We live in a world where degrees are overvalued and misinterpreted, and from an efficiency standpoint, I understand why this is.  It’s very difficult to thoroughly evaluate the depth and breadth of a person’s knowledge, so degrees serve as a shortcut of sorts.  They supposedly offer proof (or at least evidence) that the possessor has learned a certain set of information and skills, both specific to a field and of general use.  In truth, though, they are often more a measure of tenacity than of learning.  If you can follow directions and buckle down and do what you’re told, you can get a degree, and that degree will be indistinguishable from one earned by somebody who learned and explored and bettered themselves.  And although the degree is a poor measure of a person’s retention of knowledge and abilities, it’s the system that’s in place and until something better comes along, it’s what people will continue to use.  And I can’t blame them — who has the time to do a comprehensive analysis of every job candidate’s true level of education, and how many job seekers would tolerate it?  No, we can’t get rid of degrees, however inadequate they may be.

As an aside: my father works in IT for a government contractor.  Co-workers are often impressed by the depth of his knowledge, and from time time to time will ask where he got his degree.  They are often surprised to learn that he has none.  This reaction is ludicrous.  It’s as if the population has been brainwashed into believing that attending a major university is the only way to learn anything.  Perhaps this is the reason so few people read anymore — maybe they believe they cannot possibly learn anything from it because there isn’t a professor or tuition involved.

What a horrible way to live your life.

There is a solution, however to this whole “degree” mess, for some people if not for everyone.  That solution is self-certification.

I encountered the idea of self-certification at a talk given by Cem Kaner, a prominent figure in the world of software quality assurance.  Mr. Kaner was asked whether he believed it was worthwhile to pursue the numerous “testing certifications” available to QA professionals.  He recommended instead a path of self-certification, which he explained consists of writing articles, giving talks, and generally making a name for oneself in one’s chosen field.  Effectively, if your reputation precedes you, your lack of a degree is irrelevant.

This, I imagine, plays better with a self-employed lifestyle than with traditional employment, although I can’t imagine that being a recognized authority in your field could fail to help you get a traditional job.  But self-certification requires some attributes that formal education either does not or helps to provide.  To become self-certified, one must be internally motivated — there are no due dates or deadlines, no assignments to complete, no tests to study for, except those that one chooses to seek out.  It requires a much more pro-active approach than going to school, where your primary task is to do what you’re told.  Self-certification requires you to seek out ways to contribute, opportunities to create and share within your field, chances to get your name out there by helping others in a public forum.

Self-certification is a very different type of process (and in some ways a more valuable one) than seeking a degree.  The very act of seeking to make a name for yourself in this way is a double win — your skills improve, allowing you to provide even greater value, while you simultaneously approach your goal of having a way to demonstrate the value that you already have.  By pairing the strategies of self-education and self-certification, you can avoid the inadequacies of both traditional education and the degree system that goes with it.

(Note: This is a repost of an article which appeared on my LiveJournal on January 24, 2009.  I am transferring it over because it is the first in a series, which will be continued soon.)

I’ve never been a fan of formal education.

Maybe it works for some people, but it never worked all that well for me. I’m just a self-directed kind of guy, and working on someone else’s tasks to someone else’s standards on someone else’s schedule is nothing but irritating to me, and it hampers my education. The bottom line is that I love learning, but I can’t stand being taught.

My biggest problem with formal education is pacing. Most classes run at a fixed pace for a fixed period of time. That just isn’t how I learn best. Sometimes I make a cognitive leap in a subject and want to keep learning non-stop for hours or days on end. Other times I’m just not feeling it and the best thing I can do is set the subject aside for a while (hours, days, weeks, months, or even years) and let the concepts I’ve already absorbed gel before proceeding. Maybe I’m unusual in this regard, but I think it more likely that teaching at a constant pace is a sub-optimal system for many students. Even students who learn well at a constant pace will probably prefer a pace quicker or slower than what the instructor has chosen.

There is, however, a reasonable argument to support this system. It’s easier to teach if everyone’s learning the same thing at the same time at the same pace. It’s also easier to tell if someone’s falling behind, in the instance where there’s a deadline involved. Reluctant students may be more likely to complete a class if there are numerous fixed checkpoints along the way. Thus, our traditional educational system works in favor of the instructor and the least common denominator. The focus is on the numbers, working to herd students through the system in the largest numbers possible with the least inconvenience and cost.

This means that the students with the most potential must either fend for themselves or slip through the cracks. It’s sad, but it’s true, and it’s far worse in high school than it is in college. I was very disappointed in the “education” I received from my high school, which was very proud of its status as a “California Distinguished School”. My brief stay in Portland taught me, through meeting high school students and speaking to their parents, that Oregon schools are even worse. I advised one student there that if she wanted an education, she would have to take responsibility for it herself. High schools aren’t interested in educating kids, they’re only interested in processing them through the system with a minimum of fuss and hassle.

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

-Mark Twain

And really, that’s the key. If you want an education, you must take responsibility for it yourself. I can’t tell you how much harm I’ve done to my education in my younger years by misguidedly allowing my schooling to interfere with it. I permitted the school to persuade me that they were taking responsibility for my education, and sat back in expectation of its delivery. I was appalled by the paper-shuffling busy-work that I got instead, but continued waiting for the fulfillment of the promise, encouraged by the words of the adults in my life. In elementary school, “you’ll like middle school better”. In middle school, “you’ll like high school better”. And in high school, “you’ll like college better”. And finally I left high school early to go to Middle College, because every level of schooling before had utterly failed me. I had become more and more unhappy as the promises that things would be better next year proved to be not only empty, but bitterly ironic as things got WORSE every year. It wasn’t until I rejected traditional schooling and sought out an alternative program that I found a way to even make the situation TOLERABLE enough to graduate (and even then, not on time).

My bad… though I don’t know what I could have done differently with the limitations (both real and imagined) and lack of information I had to work with at the time.

But there is a solution to these problems, at least for those who are no longer beholden to the educational system. There’s a viable alternative to a college education — a college-level self-education. You may not wish to get the knowledge you seek from schooling, but you have to get it from somewhere, and believe me, it’s out there! I’m working out the details of how to go about this right now. It seems to me that the first step is to work out a curriculum — you have to know what you want to learn (perhaps not everything, but at least a starting point) before you can begin to assimilate knowledge. This is the step that I’m working on now, and is what prompted me to inquire about what should be included in a well-rounded education. I’m presently in the position of being able to design one for myself, and want to put some thought into it rather than just accept the structure that was thrust upon me by a system that thoroughly alienated me.

After deciding the general categories of my education, I’ll be narrowing each down to an initial focus, investigating and choosing educational resources, and beginning to read — I do expect that most of the knowledge I’m looking for will be found in books, despite my personal preference for the Internet as a source of information.

There’s still a hiccup in this plan, which I will investigate in another post — independent scholars face an additional challenge in having their studies recognized by those (such as employers) who use such things as a basis for decision-making. There are, of course, exceptions and ways around this, but as I said, that’s for another post.

At the beginning of June Chris Guillebeau posted an article on his blog about community building.  It couldn’t have come at a better time for me, as community is one of the things that’s been on my mind with regard to how I want to keep myself busy.  As I noted in my last post, self-unemployment has not been conducive to a sense of community in my life.  As a reminder, I defined community as having other people to interact with who are on the same or a similar path, people who want what I want and who can help me when I need it and accept my help when they need it.  In his post, Chris Guillebeau defines a community as  “a group of people united through a common struggle with the same stories”.  His definition is more concise than mine, but I think we’re getting at the same idea.

Community is one of the few positive aspects of traditional employment.  A traditional workplace gathers people together and provides them with a common struggle, resulting in the same stories.  The common struggle may be against the competition, the management, or even the customer, but it is present regardless, and often results in a camaraderie in the rank and file.  That’s something I’ve taken for granted in the past, and something which is not native to self-employment.  When community is not provided, it must be sought out or built instead.

I think it’s important to have a community for any major goal you are trying to achieve.  As I noted when I began this incarnation of the blog, I think it’s true that most of the problems people have in their lives are in the areas of health, wealth, and relationships.  So it stands to reason that it would be helpful to be a member of a community in each of these three areas.  Interacting with people who have similar ideas and goals as you do in these key areas can only help you stay on track with your goals, continue learning, and provide opportunities for growth (sometimes unexpected ones!).

I am currently following several blogs connected with these topics, and while these are fascinating and help me to feel less isolated as I read about people with similar struggles and stories, I think the facility of the Internet to connect people has its limits.  Although I owe many of my in-person friends to connections made online, I think that if you don’t take these relationships into the real world, they will necessarily be stunted.  Internet communities are valuable, but cannot take the place of face-to-face interaction.  (Some of you may be surprised to hear this opinion from me of all people.  To be honest, I’m a little surprised to hear it from myself.)

With that in mind, I want to find both online and offline communities with similar outlooks on health, wealth, and relationships.

In terms of health, I want to connect with people who are interested in losing weight and building muscle without expensive gym memberships or equipment.  Cardio, weight-lifting, and calisthenics are topics of interest, as well as healthful, inexpensive food with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables (i.e. fiber).

I read a bit about personal finance, and a lot of people are talking about getting out of debt, managing money, investing, and so forth.  But I am more interested in the other side of the wealth equation, and would like to interact with people who discuss income generation — entrepreneurs, freelancers, and others with alternative approaches to employment and ideas about how to succeed on these paths.

Relationships are a little different, and I’ve already identified communities relevant to my interests and learned a lot from them, though I haven’t participated as much as I would like.  I’ll go into this in a little more depth in another post, as it deserves a more in-depth treatment.

But people skills have never been my forte, and I’m not quite sure how best to go about finding groups of people who are already on these paths.  Being who I am, Internet resources are first to spring to mind:

• Craigslist
• Meetin.org
• Meetup.com
• Blog searches

These resources can help to find groups of people who are talking about these things both on the ‘net and off, but how would I go about locating such people if I didn’t have the Internet at my disposal?  What groups are you a member of and how did you find them?  Are you looking for a greater sense of community?  As always, comments are welcome.

My friend Alice wrote a post some time ago about the question “what do you do?” and how it usually really means “what do you do for money?”.  But I don’t see the question in that light — really what I’m interested in is “what do you do with the bulk of your time?”.  For most people, that is full-time traditional employment, but I find it more interesting when it isn’t.  As a result, I try to avoid the question “what do you do?” these days in favor of “what keeps you busy?”.  A subtle difference, perhaps, but a meaningful one.  If something other than pursuing income keeps you busy, good for you!  I’d like to hear about it.

I have been kept busy by four different employment statuses in my adult life, and each has its pros and its cons.  Each has a different feel to it.  Sometimes the specific activities which keep me busy are different from one status to the next, and sometimes they’re the same but take on different meanings, but these statuses definitely all have distinctly different flavors.  I’ve been employed, unemployed, self-employed, and most recently, self-unemployed.

To discuss the pros and cons of the these statuses, first I need to explore what I want out of the activities that keep me busy.

What I Want From What Keeps Me Busy

• Self-Determination. I want to be the master of my time, choosing what I do, when I do it, and how long I do it for.
• Activities I Care About. I want my activities to make a difference in a way that has significance for me.
• Project Ownership. I want to have a significant stake in and responsibility for the outcome of what I do.
• Community. I want to have other people to interact with who are on the same or a similar path, people who want what I want and who can help me when I need it and accept my help when they need it.
• Adequate Compensation. I want to be able to maintain a comfortable lifestyle indefinitely.

Now that I have some criteria to work with, I can start evaluating the employment statuses.  This is all highly subjective, of course, based on my own life experiences — I’m sure others have different opinions stemming from different experiences.

Employment

Employment has been a mixed bag for me.

Self-Determination: Very little.  Projects and schedules are determined by the employer, often without regard for your skills, interests, wishes, or well-being.  Rigid 5×8 workweeks with more than 40 hours’ worth of work to be done per week.  No telecommuting, despite working almost exclusively in the software industry.  -1

Activities I Care About: Not yet.  Business change management software, real estate database software, adult internet dating and porn sites — unfulfilling, all.  Perhaps I just haven’t worked for the right company yet.  +0

Project Ownership: Varies from company to company.  I’ve found that it’s easier to come by in a small company than in a large, which contributes to my preference for working for small companies.  +0

Community: This is where traditional employment shines.  Everyone who’s hired is brought on to be part of the team, and everywhere I’ve worked, there have been good people, even in amongst the bad.  There are always people to talk to, work with, and learn from, and that has been a significant factor in employee retention at more than one place I’ve worked.  +1

Adequate Compensation: Although I have been underpaid for my skills for most of my career, I have almost always made enough to maintain a comfortable lifestyle, and usually enough to squirrel away a significant percentage as savings as well.  +1

How I Kept Myself Busy: Doing what I was told, when I was told, for as long as I was told.  Trying to make positive change in an organization which was invariably too rigid and inflexible to accept it.  Waiting out the clock because I was obligated to be there for a fixed amount of time every day no matter what.

Total Score: 1

Unemployment

Unemployment was an unmitigated disaster for me.  I think I was already beginning to suffer from depression before I became unemployed in 2001, and being unemployed contributed tremendously.

Self-determination: Up the wazoo.  TOO MUCH self-determination, in fact.  Able to do anything I wanted any time I wanted, I did nothing all the time.  Directionlessness.  -1

Activities I Care About: I wasn’t doing things I cared about so much as doing things to try to fill the time.  -1

Project Ownership: I didn’t recognize that I had a project, so although I certainly had a stake in and responsibility for the outcome, that outcome was inactivity and depression.  Directionlessness meant that there wasn’t anything for me to feel like I had a stake in or responsibility for.  -1

Community: I was pretty isolated during this time, too.  -1

Adequate Compensation: Take it from me, the pay SUCKS.  -1

How I Kept Myself Busy: Staring at a flashing light box (either computer or TV) all day long as an escape.  Sleeping a lot.  Being miserable.

Total score: -5

Self-Employment

Self-employment felt little better than unemployment when I experienced it before, but I do believe that I was doing it wrong.  The directionlessness of unemployment and depression carried over into my freelance web design days, and I found myself unhappily doing the least I could to get by — or not even that.

Self-determination: Moderate.  You can pick and choose your clients, right?  Well, I had only one client, and worked for them doing whatever they wanted.  I was freer than at any regular job, but still bound by the client’s wishes (and hadn’t found any other clients to provide me with choices), so this worked out kind of neutral.  +0

Activities I Care About: I was building things on the web, and that was good.  I was able to expand my mind and improve my skills, which is important to me.  But ultimately the business of selling shoes on the web is not one that I am passionate about, so the projects themselves weren’t inspiring.  Another neutral, I think.  +0

Project Ownership: I had a LOT of latitude in what I could do, subject to approval by the business owner and his management staff.  I had a great deal of influence over their web site and their internet marketing activities, and took the web site from doing $500/month in business to about six figures a month in my time there.  It’s just a pity that the increasing business had no effect on my bottom line.  Still, I’ll call this a positive.  +1

Community: Very small, since it was a small business I was working for, and none of them were particularly high tech.  I was mostly on my own as the internet guy.  Again, though, I think I was doing it wrong.  More clients, more networking, etc., could have helped with this.  Another neutral.  +0

Adequate Compensation: It would have been, had I worked the hours I’d planned to, or negotiated better.  Yet another neutral.  +0

How I Kept Myself Busy: Mostly the same as during unemployment, but with an additional 5-20 hours a week of web design.

Total score: +1

Self-Unemployment

Self-unemployment has been FANTASTIC for my mental health and my mood.  I’m so glad I quit my job in January.  It’s been like a mini-retirement (allusion to The 4-Hour Workweek intended).

Self-determination: Extreme.  I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, and I am usually taking full advantage of that to work on my projects.  +1

Activities I Care About: Speaking of my projects, I have time to read, write, code, do web design, blog, study game design, play video games for fun and research (instead of escape), etc.  Things I haven’t had time and/or energy for in year.  +1

Project Ownership: Yes.  No one else is working on my projects, so the stake and responsibility are all mine.  +1

Community: This has come to my attention as something that is currently lacking in my life.  I don’t have enough community, and need to reach out and make some connections with people and groups whose goals and interests are in line with mine.  0 for now, but I believe I can improve this to +1 soon.

Adequate Compensation: This is the one true drawback to self-unemployment.  I’m burning through my savings — and really, if I were receiving adequate compensation, it would be self-employment (doing it right), not self-unemployment.  -1

How I Kept Myself Busy: Like I said in the Activities I Care About section, reading, writing, coding,  web designing, blogging, studying game design, and playing video games.  I’m very happy with how I am keeping myself busy lately, though it defies labeling.

Total score: +2

Conclusion

Self-unemployment is the most fulfilling lifestyle I’ve experienced so far, and I am loathe to leave it behind, but my dwindling savings tell me I must start thinking about it.  I would like to transition into self-employment in a manner that results in a score of +5.  Pretty much doing what I’m doing now but with more project-related social interaction and selling it to people (or otherwise being compensated, e.g. through advertising).  Failing that, I think a job at a small company (perhaps an independent game company, blog network, or web design firm) would be a good fit.  Part-time or temporary work would be good if the money was good enough to keep me in food and clothing.  But really, I’d just like to keep on doing what I’m doing.

What about you?  What keeps you busy?  And what do you want from the activities that keep you busy?