The Sokanu Blog

Helping you find your passion in life

By Spencer Thompson

In the age of the internet, many new “micro-celebrities” have been created. Just head on over to the Twitter Most Followed list to see the current rankings. What does this list tell us in terms of popularity? Not much - seeing as the top people on the list are all musicians and celebrities that we already know and love. But what becomes more interesting is when we scroll down to the ~50th position, where we can start to see some unknown names. Have you ever heard of Pete Cashmore? If you aren’t in the tech industry, probably not. How about Tony Hsieh? No? Going further down the list, somebody like Gary Vaynerchuk may pop out at you - seeing as a bald guy that tweets a lot has over 800,000 followers. Impressive right? 

So is this what we define as influence? Probably not, seeing as we have had influential people since the beginning of man. The bigger question, I believe, is what constitutes influence? And how do we interpret it? Realistically, there are very few influential people on this planet, but we are affected by many more. I believe this is because there are multiple forms of influence upon each person, and we will attempt to take a look at some of them here.

Influence Is…

The effect that something or someone has on your cognitive processes. With this broad definition, simply going for a drive every morning results in you being influential to everyone around you. But of course when we talk about influence, we are talking about a person and who they are. The problem I see is that we lump everyone into the same boat. Your teacher may be influential on you, but so is Bill Gates. But do we classify them the same way?

Strong-Link Influences

When you go to school or work, you begin to develop a relationship with the people around you. It doesn’t matter if you have passed these people on the street a thousand times beforehand, when you are forced to interact and collaborate with them, a bond is formed. Thus, friendships are a result. I’m sure that everyone reading this still has a close group of friends from high school and university, as well as another set of friends from their workplace or social place (gym, etc…) These people that you know very well are called “strong-ties”, and have a pretty powerful effect on you. In the context of the internet, these are the people on Facebook that you add first and interact with the most.

Whether you think so or not, you have a very strong influence on these people, and vice versa. If one of them moves up the corporate “ladder”, you will begin to feel differently about them. Does someone get better marks than you, yet doesn’t seem to try as hard? This may change your behavioural patterns when it comes to school. And of course in terms of morals and ethics, our strong-link network strongly influences our decisions. But the reality is, zooming out to a 20,000 foot view, is very, very few of these people are influential on anyone but your core group. Do you have a boss that you can’t stand and you complain about to your friends? That’s fine and dandy, but almost 100% of the time that boss has no influence on your friend whatsoever. And this is where we can fall into the “small-minded” trap.

Take the example of a high school. You are a math teacher that does the best job you can every single day. You play by the rules, donate your time after school and genuinely care about your students. But your principal, the boss, is not correctly allocating your budget so that you can purchase new computers. Naturally, you are upset. And so who do you turn to in order to complain? Your co-workers, family and friends. The principal has a massive influence over your life each and every day, which is negative in this case. But once again, zooming out to the 20,000 foot view - that principal is a mere speck in planetary system. To other humans, he is not influential at all. So we can determine that he has a large personal influence, but a very poor global influence. 

Industry Influence

The next level up the ladder is people that interact with you on a very rare basis. In the case of the teacher, this may be your superintendent or maybe the minister of education in your province. Obviously, this person holds a lot more power, as he or she is responsible for whole batches of school districts. Accordingly, no matter what school you go to in the region, everyone has heard of this person and follows their decisions. Every time they pass a new bill in parliament, you think that it is a massive influence in the world. What if a new bill is proposed to add five minutes to the school day. Does this influence you? Of course! You may join a protest, sign a petition or send an email to the minister himself. This person, while not being a strong-link, is a very powerful industry-link.

The problem with this level of influence is that people believe these people are mini-celebrities. In the land of the technology world, bloggers like Michael Arrington have a lot of influence. But in reality, 99.99% of the world has no clue who Michael Arrington is, and don’t care to know. They don’t care that Yuri Milnar is giving every Y-Combinator team 150k, or that Quora is growing like a weed. In fact, all of that is like space language. But if you are in the technology industry, the Ontario minister of education means nothing to you whatsoever. And the dentists association? They have an association? you might ask. You see, the issue with the internet is that we get trapped in our “worlds” rather than realizing that industry-influence is very limited. Sometimes we need to step back and look at the broader picture.

Weak-Link Influences (Global Power)

The last category of influence is the furthest away from you personally. Going back to the teachers example, a person of global influence may be Michelle Rhee. Is she involved in education? Yes - she is trying to do many great things. Does she influence your career? Probably, seeing as if you are a good teacher you will stand by her philosophies. Do you know her personally? Not even close. But the thing is, not many people do, but many know who she is. Her influence not only extends into the education industry, but also technology, finance, health-care, sports, entertainment, etc… Why? Due to the national media coverage she has gotten (ex. Oprah) and the success of Waiting For Superman - she has transcended her industry. 

She is one example of somebody who is influential across the three level. Her actions can determine changes in your day-to-day activities, effect your industry due to changes made and globally influence education leaders. Other examples of global powers can include people like: Bill Gates & Steve Jobs in technology, Michael Jordan & Tiger Woods in sports, Barbara Walters & Oprah Winfrey in media, etc, etc… These are people that have not only reached the top of their industry, but have transcended into all other industries. When this happens, true influence is reached. 

World-class individuals are very rare indeed, but very important in the global sphere. They are heavily scrutinized and always in the limelight. Every action is watched and analyzed closely (usually by non-influential people). Books are written about them, websites dedicated to them. All of these are measures of global influence. 

Are these people influential to you? Like we mentioned before, probably on some level. They are definitely nowhere near as influential as your strong-link connections, but they still affect how you think and act. The balance is remembering that usually the people that affect you the most are the people that have the least amount of influence. It’s a tough balance, but I believe that we need to learn to balance all three levels in order to continue along the path we need to.

By Spencer Thompson  (original post from Sokanu Posterous blog)

Life is an eternal education. We are almost always students of life, learning more every day. Every person we meet, show we watch and book we read - we are learning. Part of the problem with our society is that we seem to define education as the standardized years in which we go to “school”, when of course this is not the case. 

What most people don’t realize is that we are also teachers. For every person we are influenced by, we in turn influence others. Our actions cause other people to stop and question why we did what we did. Our actions show kindness and compassion towards others. We are always leaving an impact, day by day. Our circle of influence grows along with ourselves.

The way that I try to see life is as a giant classroom. In that classroom there are teachers (your mentors, parents, and influencers) and there are students (the people you influence). Your job is to learn and to represent both sides. If you are constantly growing, your platform for teaching will grow. Your words will become more powerful, and your influence will spread further. 

One of the things we must realize is that the world is completely open. You are influencing others whether you believe so or not. We are all teachers now, more than ever. We all tell stories every day. Remember:

Every life has a story. Stories are made up of experiences. Your experiences make up the lesson plan for your life. Use your life as a class.

        By Spencer Thompson    (original post from Sokanu Posterous blog)

Perspective

The world around us moves at the speed of light. With planes, trains and automobiles we can travel to far corners of the earth. With the Internet we can access any piece of information we want. With the advent of social networking, we can connect with virtually anyone we want.  But through all of this innovation and the new ways that we can connect with one another, is there really any difference in the way we interact? Humans have always had very poor judgement systems when it comes to meeting other people. Our interactions with one another are interesting simply because of the multitude of ways that we judge instantly.

The world would be a lot simpler if humans were built to be the same, or at least very similar.  We would understand how one another are thinking, our paths to get to a certain point in life would be the same and our opinions would be non-existent. But of course, uniqueness is what makes the world go round. I am not going to get into the philosophy behind perspective, as that could easily become a book-length blog post. Instead, due to the nature of Sokanu, I am going to focus on how perspective affects us when it comes to careers and career choices.

Growing up in the Western world, most of us are used to the luxuries that we receive on a daily basis. And no matter how hard we try, we still take these things for granted. If we truly appreciated what we had, each and every one of us would wake up and start jumping up and down because we are living with shelter, have instant access to electricity and can eat anything we choose. A lot of the world does not have the basic necessities of life, and therefore their perspective is based on the first level of Maslow’s pyramid. I will not be talking about that today, as it is extremely difficult to understand the perspective from that world.

Instead, let’s focus on the traditional path that a westerner takes through life. Grows up in a middle class neighborhood, goes to public school, has friends, plays video games, graduates from high school, goes to university, graduates from university, gets a job, gets married, has kids, advances in his career, retires, and eventually dies. This is the typical path of a person from birth to death in North America. Now, where does perspective come in? Well, between each step in life, it’s the blank space that determines what kind of person we are. It’s the non-traditional things that we learn that defines what we believe, how we think, who we talk to and how we live our lives. And the first rule we must remember is, everyone’s blank spaces are different.

Filling In The Blanks

When you take the bus or train to work, do you ever stop to listen to some of the conversations going on around you? If you are someone that just puts in earbuds and shuts out the world, try this on Monday. Check your Blackberry, read the paper, or just sit in silence. Observe the people around you. Realize that every single person sitting around you has had a unique life path to get to this point. No two people are the same. That person sitting across from you can be a banker, lawyer, doctor or he can be a pastry chef or farmer. And his path to get to that point has been totally different than yours. Isn’t that amazing? As obvious as that may sound, every single person sitting around you, at that exact moment, has had a unique life. Their blank spaces have been totally different than yours. Sure they have gone to school, gotten married and had kids, just like you. But that person is so completely different you have no idea.

I’ll explain with a story of my own. On the way back home Thursday evening, I was sitting at the front of the bus. A couple came in and sat down. The lady was older and couldn’t hear very well. Her partner was making sure to talk directly into her ear so that she could hear. As a result, the entire bus could hear exactly what she was saying. He was talking about loan sharks, politics and conspiracy theories. Normally I would internally roll my eyes and stop listening. But I was also reading The Happiness Hypothesis on my Blackberry, and had just read a passage on perspective. I realized that these people may not have gone to Harvard, may not live in a $10 million dollar house, may not have invented a revolutionary technology, but they were still entitled to their perspective on life. And my opinion on what they should or should not believe is irrelevant. 

Their blanks in their lives were completely different than mine. I spend my time worrying about financial forecasts, UX mockups, hiring, marketing, designing, reading, writing and thinking about Sokanu. My perspective is generally focused on the tech world. If I had asked these people who Mark Suster or Fred Wilson was, they would look at me with confusion. But on the flip side, if they asked me any question about any other industry, would I be any better off? In each industry, I am beginning to realize certain sets of people have a very narrow view of the world through their eyes. The science world thinks that the art world is flaky, while the art world thinks that scientists just aren’t creative enough. Finance guys think that technology people don’t understand capitalism, while tech people think that finance guys don’t understand entrepreneurship. It goes on and on. We generally exist in one world in our entire lives. Our “tribe” and information is all related to that world. And because of this, all of our gaps are filled with the same thoughts, opinions and beliefs as others in that world. Thus, our view of the world begins to narrow. We begin to realize what “the real world” is.

The Real World

When you were growing up, did your parents ever talk to you about “the real world”? You know, the one where money doesn’t grow on trees, you have to work extra hard to pay the bills, promotions aren’t real, a $20,000 car is all you can afford, owning a house is the greatest achievement you will have, a university degree is a key to life, etc… And the problem is, we are a product of our environment. So whatever our parents deem as the real world, we usually accept as our own. The only issue with that is there is no one real world. There are millions of real worlds co-existing on this planet at the same time.

You create your real world. Every single action that you take determines your world. And that is why perspective is so important to consider. We co-exist with billions of other people that live in their own worlds. And when two people or more share overlapping features from their world, they form a tribe. And collections of those tribes form the industries that we know today. So when it comes to careers, we generally find ourselves funneled into a category that we live our lives in. And this is wonderful, because it allows the plethora of different personalities and talents available on the planet to shine through.

Next time you are talking to someone new to your world, or from a totally different world, don’t just dismiss them. Remember, we live in a world with multiple intelligences, and so what we may be intelligent at, others may be lacking in. But remember this works both ways. There is something to learn from everyone. Sometimes the worlds are so far apart that your perspective can’t understand theirs, but that doesn’t mean they are wrong and you are right. 

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Choosing a career path is tough, and the education system doesn’t make it much easier. They try to guide you towards one of these worlds that exists on our planet. The problem is that most of the time, schools don’t understand the unique perspective of their students, and they don’t adapt their needs to the situation. This is why finding your passion is so important. Passion is not the be-all-end-all, but rather the guiding force that allows us to make the right decisions as we travel through life. Finding your passion, connecting with your tribe and achieving your goals are the steps that you must take in order to find a career that you will find rewarding. But having a sense of perspective for the world around you allows you to understand that your opportunities are endless.

Never let someone with little perspective guide you away from your passion. Next time you have a conversation with someone who doesn’t understand why you are doing what you are doing, try to understand their perspective. How were they raised? What was their path in life? This will often let you understand why they are making the statements they are. By getting this, you can understand where they are coming from. People that are not in your world will very often not have the same perspective to you. Remember, that’s what makes the world so unique and wonderful.

80% of the world lives on less than $10.00 a day(1). 50% of the world lives on less than $2.50 a day. The fact that you are able to sit and read this article is a semi-miracle. Our ability to read, interpret and process information is a gift, not a right. We are lucky in so many ways - yet people continue to complain about their “lot in life”, regardless of how bad that lot really is. 

The chances that you were born in North America is extremely low. If you were born into a “modern” society, one that values freedom, education, health, innovation & diplomacy, you have already won. You have won The Ovarian Lottery, the greatest leg up you can have in life.

The world is filled with people who love to complain. They complain about how terrible their marriage is, how badly behaved their children are, how soul-sucking their job is, and frankly - how life sucks. And you know what? They are right. 

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.” 
― Henry Ford

Most people sit around and wait for their “lucky day”, the day where all of their dreams come true. They sit and pray, hoping they win the lottery, so all of their problems will be solved. What they don’t understand is - they’ve already won. Just by being born here, by being alive past the age of five, by having the chance to be educated in a public school system - you have won. You are in the top 20%. 

Life is hard - we know this. Next time you start to complain about how hard your career or life is, think of this.

  • There are 7 billion people on the planet Earth
  • 80% of them make less than $10 dollars a day
  • 1.2 billion people have a disability
  • 7.6 million children a year die before the age of 5
  • 23 million Americans are addicted to drugs or alcohol
  • etc….

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What are you complaining about again? Remember - you have already won. Billions of people would trade anything to be in your position. You are the envy of the majority of the planet. You have already won the lottery. Now don’t waste that winning ticket. 

Sources:

1. http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

By Spencer Thompson

People that know me well know that I love to preach about the virtues of reading. It has single-handedly done more for my personal development than anything else I’ve done. It has affected my personal relationships, my business relationships and my ability to make decisions. Almost all great leaders have the same feeling - that reading has changed their life. Why is this?

Life is like a giant snowball. When we are young, we spend our time cultivating this snowball. We pack it tightly with the bias that our parents, family and friends give us. We take in experiences, changing our brain - and use this change to pack the snowball even tighter. And then we add the “education” we receive - school-based or otherwise. 

Most people form this snowball by the time they are 18, and it forms the base of what they believe for the rest of their life. Very few people take the time to add to the snowball, cultivating it for the future. And fewer still focus on pushing that snowball down the hill so it can start to build itself. 

Of course this is a metaphor for acquiring knowledge, but it is my favourite one. Our knowledge bases are truly like a snowball - we add to it all the time but very often the size varies amongst people. The reason is simple - some people are better at acquiring knowledge than others. 

To acquire knowledge means to take in signal from all of the noise around us, and apply it to the mastery of your craft or your life. When you read articles on the internet, watch TV or check Facebook, you are receiving information. The question is - is that information useful to you? Can you apply it towards something to make you a better and more successful person? 

Very often the answer to that is no. The amount of noise we receive on a daily basis FAR outweighs the useful signal. This is a problem if you want to build a competitive advantage for yourself in life.

Those who are masters at filtering this knowledge learn to build a self-perpetuating snowball. Each meeting they have, each show they watch and each book they read adds to this war chest. What most people don’t realize is that while the the world is incredibly complex, many subjects that appear to be different intertwine in ways we would never expect. Psychology greatly affects business, physics influences biology, technology disrupts most industries, economics affects nearly everything we do, etc…

Meeting people is one of the greatest ways to acquire knowledge. You will soon realize that one of the great quotes - “people lead to people” is very true. Each deep interpersonal relationship you build does not only increase your personal knowledge (and hopefully theirs) but it also creates a network effect for your personal network. With focus on getting signal out of a meeting, it is amazing to see the resulting relationships that are built out of a simple conversation. Soon you will begin to realize that because you have been cultivating relationships over a while, your network is vastly larger than you would have expected. 

**

Ultimately the acquisition of knowledge is useful for one task - making decisions. Whether an investment decision, a personal decision or deciding which car to buy - your snowball influences the speed and accuracy of that decision. Your various “touchpoints” of knowledge all cross and allow you to build an amazing filter in which you process decisions. Looking to download a piece of software? Your snowball tells you what a sketchy spamware site looks like, and that you shouldn’t click download. It tells you that even though the person you are talking to is really nice, they aren’t worth continuing a relationship with (or they are!). And on a simple level - it helps you understand why gas prices at the pump are so expensive.

The most successful people in the world do not have some kind of secret that the rest of us do not posess. Most of them were not born into opportunity like we fantasize that they are. (another post - why we create success bias in our minds in order to make ourselves feel better) They just understand the power of their brain - and how to use it as an effective weapon in the game of life. 

Going back to the beginning - it is my opinion that books are the single greatest way to build the base of the snowball (and add to it at a rapid pace). Why is this? 

Books are usually the culmination of a life of research and thought (the good ones anyway). When someone at the top of their field spends 25+ years thinking about a topic, then decides to put their life’s work into a bound format that is 300 pages and costs under $30, think about it. The fact that you WON’T read that is pathetic. The gains are exponential. Secondly - a book forces your brain to create visual representations of what it is processing. Unlike images that are fed to us through a TV, a book leaves the pathway from the back to the front of the brain open to intepretation. 

image

In conclusion, spend the time cultivating your personal knowledge snowball. The payoff is not linear, it is exponential. The number of connections you are gaining with each piece of signal is amazing. If you can imagine your life 40 years from now with a self-perpetuating snowball, the results are incredible. There is no bigger competitive advantage you can give yourself. 

Throwback post from CEO Spencer Thompson

As a nation, we have adopted a model of judging people quickly and immediately as to how successful they are. That model is education, or lack there of. Very often in business or dinner parties, conversation can quickly turn to level of education.

“Where did you go to school?” one person may ask. “I am a Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/Oxford 1997 alumni” responds the individual.

Immediately, as if that person has said the magic words, he is immediately given an immense amount of credibility. People automatically assume that he is successful, regardless of the field he is in. Now, if he mentions that he works for an investment bank such as Goldman Sachs in New York City, people’s eyes begin to widen. He is the definition of success in the Western world. Well educated, established in a world class city and has a well paying job is the perfect combination. That individual at the dinner party will have to work really hard to ruin his reputation.

Let’s compare that to another individual. A person may ask the same question, “Where did you go to school?” Except this time, the second individual answers, “I didn’t go to university, I actually moved to Paris to become an artist” The immediate reaction now will be “Uh huh”, and the conversation will move on. That second individual at the dinner party will have to work really hard to improve his reputation.

Why is this? Why do we measure people’s level of success on where they went to school? Isn’t it about the person and their unique happiness? While it may seem not, that is because most people assume that there is only one type of education in the world. We begin to believe that intelligence is defined by education. Of course, this is not true.

In fact, we believe that there are three levels of education: 1. Formal Education 2. Self-Taught Education 3. “The School of Hard Knocks.” By separating education into three types, we can directly define what each of them represent and how people fit into each one. Let’s take a look at each in more depth and try to understand where people go wrong in judging people’s intelligence based on level of education.

1. Formal Education The most common form of education in the Western world, formal education is the process of going from elementary school —> high school —> bachelor degree program —> and possibly a graduate degree. While going through this process, the students make connections, join extra-curricular activities and prepare themselves for the workforce. After going through high school, students can choose to go to college (usually for more hands-on education) or a formal university (usually more theory and academic work), depending on the career path that they have chosen.

Formal education is perfect for students that want a professional career, whether wanting to become a lawyer, accountant, doctor, psychologist, project manager or something similar. In order to become one of these professionals, very often a bachelors degree is not enough, a graduate or doctorate degree is needed. At the top of the mountain of formal education is university professors, who almost always require a PhD and teaching experience. What about the rest of the students? What about those students that want to become entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, artists, dancers and other things that are not traditionally taught by formal education? Should they still go through formal education just because the system says to? This comes down to what is known as the “hierarchy of subjects”.

As a culture, we have a predetermined list of subjects that are deemed more important than others. At the top are math and science. In the middle are the languages and social sciences, and at the bottom are the arts. Dance is hardly ever included in a list of academic subjects, and visual arts and music are just above that. Why is this? Why, in formal education, do we treat math and science as the be-all-end-all? The system was built in the Industrial Revolution in order to produce educated individuals for the workforce. Today, those who want to be educated into a formal professional can get their degree, but what about the rest of the professions?

2. Self-Taught Education The second kind of education is not that well known. I believe that in the coming years, self-education will become ever more important as more and more people get generalized degrees, and inflationary education sets in. Self-taught education is simply learning from books, seminars, mentors and the internet under one’s schedule and time. Most great musicians, artists, athletes and entrepreneurs go through this method in order to become the best in their field. That painter that I referred to at the beginning of this article would have been self-taught through books, the internet and mentors she may have met in Paris. She is learning more than the majority of people do in a lifetime.

What are the downsides to going with this method? Well, unless you are quite structured and have a love for learning, it can be difficult at times. In formal education, we are used to the structure of predetermined classes, bells to signal the end of periods and set timelines for each day. With self-taught education, we must set our own schedules, be motivated to learn and discipline ourselves to put in the necessary amount of time to make it work. This becomes very easy if you love what you do. Basketball players that want to improve will gladly go out to the court and shoot hoops for three hours. If we analyze this activity, it is self-teaching because it is improving their muscle memory, abilities and intelligence about the game. To the basketball player, it’s just fun. It doesn’t feel like learning.

To the up-and-coming musician, playing the drums when he gets home is not a chore, it’s a gift. He loves playing his drums day and night. (mind you his family may not like these drums day and night). To the drum player, self-education is something he loves to do. The same thing can go for entrepreneurs. How many stories have you heard of entrepreneurs choosing to forgo formal education in favor of self-teaching? With the power of the internet, we literally have any piece of information that we need at our fingertips. And if you don’t like the way that it is presented online, there are millions of books, magazines and audio files available to purchase. Some great websites for online video learning include:

Academic Earth actually includes some full courses at some of the top universities in the world (Havard, Yale, Stanford) that you can listen to online. I am currently going through the psychology course at Yale right now, all for free. There is no better time in history to get a self-taught education. However, there is still another class of education that we sometimes refer to as “the school of hard knocks”.

3. “The School of Hard Knocks” Many times we read stories of businesspeople or actors that don’t go to college, don’t self-educate continuously and yet still become successful. Why is this? Those people have been through the school of hard knocks. Another way of putting this is education on the fly, or building a plane after jumping off a cliff. No matter what you call it, usually it’s a long journey. Many people that are successful did not start out with this burning vision of success in their minds. In most cases, they just started working at a job and began to grow.

I like to use the example of the restaurant owner that started as a dishwasher 20 years ago. When he was just a kid, fresh out of high school (sometimes not even) he simply needed a job. So he got one as a dishwasher at the local restaurant. Unlike most kids that get a job, however, he began to notice the inner workings of the restaurant. He began to observe how the the food was ordered, all of the prep work that went into dinner service and how the waiters and managers interacted. What started out as a job soon became a free education (that he was actually getting paid for!). Soon, he moved up to bussing tables, working late into the night. Keep in mind, however, that he made plenty of mistakes along the way, and this is a lengthy process. However, fast forward 20 years, and that same individual now owns his own restaurant. By graduating from the school of hard knocks, he knows what to do, what not do to, and how to run a restaurant properly.

The same story is applied over and over again in business. An entrepreneur one day has a brilliant idea that pops into her head. She decides to quit her job and dive full bore into this venture. She has no previous business experience, no contacts and no capital to get started. But she is an entrepreneur, and she will do whatever it takes to succeed. She will go through the school of hard knocks for years before she finally has a company that is profitable, successful and creating jobs around the world. A great story that outlines this is the story of Five Guys Burgers And Fries.

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So what have we learned from examining the three different types of education? Well for one, we must observe that one is not better than another. Just because someone decides to go through the formal education system does not make them any more intelligent than someone that decides to open up their own art studio. There are millions of different ways to learn a plethora of activities, and there is no set path to success. Education is completely personalized to the career that you want to achieve.

Here is a great quote to illustrate learning: “For learning to take place with any kind of efficiency students must be motivated. To be motivated, they must become interested. And they become interested when they are actively working on projects which they can relate to their values and goals in life” - Gus Tuberville, President, William Penn College

When you become interested in what you are working on, it no longer becomes work. It becomes something you love to do. Learning should not be a chore, and neither should education. You should learn because you want to, not because you have to. Finding your passion is the key to doing this successfully. Intelligence is not determined by education, because as we have learned, there is more than one type of education. Each type is unique to the career path and the individual taking it. In the end, education is just a means to an end, with that end being success. Success in any field, in whatever way you define it. Remember, success is just another word for happiness.

I recently finished reading the book How Children Succeed (highly recommend it) and took a few core points away from it. The point I want to talk about today is that of character, a term used in the book to explain common traits that successful children have.

Traditionally we think of the same metrics of success for a child. IQ, test scores, grades are some of the most common. These are all things we can “measure” easily and can be ranked on both a micro level (within the classroom) and on a macro level (across the country or the world). The problem with this methodology? These may determine success within the academic environment, but do they really matter when it comes to success in life?

The author, Paul Tough, argues no (for the most part). What matters equally, or more, is character, a set of traits that are difficult to measure - but make us who we are. This quote from Paul sums it up nicely:

“Absolutely, cognitive skill and IQ make a big difference; vocabulary matters. But the scientists, the economists and neuroscientists and psychologists who I’ve been studying and writing about are really challenging the idea that IQ, that standardized test scores, that those are the most important things in a child’s success. I think there’s lots of evidence out there now that says that these other strengths, these character strengths, these noncognitive skills, are at least as important in a child’s success and quite possibly more important.”

I want to spend a lot more time talking about the psychology & neuroscience in another post, but I want to take this post to dive into three of the most important character “traits” and how they affect people. Since Sokanu is a human development platform focused on career discovery, many of these traits have a direct influence on the way we approach development. The three core traits I want to focus on are grit, self-control and curiosity.

Grit:

In my opinion, the most important character trait a human can possess. Grit is exactly what it sounds like - a will to succeed. Persistence in the face of adversity. Running over roadblocks.

The biggest negative to achieving high grades and “success” in academia is that you don’t “learn” how to fail. You don’t know what it is like to go around an obstacle. So the first time something doesn’t go your way, you are unsure of what to do. This is why you see so many “smart” students never reach their full potential in the “real world”.

I’m a big fan of this definition in Wikipedia:

Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait, based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective. This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie within a gritty individual’s path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization. Commonly associated concepts within the field of psychology include “perseverance,” “hardiness,” “resilience,” “ambition,” “need for achievement” and conscientiousness.

Self-Control:

The way I like to think of this is as a way to delay gratification or satisfaction. Most people (especially in this generation) crave instant gratification. We want apps to download in seconds, songs to stream instantly (for free of course) and responses to be sent right away. Imagine the shock then when people realize that success takes years of hard work.

This character trait is incredibly important because it goes hand in hand with grit. Understanding that you may have to delay certain things in order to have a long term gain is incredibly difficult for people. It is the difference between short and long term thinking. Would you rather have $200,000 today or double your money, every day for a month, starting at $0.01?

There is a great quote about entrepreneurship that I believe applies to self-control really nicely.

Curiosity:


An obvious one, but it is constantly shocking how many people lack this. Having a genuine curiosity about the state of the world opens up your mind in more ways than you know. The neural pathways created or activated during this process is incredible. Reading books, traveling to new places and talking to people with a different perspective all alter the way you think about things.

Children having natural curiosity is something we should try and keep throughout life. Many kids lose this sense once they think it is “uncool” to learn. It should always be your goal to be curious. Wonder about how things are made, cultures are formed and how the world works in general.

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Combined with the two traits above, curiosity completes what I believe are the three most important character traits for building successful people. There are many more I’d like to talk about in our next post. The concept of teaching character vs traditional “success” metrics is an extremely important one. We should all be spending more time building these traits in people we know and love - and understanding how early development of this extrapolates over an entire lifetime. It literally affects every aspect of your life. That is why character is so important.

I get asked all the time whether we are a “job site” whenever I mention what we do. Not only is it wrong, the misconception is fair. Many people don’t see a difference. For example - Forbes just released a list of The Top 75 Websites For Your Career. The list is a composition of job posting boards and internship sites, which are also posting boards. There are very few (if any) career sites in there. I’m going to talk about how we see the difference. 

First, a quote to begin:

Most people approach their work in one of three ways: as a job, a career, or a calling.

If you see your work as a job, you do it only for the money, you look at the clock frequently while dreaming about the weekend ahead, and you probably pursue hobbies, which satisfy your effectance needs more thoroughly than does your work.

If you see your work as a career, you have larger goals of advancement, promotion, and prestige.

If you see your work as a calling, however, you find your work intrinsically fulfilling [since] you are not doing it to achieve something else. You see your work as contributing to the greater good or as playing a role in some larger enterprise the worth of which seems obvious to you. You have frequent experiences of flow during the work day, and you neither look forward to “quitting time” nor feel the desire to shout, “Thank God it’s Friday!” You would continue to work, perhaps even without pay, if you suddenly became very wealthy.

                                                      Jonathan Haidt - The Happiness Hypothesis 

The difference is not as simple as laid out above, but I like the quotation a lot.

A Job Site

A job site is exactly what it sounds like. Do you notice a big “search for a job” box on the homepage? Is there an option to “upload your resume?” Chances are you are on a job site. There are oodles of them - from Monster to CareerBuilder to TheLadders and down to Craigslist. LinkedIn is also a job site but does some really interesting things in the way of professional networking. Job sites do not solve any problems for the user - they are a marketplace. They have a listing of jobs (from employers) and they have a list of resumes (from users). Their job is to match these two up. Most job sites are not very good at this, but innovation is very slow in this space.

A job title is something specific, like “Managing Director of XYZ Corp” or “Lead Cultivator of Bananas at ABC Farms.” They have a list of requirements and give a description of the job. 

Everything I’ve listed above, Sokanu does not do. Why? Well - it doesn’t solve our problem. What is our problem? That most people have no idea what they are meant to do. What is the point of a job site if you don’t even know if you are on the right track? What track? A job site only makes sense if you know that attaining a job is a step along a specific path. There are 3 million job postings that exist, unfilled. There are WAY more people then that who don’t know what their perfect career is - leading to a mismatch of skills.

Job sites do not solve this problem.

A Career Platform

A career title is something much higher level, like “Carpenter” or “Accountant”. A career title has a multitude of job titles that fit underneath it. 

The reason we are unfamiliar with career platforms is because there are hardly any. The reason? They are really, really hard to build “correctly”. They need to customize to each person’s unique situation, and help guide them. They need to begin with the end goal in mind - and ask the question, “where do you want to go?” They should facilitate the process of discovery and trial and error. Users should be able to “sample” a multitude of careers and see what they like and don’t like. Only once they have narrowed down some choices can they see the path in front of them. 

The career platform should also help the person with their path. Part of the path may be going to school. A step may be meeting a specific person. Another one yet may be finding a job within that career. Notice that a job is not the be all end all. It is merely a step (albeit an important one) in your path. Most people approach this with the opposite attitude. They start out with applying for jobs that they have no passion for and with no context of how it fits into their path in life. 

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Finding your calling, going back to the quotation above, is the ultimate goal. We try and take a direct approach at combining your calling with a career that is optimized for you. We see finding a job as only a step along a path to finding your calling. That is why we would never call ourselves a job site. 

For many people, finding a job is the best (or only) option for creating a living for a family - we are after something different. Find a career that’s right for you, work passionately, live happily. 

By Spencer Thompson 

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