How To Become Infinitely Employable

If I talked about all the problems with the current education system you’d be reading for an hour. Instead I’ll assume you have a baseline understanding of the current problems with our education system:

• Student loan debt

• Useless degrees

• Lack of vocational education

• Decreasing relevance of degrees

• AI eliminating middle management positions

• Outdated teaching methods (No educational innovation)

• Employment skill gaps (9 Million open jobs in the USA)

If you aren’t familiar with some of these things I encourage you to listen to the DSTLLD podcast arriving on Wednesday!

If you’re reading this I’m sure you had the same experience I did.

“Make sure you’re taking all the university level classes. Getting into a university is extremely important for your future job prospects. College is for the kids who aren’t as smart as you.”

Somewhere along the way the education system stopped optimizing for the lifelong outcomes of students and started optimizing for university admissions.

Here’s the problem statement:

Our current education pipeline incentivizes massive debt for almost zero positive outcomes.

As technology has advanced it has created massive shifts in both the skills required for employment and the accessibility of learning those skills. You can learn more about the world of business and marketing from YouTube for FREE in 10 weeks than you could from a 4 year, $60,000 university degree.

This relies on your trust in your own ability. An internal locus of control. Agency.

87% of employers believe they will encounter skill gaps in their employees within the next 5 years. 43% are experiencing them now. I’m now repeatedly hearing the terms upskill and reskill in advertisements for education.

Remember the phrase, “you won’t always have a calculator in your pocket.” Fast forward to 2023 — in the age of AI — you’re 2 years away from you having a personal AI assistant with you for the rest of your life.

Here’s the solution:

You need to learn how to learn.

Let’s assume you have access to 90% of human knowledge via AI and the internet. The only barrier to having any job you want then, is not knowing how to learn that knowledge.

It would be hypocritical for me to talk about this and then try to teach you how to learn myself. If you have the access, why not learn from the best? Here’s a couple resources to get you started:

• Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything

• Learning how to learn | Barbara Oakley | TEDxOaklandUniversity

• 15 Effective Ways You Can Learn How to Learn

My purpose with this newsletter isn’t to try and teach you everything myself. It’s to point you in the right direction by distilling an endless amount resources into the best I’ve found to solve your problems.