School was never a strong suit of mine. I was never a really poor student until 12th grade (I averaged B’s in hard classes, A’s in easy classes) but I’m Korean, so I was subject to the Asian Grading Scale:

• A is for Average
• B is for Bad
• C is for Catastrophic
• D is for Disowned
• F is for Find a New Family

If you’ve wondered why Asians are stereotypically high achievers, angry, and struggle with love and self-acceptance, look no further than the Asian Grading Scale.

I got my first C during 11th grade in Pre-Calc and never understood the point of taking such a class. In 12th grade, I simply stopped going to school halfway through because I thought it was so pointless. Because it was such a sudden drop off, my guidance counselor Dr. Coffey, my counselor since 7th grade, asked me point blank if I was doing drugs.

I wasn’t, but in retrospect I can see that my parents splitting up again in the 11th grade destabilized a lot of things, souring my relationship with learning.

Our Relationship with Learning is Pretty Important, Though

Learning how we learn is one of the most overlooked, underrated, and important things we can learn, especially as we move through different eras of life and continually reinvent ourselves.

Learning can also be a badge of snobbery, where we “high achievers” look down on others who aren’t into growth as much as we are.

That said, there are a ton of people who just don’t care. I read some crazy stat like 42% of U.S. college graduates never read another book after finishing college or 40% of American adults report reading zero books in a given year. (Sad.)

As always, there’s a third group: people who stay stuck not because they aren’t willing to put in the work, they just aren’t sure how they learn.

This is top of mind as I venture into some new things, so here are some notes of mine that may help you.

1. First, vocabulary is important to me. I need to understand terms first.

This is likely from speaking broken Korean my whole life. I speak at less than a kindergarten level and like to joke that after a few shots, I speak better Korean.

By better Korean, I mean simply talking louder and drawing out random noises after words, to make myself sound like a stereotypical Korean man. This is accurate as stereotypical Korean men tend to be stereotypically drunk. (I can say this, I am Korean. Do not cancel me.)

It’s very frustrating to have a conversation with someone in Korean and literally not know 75% of the words they are saying. This isn’t an intellect problem, it’s simply vocabulary. But it can make you feel stupid and then discourage you from continuing.

So, anytime I learn a new discipline— marketing, music, Muay Thai, AI, investing–– I start with key terms and create little glossaries. This is a bit of my Korean one:

2. Frameworks frame the work.

Frameworks allow me to think for myself while also having structure. This is why I’m very much into the Great Mental Models series and The Decision Book. Despite my dislike for math and science, math and science literally show me how this world works.

For example, if you’ve ever been ticked off that the house gets messy all the time, that you have to maintain your car, or that you need to stay on top of employees and clients… you’re disregarding the Second Law of Thermodynamics: entropy of an isolated system increases. In other words, without the deployment of energy, all things move away from order.

You can fight physics or you can set up the systems to deal with this reality.

3. Community and Coaches: sometimes the same, sometimes different.

A coach and community serve different purposes, and don’t always have to be from the same container. But you must have both in any new endeavor.

As soon as I commit to really learning a discipline, I look for both. How do I find them? My experience truly has always been, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

When I look at coaches I ask: 1. Are they someone I want to be like? or 2. Are they just someone I need to learn from, despite not wanting to be like them?

Both are valid and you will get in trouble if you confuse their character with their expertise.

You will also be looking for a unicorn if you limit yourself to simply finding someone who does both. This has more to do with your own insecurities vs. what you really need at the moment, which is to learn a new discipline. Some teachers are a-holes, and brilliant.

A few other random notes I’ve written to myself:

• In the beginning, read a few books, watch a few videos, then just start.
• Don’t focus on minimizing loss. Set aside money specifically for this, and budget it. Consider this your tuition.
• Don’t focus on ROI right away. Focus on reps, and on execution. Make a habit of execution. Then, like music and art and speaking and writing, you will find your style and voice.
• Don’t overextend and learn 5 new things all at once. This will drain your reserves and lead to poor choices.
• Don’t rush. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. You have a slow heart, so continue to stay calm.
• Flip side of previous: take risks. You have a slow heart and are conservative. This strength can become a great weakness.
• Don’t strain for perfection, strive for accuracy.
• Always get faster feedback loops. The more reps early, the more feedback comes in, faster.
• Realize that the world is not out to get you. Fear will cripple you.
• Learn and execute from a place of abundance.
• This is a world of infinite possibilities. Everyday someone is getting really rich, and someone else has lost it all. Do not tell yourself an untrue story about either.
• Wealth, whether it is material, relational, or spiritual, is as abundant as the water in the oceans or electricity.
• You are participating in something much bigger than you. This is spirituality.
• Cultivate humility.
• Laugh, have fun, be of good cheer. What’s the point if you’re not happy?

I’ve come a long way from nearly failing to graduate high school and being put on academic probation twice in college.

I’ve toyed with the idea of reaching out to my alma mater to ask if they’d have me as a guest for one of their marketing classes. I wonder if they’d look up my transcripts and be horrified, haha. We’ll see.

Lastly, I’m thinking of doing an online writing live course in the next few weeks, specifically for writing newsletters.

I’ve been humbled by the response to my newsletters and also have a lot of insights from working with a variety of private clients the past six months on their own newsletters, helping them find their footing… with results to match.

I will clear a bit of time on my calendar because writing from the heart is something I’m really passionate about, and I think I can help. I will have details next week.

Enjoy your week, and if you’re somewhere where the leaves are turning, enjoy those amazing, rich, fiery hues as autumn comes into full bloom!

Falling forward,

Mike Kim

All em-dashes in this issue were human-generated, by me. I refuse to let AI have my em-dashes.