought to every slight movement we make: You could barely read this article, and I’d hardly be able to type it. We need filters to operate, and sometimes, the most blatant filters help us get the most done.

When it comes to your career, Sam Altman offers such a filter. He calls it the “vector theory of impact.”

Charlie Munger’s “How To Start Coca Cola in 1884” Thought Experiment

October 9, 2020July 31, 2024 Nik

A few weeks ago, Apple’s market value surpassed $2 trillion, making it the most valuable company in the world. Apple is now worth as much as the entire German stock market. If you split that money between individuals, you could create 2,000 new billionaires tomorrow — or two million millionaires.

Million, billion, trillion, what’s even the difference? Such numbers are hard to process for humans. Maybe, this’ll help: If it takes one million seconds to complete a project, you’ll spend 12 days working on it around the clock (or a month of 8-hour workdays). If it’s a billion seconds, it’ll take 32 years — without sleeping, eating, or taking a break. A trillion? That’s 32,000 years. Going back in time, this is when we’ll find the first cave paintings known to man. From that perspective, Apple has eclipsed all of human history.

The most fascinating lesson from Apple’s journey to $2 trillion, however, may not come from Apple at all. In 1996, long before the tech giant’s meteoric rise, one man thought about how to reach that myth-enshrouded mark. He didn’t use Apple as an example, but since the proverbial one doesn’t fall far from the tree, he moved only two letters over in the alphabet — to Coca Cola.

The man is Charlie Munger, billionaire investor and legendary partner to Warren Buffett. In a talk, he explained how anyone could have started Coca Cola in 1884. In Damn Right!: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger, Janet Lowe included a transcript of his speech.

Using only a few ideas, Munger reverse-engineered how to turn a $2 million investment into an unfathomable $2 trillion market cap 150 years later — a figure the actual Coca Cola company is not unlikely to reach by the target year, 2034, given its previous high of $250 billion.

The point of thought experiments is to form our own, unique understanding of the world. Instead of importing ideas and opinions from other people, they lead to first principles thinking — to a worldview built from scratch which, in turn, will give us a more accurate picture of how the world really works.

Following in the footsteps of this particular experiment, made by one of the world’s best thinkers, will teach us about business, growth, psychology, and life. Here’s Charlie Munger’s $2 trillion masterclass in thinking for yourself.

Your Job Is To Make Opportunity, Not Wait For It

October 8, 2020July 31, 2024 Nik

One time, a Hollywood agent emailed me out of the blue. Somehow, he had landed on my newsletter, and boom, there he was, sitting in my inbox. Then, he asked to have a call.

At first, I couldn’t believe it. I double-checked the photos. Yes, that’s him with Mariah Carey. And Elton John. And Lionel Richie. Jesus! I wonder what he wants from me.

On the call, he wasted no time in introducing me to a senior editor at Deadline Hollywood. I was floored. I could barely scrape together my elevator pitch. Eventually, the connection broke. I followed up with her via email but never heard back.

After that, we stayed in touch via email. Then, we had another call with his business partner, who runs — get this — a publishing agency. “I’m pretty sure he wants to sign you,” the partner said. “You could write a book with us.” I also heard some variation of “We’ll make you rich” in there. Maybe I just imagined it, but the result was clear: My entire life was about to change.

The partner was supposed to have a layover in Munich, and I was meant to meet him at the airport. I crawled out of bed at 6 AM and hopped on a train. This was it! I would shake his hand, have a 9€ sandwich, and then — hopefully — ink a book deal. Or any other deal that would skyrocket me to fame and success.

Halfway to the airport, the phone rang. “Nik, I’m not gonna make it. My plane got delayed.” Okay, no biggie. I got off the train, swapped platforms, and took the next one — right back into mediocrity.

We kept emailing. Slowly, the collaboration talk faded. I kept waiting. “They must bring it up again soon.” By the time the “poof” sound of my shattering dreams arrived in my ear, a few months had passed. Eventually, it dawned on me: This was not my big break and, actually, just like that plane, that break would never come.

You’ll Retire 3 Times in Your Life

September 28, 2020July 31, 2024 Nik

“Retirement starts when you stop sacrificing today for some imaginary tomorrow,” philosopher Naval says. That’s one way to look at it.

Another is that “retirement” is this vague, distant, supposedly rewarding thing meant to happen at the end of your life, and even though you actively plan for it, it feels too far away for you to grasp it.

You can see your pension contributions on your pay slip each month. You can check how much you’ve saved and how much it’s growing. Maybe your total projected payout even looks like an “I won the lottery” kind of jackpot that’ll unlock when you’re 65.

None of this, however, changes the fact that retirement is a long way down the road, and that’s why it feels strange, unfamiliar, and maybe even unimportant to think about it. Trust me, it is not.

As a self-employed writer, I think about it all the time — but I also make jokes. “What do you mean, ‘after graduating?’ I’ll retire, of course!” Lately, however, I started seeing a kernel of truth in all my early-retirement jokes.

I’ve only been an entrepreneur for six years, but looking back on my journey, I can see some clearly marked points after which I felt freer than ever before. Isn’t that what retirement is about? A sense of liberation?

Given the huge weight they lifted off my shoulders, I now consider these checkpoints my retirements. So far, there are three of them, and I think they mark my path to freedom and happiness much more clearly than any traditional definition of retirement ever could.

If you’re sick of the vague cloud of “retirement” hovering somewhere in the distance, here are three more hopeful, specific ways to look at it — none of which require you to be old, and all of which you can choose today.

There’s a True Path to Your Goals

September 1, 2020July 30, 2024 Nik

In 1997, famous architect Rem Koolhaas won a competition to design a campus center for the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. The building was meant to connect important, dispersed college functions and provide students with space to eat, relax, and take care of administrative tasks.

When Koolhaas first came to the site, all he found was a big patch of grass used as a parking lot. Between deciding where to put relevant offices and how to design the exterior, a debate about how to connect it all ensued: Where do we pave the walkways?

If You’re an Intellectual, Act Like One

August 31, 2020December 18, 2023 Nik

In seventh grade, my history teacher asked if anyone knew what the huge, fancy, painting-like carpets covering the walls of the Palace of Versailles were called. His question was met with silence and puzzled faces.

Eventually, I raised my hand and said: “Gobelin.” My teacher was thrilled. So was my neighbor. “Ooooh, go-be-liiiiin, Mr. I-know-everything.” The class erupted in laughter.

There’s something to be said here about shaming intellectuals and about a system in which being fun is cooler than being smart, but at 13 I was oblivious to both of those things — so I too erupted in laughter. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right?

Category: College