Smart Kids Do This

Friends, the moment has come. The time has arrived. Your wish has been granted.

“Smart Kids Do This” is now available on Kindle.

It’s got everything you need to smarten up for the 21st century. To do your own thing. To launch into greatness.

There’s all the content from the blog and much more. At least 50% more. Hundreds of hyperlinks. All the brilliance you can fit in one pocket.

It’s a checklist for greatness. It’s a DadWiki. It’s a sleek object at the bottom of a rabbit hole labeled “READ ME”.

SKDT is not for everyone — nay, it demands a deep understanding, a quick wit, and a rarefied sense of humor — which means it’s unquestionably for YOU.

You should get it now. Your brain will never be the same. And I mean that in a good way.

All the best.

Photo by Tmuna Fish. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Everybody needs somebody sometime. Many things can’t be done without help, and that means community, and that means mutual trust and friendship and respect and working together. People cooperate. They form networks to increase the power of each individual who belongs to the network. And they do things for, and give things to, one another. Some of this is done within the market economy, but much of it is not.

All smart kids have benefited from receiving things they never paid for. Some of them learn exactly how much they’ve benefited when their parents present them with a bill for services rendered over the last 18 years. They understand that “paying it forward” without keeping score benefits the community as well as themselves.

But they believe in getting the most return for the money they donate. Who deserves it more, an abandoned child in the third world, or a reasonably-well-dressed, able-bodied man smoking in front of the grocery store? That was rhetorical. Smart kids know that transferring $1 or $2 a day can make a huge difference. Millions of people live on less than that.

Even an extra 29 cents a day per person could release half a billion people from desperation, Gregg Easterbrook writes. That’s some pretty amazing power for a few coins in your pocket. Smart kids like to use their amazing powers to make the world smarter, healthier, and better connected.

So smart kids give back. They might check out Charity Navigator to determine the best ways of giving back. And they might start sending money through Kiva (which lets you become an actual VC!), Grameen, the Acumen Fund, or another worthy conduit to their new friends overseas.

They give their time and abilities as well as their money. They’ll take time off during a flood to stack sandbags with their neighbors. If there’s a wildfire, hurricane, tornado, or thunderstorm, they’ll activate their Scout troop mobilization plan and get to work.

They might serve on the boards of charitable organizations. Philanthropy benefits them in many ways — it involves evaluating potential investments, studying the needs of others, and making decisions, alone or in a group.

Giving back doesn’t have to mean nonprofit. Many smart kids start businesses and in so doing, help others find purpose in their lives.

Giving back reminds smart kids how rich they really are.

Photo by Marty Stone. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Western civilization may well depend on groups of free people who come together for a shared purpose regardless of their genetic ties. When conditions are primitive and dangerous, people tend to associate with family. You may or may not be able to depend on them when times are tough and the chips are down and TSHTF, but that’s the way most primates bet. Pass the bananas.

Extend the families far enough and you get warlords. Moving beyond the feuding and suspicion requires trust. How do you build trust? You associate with people outside your group and do things together. You keep your promises and allow the others to rely on you, and they do the same. Now we’re cooking with gas.

Smart kids like to do things collectively, at least some of the time. Barn raising, for example, is hard to do by yourself. But this doesn’t mean they’re “joiners” in the knee-jerk sense. Smart kids are loose, flexible, mobile, and spontaneously organizing. If you run across a group of strangers flash-mobbing for charity, perhaps by forming a soup kitchen that feeds hundreds in mere minutes, chances are there’s a smart kid behind it.

Sometimes smart kids go to regular meetings of groups of people who share their interests. They get to know some of them, then hang out more with the people they like the most. Sometimes those people become co-founders.

Smart kids learn to associate with other people to get things done, and yes, that means politics. It means dealing with other strong-willed leaders besides themselves and reaching agreements on matters of common interest. They build character by serving on committees with people they can’t stand — who often end up becoming their friends. Awwww.

Photo by psd. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Smart kids know you can’t achieve anything that qualifies as true “success” by being a jerk. Let’s say that by scheming and conniving and backstabbing and being unethical, you make several million dollars. You’re now a jerk with some money. Yay. When the coke high fades and the… companions… leave, then what?

“But you don’t understand,” smirks Mr. Strawman, the “jerk” created for the sole purpose of being refuted in my next paragraph. “Now I can live in this fabulous palace, drive this expensive car, dine in these fine restaurants, and wear special non-poor-people clothing, so that everyone recognizes my greatness. And I don’t have to work! I’ll just lounge on a beach somewhere until I die, possibly getting involved now and then with another shady enterprise.”

But Mr. Strawman, if you observe the world carefully, you will discover that somebody who made a million dollars by being dishonest would likely have made two million by being honest. However, there is a sizable minority of people who believe otherwise. They may have grown up around shady people and think such behavior is normal. Or they may be drawn to the romanticism and self-destructiveness of the dark side. To such people, only boring patsies keep their promises, tell the truth, and treat others the way they would want to be treated. Such people often have talents they can capitalize on, and they often make money. But how many of them have real friends, stable marriages, the trust of their children, and the respect of their peers?

“Daddy, how did you make so much money?”

“Well, Son, I defrauded investors over the course of many years in a classic ‘Ponzi scheme’, siphoning away their hard-earned money so I could spend the rest of my life wondering whether I’d get caught.”

“Way to go, Dad!”

In the end, we tend to get what we value most, and while smart kids appreciate money, they know it’s not smart to value it over everything else.

So smart kids tend to be nice. This doesn’t mean being a pushover, but it does mean being polite, honest, dependable, and decent.

Some of the more outgoing ones have taken the Dale Carnegie course. If they haven’t taken it they’ve probably read “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, the old-school version with Madame Schumann-Heink and the crack about iodine and somebody’s thyroid gland. Nobody has ever written a better guide to succeeding by being decent. But if someone does, call me.

Photo by jskrybe. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Smart kids tend to favor transparency and openness. They like what David Brin has to say on the subject and intend to consult him during the next Constitutional convention. When they entrust others with power, they want to know that power is being used responsibly. The windows need to be open so you can look in. Eeyew. Not that open.

They like to record things with their iPhones, Flips, and anything else to hand. They upload pictures to Flickr and videos to YouTube, only some of which feature lip-synching. Some feature livid authority figures caught in the act of abusing their positions. Smart kids appreciate the use of “rodneyking” as a verb. Transparency also means you know whether a company uses slave labor to make your jacket, and what it does to dispose of its waste products.

And smart kids tend to benefit personally from living in a metaphorical glass house, at least some of the time. If you’re out in the open, you get to meet all sorts of wonderful people who’d never know you if you didn’t make that possible. You attract the people who agree with you, and then you have opportunities to do things with them. What a blast! And it’s so much easier with the Internet. Who created it? Send that person a fruit basket!

Transparency means accountability. It means screwing up in public, and taking ownership of your mistakes like a real adult instead of trying to blame them on others. And that’s a learning experience. Learning is dramatically accelerated when you do it in public where kibitzers can wander over and make comments. Smart kids don’t always take their advice, but they do sometimes. Serendipity means you never know when a smart kibitzer will appear on your doorstep.

Photo by ajleon. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Smart kids like to join whatever conversation is taking place. They’re great at using the web to connect with like-minded others. They know it can be an essential means of finding the right people when those people aren’t in close physical proximity. Some even meet their future spouses on the web, and they’re not embarrassed to let the world know how they met. Beats a smoky nightclub, anyway.

If their PHP, SQL, Java, and HTML skills aren’t all that, they grab a book or fire up a web tutorial and start learning. And they’ll find at least a weekend sometime to play around with Perl, Python, or another scripting language.

Smart kids build platforms. And their websites tend to focus on useful content and have simple interfaces. Sometimes they’ll build parody websites with lots of time-wasting Flash animations and l33tspeak, but that’s just blowing off steam.

They enjoy collaborating on wikis, Google Wave, Skype, and anything else that brings people together over long distances. They like to bring people together. The more the better. Networks build leverage. So you’ll find smart kids working with Geekcorps and other similar organizations, because when you plug in more smart kids from the third world, that equals more smart kids working together to take over the world.

Together they create a mosaic of images, a collage of sounds, a never-ending speaking of truth to power. When they become power, like the Founding Fathers, they will arrange things so others can speak truth to them.

They’re aware that everything on the web is on their permanent record. They check themselves out on Google every so often and make sure there’s lots of good stuff out there. Conversely, if they meet someone new, they like to check them out on social networks and find out whether the person is a nutcase.

Every now and then they will unplug everything electronic and go off to the waterfront or the forest or Machu Picchu. But don’t worry. They will have arranged it so you get a prompt auto-response to your email inquiry, and in case of emergency you will be able to call someone in Bangalore. Smart kids care about you.

Photo by Samael Kreutz. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

One important thing to remember about stories is that people love them so much they often want to model their lives after them. This is a problem, because a good story involves a conflict, a struggle between something good and something bad, which terminates in a climactic battle. It’s interesting to watch “Safety Last” and see Harold Lloyd climb up the building instead of down, because there’s an increasing risk of falling to his death. Down would be boring. And it’s interesting to see the couple in the movies get into more and more debt, because there’s an increasing risk of bankruptcy. In contrast, motion pictures titled “Bob’s Growing Savings Account” or “Fun with the Amish” might not earn back their original investments. Give us drama! Conflict! Excitement!

In real life, however, it’s usually better to decrease your chances of dying, losing your money, or fighting with your loved ones. TV, movies, and video games are exciting in the dramatic sense. And by that standard, a life well lived is boring.

Common sense is boring. The St. John’s College reading list is boring. Flossing is boring. Life insurance, regular health checkups, and research are boring. And thanks to overexposure in science fiction, flying cars and jetpacks are boring.

Smart kids know how to find value in things other people consider boring. Others, lacking those skills, turn to gambling, overspending, etc. to fill the inner vacuum, to add something that appears to be meaning and purpose but is actually self-destructiveness. But if you’re reading this and you meant to end up broke and homeless in a Las Vegas alleyway, lying in a puddle of something nasty, then I apologize for being judgmental.

Smart kids like to compete in boring, unglamorous markets that put the competition to sleep. Because they see things other people don’t, smart kids enter unconventional markets. It might occur to them that millions of poor people around the world could use a $100 house, a $10 bike, or a $1 pair of glasses. There are smart kids living today who will design these things, get them to market, and harvest copious wads of cash.

When they spend money, they buy things that are productive but almost never prestigious. A portfolio of carefully selected index funds is boring, and smart kids find boring things exciting.

Photo by Yogendra174. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

If you pick out a random person and want to scare him, a good bet is to go up and ask, “What would you be doing with your life if you could do anything?”

Many people can’t answer that question. They’ve been doing what they’re told so long, it might take some serious effort to find out. Or they’re scared that whatever they’re doing now is something they have to do, and if they so much as think about doing something else, the whole house of cards will collapse.

So if there’s no answer or if the answer shows he clearly hasn’t thought about it, you’re not talking to a smart kid. But if he answers with passion and you can tell he really means it, that’s an excellent thing. And if he’s living that life right now, keep him in your contact list, because here’s somebody you can learn from. Unless his purpose is to sell you a foolproof MLM work-at-home system that a housewife just across town used to make $8475.23 last month.

Smart kids either know why they’re here and what they’re meant to do, or they’re in the process of figuring it out. They agree the unexamined life is not worth living. So they examine theirs. They decide for themselves what the most important thing in the world is — what they’re meant to do with their lives. And they would not be smart kids if they didn’t put first things first, and focus their energies on what’s most important.

Having a purpose gives you a direction to stick to when things get rough. It helps you maintain grace under pressure. Although some people’s purpose seems to be to run around like a chicken with its head cut off whenever something goes wrong. Live and let live.

Photo by alancleaver_2000. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Smart kids take risks, but they also manage them to maximize the rewards and minimize the downside. Because this involves a bit of math and the ability to estimate, it baffles many people, especially those with the thrill-seeking gene. “Eh? You won’t lean out the car window while I’m driving over the cliff then? You must be risk-averse! I suppose that means you won’t have some of this three-day-old pizza lying on the floor… (wolfs down a piece)…”

Smart kids hedge. They diversify their investments, their income sources, and just about everything else. They go down checklists to make sure they didn’t miss anything important. They do boring things like taking vitamins and flossing and getting regular checkups, knowing it’s far less expensive to prevent catastrophic failure than to deal with it.

They’re good with odds and because they understand them, they don’t panic about air travel but pay constant attention to automobile traffic. If they’re on the road they remember enough physics to realize mass increases momentum, and then they get into the biggest vehicle they can that isn’t prone to tipping over. They know lotteries are taxes on the innumerate, and many taxes are penalties on the illiterate. They are careful when approaching a place that combines angry young men and alcohol, such as London.

Photo by pranav. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Smart kids know math. Martin Gardner is their friend. Probably they’ve seen “Donald in Mathmagic Land” at some point.

Some are partial to Madden Football. Others get together with their MIT classmates, develop elaborate card-counting schemes, make serious cash at the blackjack tables, and get their butts kicked by security. There are so many paths to enlightenment.

Some of the best paths are in the back yard or the forest. Smart kids learn the Pythagorean theorem outside with a tree and a yardstick. They calculate the angular velocity of a falling maple seed.

When they learn math they insist on using the standard algorithms. They can do a lot of math in their head, to check whether the calculator’s broken or the person they’re negotiating with has got the numbers wrong. If they’re having trouble with math they add dollar signs in front of the numbers and then things start to get easier.

While they like to go retro and work things out for themselves with paper and pencil, they call up a tutor when they need one. The Singapore Math people are online and ready to help 24/7.

Whenever math can be useful to smart kids, they know about it and they use it. They calculate probabilities all the time, and they’re forever estimating costs and benefits. If you grab Al Ries’s “Horse Sense” and read them the odds of succeeding at various things, they probably won’t be surprised. Compared to some people with eight sons, who did not understand that even after the seventh, the odds of their having a girl were still only 50%.

Smart kids know a 100% chance of rain means it’s a good idea to take the umbrella. But a 50% chance on Saturday and a 50% chance on Sunday does not add up to a 100% chance of rain this weekend. Math is so useful!

They know something about statistics and might have started with a Larry Gonick comic book. They’re familiar with statistical prediction software and might consult it when making decisions, but sometimes they will cast it aside and just trust their feelings, like Luke Skywalker did before he fired that critical photon torpedo. They know they’ll have to come up with a great excuse if they miss.

They know what a standard deviation is and why it matters, and they can tell the difference between a median, a mean, and a mode. Statistics can be used to support or refute almost any argument, so it’s important to know how they work, no? Smart kids know correlation is not causation. They want to know how valid the data is, how large the sample was, how the pollsters asked questions, and whether there was a selection bias.

For some reason many smart kids enjoy learning math from comic books instead of dry, committee-approved textbooks that have been gathering dust and doodles for the last 37 years. If they want to learn metric, for example, they’ll use xkcd’s cartoon guide.

They’re good at estimating how much time it will take to write that report or how much carpet they’ll need to cover that floor. They look at the price per unit when buying things to see if the big box is really cheaper.

They can probably handle Excel, though some insist on Open Office Calc. And they can read a balance sheet. They’ve heard the Mathematica Home Edition is not too expensive, which is a good thing if you like graphing Fourier transforms… and who doesn’t?