🤖AIP 48 School Is A Matrix, Here's How To Get Out
School is a matrix.
As kids, we are told there is one path in life. Get straight A's so you can go to a great college, get a great job to raise a family, retire, and do all the things you should have been doing at 20 but are too old to do at 60. Not knowing better, most of us unconsciously adopt this goal hierarchy.
We're living in a school matrix.
A confined, artificially constructed environment built to give us the goal hierarchy mentioned above.
It's no different from the Matrix in the 1989 classic, The Matrix. In the movie, the main character, Neo, realizes he and the rest of humanity are living in a computer simulation built to provide energy to machines which have taken over the real world. Realizing this, Neo joins the resistance to free humanity from the simulation.
Most of us don't join the resistance.
Instead, we stay in the matrix.
The Problem With Living In The School Matrix
There are major problems with staying in The Matrix.
I know because I have been inside it for most of my life. I graduated valedictorian of my High School class and went to my dream school, Cornell. But something was wrong. While aiming for straight A's, I started to lose intrinsic motivation for learning. As a kid, I consumed books, spending hours every night reading before bed. I read Harry Potter, Fabelhaven, Deltora Quest, and more. But as I got into middle and high school, my reading habits stopped.
Because I wanted to get straight A's, I saw it as "wasted time."
I didn't feel the vision I was pursuing was mine.
When we stay in the school matrix: We lack autonomy over our goals and, therefore, struggle to find meaning in our lives We don't foster intrinsic motivation We become cookie-cutter versions of everyone else, aiming for straight A's We distract ourselves with social media, video games, and getting good grades
And one more major problem of staying in the matrix: It's not enough to go to school and get a degree anymore.
In the digital age, your perspective and ability to learn fast matters more than your rote knowledge. There is more information than ever, and new information is coming faster than ever. A physical college degree doesn't prepare you for the digital world anymore.
Traditional schooling still builds on an industrial-era model.
It's trying to make you into the perfect factory worker.
Traditional schooling teaches you how to do algorithmic work. Algorithmic work has clear processes, systems, and outcomes. But as Daniel H. Pink describes in his book, Drive, heuristic work is increasing over the last few decades. Heuristic work doesn't have a clear process, system, or outcome for doing it. Think about knowledge work, content creators, AI researchers, and more.
To thrive in an age of heuristic work, you have to learn fast, remember more, and become more creative.
But most of all, you must have an intrinsic love of learning to have the time to do all this.
Because traditional schooling diminishes intrinsic motivation, it's not enough to only learn through school if you want to thrive in the digital age.
What Kind Of Student Do We Need?
Before we go further, let me iterate who I'm NOT talking to.
For anyone looking to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or lawyerdoctorengineer, ignore what I'm saying. These highly competitive jobs require rock-solid grades to get into good schools. For everyone else: I recommend you consider what your degree will do... Because the skills needed in the digital age differ from those taught in most schools.
In the age of information overwhelm and AI, deep thinkers, those with diverse skills that combine to make a category of one who will succeed.
We need a New Era Student.
A student who is intrinsically motivated to learn. A student that not only can learn incredibly fast but can imbue their unique perspective into their notes. A student that differs fundamentally from the other students around them.
The question is, how do you make the journey to become a new-era student?
Breaking Free From The Matrix
To break free from the matrix, you have to do new things.
We stay in the matrix because it's comfortable. Humans don't like to spend unnecessary energy. It brings us peace of mind following the default path laid out before us.
We have to step out of our comfort zones.
Expose yourself to new routines, habits, and beliefs.
Some of the most typical cycles to break free from are the traditional school cycle, the job cycle, and the eating cycle. To break free from the school cycle, stop aiming for straight A's, develop an intrinsic love for learning, and learn how to learn in the first place through more effective studying and note-taking. If you want to learn how to do that, I would recommend checking out my Obsidian Student Roadmap playlist on YouTube--you'll learn everything about how to take effective notes and study. To break free from the job cycle, start creating your own side hustle. If you want to learn more about that, check out my free College Content Creator resource list. It includes all the resources I wish I had gotten into content creation 3 years ago in college. Finally, to break free from the eating cycle, fast for a day.
All of these methods can help break you from your matrix.
But breaking free once isn't enough.
Every time you break free, you create another matrix with your new worldview. To continue breaking free, you must practice radical open-mindedness. The new era student can experiment, test ideas, and try new perspectives. They understand idealogy and dogma are the antithesis of learning. Even this idea I'm promoting, that school is a matrix, you should carefully analyze and come to your own conclusion.
Keep learning...
Leveraging Psychological Energy To Create A Better Life For Yourself
This is where the ultimate power of breaking free from the matrix comes.
If you take nothing else from this article, take this: We can create a better life for ourselves by leveraging the power of psychological energy.
What's that?
Psychological energy is the energy we create through living in the mental world. The physical world is everything external to us in reality. The mental world is what exists in our head, our perception of reality.
Humans live mentally when remembering past events or imagining future ones.
This can both create energy and take it away.
It takes energy when we remember an experience--say, breaking up with a lover--and let that negative energy seep into our present state. But it can also give energy. For example, when we create a vision for our future, let our imagination give us power in the present.
The difference between whether we get positive or negative psychological energy is one word:
Awareness.
If we are aware when we remember a past negative event, we can detach from the feelings and thoughts that arise. We release their hold over us. Because we understand we aren't our thoughts, feelings, or physical possessions.
We are the awareness behind everything.
The problem is most people are asleep, because they stay in the matrix.
Our culture, schooling, parents, friends, boss, and more unconsciously shape our perceptions and goals. When we follow the instructions of our social and genetic coding without question, we become helpless playthings of impersonal forces. The secret is waking up.
Waking up comes when we become the dominant force creating our vision and goals for the future.
This allows us to leverage psychological energy for our benefit.
When we have awareness, we can choose what to focus on.
What vision we choose to focus on shapes our goals. Our goals shape what our subconscious processes in the background of life. Our goals also shape what stimuli our conscious mind focuses on and perceives in our environment. What we perceive shapes how we feel and think. What we feel and think shapes how we behave. How we behave determines our progress towards our goals, starting the whole cycle over again.
What we focus on is our life.
Awareness is the key because awareness lets us focus on self-created goals that give us positive psychological energy.
We can consciously create our OWN vision and goals and benefit from the positive psychological energy of imagining and realizing our vision.
So, how can we implement this in our lives right now?
One meaningful project, one day at a time, one hour a day.
Do that for five years, and there is no question you will be ahead of 99% of people. How do you know what your purpose is at any given moment? It's simple.
Your purpose is whatever is currently keeping you from your vision for your life.
Any activity that draws you away from doing one meaningful project one day at a time, one hour a day, is a distraction.
Don't fall for the trap of not working until you find your passion. Passions are cultivated, rarely innate. For this reason, purpose works in layers.
As you complete one purpose, you peel back another layer, slowly getting deeper and deeper into your true purpose.
At one point in our life, it might be building our business, studying, doing martial arts, building an incredible physique. It changes all the time. When we fulfill one layer of our purpose, we move on to another.
Your problems are often larger societal problems. In this way, solving your problems can often turn into the purpose of solving those same problems for others.
That's what I'm doing: creating content online, while in school.
There are tons of skills that go into learning content creation:
- Writing
- Recording
- Marketing
- Networking
- Outsourcing
- Etc.
But one skill foundational not only to content creation but to your learning as a new era student is notetaking.
Notetaking is the skill I use to capture ideas that resonate with me from the content I consume. It's how I think critically and have fallen back in love with learning. It's the aprecusor to my writing.
So, if you're a student struggling to find a skill to start your journey breaking from the matrix, notetaking is a great start. You can learn more by checking out my If you want to learn how to do that, I would recommend checking out my Obsidian Student Roadmap playlist on YouTube.
Break free from the matrix, stop being a zombie in society.
Here's what I would like to share this week.
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✨Quote Of The Week - "I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it." - Morpheus