Air Date: 1/25/21

The Upgrade by Lifehacker

How to Get a New Job in 2021, With Ramit Sethi
Alice ​Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at Lifehacker, where
we help you improve your life one week at a time. I'm Alice Bradley, editor in chief of
Lifehacker.

Jordan ​And I'm Jordan Calhoun, Lifehacker's deputy editor.

Alice ​And today we're tackling the tricky issue of navigating your finances and your career
in 2021.

Jordan ​Yeah. For many of us, our career goals were thrown off course during the
pandemic that started in 2020. But fortunately, here to help us with that is personal finance
expert and friend of The Upgrade, Ramit Sethi.

Ramit Sethi ​The challenge I would give to people is to execute the 10-second resume
test. Close your eyes, look at your resume for 10 seconds and then put it away and
answer this question: who is this person? So if your resume doesn't say exactly who you
are and what you've accomplished, that's an opportunity for you.

Alice ​Ramit is The New York Times, best-selling author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich.
We had him on The Upgrade back in 2013 for an episode called How to Get Rich, as well
as in May of 2020 for an episode on how to protect your money.

Jordan ​Ramit's been writing about personal finance for over 17 years now and his
company, I Will Teach You to Be Rich dot com educates more than one million users
every month.

Alice ​So, Jordan, are you a person who's comfortable with money, and money topics?

Jordan ​I am extremely comfortable with money topics. Actually, one of my...One of the
things that sort of frustrates me about our culture surrounding money is just how
nontransparent it is and how in the U.S. like it's taboo to talk about your finances and how
much money you make and anything sort of related to how you receive and spend money.
And what happens, as a result, is just a lot of people, I feel, suffer in silence. One of the
things that I find most interesting, I think a lot of readers find most interesting, if ever you're
reading like sort of these voyeuristic pieces on how people spend their money, it's just like,
oh, I finally get some insight into a real person and you find out that like other people have
credit card debt or other people have student loan debt or other people spend money on
this, we're just so thirsty for that information of like there's certain secrets like how people
spend money, how much they earn, how they look for a job, what someone's like
interview—like there's so much around jobs in finance that are sort of structurally secret.
And some employers I don't even know if this is legal or not, but some employers either,
like, strongly recommend or if it's illegal, like just the culture is one that you don't talk about
how much money you make. And that's always been sort of strange and frustrating to me.
I don't know. How do you feel?

Alice ​It's really true. We're so in the dark about what people are supposed to be making or
what people are making in certain industries. And I've found it at several times like looking
for new jobs or looking even for how much should I get for a raise, trying to go even online.
And there are—.

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Jordan ​It's a mystery.

Alice ​—all these calculators, and they're just clearly wrong.

Jordan ​Yeah.

Alice ​So you're like, well, none of these are helpful in any way.

Jordan ​Yeah.

Alice ​So where do you go? You have to, like, ask people, you know, and then that
somehow is like needlessly awkward. I feel like it shouldn't be, it should be a really easy
question to ask.

Jordan ​And who loses in that is all of us. Like, basically when we're trying to negotiate for
a raise or we're trying to look for a job and we're trying to negotiate our salary, you just
you're negotiating from a place of ignorance, which sucks. And that just makes it harder for
everyone. And I guess large corporations win, I guess is the moral of that anecdote.

Alice ​Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think especially now during the pandemic, a lot of
people looking just feel like I should just take whatever they give me because...

Jordan ​Right.

Alice ​Things are things are dire. And, you know, it's it's I'm, I should be lucky I could get a
job.

Jordan ​Right. Right. People are completely in the dark and I expect our guest, Ramit, will
be able to help sort of clarify a lot of that darkness and give some advice on how people
can better look for a job this coming year.

Alice ​All right. Let's find out.

Jordan ​Let's do it.

Alice ​Ramit, welcome to The Upgrade.

Ramit Sethi ​Thanks again, great to be here once again. I love coming on the show.

Alice ​It's time number three. We were just saying you're our first three-timer.

Ramit Sethi ​I'm very flattered to hear that.

Jordan ​So glad to have you.

Alice ​So the last time we had you on it was in May, and it was the beginning that what we
thought was sort of, I don't know, mid pandemic. Did we know? Did we have any sense of
where we were? But I don't think we realized we'd be this far in and still at home. And you
painted a fairly bleak picture of where we could end up and told us kind of batten down the
hatches, you know, trim your investments. There's another term for that that I'm not getting
right. But like, you know, basically, like don't invest too much in your 401ks, make your

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cash liquid, basically prepare for the worst. How have your predictions played out and
where are we now in that? Where where is your head?

Ramit Sethi ​Well, I remember very vividly speaking with you last time, and one of the
things that I talked about was panic is bad, but overreaction is good. And I had traditionally
recommended people target a six-month emergency fund. But because of the uncertainty,
I was recommending a one-year emergency fund. And again, doesn't mean you have to
be able to accumulate that overnight, but it means that because some entire industries are
being decimated. I want to make sure you have some liquid cash in case the worst
happens. Well, six or so months later, you know, in many segments of the economy,
people have increased their savings and their savings rate hugely. So you have many
people who are sitting on larger amounts of liquid cash than they've ever had before. But
you also have certain segments that their jobs are gone and they have been at home.
They haven't been given any support or minimal support. And so they're really struggling.
My advice in terms of panic is bad, but overreaction is good. I think that advice stands. I
will say that there are certain industries where we have seen that demand has remained
high. For example, if you're a software engineer and you decided to move from a certain
city to a different city, you may not need to plan for the absolute worst in your industry. You
may be able to say, hey, from looking around, there's still a very tight labor market for my
job. And you know what? I'm going to be satisfied with six months. But that's up to you in
your judgment in general, I would say I still recommend overreacting in times of crisis, and
that's exactly what I've done. And for the people who did that, I think they're very thankful.

Jordan ​What about for those people who lost their jobs and lost their source of income,
their primary source, and they're looking for a new job now in these new times. What
advice might you give that would be different than pre-pandemic times, or is it more or less
the same? Are people's solutions to job searching now just to cast a wider net, since
there's probably going to be more job seekers out there? What's changed for job seekers
now than pre-pandemic?

Ramit Sethi ​Well, the big change is that a lot of people have gotten a taste of what it's like
to work from home and they don't want to go back. They don't want that hour and a half
commute every day. No way, no how they like it or they want flexibility. Hey, I actually do
want to go back into an office, but I don't want to go five days a week. I want to go three
days a week. So there's a huge groundswell to know how to find remote jobs. And let's talk
about that absolutely today because there are certain ways of interviewing on Zoom.
There are ways of finding jobs that offer you remote work or even convincing companies
that traditionally haven't done it. Hey, you're based in D.C., I'm based in Chicago or Austin,
Texas. I can still be an amazing contributor to your team so we can talk about that. That's
what's changed. But some advice does not change. And I love timeless advice. I love it. I
wrote my book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich because I wanted it to be timeless. And so if
you go and read the first edition from 2009, most of that stuff, 99 percent of the investment
advice is the same. That's as it should be for careers. What most people do when they're
looking for a new job, something causes them to be unhappy at work. Let's say that they're
a marketing manager, so they get really frustrated. Oh, all right. I'm sick of this. So they go
home. The first thing they do is they update their resume, right? That's what they think.
The first thing they need to do is they update it. And you know what? They put on their
resume some chronology, some boring chronology. First I did this, then I did that. Nobody
cares. Then they go to some job search website. They type in the same job title they have
today, the one that makes them unhappy thinking that somehow, magically the grass is
going to be greener at another company with the same job title and then they upload their
resume and wait. Guys, this is the most passive way to find a job on Earth. That didn't

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work before pandemic and it won't work after. It will actually work less because everyone
else is doing the same terrible thing. So there's a much better approach. We talk about
that and in our dream job material to find not just a job, but a dream job.

Alice ​So what is that approach?

Jordan ​Yeah, man, you have to tell the people now, you can't just leave us on a
cliffhanger.

Alice ​Don't hold out us.

Ramit Sethi ​First off, we've got to recognize we've got to stop delegating our job search to
algorithms and recruiters. In what other part of life would you do that? If you want a job
where you're working eight-plus hours a day, you want to enjoy it, you want to be
challenged. We need to acknowledge that we are going to take an active role. That's
number one. Number two, I want everyone to answer this question, which is: what career
season are you in? Let me quickly walk you through this. Most career advice gives you the
same advice. Whether you want to downshift, to spend more time with your family or
whether you want to get a three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year executive job at
a tech company. How can that be? Those two, are there different animals. They're in a
different universe. ​[00:10:35]​So we identified three career seasons. The first is this is when
I was in my 20s. I was willing to work 60 hours a week, Saturdays, Sundays. No problem. I
was in the growth season, OK? I want to grow. I want to grow my career, my income, my
exposure. At a certain point, some of us switched to lifestyle. Maybe I want to take care of
kids or elderly parents or I just want to go skiing more. That's lifestyle. And finally, we've all
heard stories about the lawyer who decided I want to become a beekeeper. That's
reinvention. So in order to find the dream job, you need to first really look inside and
acknowledge which one are you. Just like the seasons on Earth, there are career seasons
and they come and go. ​[42.9s] ​If you are in growth season, then you're going to search for
jobs where they promote, where they pay top of market and where they're actually going to
say, yeah, we work a lot. You may work weekends, but if you're in lifestyle, you can
automatically cross those off because you're looking for more things like work-life balance.
[00:11:36]​So you can see how when most people go to a job search site, they're literally
just typing in words and letting an algorithm control it. But the real dream job search starts
from within. Who am I? What do I want? ​[12.5s] ​And you have to choose one. Everybody
tries to straddle the fence and well, I'm lifestyle, but I'm also growth. No, pick one and then
we can go deeper.

Alice ​And I think the way you're saying it is, it's not just like you're growth, then lifestyle,
then whatever the other one is...the autumn of our lives.

Jordan ​Reinvention.

Alice ​Like it goes around and around.

Ramit Sethi ​Reinvention.

Alice ​Yeah.

Ramit Sethi ​Yeah, yeah. And after a midlife crisis, you just sail off into the sunset. No, it's
not that. We have seasons and some people are growth for their entire life, and that's fine.
Some people decide after lifestyle. They're like, you know what? OK, you know, I raised

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my children. I want to go back into growth. There's no judgment placed. As I always say,
your rich life is yours. So when I talk about money, if somebody wants to like—I had a
computer, the same computer for eight years. Doesn't matter to me. I don't care. I ran my
entire business off it. If somebody wants to spend that money instead on a certain type of
food they love or a beautiful trip or coat, be my guest. That's your rich life. Same thing with
your career. Your dream job is yours. The job that I have and the jobs that I've had would
make no sense to other people. But we have to first look inside. OK, so that's part one.
Then, we want to go a little bit deeper. When we get really specific about our job title and
our company, suddenly we can narrow the focus down. So when I ask people what do you
want to do in your career, a lot of times they give me these similar answers. "I want to help
people." I'm like, OK, I want to breathe oxygen. Can we get a little bit more specific than
that? "I like to work around smart people." OK, good, et cetera. What I am looking for after
they go through a process, I want them to be able to say something like this: "Well, I'm in
the growth season of my career. I'm looking for a marketing manager or senior marketing
manager role at a tech company that allows remote work and does B2C marketing." Now
that is specific, OK, and we could even get more specific what that allows you to do once
you've gotten that crystal clear is you can start finding those companies and circling
around them almost like a shark. OK, what's my vector? How am I going to get in? How
am I going to meet people who work or have worked at the company and get introductions
in? Because I don't want to go through the front door. Totally different approach then. Hey,
I'm just going to update my resume, fix the margins and upload it and wait.

Jordan ​Oh, man, I feel like a powder keg right now. I have so many questions that...OK,
so I love this stuff. And one of the things that I feel is missing from these type of
conversations when it comes to careers and things, you know, finding the dream job, I feel
that's that's an understandable and amazing and appreciated focus for most people who
are, you know, searching for happiness, whatever that means, or searching for some type
of contentment in their career. But I think what's often missing from these conversations is
the reality of desperation. And I think sometimes people are not necessarily looking for
their dream job, but they're looking to make ends meet and they need a job that just meets
minimum decent standard of living. Is there advice for people on, if they're looking for that,
you know, minimum decent standard of living, how they should be approaching a job
search right now? And also, I think that that's OK for a short term. I think a lot of the focus
always jumps over that stage of like, you know, making ends meet, getting your finances in
order, and then finding a dream job where I think it's, it's...I've had a small number of jobs
that were dream jobs that are jobs that I absolutely love, that I feel great and fulfilled. And
this is one of them. I love my job right now. I love working with Alice. I love Lifehacker. I've
also had plenty of jobs that were placeholder jobs that I didn't love the job, but it was
appropriate for that season of my life. And I don't think it was in either of the three
categories that you described, I wasn't planning on growing there because I honestly didn't
give a fuck about it. I wasn't like reinventing myself. I wasn't doing any of those three
categories necessarily. But I was basically treading water to get the energy to swim. And I
would love to hear advice for those people who are more or less desperate right now or in
a financially challenging position so that they can tread water until they can swim. Does
that make sense?

Ramit Sethi ​It makes perfect sense. And I think there's a wide swath of people who are
not thinking about a dream job, but rather a job. And, you know, for that group, first thing is
just to simply be able to breathe a little bit. And to be able to get out from underwater and
to say, "OK, I need a stable job that's going to provide for me and provide for my family.
And that dream job stuff is nice, but I need a job right now." So for them, you can apply
some of the same principles I talked about, but you don't have to go the full way. For

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example, when we're talking about a dream job, you know, there's a very systematic
process to go build your network to find people who have worked at the company, do
informational interviews and how to update your resume in a way that actually sails past
everybody else. Well, candidly, you're probably not going to go out for ten informational
interviews if you're already working, you know, fifteen hours a day. What you can do,
though, is you can focus on what you can control. So there are lots and lots of things that
are within your control. No one is your, what we call your marketing material, your resume
and your cover letter. Now, I've seen literally thousands of resumes as a hiring manager,
and I've also applied to many companies and gotten roles at companies. ​[00:17:50]​Your
resume is something that's totally within your control. Most people, when they put their
resume out, it has no narrative. It's just here are some facts of what I did. The challenge I
would give to people is to execute the ten second resume test. Close your eyes, look at
your resume for ten seconds and then put it away and answer this question. Who is this
person? So if your resume doesn't say exactly who you are and what you've
accomplished, that's an opportunity for you. ​[27.0s] ​OK, second thing is your cover letter.
It's not just an opportunity to regurgitate what's on your resume. It's actually an opportunity
to convince the hiring manager why they should bring you in for an interview. And it's
always good to start with, "I'm very excited to apply for X, Y, Z company. Here's why." No
generic cover letters ever. And finally, a follow-up. You do those things, you've already
dramatically increased your chances of getting an interview. OK, and then finally, if you
want to know what to do once you get in for the interview, because there's a lot of people
who can get an interview, but they get stuck there and that can be very frustrating. Well,
[00:18:55]​in interviews, a skill just like riding a bike, you're going to get predictable
questions. You need to have answers ready for them. Here are some of the questions
you're going to get: Why do you want to work here? Why did you apply here? Tell me
about yourself. Tell me about your last role. And finally, do you have any questions for
me? You need to have perfect answers to those because you're going to get them. So if
you do this level of basic preparation, this is some basic stuff, but it will set you apart from
everyone else. ​[26.8s] ​And even if you're working 12-hour days right now, and you're just
looking for a placeholder job, those techniques are going to help you land a job which is
going to let you breathe.

Alice ​I have to say, as somebody who does a lot of hiring, I could not agree with your
points more. And one thing that always strikes me is the lack of individualized cover
letters. I mean, cover letters to me are everything. There's so much more important on the
resume. Most people I've hired, they came in for an interview solely because I was so
impressed by their cover letters that often I wanted to tell them, like, well after I hired them,
like your cover letter was like, I've saved them. I have like a whole like, you know, just an
honor of list of like these just these great cover letters I have. And then on the other side,
there's people who, number one, always start their cover letters with, "My name is X..."
Look, I know your name. It's signed. You just signed it. You don't have to say, "My name is
Alice Bradley and I'm applying..." I know you're applying and I know your name and just
keep it and they just keep it so, so generic. And people who don't have questions for you.
These two things are like the kiss of death. If you don't have a question for me, why are
you here? I don't understand.

Ramit Sethi ​So I'll tell you that, you know, I share your frustration, but I also have a lot of
compassion for the people who are applying because—.

Alice ​I don't. No. I'm just kidding.

Jordan ​Alice is savage.

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Ramit Sethi ​I think, I think that really nobody teaches us this. And I want to tell you a little
story about why I got interested in this, because my pet hobby in college was interviewing
at different companies. And I, I love interviewing. Right. I get to dress up. I get to talk about
myself for forty-five minutes and tell a couple of jokes, and then I find out whether basically
they liked me or not. It's very binary. So I, I found it to be a puzzle and I found a few
friends who are equally weird and we would compare notes about our interviewing. "Oh,
what'd they ask you? What'd you say? Oh that's a good answer." And we started to get
very good at interviewing. But what we realized was that nobody teaches us this. Nobody.
Not at the best schools, not at typical colleges, nowhere. And in fact, the advice you get if
you go on Google, how to get a job, it's the worst advice possible. The first thing they tell
you is the 1.25-inch margins on your resume. Nobody cares. They tell you, they give you
generic cover letter advice. And you know what? I have a philosophy: study the winners. I
don't want a free Google resume that's worthless. So what we did was we've helped
thousands and thousands of people get dream jobs. So we brought him in and we said,
give us your resume that landed you a six-figure job. Give us your cover letters. Show us
the things you brought into your interview that got you ten to eighty thousand dollar raises.
Those are the people you want to study because you can see that they're operating at a
completely different level than the free advice you get on Google. And that is why when
people go out and they search resume example, it's sort of I mean, yes, it's frustrating as a
hiring manager, but I also have a lot of compassion because the advice they're getting is
just junk.

Alice ​Yeah.

Ramit Sethi ​That's why we created this. That's why I want to show people, even if people
are listening and some of them are a little intimidated or some of them are like, "hey, I'm
just looking for a job," guess what? You still deserve great advice. You shouldn't be given
the worst advice just because you're looking for a placeholder job. You should be shown
what everyone else is. What I learned at Stanford and what I learned to land jobs at
Google and all these other places. I believe everyone should have access to this advice or
at least know that it exists.

Alice ​Yeah, yeah.

Jordan ​Yeah. Alice, do you remember...

Alice ​Now I look like a huge, huge bitch. But anyway, sorry. What were you going to say?

Jordan ​Alice, do you remember my cover letter? Because now I'm wondering if I said, "My
name is Jordan."

Alice ​You definitely did not say, "My name is Jordan." No, you had a very good cover
letter. I mean, somebody could say it and then be hilarious and I would overlook that. You
know, not that you have to be like a comedian, you know what I mean? I'm just going to
backtrack completely. I understand everyone's plight. They're all hired.

Jordan ​You know, when you're thinking about, Ramit, when you're talking about those
people who are studying the winners, you know, those people who got these huge raises
and sort of, you know, had huge success, I imagine, to some degree by asking for it or
demanding it. I'm also thinking about, again, going back to people who are just looking for
a job who might have that advice, but might feel uncomfortable with pushing for asking for

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more. So imagine, you know, you are desperate for this job and you go through this
interview process, you're jumping through these hoops, you're finally getting an offer. How
might people...Any advice for people for salary negotiations right now? You know, let's say
someone is really desperate for a job and they're willing to take whatever, part of
negotiation is like negotiating from a place of non-desperation and strength, but like, what
if that's not your reality? How do you go about, you know, asking for more when you really
don't...You're very willing to accept less?

Alice ​Also, just to piggyback off of that, I think there's a lot of companies right now are kind
of giving people the like, you know, we're-in-a-pandemic like line in terms of negotiations.

Jordan ​Absolutely.

Alice ​So is there...What's the pushback for that? And is there one?

Ramit Sethi ​There is. This is a great question. And, you know, we've talked a lot about
salary negotiation, and I'm well known for teaching people how to negotiate their salaries,
whether it is someone who's making fifteen dollars an hour and negotiates to 17 or people
who are making one hundred and twenty thousand. And I show them how to negotiate one
hundred and seventy five thousand. I've done the range and I've extensive videos and all
this stuff on it. I want to point out a couple of things. First off, for the last 12 years, people
have been saying to me, "Well, how can you negotiate in this economy? How can you
negotiate now?" Hey, guess what? The economy's been great. The economy's been bad.
Those same people keep asking the same question. And maybe it's not about the
economy. Maybe it's actually about them simply not having the skills of knowing how to
negotiate. So that's one point. You're always going to have people saying that and they
say the same thing to me about personal finance. "Ramit, how can you talk about investing
in times like this?" If you'd followed my advice in 2009 when my book came out, you would
have made hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I don't I simply do not
allow people who use external events only to control what they do. With that said, we do
need to acknowledge that market demands change. ​[00:26:15]​And if you're going into a
salary negotiation, you need to be honest whether it's an employee's or an employer's
market. ​[6.7s] ​OK, just like rent changes, depending on whether it's a tenant's market or
landlord's market. If, for example, I'm going to give you a hyperbolic one here, you're a
software engineer. There's not that many of them. You're in high demand even with a
pandemic. Then you can go in and negotiate fully and you can use our dream job
techniques. We show you exactly what to say. And if they say something like, "You know,
it's pandemic, we don't really have the..." There's a very structured formula that we have to
respond to that. And you could say something like this. You could say, "You know what, I
agree, this is a big investment. But from what I understand from the market data that I've
presented here, the range for my experience is between X and Y, and based on my
experience, it looks like I'm closer to the top end of that range. So I'm confident we can
come to an agreement, but it does need to be within that range." That's if you have high
power. If, on the other hand, you don't, then you can ask, but you probably can't push that
hard because the employer has 50 other people behind you. Now, everybody listening, I
just want you to just note one thing. ​[00:27:33]​There are ways to find out if it's an employer
and employees market. Most people don't ask. So if you're going to walk in and disqualify
yourself, then you're doing the wrong thing. ​[11.7s] ​At least make the ask, learn the skills,
which is what we teach. And if they say no, let them tell you no, but never disqualify
yourself. Don't do somebody else's job for them.

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Alice ​I think people are so afraid they're, you know, the employer is going to get mad at
them. As if this is...

Jordan ​Like withdraw the offer. Yeah.

Alice ​Just like, "You know what? Never mind."

Ramit Sethi ​So I'll tell you, you know, I have a lot of experience because this...We've had
a dream job program and since 2012 and now we're relaunching the entire dream job
program. So we've helped thousands and thousands of people in all that time. I've heard
of two examples of people having their offers rescinded. Two. It is extremely rare and it
really is a signal of an immature hiring manager because hiring managers are well versed
in this. This is business. It's not personal. And even if it was personal, think about what
you're communicating. ​[00:28:40]​You think you're communicating, "Oh, I'm scared. Do you
think maybe you could give me a raise?" What you're really communicating is, "I'm
valuable. You would be lucky to have me. And I'm interested in this job. And I think we
could be a great partnership together." ​[13.5s] ​That is high competence. So you need to
really flip the way you pursue these jobs. If you're pursuing it out of fear, of course, you're
going to get screwed. But you need to learn the skills of top performers, study the winners,
and that's how you get jobs for winners.

Jordan ​Education is pretty countercyclical. It tends to be with the economy. So whenever

the economy's in the toilet, a lot of people are considering going back to school and sort of
scaling up and finding new skills before they go searching for a new job. What are your
fields right now for those people who are considering, you know, going to a trade school or
going to a coding boot camp or going to back to get their master's degree or going back to
school for some reason to build their skills before going back into the economy? Do you
think that's something that's generally recommended right now for people who are looking
to get a job? Like, should they prioritize getting a new skill? Or does that—is that
dependent on sort of what season they are in their lives? What are your thoughts on that?

Ramit Sethi ​First of all, I'm a big supporter of education, so I had a fantastic education,
undergrad and graduate degrees. And I'm a big, big fan of formal education. I say that
because it's become very popular, to...I mean, demonized and even mock higher
education. And I disagree. I think it's fantastic. However, if people are struggling to find a
job, it's often a seemingly safe decision to go back to school. But you find that people who
do that almost never calculate out the costs of their education and the potential ROI. I
would much rather, if they want a job, learn the skills of finding that job, use our thing, get
a career coach, go talk to ten people. The costs of these are all either free or very nominal
compared to dropping 100k on an unproven degree where your only goal is to find a job if
you want to go back because you love learning. If you want to go back because you have
an extreme clear line of sight on how this MBA is going to propel you into the next level of
management. Fantastic. I'm all for it. ​[00:31:05]​Education can be a fantastic investment
and I don't just mean financial, but if you are simply, "I don't like what I'm doing, I think I'll
go back and get this arbitrary degree because a few of my friends got it. And I haven't
actually spoken to even ten people who graduated with that degree." Then I would argue
against it. If you want to find a job, learn the skills of finding a job. ​[21.9s]

Alice ​Ramit, thank you so much. This has been amazing.

Jordan ​So great having you.

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 Air Date: 1/25/21

Ramit Sethi ​Thanks for having me back. Thank you.

Jordan ​Now it's time for Upgrade of the week where we talk about that one thing that's
making a big difference in our lives. Ramit, what's your upgrade this week?

Ramit Sethi ​My upgrade, as we think about starting a new year, is once a year, I like to
mentally clear my calendar out and just ask myself, what would my perfect calendar look
like this year? And I find that it's way easier to just mentally clear the whole thing and start
rebuilding it from scratch rather than trying to take away certain things. Because over time,
it just gets cluttered up with obligations and so I love this, it gives me a fresh start, it lets
me really align my values with my time. And I can add in certain things, like, for example,
this year I want to take more walks. I'm living in a place where the weather's great and so,
OK, great. I go speak to my coworkers. I say, "Hey, we usually do this on Zoom. Would
you mind if we do this on a phone call so I can walk while we're talking?" And the quality of
life just goes way up. So I'm loving it. And I hope that this is helpful for people as they think
about a fresh start.

Jordan ​It's like Marie Kondo-ing your calendar.

Ramit Sethi ​There you go.

Alice ​I love that. And now I'm thinking about like all the meetings I could convert to walking
meetings because, you know, with video meetings you just spend so much time to, you
know, just sitting here staring at each other.

Jordan ​Alice, what's your upgrade this week?

Alice ​So I have really been missing during the pandemic, my fancy morning coffees. And,
you know, like, you can do the regular brewed coffee, but like, where's your cappuccino?
Where's your latte? Where's your your your cortado? I don't know what the other kinds are.
So I asked for and received a milk frother for Christmas. It is a twelve dollar gadget. It's not
the kind that steams, it just goes "meerrrr" in your milk. But you microwave the milk for
twenty seconds, you froth it for ten seconds. It's very frothy. You add the coffee, the coffee
sinks to the bottom. It's like instant cappuccino. Maybe it's not espresso, sure, but it's
delightful and it works really, really well. It makes me really happy every single morning.

Jordan ​Are they that cheap? For some reason, I would have thought that this would be a
machine that costs more. I would expect to spend fifty dollars.

Alice ​No, I think if you get one that's like a steamer that really, like, shoots steam into the
milk, that's going to be a big production. This is like, a little, it looks like a whisk. It's like a
little whisk. It's battery operated. It's I think it was twelve to twelve or thirteen dollars with a
stan—it comes a little stand. And I think with that it was twenty dollars. So it's, it's kind of
amazing. I'm really a big fan.

Ramit Sethi ​I love these small, inexpensive gadgets that make you happy every day.

Jordan ​Yeah.

Ramit Sethi ​That's awesome.

Alice ​Yeah. It's amazing. Jordan, what's your upgrade?

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 Air Date: 1/25/21

Jordan ​So mine is unrelated to money at all. Let me ask you guys, do either of you
subscribe to physical magazines still? Do you have any subscriptions?

Alice ​Oh, I thought you meant like like physical health magazines. Like...

Jordan ​No, no.

Alice ​Like Men's Health.

Jordan ​Gun magazines. There's a lot of types of magazines out there...

Alice ​Guns and Ammo?

Jordan ​...that I could have been asking about. But do you have any magazines that you
subscribe to?

Alice ​Yes.

Jordan ​OK, so if—.

Ramit Sethi ​Wait, really?

Alice ​Yeah, The New Yorker.

Jordan ​I have many—.

Ramit Sethi ​Oh, The New Yorker.

Jordan ​I have New York magazine. New Yorker which just piles up day after day. Like one
of my favorite jokes from The Good Place is like hell is being in a room with a pile of New
Yorker magazines and they just keep piling up. And, you know, you're never going to read
them, but they just keep coming. So I have several magazine subscriptions and they do
pile up very, very quickly. And what goes on in the back of my mind is I'll get to it
eventually. Like I don't want to recycle it yet. I'm going to read them. And then this pile
ends up as tall as I am. So my upgrade is a new rule that I've implemented this year, which
is a 48-hour rule for my magazines. When my magazines come in, I have two days to read
them. If I'm not going to read them in two days, then recycle it because I'm not going to get
to it. And then by the end of the year, I'll have a good idea of like, how much should I
actually read Runners World this year? And if I didn't actually read that many, if it didn't
make my 48-hour rule that much, then do I really need to keep this subscription because
I'm just, like, wasting it? So a 48 hour rule is good I think for someone like me who ends up
I mean, listeners won't be able to see this, but like, this is just a pile of magazines, like on
my table. And this is only half of them. And they—and I haven't read a single one of them,
but they keep piling up. So I'm going to toss the ones that are old and of the new ones that
come in, I got two days to read them or they got to get tossed.

Alice ​I love that.

Ramit Sethi ​Great.

Alice ​I love that.

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 Air Date: 1/25/21

Ramit Sethi ​I love that. Yeah. Great technique. It's actually freeing because you're
creating discipline in your life. But it frees you to know, no matter how many come in, I can
process.

Jordan ​Absolutely. That's that's what I'm looking for.

Alice ​I love, love, love magazines. Just having them—they're like, it's like getting a gift. But
then I, I don't, I know, I just, I look at them.

Jordan ​Yeah.

Alice ​And I'm like, "These are so pretty."

Jordan ​I have like Vanity Fair for a while, Runner's World, New York Magazine, Variety,
New Yorker, Wired. I have so many magazine subscriptions and yeah. Poets and Writers.
But what use is the subscription if you're not actually going to read them? And I have to be
realistic with myself. So that's the new rule this year, 2021. I got 48 hours to read it or they
got to go.

Alice ​I love it. It's a lifehack. Ramit, thanks again. This has been great.

Ramit Sethi ​Thanks.

Alice ​And that's our show, The Upgrade is produced by Micaela Heck and mixed by Brad
Fisher.

Jordan ​Thanks for everyone who submitted reviews on Apple Podcasts and wherever you
listen. We really appreciate those. If you would like to drop a review, do it on Apple
Podcasts or wherever it is that you download and listen to your podcasts, we'd love to see
them. You can also reach us by calling us at three, four, seven, six eight seven eight one
zero nine and leaving us a voicemail. Or you can email us that upgrade at Lifehacker dot
com.

Alice ​You can also find us on Twitter, at Lifehacker, on Instagram and Lifehacker dotcom,
all one word, and on Facebook at Facebook, dot com slash Lifehacker. Sign up for
Lifehacker's daily newsletter full of tips and tricks and hacks at Lifehacker dot com slash
newsletter. And you can find show notes for this and every episode of the upgrade at
Lifehacker dot com slash the show.

Alice ​Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, a question for you. Hey, hey, hey, hey, Jordan.

Jordan ​I'm here, I'm here for you.

Alice ​I have a question for you. Very natural.

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