My curriculum — Weekly Update #5
It has begun. While I am writing this article, I am sitting in a long-distance bus towards Prague. My previous experiences with this kind of buses were relatively mixed. Since using it saved me 200 bucks, I am willing to roll the dice, though. For my first full day in Prague, I am planning to do all the necessities to set me up for success during the upcoming weeks. I will go grocery shopping for a full week, find myself a gym, buy a monthly ticket for the subway and pre-cook my food for the rest of the week. The day afterward, I will start with my curriculum. At the same time, I will try to close projects for the student consultancy I am working for since this is a fundamental part of my financial plan for the upcoming months.
Coding challenge feedback
In the past week, I had a few things that came up which hindered me to perform last week’s challenge as I wanted to. Traveling back and forth between Munich, Frankfurt, and Vallendar as well as moving out of my apartment has been more time-intensive than expected. Last week’s challenge was to reach level 50 in the Codefights arcade mode. Since I literally did not put more than thirty minutes into it, I will repeat the same challenge this week. Due to the lack of the new challenge, I will fill this week’s text with a rough draft of the curriculum I have created for this summer.
Curriculum
There are five main parts of my curriculum: Coding, business operations, mental models, fitness, and writing. The different parts of the curriculum all have their specific learning structure and a particular reason why I chose them.
1. Coding
For the coding part, I will use a mixture of online courses and side-projects. I will start by completing the Backend Nanodegree at Udacity enabling me to dive deeper into Python which is currently my primary programming language. After I have completed this Nanodegree, I will add the Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree on top, since I wrote my undergraduate thesis about startup opportunities in the AI sector and would like to expand my knowledge on the technical side of the topic. Further, I will start building my projects adding those to my repository on Github, a website where programmers can work together and showcase their work. Those projects will mostly focus on building applications for a business side-project I am working on and data analysis projects. For the side-project, I am currently building front-pages with restricted functionality. I could imagine adding a custom database to the backend to increase the number of processes the website can manage.
I think that being able to code is a crucial skill that can be applied to a multitude of different careers, enabling me to work more efficiently and effectively.
2. Business operations
I have completed five business internships up to this date, and therefore I think that I have seen a lot of different perspectives on how business is conducted. Besides working as a student consultant, I did not work on my own business projects yet. I want to change this by building an e-commerce shop with a few friends of mine. We have already figured out the products we want to sell and are currently designing the first samples. I think that setting up a business from scratch is a good way of learning how processes work and how important as well as difficult operations in business are. I have made the experience that it is usually easier to come up with a plan than actually realizing it. In the day to day operations of businesses, there are much more hindrances than one would imagine. Facing this from the front seat perspective will provide me with some exciting experiences.
3. Mental models
This is something that I added to my curriculum very recently. It is attributed to the school of thought of Charlie Munger who is the business partner of Warren Buffet and long-time executive at Berkshire Hathaway. He attributes the success they had at the company to them building a “latticework of mental models” which helps them to filter and analyze information more effectively. The basic idea behind this approach is that one needs to apply different models in different situations. Knowing those models and when to apply them in advance can offer a significant advantage over those people who encounter them for the first time. These mental models are comprised of the most fundamental theories in areas like math, physics, psychology, economics, philosophy and more. One of my goals for this summer is to create a holistic compendium of the most important mental models and learn to apply them when I make decisions. You can learn more about mental models by reading this transcript of a famous speech Charlie Munger has delivered at USC.
4. Fitness
One of the quotes I believe in is the following: “A healthy mind in a healthy body.” I do think that treating your body well is fundamental for performing at a high level. My whole life, I have been actively doing sports, and I immediately notice a drop in my overall performance if I am not able to work out. This is why I will continue to do some kind of physical activity every single day. I will try to switch between weight lifting and cardio-related workouts. Since I do not particularly enjoy running on my own, I will try to find team sports activities for the latter. Since traveling and following a team sport are hindering each other, I will stick to activities like dance courses, parkour meetups or casual football games with friends. The exact schedule will very much depend on the cities in which I will be. Moreover, I will continue my daily meditation practice to foster my overall physical and mental well-being. All of this will be complemented by a holistic and nutritious diet. I will spend even more time cooking than I currently do.
5. Writing
Becoming a better writer comes in handy in many areas of life. It enables me to express my thoughts in a sharp and precise way. Additionally, as I have mentioned in a previous article before, most of the writers I talk to mention the commonality that they write in order to get ideas. This idea is also promoted by Kevin Kelly (founding executive editor of Wired) and Paul Graham (YC co-founder + startup guru). Writing about what I want to achieve, how my habits help or hinder me, and how my improvements are going will help me to find emerging patterns and internalize my findings. This is why I publish the weekly articles on Medium in which I reflect on the progress of my week. In addition to the articles, I am currently working on an e-book with a friend of mine.
Content suggestions
This week I want to suggest two pieces of content that are targeted towards my direct peers and those that are even younger. The first one is a career planning guide written by Marc Andreessen, the serial entrepreneur and co-founder of esteemed Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The guide is not suitable for anybody. If you want to work in an industry where most options are static and predefined, it does not fit well. However, if you are interested in technology companies and the startup scene, it is one of the best ones I have read. My favorite quotes from the piece are:
“The first rule of career planning: Do not plan your career.”
“The second rule of career planning: Instead of planning your career, focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities.”
The second piece of content is an essay by Sam Altman that encourages non-technical co-founders to learn to hack. It is a very short text but effectively describes why being able to hack (in the sense of building a product) is enormously valuable for a co-founder without a technical background. In the text, there is one notion I do partly disagree with though. He says that those co-founders that start learning to hack are often surprised how easy it is and that there are so many people that help you if you start out. In my experience, this is only true for certain areas of the world. In the Silicon Valley, where he lives and works, it is very easy to find other hackers that help you out. I learned a lot while I did my internship there. In other places, this is not necessarily true. This is why picking the right location to learn a particular topic can be of great importance. I will elaborate on the importance of location in a future article.
I am really excited for my first week of learning and cannot wait to tell you about my progress next week.
As always, if you have any suggestions for weekly challenges, content suggestions or just want to reach out for feedback, feel free to contact me at any time. You can reach me via Twitter @Mikemahlkow or here at Medium.
