Welcome to NextLetter, where Frederik Pferdt helps you become one step closer to your next opportunity.

What Opportunity is Waiting for You?

Right around now, millions of children, teens, and young adults are experiencing a moment that is unique and universal at the same time.

On that first day of school, whether we’re 3 or 23, we bring along our backpacks, notebooks, laptops, and sacks of snacks, not to mention our personal perspectives and experiences, which shape what we think about school, about learning, and about the early journey of education.

So many of us also carry with us something that can’t be hidden by any pencil case or zippered pocket: A locker full of nerves.

How will my teachers be? Who will be my friends? Will the classes be hard? Why do we have to learn X, Y, and Z? This feeling isn’t reserved for just those children starting school or new phases in life. It’s something we all experience—even when we’re well beyond engaging in traditional and formal education.

We all feel that first-day emotional frenzy whenever we’re faced with new opportunities—or even the possibility of one. What would it be like with a new job? A new boss? A new career? A new relationship? A new approach to life?

Excitement and anxiety may duke it out in the battle of your brain because it can feel “safe” to stay the course so you can avoid flirting with those “first day” feelings. 

But what if we took a lesson from our school years—a time when we had little choice but to just show up and grit out your curriculum, whether you were ready for the geometry teacher nicknamed the Dean of Doom or not? What if we looked at the things that tickle our nerves not as something that causes us angst and causes us to retreat, but rather as something that ignites excitement and invites us in?

The new door you don’t want to open. The new idea you shy away from. The new challenge that sits in front of you.

The new anything. It’s easy to say no to any and all of them—and to not show up when opportunities arise.

Maybe the lesson from those first days of school is that we shouldn’t shy away from our nerves once we have a choice about what to do with them. Instead, we should raise our hands and give them a try.

Even if you have no idea what the answer actually is.

Quote I Love

Why You Need Less Direction in Your Life

Sometimes, it feels like today’s children are so ingrained in rubric culture. Do X and get Y result. We teach kids exactly what they need to do and know—and if they prove that they actually do and know those things, that’s a marker of success.

But is that really the way we should be preparing children—and ourselves—for the uncertainties of life?

In one class at Stanford, my co-teacher and I tried an experiment: We didn’t show up for class on Zoom (this was during the pandemic). And we just waited to see how they would react. Would they leave? Would they work? Would they use the time to collaborate?

Now, some of them were onto us (“they’re testing us!”), but it turned out to be a fascinating experience to watch the social dynamics—to see leadership emerge, to see creative thinking, to see how they operated.

In another class, we put a box in the middle of the room with a note, and then we left: “Enjoy class. You have everything you need.” What transpired was fascinating. They worked, they collaborated on projects, and they brainstormed. Nobody left. 

Our point wasn’t to test their loyalty. It was to instill a sense that life is uncertain. Many times, we don’t have clear directions. Many times, we don’t have clear goals. And many times, we need to break out of our rules-driven roads—and find our own paths.

That really should be part of our education—not just the formal kind, but also the kind that happens every day.

When someone throws you a curveball, what are you going to do?

One Question That Can Change Your Outlook

As part of a task force at Stanford, my colleagues worked with a group that looked at the future of education. One of the most fascinating outcomes was the idea that maybe we should rethink how we organize higher education.

The first question that students are often asked is this: What’s your major? 

That answer helps define what you want to do. 

What if that question—and the entire system—shifted to a different question: What’s your mission?

That answer helps define who you are.

Try it. Stop framing your life by your job, career, or role. What is your mission?

Not what you do, but who you are.

The Art of Next Steps

Every so often when I have friends over, we go into our little art studio for some time. One person paints one stroke, then the next person paints one stroke, and so on and so on. 

Sometimes, people get frustrated because the art doesn’t look very good. Sometimes, someone decides to do a stroke over the whole image and cover it all. Sometimes, people grow impatient. 

My goal isn’t to produce museum-worthy work. It’s just to keep going, keep building, keep creating, keep seeing something new even when all you’re seeing is old.

You can try it with just a piece of paper and a pen. Pass it around with only one rule in place: Add only one stroke at a time. 

The lesson is that life doesn’t always come with erasers, so we should always be looking forward—to figure out how we’re going to add to and change the many paintings that make up our lives.

Let me know one of your most profound lessons from school. Respond to this email, and I may share your experience in a future NextLetter. My new book, What’s Next is Now, is available now.

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