There are two ways to approach life. Read about it. Or live it.

I read a lot. I like to synthesize information together, saturate my brain synapses, make connections, and curate the exact pieces that will fit my life. Knowledge is my thing.

But it doesn’t matter how much I read, or attend lectures, or watch TED talks, or troll Twitter for the next most interesting blog post. Most of that learning stuff is useless; there’s no better way to learn than to just do.

Become an expert {Phase 1}
Action is the first step. That’s why I encourage job-hopping. Most people don’t know what they like or what they’re good at. Like you could really want to be a CEO, yearn for it with all the matter in your body and brain, and then regrettably discover that you suck as a CEO.

Or maybe you’re really fabulous. A veritable genius! The point is, without working it out for yourself, you’re stuck on the path that others have already laid out. And yeah, that’s a safe plan, I don’t blame you. Our education system is certainly not set up to handle exploration or deviation from a set course. And entering the real world closes the door all together.

In school and at the workplace we’re told exactly how to do tasks, without learning the full explanation behind it. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of a young woman who is trying to solve a mathematical problem. She’s not told the way others have solved the problem, but instead is problem-solving on her own.

Gladwell recounts that when she figures it out, her face lights up: “Ohhh. Okay. Now I see. The slope of a vertical line is undefined. That means something now. I won’t forget that!”

The young woman is working with a professor who encourages his students to unlearn the mathematical habits they picked up on the way to university. Because it’s not about memorizing the right way to do something, but your ability to try that determines your success.

“Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds,” Gladwell reports.

In order to drive innovation, we need time and space to explore, not regurgitate. To become the master of a topic, you need to understand its underbelly, where it came from, where it’s going, not just the flashy exterior.

Become an expert {Phase 2 – quickly}
Most people are stuck in the land of daydreams and don’t actually reach action, so if you’ve mastered that, pat yourself on the back. I just gave myself a little pat. Go on, you too. Now we’re moving into advanced world domination.

Exploring a topic from top to bottom is all good and well, but what if you don’t have 10,000 hours to devote? What if there was a short-cut? A way that actually helped you make more fiery synapses connections?

I realize I’m starting to sound like an infomercial here, so stay with me.

First, let me preface by saying there’s no substitute for action. And what I’m about to propose isn’t something you should do in lieu of cooking every night if you want to be a chef, but it is the way to super-size what you learn from cooking every night. In an Einstein sort of way, not Mickey D’s.

So tell me, how well can you explain what you do? How well do you understand your passion? Could you teach someone else to do it?

When you do something like send a pitch, for example, you’re learning. You’re testing your ideas and theories through the reaction you receive, the resulting outcome. In this paradigm, it’s okay to fail, you discover through trial and error, and through persistence and hard work, you win.

But there’s an entire level of awesomeness missing. And you can only ascend to the next level by then teaching someone what you have learned. Because then you’re testing your values, ideas and theories with another person’s values, ideas and theories. You understand the underlying challenge more by defining it for another. Teaching – good teaching – requires you to exchange knowledge, not simply impart it. Learning is individual. Teaching is collaborative.

“Nobel laureate physicists such as Enrico Fermi and Leon Lederman took pride in teaching bright undergraduates,” reports Michael Schrage in Harvard Business, “because it forced them to keep in touch with the fundamentals of their field and express themselves simply and clearly.”

I had no idea how to write a stellar cover letter and resume until I started teaching others to do theirs. Groups comprised of individuals in different skill sets – say, marketing, design and finance – thrive when they teach each other. Life-coaches may be so prevalent right now because the coaches help themselves as much as they help clients.

Teaching is sharing knowledge, sharing empathy, sharing ideas. It’s pushing you to understand with entirely different lenses. Just like your body needs both cardio and strength training, your mind needs both learning and teaching.

Teaching is the definitive learning experience. And it’s the quickest way to expertise.

I was sitting in a classroom. The walls were covered in plaster and moldings, but behind all that was red brick, so red that the color seeped through the cracks of the old windows, and the sun, and the light, and the energy filled the almost summer air.

It was a time when I was – more or less – happy, and we were seated, twenty or twenty-five of us. Our desks outlined a jagged circle, and I was trying not to check out the young man three desks to the right, because I was still dating my first real boyfriend, trying to make it work from four hours away.

We sat and spoke of our beliefs, the environment, of possibilities. It was the discussion I had come to college for. One that I had looked forward to since the movie Dead Poet’s Society. One that I thought I would have again and again when I moved into my own apartment someday, with paint on the floor and ink stained on my fingers, groups of friends visiting at all hours. Rules would be broken, the establishment dismantled, dreams fulfilled.

But soon, too soon, the imagination of the discussion in that classroom petered out like a mandatory orgasm. And we didn’t stay long after either, filing out of the room like an Orwellian army.

No yelling, no protest, no change. Not even the slightest smell of melodrama lingered in the air.

That was the day that I learned we weren’t like other generations. And it wasn’t all gravy.

Thomas Friedman calls this phenomenon – our generation – quiet. Too quiet, in fact. Penelope Trunk calls us conservative. Not like politically conservative, but lifestyle conservative. As in none of us, except me I guess, are found in dark corners balling our eyes out. Generation Y is balanced like vanilla. Idealism with a cherry on top.

You know, that’s not all bad either, contrary to my sarcasm-infused tone. We’re vanilla vocally because we mainly agree on things. It’s not like the Vietnam war, or women getting the vote, or abolishing slavery where there were clear sides, right or wrong, multiple or few . You know, like, opinions – impassioned and defining.

We don’t really have opinions much anymore. We have beliefs. Opinions are contested. Beliefs are “the acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something,” and offensive to question.

These beliefs include that global warming is a problem. The Iraq war sucks. We should all be treated equal. We’re nodding our heads in unison like bobble heads lined up on a bookshelf. Smiling bobble heads, of course. We can’t forget about our idealism.

We are a teamwork generation, fully in line with each other. This, again, is a good thing. Top-down management will not survive the knowledge economy. And so, teamwork, and thus, Generation Y, is inherently conservative precisely because there is consensus, Trunk argues.

But when you seek only consensus and you don’t strongly encourage- nay, require – opinions to be voiced, challenged, turned upside down and explored like a mother searches for lice on her child’s head, then you aren’t coming to a rousing, exciting, and motivating consensus.

Generation Y is so overly focused on the yin of consensus that we’ve lost its yang of conflict. Like Seinfeld’s black and white cookie, the idea of yin and yang in Chinese philosophy is that positive and negative forces act together in order create energy. They are in constant battle, each trying to gain dominance, and if one succeeds in doing so then we are left without balance.

So, without conflict, consensus is a less than thrilling one-night stand.

Nowhere is this as painfully obvious as it is in social media, where we think we’re making a difference by adding the “Causes” application to Facebook, commenting on blogs in such a way as to not offend, where mediocrity reigns supreme, and we insist on engaging in a large amount of narcissistic navel-gazing every Monday morning.

“Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms… Virtual politics is just that – virtual,” Friedman states.

Ah, when will we learn? Conflict is good, fabulous even! Patrick Lencioni builds an entire fable around this exact idea in his popular book Death by Meeting. He discusses why most meetings suck, the main crux of his theory being that there is no conflict, no drama. No one voices their opinions loud enough in order to be hypothesized, tested, revised.

Think about decisions by committee (read: team). It’s a long, drawn out, excruciating process. The resulting consensus is often a watered-down version of what could have been.

This is the status of Generation Y – a watered-down version of what we could be.

We’re all about the team, but don’t exactly know how to use that effectively, preferring to be quiet, conservative, coloring inside the lines. Meaning, we play by the rules to create change and aren’t aware of what those rules are. Meaning we’re perfectly content not to push boundaries or ourselves.

There is good reason for this. “There is a strong, strong millennial dislike of ambiguity and risk,” Andrea Hershatter says. If the directions aren’t clear, we’re not going on any road trips.

This hesitancy creates a lack of urgency. Change is necessary, but there are no sands through the hourglass urging us that these are the days of our lives. No, we believe our children will deal with it, or someone will deal with it, somewhere, and we’ll just try not to make it worse, and probably – hopefully – make it better. We hope.

Hope. Guffaw.

Screw hope. Where’s the outrage?

If Generation Y is “not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention,” Friedman argues. “That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country.”

To light a fire, you have to have conflict, and to have conflict, you have to have an opinion.

That’s a good place to start for now. Stop being so nice.

Respect other viewpoints enough to challenge them.

Respect other ideas enough to disagree.

Moon the entire left side of the highway from your car window with your opinion on your backside. Put it out there for all to see.

Look to the cookie.

My friend Nick asked me first. Then Marci said the same thing. And then today, one of my favorite creatives posed a similar question. They all wanted to know, what gives you the right to be a young leader? What gives you credibility?

Wait, what? What do you mean what gives me the right? I must admit that I didn’t have a good answer, even the third time around. To me, it’s like asking what gives women the right to work?

It seems to me that if I want to do something, then I should do it. This notion that young people have something to prove, that we must pay our dues, is outdated. But it’s obviously on the minds of my peers.

My gut reaction was to reply, “because I work really frickin’ hard. How about that?” But somehow that didn’t seem like the leader thing to do.

There’s a new trend where we’re checking under the rug to see what has been swept underneath. It’s a matter of ethics, a matter of accountability, credibility, and simply realizing that if we’re following, we should pay closer attention to who is leading.

We’ve always wanted our leaders to be transparent. But as it becomes easier to create yourself on the internet and tell whatever story you wish, being transparent is increasingly difficult. You as a blogger and who you are in real life may or may not always match up.

Indeed, our generation is moving up so quickly, that discrepancies aren’t just showing up in the online world; who you are in one job could be drastically different from who you are in the next.

And if we’re changing so drastically and consistently, do we have the expertise to move to the front of the line?

Questioning the validity of a person’s leadership skills is why more leaders aren’t stepping up to the plate in the first place. It’s why we have a leadership crisis in areas like the environmental and nonprofit sectors. And it’s why a slew of Generation Y doesn’t want to be engaged at all.

There’s nothing special to being a leader. You have to deal with a lot once you jump in, sure. It’s a challenge and it’s hard work and it’s rewarding and it’s fantastic. But leaders aren’t all that different from the rest of us.

My organization just finished a series on how local leaders in politics went from interest to action. We had a senator, state representatives, our mayor, our county executive, aldermen, lobbyists, and more. Across the board, every single political leader expressed that their story wasn’t unique. They saw an opportunity and went for it. Funny how remarkably easy it is to make a difference.

I don’t have a special skill set to be a leader. I’ve never taken leadership classes, and while I’ve been in positions of leadership since high school, I don’t think this makes me more qualified to be one now. It’s just, I can’t imagine doing anything else. Like, when I visited Madison to decide on where I would attend school, I felt in my bones that this was the place to be.

What gives you the right to be a young leader is the fact that you have stepped out from the rest of crowd. That you have put yourself out there, taken a chance, and have simply tried.

You will mess up along the way. You will make mistakes. You’ll take things personally. You won’t want to be a leader sometimes, and sometimes you might not be.

You won’t have all the skills, and perhaps it’s easier to think about it as if you’re a leader in training. But if you make that commitment, you’re already miles ahead of everyone else. And the others will follow. Because you believe in yourself. And that’s half the battle to believing in others.

Rightfully young.

In searching for links for this post, I found that Rosetta Thurman does a great job discussing this subject as well. Go check it out.

Generation Y is a kind generation. Our conservative lifestyles and penchants for quiet opinions have led us to work together happily with healthy doses of idealism. We are a teamwork generation, fully in line with each other.

Top-down management and the clutch of hierarchal authority no longer illustrate the strokes of success, but instead lead to siloed rows of depressed employees and opportunistic managers.

Gen Y, in contrast, is all about the team, preferring conformity inside the lines over pushing boundaries or ourselves. “In many respects,” psychology expert Jeremy Dean argues, “[these] norms have a beneficial effect, bolstering society’s foundations and keeping it from falling into chaos.”

We’re the soothing wall fountain over a fire of greed, instability and unethical behavior. We dislike ambiguity and risk and mitigate the risks that we have inherited accordingly. We “provide a stable and predictable social world, to regulate our behavior with each other.”

The world these group norms create are so safe and sound that one research study found that “groups don’t even need to be that well-established, people will conform to others with only the slightest encouragement.”

It’s incredibly easy for crowdsourcing and group-think to take over. The wisdom of the crowd is everywhere.

“The power of groups, the clout that crowds can exercise to get what they want, is nothing new,” one trend briefing reports. “What is new, however, is the dizzying ease with which likeminded, action-ready citizens and consumers can now go online and connect, group and ultimately exert influence on a global scale.”

We can no longer buy a camera without checking the product recommendations, go on a trip without researching hotel reviews, or visit a new restaurant without the prodding of a friend. Wikipedia is one of the best known examples of the concept at work. Revering social media “influencers” is another. Do other people like it? What do they think? Have they legitimized it, given it their stamp of approval and a gold star? And did their mother try it?

Such trends make it incredibly easy to live in society, but also threaten the individual mind, intuition and originality. Consensus isn’t all gravy.

“Unfortunately groups only rarely foment great ideas,” Dean reports, “because people in them are powerfully shaped by group norms: the unwritten rules which describe how individuals in a group ‘are’ and how they ‘ought’ to behave. Norms influence what people believe is right and wrong just as surely as real laws, but with none of the permanence or transparency of written regulations.”

Teamwork threatens creativity.

Reverting back to a command and control structure is obviously not the answer, but decentralized leadership doesn’t mean we all have to hold hands. We can’t let the pendulum swing so far from one extreme to the other that we miss that happy medium where innovation soars.

Groups do such a good job breeding mediocrity that we can’t be so afraid to be alone and listen to the sound of our own voice and let out a real note while we lip-synch. March to the beat of our own drum as it goes. We can’t be afraid to sit with our own thoughts where that nugget just needs some dedicated commitment to the state of flow to turn into something wonderful.

Groups are for brainstorms, not conclusions. Teamwork is for energy, not leadership. Conformity is overrated.

And while it’s important to be the healing generation, the calm ones, the group that will bring people together to make things okay again, there’s no reason not to leave some solitary footprints on another path for future generations to follow.

Breaking Out.

I’m going to start something new and exciting soon. As a result, “everyone” has been talking to me. Or rather, at me. They talk. I sit. They have opinions and advice and information, and it doesn’t matter if they have credibility or experience, they tell me what to do regardless. “Everyone” knows better than I do.

And, as a result, I’m paralyzed. I’m scared to do anything. I can’t even get dressed in the morning without thinking about what “everyone” will think.

My paralysis has been especially prevalent on this blog. I feel I can’t write what I want to write because it might offend “everyone.” Swirling through my head are should nots and better nots and other such niceties that make small talk boring.

“Everyone” wants to make sure they don’t show up in my blog. The guy that I’ve been dating tells me with a stern and expectant look that he doesn’t want to see any allusions to our relationship in my blog. Whatsoever. Which is a shame, because I could really be quite flattering to him if you catch my drift. My ex-boyfriend thinks I should make less such references to sex, because it’s not professional, he says. As if sex didn’t exist. As if it wasn’t one of the main forces behind everything a twenty-something does. A fact I guess he’s not thinking about when he calls me at 2:16 am, “just because,” a call which I ignore.

Other people are beginning to preface conversations with, “You’re not going to put this in your blog, are you?” to which I shrug as my stomach tightens, because this usually means they are about to say something incredibly boring, and not at all blog-worthy. Such occurrences are happening so frequently I am seriously considering investing in a high quality helmet to protect my tender head from the many times I’ve had to bang it against the wall. Then there are the brave few who will start a conversation with, “You should put this in your blog,” and tell me how Star Trek is really, really cool. Really.

I don’t want to limit my writing to what “everyone” wants me to subtract or add. I want to write about how many blogs in the blogosphere are so impressively mediocre. I want to write about how if you want to be good-looking and successful and powerful, you should hang out with good-looking and successful and powerful people. I want to write about the nice things too. Mostly, I want to write about how to really change the world, no holds barred.

I shouldn’t, however.

Because if I wrote about those things, “everyone” tells me, two-thirds of our population might have a heart attack at the same time, and the world would fall off its axis, and life on earth as we know it would end. It would be that bad.

I shouldn’t write about the realness of the real world, “everyone” says. So, as you may have noticed, I haven’t written much of anything recently.

But no longer.

It’s not that I don’t care about “everyone’s” opinion. I do. I have the reputation of a do-gooder for good reason; I believe in the goodness of people. I really like people. All of this talk and opinion has made my life much more interesting. Truly. I’ve learned a lot, and for that I am grateful.

Instead, I blame myself for getting caught up in “everyone’s” opinion, for becoming so self-absorbed that I thought I was a BIG DEAL, and not remembering the big picture. Not remembering starvation in Africa and lack of quality education in the U.S. and the fact that we’re all just doing the best we can.

And that’s okay. When life gets in the way of changing the world, you should probably stop and listen. Just don’t let what other people think paralyze you from taking action.

I forget sometimes that you have to fail to succeed. The longer you wait to take action, the higher the edge will seem from the ground. You must take the jump, and trust the parachute will open eventually.

Of course, with an audience comes responsibility and accountability. But to me, being a leader means being unfailingly honest and transparent. Stay true to who you are. The rest will follow.

The Real World.