A couple of months ago I was approached by a group of students who are part of running the Social Venture Fund at the University of Michigan with the idea to host a dinner in Detroit. I was immediately sold because of the simple belief that if there’s anywhere that needs to have education hacked, it’s Detroit.

The numbers are truly astounding. As of right now, Detroit is slated to close half of its public schools over the next two years which will raise class sizes to an astonishing 60 students per. This is in a city where almost half of the adults are functionally illiterate and an equivalent percentage of children live below the poverty line. It’s so bad that the city issued a mass layoff for all of its teachers and you can’t even find someone to run for open slots on the school board.

So why Detroit?

One person’s lost cause is another’s opportunity and there’s a growing feeling that, like what happened in New Orleans after Katrina, if you can change the game here you can change it anywhere. Detroit has a lot of problems. There’s no denying that. As does Cleveland, Baltimore and huge swaths of Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky and so many other places in the country. Which gives us two options: giving up on these cities and considering these cities and regions as a part of America’s past or fighting for these places and refusing to believe they won’t be part of America’s future.

What’s going on right now in education is unparalleled. I attended a White House event today on Jobs and Competitiveness in Palo Alto and at times it felt like a two-hour long commercial for Khan Academy. And that’s completely awesome. That we can take one of the most brilliant teachers in the history of the planet and “bring him” to Detroit through the magic of YouTube and high-speed Internet represents incredible potential. And Salman is just one of so many people who are working tirelessly to make sure that the education of tomorrow is open and accessible. There are many passionate and hard-working teachers and administrators on the ground and people all around the country who care deeply about what is going on in these cities.

I feel we may be on the brink of having two countries in America. But if there’s an equalizer, something that keeps us from becoming a country that simultaneously has hordes of millionaires and billionaires and also chronic 20+% unemployment, it’s education. And while there’s no magic formula we can’t think of a better place to focus on than the cities that seem most hopeless. Which is why we’re so excited about September 16th and what the future might hold. If you’d like to be involved in anyway, please drop me a line. This is only a small effort, and only one of many of course, but one that we hope inspires others to think about what we can do to help those who need it the most.

(Note: Donors Choose also offers some other great opportunities to help as they currently list 59 projects in Detroit that you can help with. It’s a great way to make a real difference for teachers and students there.)

I hope you enjoy it and that you find a few extra hours or even a few extra minutes in your day!)

How many times do you hear someone say “I wish there were more hours in the day” or something along those lines? The fact is that all of us are only given 24 hours. Having said that, how we spend those 24 hours varies radically from person to person. It’s become a bit of a cliche by now but the 24 hours we have is the same 24 hours that Thomas Edison and Mother Theresa had and that Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates currently have. As the old song goes “It’s in the way that you use it.”

But what if we had more than 24 hours in a day?

Not possible? I disagree. While we can never have more than 24 hours of chronological time I think it’s very possible to have many more hours of functional time. In fact, I think it’s probably possible to get up to 36 hours of functional time in your day if you do a few relatiively simple things. So without further ado, here is my prescription for the 36 hour day.

It’s a list of ways to save time that you may or may not have thought of. Implement a few of them and you’ll likely open up a couple of hours each day that you didn’t previously have . Implement all of of them and you just might find yourself with too much time on your hands. File that under “Good Problem to Have” right?

So here are 10 ways that you can radically change your life and free up the time you didn’t know that you could.

36 Hour Day Strategy #1: Optimize Your Sleep

Some of us can get by just fine on 3-5 hours a sleep a night (I’m jealous of you!) while others “need” 9+ hours to feel rested. Certainly a good portion of this is genetic and perhaps environmental. Having said that I tihnk that there are ways that all of us can sleep less and at the same time feel more rested. Here are a few suggestions:

Wake up at the same time every morning – I first came across this through Steve Pavlina’s excellent blog. I’ve been trying it for a little while and totally dig it. It’s a simple concept. Just set your alarm clock for the same time each morning, wake up when it goes off and then go to bed at night when you feel tired and not before. Steve claims it can free up 10-15 hours a week. I think he’s totally right.

Make your room a quiet, dark cave – For too many people the bedroom is a source of activity, light and noise. Do your best to minimize the amount of sound in your bed room (consider buying an air cleaner or white noise generator if you live in noisy apartment building or neighborhood). Take steps to eliminate or reduce the light that comes into your bedroom while you sleep (heavy curtains or dark room material on the windows work well here). And do your darnedest to remove stimulus from your bedroom (e.g., TV, lots of clutter, etc.)

Experiment with polyphasic sleep – Polyphasic sleep is a sleeping pattern that proposes to reduce sleep down to 2-5 hours a day. I haven’t tried it yet so I can’t speak to its validity but you back to Steve’s blog again for some great information on this unusual but potentially effective sleeping method.

Time Savings from Optimizing Your Sleep = Approximately 1.5 Hours

2011 Revision: I still think sleep is incredibly important but I’m not waking up at the same time every day and certainly am not practicing polyphasic sleep. Mostly these days I practice free running sleep and I do love having a white noise generator playing while I sleep.

36 Hour Day Strategy #2: Optimize Your Diet

The human body spends more of its energy on digestion and elimination than anything else . What you put into your body in the form of food and drink will definitely have an impact on your energy levels as well the amount of sleep you’ll need. A few years back I was pretty heavy into weightlifting and was eating a ton of calories and lots of protein every day. The result? I need to sleep a *ton* to feel rested. Sometimes 10-11 hours a night (the hard workouts didn’t help either).

Now my diet has done a 180 and I’m eating a much better (but far from perfect) mix of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and healthy fats and oils. The difference in energy is dramatic and I sleep a lot less than I previously needed to. My diet still needs improvement but these changes have literally added hours to my days.

I’d recommend a few resources for people looking to save time by improving their diet. The first is Tony Robbins’ Living Health course. Tony has more energy that any person I’ve ever seen and that’s a great testament to his health and fitness regimen. He has based a lot of his information on the work of Dr. Robert Young and thus I would recommend Dr. Young’s book The pH Miracle as well.

Finally, consider going on a cleanse. I recently went on a four-day cleanse as outlined in the pH Miracle book and I’ve had a lot more energy in the week and a half since I went off it. The book Juice Fasting and Detoxification also helped me through a pretty intense (both physically and emotionally) four days and I’d recommend that one as well.

Time Savings from Optimizing Your Diet = Approximately 1.5 Hours

2011 Revision: Turned that I couldn’t find much evidence for the benefits of an alkaline diet so I’ve largely shifted away from that. A lot of the people whose views on health I respect were doing some variation of the Paleo Diet so that’s mostly what I’ve gravitated to with modifications and more than a few cheats…

36 Hour Day Strategy #3: Multi Task

OK, this is a given right. If you do two things at the same time you will be able to do more during your day. But isn’t multitasking bad? The lady driving down the highway with her cell glued to her ear is probably not the best model for multitasking. The guy you had lunch with yesterday who checked his Blackberry 17 times before they brought the main course out isn’t doing anyone any favors with his technology-enabled form of ADD.

But I’d argue that multi-tasking, when done right, is one of the best ways to save time throughout your day. Combining talking on the phone and “brain dead activities” is a great way to multitask. For most people, doing laundry or washing the dishes is an activity that takes no thought. Why not use that time to make a few phone calls and kill two birds with one stone? But remember, checking e-mail or watching TV are not brain dead activities. And nothing is more annoying than having a phone conversation with someone who is not fully present.

Another great way to multi task is to incorporate exercise into your activities. Need to get together with a friend to catch up? Meet them for a jog and get caught up while you knock out your daily workout. I’ll often stretch (it’s good for you!) while I’m reading or at my computer (I’ve got one those exercise balls that allows we to stretch while I’m checking e-mail…kinda geeky but it works for me!).

Something else I do is to do a series of exercises created by a gentleman named Pete Egoscue. These exercises are designed to improve flexibility and range of motion and prevent injury. And many of them can be done while reading, on the phone, etc. I’d highly recommend Pete’s book Pain Free for anyone interested in these.

There are a ton of ways that you can incorporate exercise into your daily routines without taking any extra time out of your day. It’s really a great way to free up your schedule and keep your body in tip-top shape.

Time Savings from Multi Tasking = Approximately 2.0 Hours

2011 Revision: Still a big fan of combining activities. Reading articles I’ve saved using Instapaper while walking around (low-traffic) parts of the neighborhood. Listening to audiobooks while doing household chores. I do talk on the phone a lot in the car these days but always with a hands-free headset of course!

36 Hour Day Strategy #4: Get Organized

You really owe it to yourself to get organized because it will save you both time and stress. There are a number of different ways and strategies for getting organized. One of the best that I’ve found (and use personally) is David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. GTD, as it is more commonly referred to, is a system for capturing and managing the things that you need to do and remember. It’s remarkably effective in that it gets all of the little things out of your head which frees up your “psychic RAM” for more productive thoughts and results in increased creativity.

David Allen’s system isn’t the only one out there. A lot of people will use Franklin-Covey, Tony Robbins’ life management system or any of a number of other planning systems. I’m not convinced that there’s one best system out there but I think it’s important for all of us to use some sort of a system so that “Remember to buy toothpaste” isn’t consuming even an ounce of our mental energy.

There’s a ton of info about GTD online for free and the investment you’ll make in learning one of these systems will pay off in spades. Not only will you be more productive but you’ll also feel less stressed which will result in more energy and once again will add hours to your days.

Time Savings from Getting Organized = Approximately 1.0 Hours

2011 Revision: I’m not sure whether I currently practice GTD as it’s been so long that I’ve been working with the principles that it just seems like a part of my natural life. I’d highly recommend that anyone who hasn’t read Getting Things Done immediately does that. You don’t need to practice GTD religiously but I guarantee you’ll pick up at least a couple of things that will make you more organized and effective.

36 Hour Day Strategy #5: Improve Your Typing Speed

In this computer age, the keyboard is often our primary form of communication with many people. This is a wild ass guess but I’d say that the average person probably spends about 1-2 hours a day typing. This could be e-mails, IMs, memos, reports, etc . Certainly for some people this number is much higher and for others it is low. So let’s just say an average of 1.5 hours per person for now.

Now let’s assume that you currently type 40 WPM. If you improved your typing speed to 60 WPM you would save 33% of the time you are currently spending typing. Improve it to 80 WPM and you’ve now saved 50%. That’s probably a half an hour or 45 minutes a day you’ve saved. Over the course of a year or a decade (not to mention a lifetime) this results in a *huge* savings.

It’s amazing that we invest in all of these productivity applications in businesses and yet you have many people who are still hunting and pecking at their keyboard. That’s just crazy to me. The faster you type the better you can communicate plain and simple. The keyboard becomes a natural extension of you vs. some impediment to exchanging information and sharing yourself with the world.

I’d highly recommend investing a little time (even just a few minutes a day) in improving your typing. A program that I use for this is TypingMaster and I love it. It’s easy to use and can even be configured to track your real-world typing so that it can incorporate words you commonly mis-type into its drills. This is definitely a great way to save time on a daily basis.

Time Savings from Improving Your Typing Speed = Approximately 0.75 Hours

2011 Revision: This is an area where I feel like I’ve learned an important lesson: Type fewer words. I used to send emails that were waaaaaay too long and thought “gosh, if I could only type faster.” Five years later I’ve realized that typing those long emails was both wasting my time and that of the recipients. I tend to treat email more like Twitter these days, trying to be as concise as possible. Check out this post and this post for great tips on the topic.

36 Hour Day Strategy #6: Improve Your Reading Speed

Just as with typing, improving your reading speed can make you more productive and save you tons of time. It also varies a lot but I’ll assume that each of us again spends on average between one and two hours a day reading. Whether this is the morning paper, e-mails at works, research for your job or for school or the latest book we all have a need to be continually reading in this day and age.

The fact of the matter is that most of us don’t read all that well. We read slow and we often have to read things multiple times to understand what’s going on. And in the end that either reduces the amount of stuff we end up reading (if you read slow and have trouble comprehending reading just won’t be enjoyable to you) or results in a lot more time invested in reading than necessary.

As with typing there are ways to improve your reading abilities. Here are a few that I’ve incorporated:

Active Reading – One of the reasons why many of us don’t read that well is that we’re entirely passive when reading. The brain engages much more when it is active and the best way to encourage this is to make notes while reading. If you’re reading a book then mark the hell out of it. Underline passages, jot notes, etc. You’ll find that your comprehension will go way up as will your reading speed (even after accounting for the time spent marking up your book). One of the best parts about making notes is that you can return to the material later and review it more quickly and effectively.

EyeQ – Off and on over the last few years I’ve been using a software application called EyeQ to improve my reading speed. I think it’s the fastest and easiest way for a person increase their ability to rapidly process information. It works by getting you to move your eyes more quickly through material. This results in an increased ability to filter out words that are meaningless (a, an, the, etc.) as well as a reduced reliance on subvocalization.

Photoreading – I took a class in Photoreading a few years ago and while I’m still not convinced that it’s 100% legit any system that claims to increase reading speed to 25,000 words per minute or more is definitely worth checking out. For people who have a ton of reading to do (e.g., graduate students, attorneys, etc.) something like Photoreading could possibly revolutionize their lives and free up tons of time.

Time Savings from Improving Your Reading Speed = Approximately 0.75 Hours

2011 Revision: Reading faster is indeed still an important thing. However I thing my major learnings here include the portability of reading (taking articles to go vs. reading them on the laptop), substituting listening to content I want to consume rather than reading it (see the next strategy) and working to have conversations on topics with experts rather than just reading about them. It also helps to be a bit older (and perhaps wiser?!) about what to read.

36 Hour Day Strategy #7: Learn Out Loud

Probably the #1 reason why I started LearnOutLoud.com is that I believe so strongly in the power of audio learning to literally add hours to peoples’ lives and provide increased enjoyment of, and fulfillment during, times which have historically been frustrating and unproductive (e.g., the morning commute).

Audio learning is the perfect multi-tasking activity. Most people who know me know that I’m listening to audio books, podcasts, etc. several hours every day. I’ll do this whenever I’m driving, while exercising, doing stuff around the apartment, etc. I’ve been able to crank through an unbelievable number of books in the last year (including unabridged versions of My Life by Bill Clinton and The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman) that I never would have found the time to sit down and read. Likewise, I’ve been able to virtually “attend” conferences like South by Southwest and the World Economic Forum thanks to the miracle of podcasting.

Thanks to the iPod and other portable MP3 players it’s never been easier to learn out loud. One of my favorite things to do is to go for a run with a few podcasts or an audio book queued up. In fact, I recently completed the LA Marathon while simultaneously listening to the first half of John Battelle’s book The Search (read more on that here). It was kind of fun to know that I was getting both a workout for my body and for my mind.

We’ve essentially set up LearnOutLoud as the epicenter for what I truly feel will be an audio learning revolution in upcoming years and decades. People are increasingly pressed for time and the opportunity to listen to the information you need to consume rather than having to read it opens up a lot of doors. It’s a great way to stay on top of all the information and trends that affect your world and that’s why I’m so excited about it.

Time Savings from Learning Out Loud = Approximately 1.5 Hours

2011 Revision: I’m still blown away by how awesome audio learning. As a busy entrepreneur I have nowhere near as much time as I’d like to read. So to be able to crank through a few books on month by listening to them is pretty cool. And now way more than in 2006 there are all sorts of screencasts, tutorials, podcasts, interviews (e.g., Mixergy) to be constantly learning from. It’s truly an autodidact’s paradise these days.

36 Hour Day Strategy #8: Use Software To Your Advantage

The right software can bring huge time savings to your life. Certainly not all software will save you time. In fact, some applications can actually be huge time sucks. Anyone ever hear of Minesweeper? But there are some programs out there that will add minutes to your days and hours to your weeks and months. Here are some that I’ve stumbled upon:

ActiveWords – ActiveWords is a macro application that allows you to assign hot keys to repetitive tasks. We use this a lot in our business to save time and it could certainly save you time in your personal life as well.

Here’s a simple example of how I use it. Let’s say that someone is coming by the office for lunch. I want to give them fairly detailed directions via e-mail. One option would be to type up directions each time. That’s really a waste as I’m writing the same thing everytime. Another option would be to type up the directions and put them in a text file and then cut and paste them into my e-mail each time I needed them. That does save time but I still have to find the text file on my system each time and do the cut and paste. What ActiveWords allows me to do is to assign a hot key or phrase to my directions. Now all I have to do is type “officedirections” and hit F8 and the directions will automatically be inserted into my e-mail. Cool huh?

There are a ton of ways to use this nifty little application and I feel that I’m just scratching the surface of its usefulness.

Cloudmark Spamblocker (or other anti-spam software) – If you’re manually processing and deleting spam you’re just wasting your time. The investment in a good spam blocker is well worth it. I’ve been using Cloudmark’s product for several years and I really like it. Almost all my spam gets blocked and rarely does a legitimate message end up in my spam folder.

Another solution is to use GMail (or another web-based app) for your e-mail. These systems end up doing a pretty good job of filtering spam as well. And now a lot of these services have advanced functionality so you can use them and have the e-mails still appear to be coming from your domain (e.g., jon@learnoutloud.com rather than learnoutloud@gmail.com).

Bloglines (or other RSS aggregation software) – I follow 50+ blogs on a number of subjects including technology, new media, audio books, podcasting, U2 and of course Dilbert. There’s no way I’d be able to stay on top of all of this stuff without the help
of a piece of software that puts all these blogs in one place and shows me what new updates have been made to each of them. I use Bloglines and I love it. Not only can I read blogs when I’m at the computer but there’s even a mobile version of Bloglines so I can read blogs from my Blackberry.

Blogs are increasingly becoming the best way to consume information online and so if you haven’t set up an aggregator yet I’d definitely recommend it. There are dozens of aggregators out there and while Bloglines does the trick for me you may want to look at the other apps to find one that works well for you.

Time Savings from Using Software To Your Advantage = Approximately 0.5 Hours

2011 Revision: The names have changed (TypeIt4Me vs. ActiveWords, GMail vs. Cloudmark, Twitter/Hacker News vs. Bloglines) but the strategy is still sound. Investing in learning software to help with productivity remains one of the best investments I’ve personally made. I strongly recommend taking the time to get really good at the software you use the most.

36 Hour Day Strategy #9: Cut Your TV Time in Half

Depending on what study you look at you’ll find that the average person watches something like four hours of TV a day. That boggles my mind. We’re incredibly busy and yet we somehow find a way to spend four or more hours a day watching television?!!! Crazy…

Now I’m not one to say that all television is bad or that mindless entertainment is never a good thing. There are definitely some TV shows and there’s of course a time and a place for turning the brain off for a bit. I have no beef with that but what disturbs me is when people give huge chunks of their life to an activity that doesn’t really provide any meaningful benefit in most cases.

A year and a half ago I turned off my cable service and I haven’t missed it at all. I’ve got a Netflix subscription so I can have a few movies handy for times when I want to watch them. And if there’s a big game on (like last night’s incredible UCLA win…Go Bruins!) then I can typically find a place to watch it with some friends. What I have noticed is that the activity of sitting down “just to see what’s on” has become entirely foreign to me. And I think that’s a very good thing.

So I’m not saying you have to go to the extreme and shut your TV off. Just be conscious of what you’re watching and why. And see if you can’t reduce the amount of time you spend watching TV by 50%. If you currently watch four hours a day you almost assuredly can get by watching two hours a day. I mean there are some good shows on but not that many good shows…

Time Savings from Cutting Your TV Time in Half = Approximately 2.0 Hours

2011 Revision: TV is pretty much the devil when it comes to productivity. I still watch some but I really try to limit my TV time, especially when I’m at a busy point in life. This is probably the #1 place people could find extra hours if they really wanted to.

36 Hour Day Strategy #10: Get Help from Others

The final way to have a 36 Hour Day is to look for opportunities to have other people help you out with stuff. A lot of this definitely depends on factors like what your job is and how much money you have. If you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company you can probably find people to do a lot of stuff for you and will have no probably paying them to do so. But what about the rest of us?

First of all, don’t discount people’s interest in helping you out for free. Let’s say you are moving in a few weeks. Why not ask several friends to help you out? It certainly makes the load a lot easier and saves you time.

Another possibility is trading things you are good at for things you need help with. For instance, let’s say you need help with housecleaning. Perhaps you can find someone whose English skills aren’t that good and offer to tutor them in English in exchange for help with cleaning. You’ll save time and they’ll benefit from your help resulting in a win-win for both of you.

There are tons of opportunities like this if you just keep your eyes open for them. Of course asking someone to help you out means being willing to help if you’re asked to. But with all this time you’re saving this shouldn’t be a problem right?

P.S. There’s another great way to save time when you’re researching something or looking for information. There are a number of services online that will help you for free or a nominal charge. For instance, when I have a tech problem I’ll often post it to Experts Exchange and I’ll usually get back an answer within hours or even minutes. For non-techie questions I’ll use a service like Google Answers. There’s a small fee associated with getting questions answered but you can set the amount and it’s almost always worth it in terms of the amount of time you save by getting someone to help you out with the research.

In addition to services like this there are thousands of message boards on the Internet staffed with volunteers who can help you answer many questions. Back in the day I started one of these message boards at CertTutor.net and it has helped thousands of people get their technology certification questions answered. It’s just one of many like it out there in just about every subject you can imagine.

Time Savings from Getting Help from Others = Approximately 0.5 Hours

2011 Revision: This is still a big part of my life and it’s often to see that with stuff like Quora and Twitter this is getting better all the time. I’ve also gotten better at leveraging virtual assistants for tasks and learning how to reach out to others in my social graph. For people who achieve at the highest levels of society, this is probably the area where they find the most leverage and an area that all of us probably have room to improve. So often I find myself asking the question “Am I the best person to be doing this?” and that guides me as to whether I should find someone to help out.

So as we add these up we find that there’s the potential here to say 12 hours of time each day. Wow. Certainly your mileage with vary with the strategies but hopefully you can implement some of them in your daily life. Time is the most precious commodity on the planet and by saving time in some areas you’ll have more time for doing the things that are truly the most important to you and for pursuing your goals and following your bliss. And if we all do that…well, I think that will change the world.

2011 Revision: OK, I still agree with this. I think most people overvalue their money and undervalue their time. Time is indeed the scarce resource and I’d love to see everyone (myself included!) adopt more of that mindset. There’s a lot of work still to be done in this world! I hope you’ve enjoyed this and please feel free to share additional time-saving tips in the comments.

“We claim to be part of the American dream and of a system based on merit and opportunity and talent,” Mr. Marx says. “Yet if at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile, then we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution.”

There’s a lot of evidence that suggests that the admissions policies of the top universities tend to perpetuate the notion of rich getting richer. This post isn’t meant to argue for or against that point. Rather it’s to argue another point which is that when you look at this issue the larger concern here shouldn’t be that people from lower-income families aren’t able to receive as good of an education as people from higher-income families. That’s of course very important but the critical factor is that people from lower-income families aren’t able to gain access to the same networks that higher-income families have access to.

One of the articles that has been influential in my thinking here was Malcolm Gladwell’s 1999 article in The New Yorker entitled “Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg“. I’ll let you read the whole thing but suffice to say it’s the story of an unlikely “super connector” named Lois Weisberg and includes this very pertinent passage:

If the world really is held together by people like Lois Weisberg, in other words, how poor you are can be defined quite simply as how far you have to go to get to someone like her. Wendy Willrich and Helen Doria and all the countless other people in Lois’s circle needed to make only one phone call. They are well-off. The dropout wouldn’t even know where to start. That’s why he’s poor. Poverty is not deprivation. It is isolation.

Poverty is not deprivation. It is isolation. When the high school senior from the inner city doesn’t get into Harvard or Yale, she’s being isolated from the networks that could allow to reach the highest rungs of society. In all fairness, many people from impoverished communities have been able to access these networks in recent decades and it has lead to some of the greatest success stories of our time. Michelle Obama. Sonia Sotomayor. Even a story like Lloyd Blankfein’s (Goldman Sachs CEO/Chairman) is largely one of accessing networks (through a full ride to Harvard) that would have been normally inaccessible to a son of a Postal Service worker.

As Gladwell states in his article:

Minority-admissions programs work not because they give black students access to the same superior educational resources as white students, or access to the same rich cultural environment as white students, or any other formal or grandiose vision of engineered equality. They work by giving black students access to the same white students as white students — by allowing them to make acquaintances outside their own social world and so shortening the chain lengths between them and the best jobs.

We live in an age where with a solid Internet connection and someone to guide you through the process of self-education (admittedly something many people don’t have) you can learn just about anything. Certainly enough to qualify for some of society’s highest-paid positions. But unfortunately that’s not enough. Because despite the fact that it’s easier than ever to learn the things that will qualify you for a well-paid position in the world, it’s not easier (perhaps even harder) to gain access to the networks that will let you achieve your full potential.

Waiting for Superman paints a very compelling picture about the dire situation in our inner-city schools. And the point that it might not be that schools reflect their surroundings but rather that surroundings may reflect their schools is well worth pondering. But it’s often overlooked that the most tragic part of children from the inner-city not gaining access to elite schools probably isn’t the fact that they might be losing out on access to a world-class education. Rather, it’s that for most that was their best shot at gaining access to an elite network.

So can we change this? I think we can. It starts with recognizing the problem for what it is and doing what we can to teach kids from impoverished backgrounds not just how to read and write but how to become upwardly mobile in their networking. That might sound strange but it’s not like there aren’t role models for how to do this. Guys like Russell Simmons or Jay-Z. How do we instill in our less privileged youth an attitude and aptitude for rising up the ranks and meeting the people they need to meet Lois Weisberg-style, regardless of what university they happen to get into?

Sounds like a hell of an idea for a world-changing non-profit. If you know of anyone doing anything like this I’d love to talk to them.

eduFire is now a part of Camelback Education Group – In June eduFire.com became a part of Camelback Education Group, a higher education holding company in Phoenix, Arizona. The blog post on eduFire has more details but I’ll add here that I’m excited about the future of eduFire as a part of Camelback, a company that I think has the potential to be a huge player in the online education space in the future. I’ll be helping with the transition but also starting to look at what my next career-related adventure will be. I am incredibly thankful to all of the people who’ve supported eduFire since we started it in 2007. I’m very proud of what we accomplished and very grateful to all those who helped make it happen.

Carrie and I got married! – On June 19th Carrie and I tied the knot in Lexington, Kentucky. It was an incredibly special week for us as we got to enjoy it with ~200 of our family and closest friends. We were married by our great friend Mark Dowds and one of our all-time favorite musicians, Rob Costlow, played at the ceremony. Oh, and there was a rap. All in all we could not have asked for a more amazing experience and are humbled and awed by how blessed we are. Thank you to all of you who traveled from places far and wide to be there with us in Kentucky. It meant so much to us!

Dubai and Ethiopia – For our honeymoon we went to Dubai and Ethiopia. Dubai was first up and was a really interesting experience. I kinda think that Dubai might be the world’s biggest start-up. You drive around the city and see all the cranes and skyscrapers and it’s hard to fathom that most of this didn’t exist a few decades ago. Really, a very audacious place. From the world’s tallest building to the world’s biggest (and most impressive) mall to ridiculous man made islands, this place screams “larger than life”.

It certainly isn’t a perfect place. Far from eco-friendly and the whole “slave labor” accusations thing is more than a bit troubling. But on the whole I have to say that I loved Dubai because of how entrepreneurial it felt. Similar to Bugsy Siegel rolling into Nevada in the 40s and envisioning Vegas, Dubai is really the product of an insanely bold vision and imagination.

After Dubai we traveled to Ethiopia. We wanted to incorporate some service work into our honeymoon and my parents lived in Ethiopia for a year when they were first married so we decided to follow in their footsteps. Simply put, it was a life-changing experience. It’s one thing to hear about people who live on less than a dollar a day. It’s another to actually sit with them in their homes and talk to them and play with their children. The range of emotions that a place like Ethiopia evokes is overwhelming. I wish that everyone could have the experience that we had at least once in their life.

We spent several days working with orphans in Debre Zeyit, a town about an hour outside of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia’s capital and largest city). Carrie and I will never forget those kids for as long as we live. Many of them have lost parents to HIV and some of them are infected with HIV themselves. Their lives are poor and destitute and it would be easy to pity them. Until you realize what they do have. Huge smiles. A sense of community like none that I’ve seen anywhere else in the world. An unbelievable spirit. On one hand you want to help and do whatever you can to help lift them out of poverty. On the other hand there’s a huge part of me that felt that anything that disrupted their incredibly strong social fabric would be a tragedy. As I shared with many people after first going to Africa in 2003, nobody in the world smiles as big or as easily as Africans do. (By the way, if you haven’t already check out the documentary I Am Because We Are. It was similar to our experience although the situation in Malawi is even more dire than Ethiopia.)

To sum up, it’s been an incredible last few months and I’m left with both a huge sense of gratitude for how blessed I am and also a stronger sense of urgency than I’ve ever had before to go out and make the world a better place. I’ve been reminded several times in the last few weeks of Ted Kennedy’s eulogy of RFK. You really should watch the whole thing (often) but this passage in particular does a pretty good job of bringing it all together for me.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

If you were 24 and had $200k in spare cash, how would you invest it?

I was actually in a very similar situation to you a decade ago (sold my first company at 24) so I can offer some of my thoughts in terms of what I did and what I would do differently knowing what I know now.

#1 – Absolutely do invest in yourself professionally. I’d recommend three things here.

First, consider any/all education opportunities that would allow you to build your network. While college or grad school is totally overrated from a “what you learn” perspective it’s a phenomenal place for getting to know other high achievers. If you can get into an Ivy League school or grad school that’s a really option to consider (since you’ll have enough money to live on for a while).

Second, consider moving to a big city if you aren’t there yet. The opportunities for advancement (personal and professional) are typically greater in a place like NY, SF or LA. Money prevents many people from going but it shouldn’t in your case. I made the move to Cali at 27 but wish I would have done it sooner.

Third, use the money to build your network. Go (selectively) to conferences where you’ll meet interesting and ambitious people. Attend a lot of events. Take a job with a start-up company where you may or may not cash out big but you’ll be able to meet other entrepreneurs and interesting people.

#2 – Invest in yourself personally. Spend some time studying health, exercise and nutrition. Investments made in these areas when you are young pay huge dividends later in life in terms of increased energy, less sickness, better quality of life, etc. The reason many people don’t spend the time they should in these areas is because of time or money. You have both which is a great opportunity.

#3 – If you are making any financial investments try to invest in things that have intangible benefits. Rather than trying to 100% maximize your financial gain (you’ll have plenty of time for that), focus instead on the overall benefit of your investment. For instance, if you think you might be interested in working in another country then invest in some stocks of companies in that country or in that country’s currency or bonds. Doing so will cause you learn more about the country and be that much more prepared if you do indeed make the move. Same thing is true for industries. Thinking about starting an education company? Buy some stocks of education companies and study their 10-Ks, S-1s, etc. You’ll learn a lot more about the industry and if you make money on your investments that’ll be gravy.

#4 – (Adding this one a day later). Travel. When I was 24 I had never left North America. Between 24 and 27 I visited Europe, Africa and Australia. Those experiences were awesome and I’m very glad I took the time and money to do that. I’d highly recommend setting aside a portion of your money for traveling. Specifically look to visit places that will play a big role in the global economic landscape. China and India would be the two musts on my list.

Meaningful travel where you can spend a lot of time in a given place becomes more difficult as you get older (things like kids, mortgages, etc. make this so). If you’re young and have the money and time to do it, traveling can be one of the best investments you could ever make.

#5 – Finally, give some of it away.

I hope this helps a bit. This is only my personal viewpoint based on my experiences and values. However, I *so* wish I would have read something like this 10 years ago. Not that things turned out badly by any stretch…

I love supporting entrepreneurs in general too so if you’re up to something cool on the entrepreneurial front drop a line in the comments and I’ll do my best to try to feature cool companies here from time to time. Always feels good to shine my (fairly small but growing) spotlight on worthy endeavors!