Neville's Financial Blog

For the most part, YouTube is probably more a colossal waste of time more than anything else. Take a look at the day’s most popular videos and you’ll quickly see that most of them are relatively useless or at most just mildly entertaining.

Like any big group of anything, roughly 80% will be pretty useless, but there will also be a top tier with some very helpful stuff.

Despite having an enormous TV downstairs with a killer surround sound system, I don’t watch TV at home anymore. I used to watch all the time, but kept asking myself “What the hell did I just do for 6 hours?” So more and more YouTube is becoming one of my most-visited sites. I’ve discovered a few things which make the YouTube experience educational, informative and helpful rather than just a giant distraction for bored students, people with spare time on the job and insomniacs:

USES:
Personally I like learning about interesting/successful people and how they got where they are. I find that subject fascinating. I read about this kind of stuff all the time, but sometimes it’s nice to hear and see the words being spoken. I find the stories inspiring and containing many great nuggets of information.

It’s also great stuff to listen to in the background whilst doing work.

EXAMPLES:

Inside the Actor’s Studio:
The show focuses on celebrities who are very well known, and you often get a very introspective view into the celebrity and the work and hardships they endured to get where they are.

Obviously it’s preferable listening to the celebs who had a similar upbringing to yours, but some of the others are good. Even if you weren’t brought up in a poor, broken home it’s nice to hear what it’s like for others.

I personally just watched the Conan O’Brien interview and thought it was great.
Conan Obrien Interview

Richard Feynman
On one of my library visits I randomly read “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” which I strongly recommend. I loved reading this book, and was introduced to the great physicist Richard Feynman with his very-not-so-scientist-like-antics and brilliant mind.

I think the reason he got so popular was his great layman explanations that help people understand complicated physics, he definitely communicates ideas MUCH better than most intellectual types…..and that small thing he did in the 40′s to basically help build the first nuclear bomb.
Richard Feynman Part 1
Richard Feynman: Take the Word From Another Point of View Part 1

Berkley Physics
I find it fascinating that my dad migrated to the United States from India to get his masters from Berkley….and now I can get all of those same classes online, for free!

Berkley posts many classes online, for free, for anyone to view. No enrollment fee, regardless of age….almost anyone in the world has access to higher education. You’re not going to get a helpful TA to push you along with school work, but any self-motivated person out there can participate in a top-tier college course.

I’m personally taking this Berkley Physics course right now. Getting some of the best professors and special guests in the world on any subject you like? Way better than watching 6 hours of TV.

Archive of American Television:
Sort of like Inside the Actors Studio except more in depth and un-edited. Each interview is somewhere around 4-6 hours, so you get details you normally won’t hear on edited interviews.

The AAT has posted hundreds of their interviews, many names which you will recognize. The other cool thing about these interviews is they generally only interview older people who’ve gone through a lifetime of experiences. I like that.

It’s great listening to these in the background while doing work that doesn’t require intense thought.

I very much enjoyed and learned from the Ted Turner Interview and George Carlin Interview.

Warren Buffet:
Obviously one of the richest men in the world will have some good insights, and his are remarkably simple. There’s tons of Warren Buffet stuff on YouTube but my favorite is this Warren Buffet Speech given to a class of MBA’s.

TIPS:
If you’re interested in learning about a person, simply YouTube search some simply phrases such as:

• (Their name) speech
• (Their name) documentary
• (Their name) interview

Another thing is to realize right away that YouTube user comments are probably some of the most idioc things ever.

————————————-

So while YouTube can be one of the greatest time-wasters of all time, it can also be massively helpful and educational.

I’m a firm believer that most education is learned in your spare time….so why not better yourself with YouTube instead of just wasting time on it?

Ok, fine….a double motorcycle backflip from time-to-time is OK too :-)

For Christmas my brother bought me a Samson C01U Studio Condenser Microphone. That’s basically fancy talk for a high quality microphone I can hookup to my computer:

When a kid says, “I wanna be a doctor”, the process usually goes:

• He graduates high school
• Enters college and enrolls in some form of pre-med program
• Goes through years of biology and other doctor-ish courses
• Goes into the hibernation known as “studying for the MCAT”
• Applies to medical school

Somewhere along that path 90% (actually I just pulled that statistic out of my ass)….but a LARGE percent of these “I wanna be doctors” never make it.

Most of them soon realize they either hate biology, they’re not smart or hardworking enough to score high on the MCAT…or that they don’t want to work so hard to be a doctor after all.

Unfortunately these realizations often come late in college…when they’ve already spent much of their college career attempting to be a doctor.

Well I’m Indian….which either means I’m destined to become a doctor or an engineer.  Both admiral….however as a high school student I couldn’t REALLY tell if I truly wanted to become one of these…simply not enough experience.

However, I was a fortunate little lad…my high school offered this class where you leave school for three hours every other day to shadow different types of doctors. This is nearly HALF the school day you get to dress up in scrubs and follow different doctors as they make their rounds.

This was a two year course…the first year being preparation, the second year actually following doctors.

The 2nd year came around, and it was SO COOL as a student being able to leave everyday in my car (we had special passes which let us freely walk around school).  We got to shadow an allergists, dentists, general practitioners, sports medicine doctors and a lot more.

By shadowing, I mean we followed them everywhere, including their rounds with patients.  Some places occasionally made us do bitch work (like organizing patient records)…but most places really made us feel we worked in the medical industry.

This was a REMARKABLE OPPORTUNITY for myself, because it made me realize something:

I DIDN’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT BEING A DOCTOR!!

I quickly found out I had the same amount of empathy for others as a crotchety old man.

Have you ever had a great doctor who takes lots of interest in your medical problem?  Yea…that WOULD NOT have been me.

While I enjoyed leaving school for this, I really detested the whole aura of being in a medical facility.  I never think, “I’d love to spend 12 hours a day in a place filled with a bunch of sick people!”  It’s just not my thaang.

95 year old man slowly dying a painful death in a hospital?  PUT THIS GUY OUT OF HIS MISERY! Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep him alive? What’s the end goal of that?

Sometimes I just didn’t understand what the point was.  If I ever became a doctor, I’d be more like Dr. Kevorkian.

I must admit certain specialties such as the allergist had it pretty decent: He had very normal hours, mostly healthy patients (with the exception of runny noses), a family-like community of patients and staff, and roughly $400,000/year in profit. He basically owned a business he could eventually sell.  That was neat….

However the monotony of this got to me.  He enjoyed what he did….but it’s not something I would want.  It simply didn’t interest me.

It was around this time I started getting very much into business and reading about business men whom I admired.  The way they made money was scalable….the way doctors made money was much like how the janitor made money: by the hour.

This did not appeal to me.

A doctor has a very likely chance of making a great living for the rest of their working lives….but a business person can either go broke, do as well, or make it REALLY big….without necessarily having to be present all the time.

THIS appealed to me!

A dead guy helps me understand why such an advanced and featured-filled product is marketed in SUCH a simple fashion: