- If you've ever had the sneaking suspicion
that college didn't quite prepare you for the real world,
you're not alone.
From building healthy habits to networking successfully
and managing your personal finances,
there's a lot that's left out of the curriculum.
Alexa, how do I do my taxes?
- [Alexa] Hire a qualified tax professional
and don't tax the rich.
Jeff Bezos just wants the best for you.
- Fair enough.
Depending on your degree,
the electives you signed up for and the country you live in,
your college experience
might've been radically different from mine,
but all things considered,
college rarely prepares you for the practical life advice
that will help you keep your shit together
well into adulthood.
But hey, who needs a six-figure degree
when you have YouTube?
In this video, I want to dive
into the 10 biggest things that college doesn't teach you,
and also provide you with resources
and tips to help you course correct.
And pay attention because this will be on the test.
So before we get into it,
I want to thank my sponsor
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for sponsoring this video.
Number one, basic personal finance.
While I didn't know the basics of personal finance
when I graduated college,
nor did I even know what compound interest meant,
I soon learned that it's really not all that complicated.
Most financial experts on TV
try to make things sound really confusing for two reasons.
One, to make them look smart,
and two, to make you feel like you need their advice,
but you don't.
Here are the most important, practical,
personal finance lessons that I've learned
over the past few years that will help you
get started on the right foot.
First, save more than you spend.
I know this sounds absurdly simple,
but we really need to cut down to the basics.
You have to actually save more money
than you're spending every month.
Number two, never make purchases on a credit card
if you don't have the cash.
Three, invest in yourself and your skills.
Find books and courses and resources
that will give you a legitimate return on your investment.
There's lots of free stuff out there,
but there's also some really great paid content, as well.
Four, save up an emergency fund of $1,000 or more
to protect you from the inevitable shit
that life throws at you.
I guarantee you will need this,
and you'll be glad that you saved it up when you do.
Number five, pay off all your debt
as soon as you possibly can.
And number six, open up a retirement account.
If your company matches your 401k or retirement plan,
then you should make sure that you invest
before paying off your debt because this is free money
and you don't want to miss out on it.
And by the way, if you're having trouble
figuring out where to invest your retirement funds,
I have a really easy solution for you.
Use target retirement accounts.
Companies like Vanguard have created target retirement funds
based on the year that you plan to retire.
So if you expect to retire in 2050,
you can simply put all your retirement savings
into the Vanguard target retirement 2050 fund.
It's set up with a variety of mutual funds,
so the investment is already diversified,
and over time the fund is gonna get more conservative
as you get closer to retirement,
so you will be taking fewer risks, which is a great thing.
If you're looking for free resources on personal finance,
check out the personal finance subreddit.
Click on the Wiki button,
and you'll find tons of reliable advice
on doing your taxes, investing, and paying off your debt.
Number two, how to actually get a job.
Yes, college is about exploration and self-discovery,
but when you strip it all back, one of the main reasons
people actually go to college is to get a good job.
I mean, you wouldn't actually pay that kind of money
just for the experience, would you?
Burning Man is a hell of a lot cheaper
and I hear they have way better drugs.
- I don't know, it sounds pretty good to me.
- Unfortunately most of our time
in college is spent learning from decades-old textbooks
and very little of it prepares us
for actually landing our first job,
and then our second and third and so on.
Here's what I've learned.
If you're in a creative field, your resume doesn't matter.
Your work matters.
Before I was YouTuber, I was a freelance filmmaker,
enduring almost a decades' worth of work
with hundreds of different clients.
Not a single one of them asked to look at my resume.
Nobody once asked where I graduated college
and not a single person cared about my GPA.
If you're in a creative field,
clients and employers care about one thing above all,
that you can reliably deliver quality work.
And to show them that you can do that,
you need an impressive reel showing examples of said work.
Now, if you're in a more technical field,
your resume is gonna matter a bit more.
And for those people, here's my advice.
One, keep your resume to one page.
Two, focus on your accomplishments.
And three, forget about your resume.
Seriously, you don't need it.
Think about this.
There are hundreds of people
that are applying for the same position that you want.
How are you gonna stand out?
Can you build a website?
Can you start your own side business?
Can you learn how to effectively cold email employers,
even if a job isn't posted online?
I've personally hired a number of freelancers
over the years simply because they sent me
a cold email with some great ideas.
Ask yourself again and again, how can I stand out?
And please for the love of God
don't send your potential employer
a cake with your resume on it,
unless you're applying to work at a bakery.
In that case, that's a great idea.
Number three, how to never get a job,
or how to live an unconventional life.
If college is one, it's conventional.
It's the way things have always been done,
and it's moving way slower than the world around us.
And in the past few years we've seen massive changes.
There's a movement of people working from home,
millions who have switched jobs for better offers,
and just as many people
taking the leap to freelance or starting their own business.
Having a job used to be the goal.
Our parents and grandparents' idea of a good life
was to work hard for one company for 40 years,
get a decent pension,
and an engraved pen at the end of retirement.
That's not the dream anymore.
Now we understand that if you're gonna work
40 plus hours a week, we better actually enjoy it.
And we've realized that it's more important
to have flexible work so we can actually make room
for the things that matter most in life.
I'm lucky in that after I graduated college,
I never got a real job.
I was a bit early to the world of freelance.
I was so early, in fact,
that people still thought that self-employed
was just another word for unemployed,
but now it's more possible than ever
to turn a skill into your own thing,
to build a flexible schedule and a life that you love.
Whether you already know this or not, it's worth repeating.
You don't need a nine-to-five,
you don't need to make six figures a year,
and you can live a much simpler life than you currently are.
And this all takes a hell of a lot of courage,
because when you follow an unconventional path,
it requires you to push
through a world of fear and self-doubt.
Number four, how to build healthy habits.
College students are known
to have some pretty terrible habits.
Whether it's fueled by procrastination,
partying or overwhelming curriculums, many students develop
less than desirable habits just to keep up.
Fast food diets, excessive alcohol,
and all night caffeine-filled cram sessions
are the norm for many undergrads.
And while I think it's totally okay
to keep things loose while you're young,
a lot of people have trouble adapting
and building healthy habits later in life.
And these habits are the foundation
of living a meaningful life.
We are the sum of all the small decisions and behaviors
that we act on every day,
so if you're looking to finally get your habits to stick,
here are the most important things you need to know.
Control your environment.
If you learn to control your environment,
you can learn to control your habits.
Keep the junk food and alcohol out of the house.
Get clear on your why.
What are you working towards?
What's the motivation behind your action?
Call on this when times get tough.
Track your habits.
Use an app, journal, or better yet,
print out a habit tracker and tape it to your fridge.
You're not looking to make radical changes overnight.
You're looking for momentum.
Use the two day rule.
When building a new habit,
make a promise to yourself
that you will not take two days off in a row.
Among all the habit tactics I've tried,
this one has been the most effective for me.
Above all, remember this, you are not perfect.
You will fail, you will make mistakes,
and you will fall off the wagon.
But when you have a plan for when you do inevitably fail,
you'll be far more likely to get back on track.
Number five, networking like a human.
Networking feels like a dirty word,
but it gets to the point quicker than saying,
how to meet people that could become your best friend
or at the very least
create a mutually beneficial working relationship.
I've always hated the idea of networking.
It always just felt forced and inauthentic and icky to me,
and that's because I always thought
it was about extracting value from other people.
We often go to networking events on the hunt,
asking ourselves, what can I get out of this?
But everything changed for me
when I flipped it around and asked, what can I give?
Networking is only sleazy
when you're trying to get something out of the connection,
rather than giving.
Whether you're sending a cold email
or meeting someone for coffee, you need to ask,
what can you do to help this person achieve their goals?
The self-help OG Zig Ziglar put it best.
"You will get all you want in life.
"if you help enough other people get what they want."
Number six, how to create a life outside of work.
If you play your cards right,
enroll in the right classes and luck out
by knowing exactly what career
you want to pursue at 18 years old,
you might learn some things in college
that set you up to be a productive employee.
But while college might teach you a lot about work,
it teaches you very little about life.
The truth is that when most people enter the workforce,
they go all in, especially in the US.
We focus on getting that first job,
climbing the ranks, transitioning to a better paying job,
climbing a little bit higher.
We put in the extra hours,
squeeze every minute out of our weekends,
and find ways to hustle just a little bit harder.
But we often put so much of ourselves into work
that we actually forget to live,
and that's certainly something I experienced firsthand.
After graduating, I left my free spiritedness
at my last bar crawl
and continued to focus on work, work, work.
It wasn't until I reached my late twenties
that I realized that I was burning myself out.
I was suffering from serious bouts of anxiety
and I had a really toxic relationship with work.
And while I didn't totally sacrifice my life
for the sake of work, I often came far too close.
If I could make one change about those years,
it's that I would have paced myself a little bit more.
I would have learned to slow down much sooner,
and I would have tried to balance
my mental health with my ambitions.
I'm sure if I tried again 100 times,
I would mess up 99 times,
but hopefully you can learn a few things from my mistakes.
It's difficult to come back from burnout.
It's even more difficult to reverse the effects of anxiety,
and I know this to be true
because it's something that I'm still working on.
Number seven, how to cook simple, nutritious meals.
When I graduated,
I only knew two staple recipes for my diet,
and one of them was mix protein powder with water.
(cup rattles)
It took me a few years of eating and feeling terrible
before I was able to start to turn things around.
And one of the biggest game changers for me
was to come up with a few simple but nutritious recipes
that I could have on rotation.
Now, this is gonna require some trial and error for you,
since everyone's different
and there are so many diets and preferences out there.
Some people thrive by going vegan.
Others prefer high protein.
To get started, you need to first unlearn
everything you were taught
in middle school about the food pyramid.
Then get a basic understanding of macronutrients.
Those are carbs, fats, and proteins,
and make sure that you're getting enough
of each of these into your diet,
and right now is when the keto bros are rolling their eyes.
Bro, you don't need carbs.
I haven't had a carb in, like, six years
and I honestly feel so good.
One of the best purchases that I made right out of college
when I definitely didn't have the money was a Vitamix.
For the past 10 years,
this blender has helped me to introduce fruit,
vegetables, and vitamins effortlessly into my diet
through my daily green smoothies.
I typically throw in an entire bag of spinach,
a couple apples, bananas, and an orange,
and I have three smoothies for the next couple days.
Another go-to meal I make is cooking up
a protein with veggies.
Whether it's chicken, fish or steak,
I frequently cook up a protein
in addition to sauteing a side of veggies.
Here's some quick advice to keep you on track.
Ditch the canned and frozen vegetables and go for fresh
Go organic if you can afford it.
And if you're burning your food on the stove top,
it's because your heat is too high,
so turn it down to medium low
after you get a good char going.
Number eight, basic fitness advice.
In addition to implementing
some simple and nutritious meals into your life,
fitness is another area that's often overlooked in college.
Starting a fitness routine for the first time
can be a truly intimidating experience.
Take going to the gym, for instance.
The equipment alone can look like a torture device
brought back from medieval times,
and then you have the chiseled athletes
that are so comfortable in the gym,
it feels like you're trespassing on their private property.
But whether you're just getting started at the gym
or picking up any other fitness habit,
here's some advice that will help you get started
on the right foot.
First, you have nothing to be afraid of.
Most people are so focused on themselves,
they won't even notice you and that's a good thing,
so don't worry about feeling lost
because everyone has to get started somewhere.
And in my experience, the vast majority of people
would love nothing more than to help out a newbie.
So if you're feeling confused
about some cable system at the gym,
don't be afraid to ask for help.
Next, go low, slow, and steady.
You need to remove your ego from the equation.
Start with the routine that feels easy,
whether it's a lower weight than your max
or a quarter of the distance you know you can run.
Ironically, the slower that you start,
the quicker that you can build momentum.
And finally, if you're not enjoying it,
you haven't found the right routine yet.
If you've been exercising for three to six months
and you absolutely hate your fitness routine,
then you're likely doing it wrong.
Your workout should be something that you look forward to,
not dread, so experiment until you find something
that feels right.
Fitness is one of those domino habits
that has a way of impacting every other area of your life,
so if you're looking to make a big change this year,
I recommend that you start here.
Number nine, self-awareness.
Some of us are lucky enough to get our first few lessons
in self-awareness early in life.
From the time that we enroll in middle-school,
we start to get a taste
of how we stack up in the world around us,
and that maybe our parents are a little bit biased.
Maybe we're not the strongest kid in class,
maybe we aren't the smartest,
the most gifted or have the biggest biceps.
And while this might be a bitter pill to swallow,
it helps us to identify
the greatest areas of potential growth.
Unfortunately, a lot of people never get this lesson.
Instead of learning about the areas
where they can improve themselves, they bury the truth.
They mask over their faults and fears
and live in their own altered state of reality.
But learning more about ourselves,
our insecurities, our motivations,
passions and desires is vital to living a meaningful life.
When we dig deep and ask difficult questions
about the life we wanna build for ourselves,
we can actually start to put together a vision
for where we need to go.
Number 10,
college isn't actually supposed to teach you everything.
Okay, so at this point in the video,
you might be getting the vibe
that I don't exactly support the idea of college,
and that's not totally true.
I think college has the opportunity
to be a game changer for lots of students
who aren't yet ready to start their careers
or don't know what they want to do in life,
but the curriculum and costs needs a massive rehaul
in order to actually provide a return on investment.
I can tell you from my experience
that I definitely didn't get six figures' worth
of value from college,
but it should be clear that I don't think that means
that we should be spending our time in university
learning how to make a green smoothie.
I mean, you've got YouTube videos for that,
but one thing they absolutely
should teach students is how to be self-reliant.
College was never supposed to teach you everything,
and if you were expecting your syllabus to do that,
you were probably severely disappointed.
From the moment that you throw
your graduation cap in the air, you're largely on your own.
The sooner that sinks in,
the more you can set yourself up on the path
to find success, happiness, massive biceps,
and to even learn how to pay off all that debt
you accumulated for going to college in the first place.
I hope this video helped.
Good luck and I'll see you next time.
(upbeat music)