Changing the world by trying. Living passionately. And a bit on student life.

You see it all the time in the inside flap of books or at the bottom of websites/flyers/blogs.

So and so does not endorse this activity.

Google is not not associated with this content in any way.

This is an unofficial Harvard page.

The views expressed here are only those of the author and do not reflect those of Penguin Books.

It’s so easy to put a line in the footer and chicken out. The thing is, like it or not, you’re forever associated with whatever you do (and whatever your employees, followers, customers and evangelists do).

Everything is public.

Take responsibility. Trust your employees. Defend your opinions. Polarize people. Stand up for what your employees tweet. Ditto for what they write on their personal blog. 

Hiding behind a footer line doesn’t cut it.

You’ve probably been in a math class where a student shouts, in despair, “I want to be a (designer, business person, plumber), why the hell do I need this anyways?”

Invariably, one of two things occurs:

(1) The teacher tries to convince you need this to do more math. Either you need it to pass the class, to pass the next class or to use it in yet another formula.

(2) The teacher tries to establish the real-world use of math, but usually fails miserably. Either the teacher talks about the importance of math in designing space shuttles or regulating the stock market or building bridges. The thing is, you know very well you’ll never use Taylor series in your career. In fact, very few will actually use the learnings, and most of those who do will have to relearn it entirely by the time it’s useful.

Math, in of itself, is useless. (at least at our level)

In the past century, we’ve been terrible at teaching math.

We’ve resorted to teaching math with paint-by-numbers classwork because it’s easy. If you don’t know the answer, there’s a formula you can blindly apply. And if you can’t find the formula, raise your hand and the teacher will neatly write it on the board so you can learn it by heart for the next time it’ll show up on the exam. Neither the teacher nor the students have to understand, just follow what’s in the textbook and you’ll get the answer.

Yes, you’ll get the answer.

But it turns out the end result is useless. Computers are much faster, better and cheaper to spew out the solution of any problem.

Your insight into the math problems, however, is incredibly worthwhile. Thats we’re you, as a human being, come in to play.

Math is like a brain workout. See, you don’t workout for fear of someone throwing you a dumbbell when waking in the street. Similarly, you don’t learn math because you expect to apply calculus in your everyday life.

Math trains you at understanding excessively abstract and complex ideas and breaking them down into manageable bits. It turns out that people good in math are invariably better at understanding equally abstract and complex social, political or economic problems. 

In fact, math results have a very strong correlation with future salary and professional achievement. Think about that. Whatever your profession (even if it has no math involved whatsoever), it is highly influenced by how good you were at math in high school.

Every four years, the TIMMS — a comprehensive math and science test — is administered in every country in the world. Attached to the test is a questionnaire on demographics and attitude towards math. In total, it’s a 120 questions long. As you’d imagine, most people abandon somewhere in the process of completing it.

Now, here’s were it gets interesting.

Erling Boe discovered (by accident) that the number of questions not answered on the questionnaire is perfectly correlated with the final score. You can predict with near 100% accuracy the math capabilities of someone without ever asking them a math question. All you need to do is measure how fast they abandon.

We sometimes think about math as innate — you either ‘have it’ or you don’t. In fact, it has nothing to do with ability and all to do with attitude.

Changes the way you think about math, right?

The Montreal Canadiens yesterday set up HD screens in the Bell Center to broadcast the 7th Canadians-Penguins match. Tons of people paid good money ($220,000 in total) to watch something that’s exactly the same thing as what’s on their home TV set.

Those 20,000 people weren’t at the Bell Center for the hockey game. They went out of their way to share a genuine experience with other fans, to connect and socialize and for the sense of identity.

The Canadiens get it. 

My neighbourhood dental clinic also gets it. They understand their job is to create a genuine connection with the human being that’s fixing your teeth (they call them dentists).

And it turns out the business of selling shoes is all about that same connection. Zappos gets it wonderfully well.

But does your business get it?

Whatever industry you’re in, always remember you’re also in the customer service industry.

You can rely on the engineering or accounting or finances department, but you can’t outsource marketing.

Every time you email someone, that’s customer service.

The way you answer the phone is customer service.

Every employee’s Facebook page is marketing.

Same goes for Twitter.

Your blog is customer service.

Customer service (and marketing) is part of every employee. It’s the tone you approach everyday things.

Exclusively hire people with a similar marketing vision and you’ll never need to fuss over a marketing plan. Forget it, customer service is not a department.

You can’t scale caring.

Forty percent of Americans read one book or less last year.

What if your doctor told you she hasn’t read a scholarly article since med school? Or your lawyer told you he doesn’t bother reading new case studies?

Then why is it acceptable not to read in your field?

Turns out books are by far your #1 entertainment and learning value. Before even trying to be the best (plumber, businessperson, marketer, therapist) in the world, you need to read an awful lot.

But don’t read anything. Most books/blogs are about the top ten tips on X, about following the checklist and learning the manual. Except for a few that get you to write your own map. I’ve compiled the very best readings here (I’ve been very conservative, keeping the list as manageable as possible. I will update regularly).

Never before in history have you had access to so much valuable experience. Among the clutter out there are some of the best books/blogs ever published. 

But hey, you could always just continue on with getting busy. There might just be something in those books that will change your life.

When’s the last time you finished a book and not felt smarter?

MIT releases all of its lectures online for free. Academic Earth has some of the best scholars in the world, their lectures also streamed free to your computer. You can learn more on the Khan Academy that you’ve ever learned in school.

So, really, why are you in school?

Certainly not for knowledge, since you’re deliberately paying much more to follow classes from subpar professors.

Perhaps you’re in school for the credibility that diploma will get you. Yet, the Internet era changes everything we know about credibility. It’s no longer about the formal certificates, but about what you shipped. It’s easier than ever to build a movement, to start a blog and to make change. To build credibility.

But.

You could be in school for the people. And please, stop calling them “contacts.” Your objective could be to develop genuine relationships with people that care enough to disagree with you. To argue and to help you build something great together. You could be in school for the genuine life-changing relationships that will alter the way you see the world.

That changes everything.

Consider a street performer. The vast majority of people will walk by. And that’s ok.

The majority of people visiting this blog will read a few words of the first post, get bored and walk away. In fact, 79% will never come back. That’s fine.

If you start running after the passer-bys to desperately get them to care for your work, you lose. More importantly, if you alter the core of your work to satisfy the non-believers, you also lose. You become mediocre, stale and mainstream, but nobody cares about average.

The goal is to satisfy the few who care. Those who stop, watch, donate and bring five friends tomorrow.

Exceptional work is not for everybody.