Second "Ask Sal anything" session focused on life advice

Let's start with, uh, Christine. I believe, Christine, you had your hand very patiently raised last time, so let's start with you now. A reminder, we are recording this session, as I put the last one on LinkedIn, so this could happen again. So, by participating, you know that that might happen; not, you know, just kind of our release form implicitly.

All right, Christine, go ahead.

Sounds good, thanks for the great memory. And of course, like everyone here, I'm a big fan and been a user for quite some time. My question for you is, in times where you're trying to make a decision where the answer isn't super clear, it's a really tough choice. Whether this is deciding what major you want to have in college, when you want to stay in a job or leave a job, what are values or a piece of advice that you turn to when making these types of decisions?

Yeah, that's a good question. I do feel like that, you know, this decision-making is one of these things that no one really explicitly in any way teaches you or gives you even frames of reference. I heard a quote recently, which I really liked, and I do think this is part of my life philosophy. I'd like to believe which is, um, there's often times no right decision, but you can make the decision right.

So, once you’ve committed to a decision, I do think that it is, um, and my mind does tend to work this way. I tend to convince myself that I made the best possible decision, and then I do what I can to make the decision right.

You know, first of all, if you're always second-guessing the decision, by definition, whatever decision you made will almost—you’re making it wrong—because you're always looking at what the alternative path could have been.

So that's my first advice: always have an attitude of making the decision right, no matter what you're doing. Whether it's a job, or a major, or choosing a partner, just think day in, day out, what can I do today to make this, make things better, to make a positive dent in the universe, to learn more, to get excited about it.

When you're at the point of making a decision, I tend to, you know, do my best to just, um, uh, do a fairly rational decision tree if I can.

Now, I will say—and I do, I do that—you know I've often joked that people know me for my math videos and science videos and other videos, but I've also wanted to make, like, things like a dating video. Like, I’ve met friends who might be with someone, and I’m like, “Why are you going to marry that person?” They’re like, “Well, no, probably.” And I was like, “Then why are you?” Like, every day that you delay this, you're just making the pain larger in some future state.

And if you do the decision tree, it's not a complicated one: you're like less pain now versus ignoring it and making more pain in the future. So I do recommend taking a lens of that.

I also think making decisions that are not just in your best interest, but making decisions that you’re truly trying to make in the interest of everyone involved in the system. You know, I try not to judge people, but when I do judge people, I judge them on the decisions they make, uh, that the consequences for them, where they’re looking at the consequences of the system, not just the consequences for themselves.

I mean, going back to the whole dating example, I've seen people—I'd say not to judge—but sometimes selfishly stay in something that lowers the other person's option value over time, which I think is actually very, very selfish.

That's the times I've, I've most harshly judged people, although I try not to judge. You know, uh, we all have our flaws. I do think that intuition sometimes we don't take it that seriously, because it kind of like, oh, you're just going off of gut. I do remind folks that your gut actually does have a lot of neurons, so your gut is kind of a mini brain. Your gut actually has more neurons than some animals have in their brains.

But on top of that, we, you know, in our actual brains—not just even our gut brains—we have a hundred billion neurons. And one of the critiques of machine learning is that it can come up with insights, but you can't explain why that neural net is coming, saying that that is a dog and that is not a dog.

I think our human brains are similar in that it is a big neural net and it can—it what intuition really is, it's your neural net telling you this is a dog and that's not a dog, but you can't exactly explain why.

Of course, I can explain why something might be a dog or not, but why this is the right major, why this is the right career, why this might be the right partner? Sometimes I do think is a gut thing.

I’ve got to say last time I talked about solving hard problems, and sometimes you just have to look at the problem and engage with the problem, and then sleep on it.

And then the next day, all of a sudden, you've delegated to your subconscious mind and it's been turning on that problem while you're sleeping. And then when you wake up, I found this sometimes you can solve the problem almost magically.

I found the same thing with major decisions; I don't fret too much about them. I will think about them, I will do the whole decision tree thing, I'll oftentimes meditate to try to clear my mind so I'm not thinking about the decision.

And it's interesting: sometimes I'm meditating, I'm meditating, and the answer just comes to me, it's just like, you've got to do this. I was like, oh, of course, it's obvious. Or you sleep on it for a night or two, and then you just wake up in the morning, of course I've got to do this. This is the right thing; everything tells me that the stars are aligned here.

So there's no perfect formula for decision making; it's a great question. But that's my best wisdom that I have.

And you know, the more in life you can, you can perceive the grass on your side of the fence to be greener, the more happy you're going to be as a person. And I'm, I'm the king of that for better or for worse, almost to a fault, but I'm happy.

All right, let's see Amit.

Ahmed, a, uh, hello. Assalamu alaikum everyone, and thank you so much Sal for hosting this. I'm delighted to be here, and it's an honor to be here with all of you aspiring learners. My question is about being content. I've struggled with this concept a lot.

I think that people that they accomplish shouldn't be content because being content limits them to a certain extent. What do you think about this? Do you think that being content is just being happy where you're at, or is it being happy along with, uh, being or aspiring to be more than where you're at?

Another very good, very deep question that I’m, I, you know, my life journey I've, I've had different frames of it. I think early, early on in my life, when I was a lot of y'all's age, I was very not content. I was, I was, I had that proverbial fire in my belly. I was constantly thinking, you know, to Christine’s last question, how do I make the right decision, pick the right major, find the right job?

I was afraid, if I'm honest about, well, what if I don't succeed? What if I can't be in a solid financial position? Many of y'all know, you know, my family. We didn't—my—I was raised by a single mother. We didn't—she worked a lot of minimum wage jobs, cashiers, different places. Eventually scrounged up enough, you know, pennies to open up a, a not-so-impressive convenience store.

So when I was a lot of y'all's age, I was just like—and the good thing is we had a lot of family friends who were professionals, who were doctors, who were engineers, and I saw how much better your life could be, even materially. But to put aside what you do in the hours of your work, but even materially, you know, my friends whose parents were engineers had nice houses in better neighborhoods. They had health insurance; their path was easier.

And so I had a lot, when I was a lot of y'all's age, of angst. I could only describe it as angst. So like, I can't, I need to get out of this; I need to get some. So that was always a bit of a burning motivation, and I wasn't content.

And when you're not content, it can sometimes—I wasn't overly angsty; I think I was a pretty, if people knew me, they would say, oh, he's a pretty happy-go-lucky laid-back guy. But there was a piece of me that I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night like, I can't, I can't mess this up.

You know, you have, you know, I was like quote Eminem, you only got one shot. You know, don’t I forget what he said in Eight Mile, but it's—it’s always, um, but there was some of that.

I think as I've grown older, especially I think in my, in my 30s. I'm now 44 going on 45. But in my 30s, I started to realize that that angstiness and that a little bit of a chip on your shoulder is not maybe as useful as you think it is.

It can continue to make you—once again, you're not enjoying the ride as much as you should. And once again, I did enjoy my ride a lot. I had a lot of really great memories from my journey, but I think it's, I've started to appreciate more that I should appreciate it in the moment while it's happening.

And there's this—in Vedic philosophy, there's three aspects to everything in the universe. One is Satwik, which means truthful. You know, you—I'm, I'm maybe you speak words such, you know, truth, um, and that—and even in actions there can be truthful action.

The second aspect is Rajasik—for those who are familiar with the, you know, languages from the Indian subcontinent, you can think of Raja like a king. And Rajasik is when you're very—it's considered a form of energy. It's when you're very, uh, focused on and rejoicing action; it's when you're very focused on the outcomes.

And then there's Thamasic. Thamasic is kind of like you're not really in control; it's a little bit chaotic, and you're doing something because you’re forced.

So Satwik action, you're doing something because it's right, but you accept the outcome. Whatever the outcome is, it is what it is. You get new data points, and then you make a new set of decisions and do what's right.

Rajasik action, or justice decision-making, is to say, you know, I'm going to do this because if I do this, I'm going to become rich and famous, and if I don't become rich and famous, I'm going to be really miserable. Or I'm going to do this because if I don't do this, something really bad is going to happen. We're not going to have enough money; we're not going to have food on the table; we're not going to do all that.

And, and then Thamasic is like, I'm forced to do it; I don't really feel like doing it, but someone's, you know, whatever. I think we all agree that Thamasic is not a good place to be for most things in your life.

Rajasik is where most of us are most of the time. Most of us are saying, hey, if I do this, I'm going to get a promotion; I'm going to get a better job; I'm going to do this. And it can be very motivating, and it can give you the external appearances of success, but it can also make you miserable and not content your entire life because, no matter what, there's going to be outcomes that, when you're in a Rajasik frame of mind, you have trouble accepting.

I found that the more that I can move to a kind of a Satwik form of action, where I just do what is what I think is right at any motion, at any moment, um, and then whatever the outcome is, I can just accept it and sometimes even enjoy it or savor it and learn from it, and then take the next set of actions.

I found that in no way does it quell my ability to do things or in no way does it suppress my ability to take action or to be ambitious or try to do big things, but it makes me a lot more content and, frankly, a lot more pleasant to be around. If I'm just accepting, if I'm just accepting things.

And I'll say a lot of times, I actually think you'll be more productive if you take that Satwik aspect, because a lot of times, the Rajasik aspect, your ego gets involved very, very heavily. And so, you know, a lot of times I think we procrastinate because our ego doesn't want to realize that it can't do the thing. And so it's like, well, oh, maybe let me go get a snack because your ego is like protecting itself: like, what if you start to study it and you have trouble doing it?

Or what if you start to write that paper and you have writer's block? When you have a Satwik point of mind, you're like, you know what, the right thing to do right now is just to start; the chips will fall where they do.

And so I find myself procrastinating a lot less when I'm, when I've gotten less caught up with the outcome and I just want to start taking action, and then I just accept the outcome wherever it is. A lot of the stress at work has gone down dramatically.

I used to, you know, sometimes I have some big decisions to make, uh, that could affect a lot of people. And when I take the Rajasik mindset, I'm like, wow, this is the wrong decision; it could affect these ten people's lives. You know, it can really stress you out; it’s not going to help you make a better decision.

You take a Satwik point of view: let me look at the data; let me meditate on it; let me take the best possible decision I can. And look, I just have to accept the outcome, and then let me make another decision based on that. But anyway, I give you a long-winded answer; my apologies, but hopefully that was useful.

All right, thank you so much.

All right, um, let’s see. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing your name correctly.

Yeah, you are. Um, first of all, uh, hi from India. It's actually, um, 12:45 a.m. Thank you for staying up. Yeah, I'm a huge fan, and, um, I just wanted to ask that, you know, we've always—I’m a college student currently, and we've always been, um, having so many—like, we've been getting so many tips about, you know, how to do smart work and hard work and how there’s a difference. And I've been using Khan Academy for a long time, and I just wanted to know how you would differentiate between those two and if you would have any, um, particular great tips for us as we're making our ways, making our way through college, and building a resume and, you know, yeah.

Well, I think the difference between hard work and smart work—I do think I was fortunate throughout my entire academic career that I kind of fell into what would now be described as smart work versus hard work because when I was young, I was the student that I—I actually in my early years, I wasn't particularly grade motivated.

I guess I was less for justice than I realized; I was actually more motivated by, hey, this is interesting. Uh, let me connect the dots. Okay, they’re teaching me this formula in this class, but wait, that’s kind of the same formula that we learned in the other class if we just change the variables or if you just format the algebra a little bit differently.

And when you approach any knowledge that way, it naturally is going to connect more; it's naturally going to stick more. The more you know, one of some of the things I really enjoy when I get covered in Khan Academy or when other people are covering it in Khan Academy is try to connect the dots between different things so they don't just feel like things to memorize. One, you're going to learn it better, and life is just going to become, it's going to become a lot more interesting.

In the U.S., a lot of times they teach the Louisiana Purchase; some of y'all might know about this, you know, in 1803 Thomas Jefferson is able to buy Louisiana from, at the time, Napoleon-controlled France for like $3 million. And Louisiana was not just the state of Louisiana; it was like a third of what we now consider to be the United States.

And the way they teach it when I first learned that—I think in fifth or sixth grade—was kind of like, they got a good deal. Like, you know, that's how it's taught: like just memorize the fact, 1803 they bought Louisiana and they got a good deal.

Later I learned, well, the reason why they got a good deal is that Napoleon, who was trying to take over Europe, had his navy defeated at Trafalgar by the British, and so he really did not have much of a navy to speak of. And so there's no way that he could protect this territory that's on the other side of the planet.

And so, in some ways, Napoleon got $3 million that probably the Americans could have just taken, and Napoleon could have done nothing about it, and at least he got $3 million more for it. So, you know, that's just an example of it's fun to connect these.

And then when you connect it, you realize, wow, that's so interesting, right? Like these decisions that people are making, very human decisions, as opposed to just random, random facts in history. You know, there’s things that, uh, in history or whatever, you know, in math that will give you goosebumps if you just look at them the right way.

So I try to remind everyone—sometimes you'll hear me say this in Khan Academy videos, you know, your biology textbook might seem a little bit dry sometimes or hard to read or your stats textbook—but that biology textbook, like every chapter is the culmination of probably a few hundred people's life work.

Like, you know those people would have done, you know what Isaac Newton would have done to get a hand, get a hand, get his hands on your calculus physics book, or what, um, you know, name them Pasteur or Curie would have done to get their hands on your chemistry textbook or to get your hands on their biology textbook.

And they really are explaining the universe. Sometimes they’re not doing it in the most wondrous, you know, wonder-provoking way, but they are fascinating things. So that's my, you know, when you study, when you learn things, just try to have that air of wonder.

And when you watch a movie like Harry Potter or something, we all get excited because we're like, wow, they're finding out different spells and they're looking at these ancient runes and they're figuring out things about the universe, and then they're able to do magic.

And I view learning as the same thing. Yes, the books that you're looking at are sometimes not the most interesting thing, but if you really engage in it the way that Hermione Granger would engage with it, you're going to see that you're going to be able to do magic. You're going to be able to understand things about the universe that frankly would have seemed like magic even 500 years ago.

And so when you view yourself as you're this person, you're going on this quest, there's things for you to explore, dots to connect, it just becomes a much more exciting, frankly, experience.

And then when you're doing that the whole time, yes, I've sometimes found myself cramming and having to, but even then, when you're cramming, but the knowledge is being connected with other things, you're more likely to learn it, you're more likely to retain that.

You know, what my Hermione Granger analogy reminds me of an answer to Christine's question about decision-making is sometimes I do—and this might be mildly delusional—I say, look, you can view yourself as just kind of living a mundane life, or you could view yourself as a protagonist in an epic movie.

And whenever you're faced with a hard decision, you're like, well, what would the protagonist—what would Bilbo Baggins do in The Hobbit? What would Hermione or Harry do in Harry Potter? What would Hari Seldon do in the Foundation series?

And I find that when you do that, first of all, life becomes a little bit more fun to live, but you'll actually do the more Satwik thing. You'll do the more like, what would the protagonist do in the story? What would happen here to make this a more interesting story?

And it also reminds myself the other way that no great story is not with its, some significant stress. You wouldn’t want to read any of these books or watch any of these movies if they did not have significant stress and moments of tension and moments where you're not sure how things are going to turn out.

So when you have those significant stresses or moments of tension or times that you are unsure of yourself, you're like, oh, well I got a good movie that I'm living, like my movie is interesting.

But that’s my best, best advice: stay curious. My advice on making decisions also, especially if you think about careers and majors, ask a ton of questions. People like giving advice as you see, I'm enjoying giving advice to you right now.

People, you know, even in—I try to fundraise a lot, and someone told me this piece of advice, which actually turned out really true: if you ask for money, people will give you advice; if you ask for advice, people give you money. And it is somewhat true, but the simple—but oftentimes the advice is the most useful thing.

So don't be afraid to ask as many questions, people who are a little bit older than you who've gone through this decision-making process, uh, you know, get them one-on-one and ask them some pride. You know, what stresses you out?

If they’re close to you and it's not tacky, ask them how much money they're making. Ask them if they made the right decision. Ask them how it's affecting other impacts of their life, their life-work balance.

And I think that's really going to help you make good decisions. I was the kid, when I was in college, I would somewhat—I’ve never had a really strict filter; I’ve always said what I’ve thought. And when I talk to people, I've always been willing to ask them pretty open questions.

And I think if they realize that you're coming from a place of vulnerability yourself and authenticity yourself, people will also be vulnerable and authentic with you, and they'll give you a lot of really good information and advice.

That is such a great outlook; thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right, uh, let’s go to Vinay.

Oh, hi, Sal. I am in grade 10, and first, thank you so, so much for both Khan Academy and schools—like, especially for India. I'm from India, so we have the CBSE grade and board exam. So thank you so much. Like, Khan Academy really helped me a lot, especially in these exams.

Uh, like, I'll just ask one question: if you were 18 right now, or if you were at my age, what would you work on and why? Like, what do you think lies ahead in the future for the youth?

Well, I think it's going to be a different answer depending on what you're interested in, what you like. But I do think the trending thing is that artificial intelligence and the most trending part of intelligence, computer engineering, and all these things—if you're interested in that, I don’t think you can go wrong with it if you're interested in it.

I will say, you know, I've often joked, like I can meet—I was a computer science, electrical engineering, math major when I was in college, so I was doing the equivalent of what you're thinking about going forward, but that's because I was really interested in it.

When I went to college, I thought I wanted to be a theoretical physicist. I was fascinated by theoretical physics; I said, like, I want to explain the nature of reality, and that's what physics is. After I was, you know, I’d read Feynman's books and look at his lectures and, and I was really inspired by that.

Then I go to college, and I’m like, even better than studying realities, creating your own realities. And I thought, then that's what I found was interesting about computing: that software, especially if you thought about virtual reality and things, you could actually create realities.

And so that's what drew me to that. So if you have a passion for that, you have an interest for that, absolutely. What I do recommend for everyone here who's roughly 18 or so years old is those subjects that you're learning in your end of high school early college, really master them.

Master them as well as you can master them because if you if you truly master your high school, early college level calculus, statistics, biology, chemistry, physics, maybe a little bit of econ, if you truly master it, you're going to be unstoppable in pretty much any field that you want to go.

Your reading and your writing, of course, as well—if you can write well at that level, you're going to be unstoppable pretty much in any field you can go.

I'll add communications because I think a lot of the schoolhouse.world tutors, they're building a muscle of communication, which is going to be invaluable. No one has grades on communication; there’s no standardized test scores on communication.

But the reason why schools like MIT and UChicago are interested in schoolhouse.world tutors is, one, it shows they know the material, but it also shows that they know how to communicate fairly, fairly complex things.

So that's my best advice. And you’d be surprised, even today, I meet a friend who has a PhD in biology; they're working at a biotech firm, and they start explaining their research, and I can go surprisingly far with them. I'm like, oh, you're talking about the Krebs cycle? Oh, that's affecting ATP production, and they’re like, how do you know this?

And I'm like, it's senior-level biology or freshman biology in college, and everyone learns—everyone takes those classes. But most people cram, take the test, and then forget it all.

But I will tell you that those classes, if you really master it, you're going to be unstoppable. And then, of course, you can layer it on if you go into computer science or artificial intelligence or whatever else.

You know, if I were to think about what industries are really interesting, obviously artificial intelligence is really interesting; I think biotech is going to be really interesting with CRISPR. I think you're going to start seeing the intersection of the two, where genetic engineering, there's going to be a lot of ethical questions around it, but there's going to be a lot of interesting positive things that can happen for humanity there as well.

But anyway, but even if you're not interested in either of those two, if you can speak well, if you can write well, if you have a solid dose of analytical skills, you will be very relevant. And, and if you take—and I generally be—if you're positive and you're authentic and you're trying to do right by the people around you and you surround yourself with good people, you’re going to do just fine.

Thank you so much; hope to meet you in person one day.

Yeah, one day, maybe. It's disappointing, but yeah.

All right, let’s see. Okay, we have—I could go a little bit longer today, and, um, I will.

Let's see, Matthew.

Thanks so much; this is Matt. I'm no longer a student—well, I am a continuous student; I love to learn, but I actually came to ask about Schoolhouse.world. I was wondering what you need to reach more people and what your, like, pain points and blockers are for growing the business?

Yeah, I think, um, you know what Schoolhouse.world is, as you know, the way that we—the dream here, the vision here is that we eventually are able to make a world where millions of people are able to get, uh, free tutoring, uh, for, for everyone.

And the—and I don't know, they keep spotlighting my video; I actually like seeing everybody else, but anyway, um, the goal here is to give a free two-day; make it for everyone. Right now we're at a reasonable scale; we have several thousand people using Schoolhouse.world. We have many hundreds of amazing tutors; I know many of y'all are, are some of them, and I thank you for that.

But our hope at the Schoolhouse.world team is to just continue to scale it because I think once we get to a scale that's maybe ten times bigger than where Schoolhouse.world is right now, then I think the flywheel is there. Then I think Schoolhouse.world will only grow and grow.

And as you all might appreciate, the more tutors there are—if we have 500 tutors now, if we can get to 5,000 tutors, if we have 500 sessions a week now, if we go to 5,000 sessions a week, then pretty much anyone who shows up there’s probably going to be a session on what they care about within minutes, or there might be a series, a group that they could join for multiple weeks that's available very soon.

And so then you have high liquidity. I'm also hoping that, and I've talked about this last time, that your ability to become a tutor and be a highly reputed tutor actually is going to, one, it'll feel good. I think many of y'all will enjoy doing that.

But above and beyond that, it has some cachet in the broader world that it can connect you with opportunity. It can get you into colleges; it can get you a job; it can get you a scholarship.

I've talked to a major scholarship group just the day before yesterday about exactly this, and they are interested—they are very interested if you're a Schoolhouse.world tutor of, wow, these are exactly the types of young people that we want to give the scholarship to.

It's a significant scholarship worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I showed them—and not to set people's expectations too high—I showed them some of our highly ranked tutors who are high school students, and they said, wow, this is amazing. These are exactly the type of people that we want to work with.

So, I, you know, my hope is if we go five years in the future, we have millions of people on Schoolhouse, the quality is high, the amazing people who are giving tutors, many of whom might have started as a student trying to get tutoring are able to get opportunities because they clearly know the subject matter and they can—they're trying to do good for others, uh, and they're clearly articulate and can explain things quite well.

So unfortunately, I have people calling me; I realize I did—I did have 12:30 Pacific time booked, but I have really enjoyed this. Sorry for the long-winded answers. I hope they can be vaguely useful for y’all, but I—and I see that I'm leaving about 30 hands raised; my apologies for that.

What I will do is see if we can schedule more of these because I enjoyed these as well. So don’t fret, if you’re enjoying this, we will get a chance to do this again.

So I will see you all then; talk to y’all later. Thanks for joining, and thanks for being part of the Schoolhouse community.

Thanks so much; have a nice day.

Thank you.