Why You Should Create a Curriculum for a Self-Taught Master’s Degree (Book Suggestions Included)
I’ll start with the cliché — knowledge is power. Literally. It opens doors. It allows you to articulate yourself and have conversations that weren’t available before. It creates wisdom and discernment to know what to avoid, and to see the world as it is rather than how you’d like it to be. Knowledge even provides a glimpse into your psyche and your motivations.
Besides, the clock is ticking on your life and your future. What you do today, every day for that matter, will determine the outcome of your existence. As Alexander Hamilton would say, “I would willingly risk my life tho’ not my Character to exalt my Station.”
Hamilton didn’t only say these words. He acted on the belief. He’s a rags to riches story that used books as one of his tools to improve his Station. Hamilton believed to “Employ all your leisure in reading.” He even read Malachy Postlethwayt’s Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce while immersed in the responsibilities and stress of war. (Thanks to Jeff Wilser’s Alexander Hamilton’s Guide to Life for these anecdotes that he got from Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton.)
This is somewhat contradictory to the world that we inhabit. How many of us are willing to forgo occasional fun and turn some of our leisure into study hall? Our incessant checking of social media and other distractions further impedes our ability to create attention spans that are capable of long bouts of reading. In Cal Newport’s Deep Work he gives us a playbook for how to build our attention spans, and a theory as to why it matters. His idea is that at the same time our society’s need for knowledge workers is increasing, the number of people who can perform long durations of focused work is decreasing. If we can become capable knowledge workers, we can take advantage of a market opportunity.
Why Not Get a Traditional Master’s Degree?
It isn’t obvious that a master’s degree is the right answer. For some fields, additional schooling is required, but for others, it’s possible to improve your Station if you have the right skills, knowledge, ability to execute, and opportunities in front of you. And opportunities are out there. The market is looking for competent people.
For a quick example, many in government and business study The Peloponnesian War, one that took place centuries ago between Athens and Sparta. Multiple books cover the strategic lessons from this war, which is taught in college curriculum, and we have access to the knowledge now.
Why Should I Try and Pursue a Self-Taught Master’s Degree?
The world is highly complicated and filled with shades of grey. We often don’t realize what we don’t know. Peter Thiel, the billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist said, “The things that I’m right about, other people are in some sense not even wrong about, because they’re not thinking about them.” What is it that we aren’t thinking about? What knowledge isn’t even on our radar as potential knowledge? What are our unknown unknowns?
The reason one would pursue a self-taught master’s is to soak up as much knowledge as possible, without getting into debt, while using the time that would be spent in school to build useful skills and careers. It isn’t obvious that you can’t land in the same place without schooling. And if the self-taught approach doesn’t seem to be paying off, go to school. If it does seem to be working, chase the rabbit down the hole as far as it goes.
This also avoids any mistake of chasing a master’s simply to delay the future because you don’t know what direction to take your career. Some people just get further schooling to avoid having to work, or so they can live as a full-time student. As much as I, too, would like to sit around and study all day, it’s not the most realistic plan. So the big question again is, does a degree guarantee that you’ll land a job you couldn’t have gotten through a natural progression?
Every question should be considered. Granted, we all are unique. The value of a master’s is because it’s an educational tool that will ideally propel a person. But tools that require large sums of money shouldn’t be sought after without great consideration.
And we shouldn’t bank on systems in life always working. Nassim Taleb illustrates a useful example of this in his book The Black Swan. As he says, “Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is a general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interest.’” In Taleb’s example, the bird would then be shocked to learn of its impending doom when it’s killed the day before Thanksgiving. If it banked on the systems of life being the same every day, it banked wrong. This is a useful analogy to remember that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on institutions, theories, and other processes always working just because they don’t have a history of not working.
Don’t forget Hofstadter’s Law either. Things always take longer than expected. So if a well developed career is set to take quite some tome, will a master’s help or delay?
What Will I Need to Create a Master’s Curriculum?
Books. Lots and lots of books. Warren Buffett said on Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor that the book The Complete Investor was best investment he ever made. It changed his life. Buffett is right. Books have the power to change our lives. Author and marketer Ryan Holiday gave advice that I’ve adhered to religiously — if you ever want a book, buy it. Don’t be cheap or procrastinate on getting a product that might change your future.
*Before we go on, I will point out two apparent pitfalls in my proposed strategy.*
1. I have yet to prove that I myself can succeed with this framework. I don’t have the credentials to say, “Look! I succeeded with no master’s degree!” So, for obvious and self-precautionary reasons, take my blogs and ideas with inherent skepticism.
2. It isn’t obvious that just because you can understand a concept you can execute it. You’ll first have to find a place where the concept can be executed, then you must to have the ability to execute it in the real world, with other adults, other people’s feelings and ideas involved, and possible push-back.
Examples of skills that can be understood in your head but not performed in the real world are negotiating and public speaking. Maybe you can execute in the mirror and you understand lessons from books, but can you pull them off in a room full of adults who have their own livelihoods and the livelihoods of their pockets on the line?
So, we’ll have to develop confidence, skills, and build trust in those above us so that they believe we can succeed. A solid track record of previous work is a good place to start.
Ok, So What Should I Read?
Anything. Everything. All the things.
Read what teaches you about the world. Read what teaches you how to think. Read what teaches you how humans operate and what’s happened in history. As much as technology has changed, human nature and our basic needs have not. The things that people in history sought after are what people seek after today.
As a rule, I’d warn to be weary of books that are too close to the self-help genre, or at least ones that aren’t actionable. It’s one thing for a self-help book to teach a philosophy or way of thinking that you can apply, it’s another thing for a book to simply speak platitudes about happiness, positive thinking, and how awesome you are. These are great affirmations, and you are indeed awesome, but these aren’t actionable sentiments.
If anything, read a self-help book just to see how fast you can get through it, and to learn how it was marketed and sold. I apply this same logic to attending conferences. Can I learn it in a book? Will that save me hours of travel and lines and crowds and time?
Enough Talk. Here’s Some Books!
If you ignored the rest of the post for some books, here you go. These are what are on my radar. I haven’t read them all. I will also link to helpful book lists.
Strategy and Power
Why?
So you can understand how the world works and learn to think strategically in your life and career.
Books
- Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman
- The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
- The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene
- The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
- The Art of War by Sun Tzu
- On War by Carl von Clausewitz
- The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
- Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram (also read Boyd’s Destruction and Creation.)
- The Landmark Thucydides: The History of the Peloponnesian War by Robert B. Strassler
- Secrets of the Japanese Art of Warfare: From the School of Certain Victory by Thomas Cleary
- Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Factsby Annie Duke
- Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday
- Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts by Ryan Holiday
- The Second World War by John Keegan
Philosophy
Why?
To learn how to think better.
Books
- Plato’s the Republic
- The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
- As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- Discourses and Selected Writings by Epictetus
- On the Shortness of Life by Seneca
- Letters to a Stoic by Seneca
- Essays by Montaigne
- Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
- The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
- The Sickness Unto Death by Soren Kierkegaard
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
- Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
Biographies
Why?
To learn how successful people lived, what they did right or wrong, and what to do or not do.
Books
- The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro (And Robert A. Caro’s series on Lyndon B Johnson.)
- American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
- Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
- Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow
- Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow (And anything else by Chernow.)
- Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isacson
Pop Psychology
Why?
For new ways of thinking.
Books
- The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar
- Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (All other books by Malcolm Gladwell.)
- Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
- The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now by Dr. Meg Jay
- The Click Moment: Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World by Frans Johansson
- Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
Psychology
Why?
To learn how humans think and operate.
Books
- Crime and Punishment (Fiction Novel) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- Civilizations and its Discontents Sigmund Freud
- The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by Carl Jung
- Modern Man in Search of a Soul by Carl Jung
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
- 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
Marketing, Business, Communication, and Writing
Why?
To improve in the real world.
Books
- Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff
- Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Frank Luntz
- Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy
- Letters From a Self-Made Merchant to His Son by George Horace Lorimer
- All Marketers are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works — and Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All by Seth Godin (Any book by Seth Godin.)
- Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
- Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss
- Perfecting Your Pitch: How to Succeed in Business and in Life by Finding Words That Work by Ronald M. Shapiro and Jeff Barker
- Pitch Perfect: How to Say it Right the First Time, Every Time by Bill McGowan and Alisa Bowman
- The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
- On Writing by Stephen king
- The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
Misc
- Everything by Nassim Taleb. It will drastically change how you look at the world.
- Books on religion and life.
- Classic fiction that has real world implications like 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451.
- Find others relevant to your interests and career and read read read!
What credible people have lists? Here’s a few:
- Ryan Holiday’s 58 Books That Will Make You Better, No Matter Who You Are(Towards the end he includes links to more lists.)
- Book list by Jordan B. Peterson.
That’s a wealth of knowledge across a number of disciplines — strategy, business, marketing, communication, philosophy, and pop-psychology. That’s hardly getting started. Much of this might not directly apply to your work and what you want to accomplish, but I’d be hard pressed to think that if you conquered many of these books you wouldn’t come out looking at the world differently and as a much improved person.
Nassim Taleb’s shares an idea in The Black Swan of being an antischolar, one who treats unread books as the true source of wisdom, because these offer us more value than what we have already read. For this reason we should be eager to fill our bookshelves and not worry about having too many books that “we need to get to.”
This is only the beginning of my attempt at creating a self-taught master’s curriculum (and beyond). To go even further with this strategy, if you want knowledge that comes directly from an academic source, look up the course materials for classes you’d like to take and buy the books. Remember that after all, college is just a group of buildings where people who live in academia share ideas they’ve gotten from books. We can access these books wherever we are, while also learning how to implement them in the real world and not just in classroom.
