by Gary Mintchell | Aug 18, 2025 | Personal Development, Workforce
I saw an article about jobs in The New York Times (it was long enough ago that I’ve lost the link).
It started with the premise College graduates, on the other hand, often do not have the right skills to be successful on a factory floor.
I find that a completely bogus argument. Someone who truly educated themselves at university should have learned essential skills for living such as how to research, how to think, how to write coherent thoughts, how to communicate. They should have some math and science, as well as some literature and philosophy.
Speaking as someone with that above education who also worked on the factory floor in one function or another for about 20 years, the failure lies elsewhere. Probably in expectations.
Try this statement presented as one of an n=2 examples (journalism):
The country is flooded with college graduates who can’t find jobs that match their education, Mr. Hetrick said, and there are not enough skilled blue-collar workers to fill the positions that currently exist, let alone the jobs that will be created if more factories are built in the United States.
Society has spent about 50 years telling young people to a specific training at university and then get a nice, cushy white collar job leading to CEO within 15-20 years, if not sooner. Unfortunately, the markets and economy did not cooperate with these predictions.
This initiative, however, does directly address a flaw in our system.
The Business Roundtable, a lobbying group whose members are chief executives of companies, has started an initiative in which executives collaborate on strategies to attract and train a new generation of workers in skilled trades. At an event last week in Washington, executives commiserated about how hard it was to find qualified people and swapped tips onstage for overcoming the gap.
My grandfather taught me a lot about manufacturing before I was even 10 years old. He talked about being forced to drop out of high school (about 1915) and apprenticing as a machinist at the old Monarch Machine Tool Company. He had a number of jobs with increasing responsibility and opportunity. During World War II he was a production superintendent in a GM plant that was converted to the manufacture of aircraft machine gun bolts. He employed a number of strategies that I later learned were similar to Lean Manufacturing. GM sent him to take college courses while he worked for them. (OK, you win, this is n=1; adding me, the journalist n=2.)
Their ideas included combing through existing company job descriptions to prioritize relevant experience over college degrees and recruiting high school students as young as sophomores for experiences that could draw their interest in manufacturing careers.
“For every 20 job postings that we have, there is one qualified applicant right now,” said David Gitlin, the chairman and chief executive of Carrier Global, which produces air-conditioners and furnaces and services heating and cooling equipment.
By the 1960s companies had farmed out their apprenticeship programs demanding public schools to provide compliant workers. The public school skills training programs thrived to a degree, but also faltered under parental wishes for their children to become rich, college-educated people.
I believe university education (short of PhD track) even in technical training such as engineering really exists to help a willing individual learn to research, think, write clearly, and acquire a background deserving an educated person. Where they work? Well, that’s up to serendipity and drive.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 4, 2025 | Personal Development
I am willing to pay for services, especially health and nutrition, that provide valuable information. Examine.com is one. Their latest newsletter shatters some current myths referring to actual research.
Here’s a teaser:
Have you heard about granulated beet extract (GBE)? So hot right now!
Moderate doses improve mood by activating the mesolimbic dopamine pathway. And unlike many supplements, GBE’s bioavailability is off the charts! This is due to its dual use of SGLT1 and GLUT5 transporters.
Oh by the way, granulated beet extract is also known as table sugar. You may very well have supplemented with GBE this week because 55% of table sugar (sucrose) produced in the U.S. comes from beets.
As GBE illustrates, names hold great power. Would you trust my scientific acumen more or less if, instead of Kamal Patel, my name was Booger von Simpleton, Attorney at Law?
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 30, 2025 | Personal Development
Poets across centuries and cultures have developed structures for their poems. Haiku, ballad, sonnet.
Poets especially in the 1950s and 1960s explored something called free verse—that is, no outside structure.
The teacher of poetry writing at university explained how easy it is to get lost in free verse. The poet must discover an internal structure to effectively express themselves.
Some people have expressed that they wish a life totally free from constraints. “That is freedom,” they proclaim.
Just like the early free verse poets (ever tried to read Allen Ginsberg?), total freedom so easily drifts into meaninglessness. One becomes subject to whim, suggestion, cravings. No purpose. No value.
Some constraints actually allow for creativity and true freedom to live a fulfilled life. I’ll try to start your thinking.
- Consistent sleep times
- Consistent exercise
- Regular (for you) work times
- Ability and courage to say no
- Solid moral foundation
Can you add more?
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 29, 2025 | Personal Development
This is becoming a mini-series on curiosity.
Let’s see…a student for 17 years, teacher for one, school board member for eight, wife taught in elementary school for 35.
Some people dislike public schools (meant to provide a common education for everyone in a democracy) because they want to see teachers’ salaries reduced. Some because they don’t teach political or religious philosophy they espouse.
I side with Seth Godin. He calls it the industrial-education complex. Schools, public and most private ones (and most universities) exist to churn humans through the system such that they can provide bodies in industrial-type jobs. Not thinking or creative jobs. Assembling things, entering data/writing rote reports, attend meeting after meeting (sort of just like school).
In this post called Why and How from a couple months ago, Godin tackles science non-education. (Interesting that my copy of Burn Math Class arrived today. I’ve had the same feelings about math class as science class—and I like both things.)
Let’s get rid of science class in school.
Instead, beginning in kindergarten, we could devote a class to curiosity and explanation.
A class that persistently and consistently teaches kids to ask why and to answer how.
The unacceptable single-word answers are “because” and “magic.”
Curiosity is a skill, and it can be taught.
I learned biology when my parents bought a microscope, and I began exploring. I read about planets, and relativity, and dinosaurs. I learned electronics math while learning how to assemble and analyze circuits. I bought a 22-scale log-log slide rule (still have it) and an electronics math slide rule in the early 60s while in high school.
I was frustrated by chemistry. I kept wanting to ask Why. He kept saying to memorize the balance equations or whatever. The only math class than kept me interested was geometry. The teacher said what I’m really going to do is teach you to think. And he did. Solving proofs for theorems was pretty cool.
Everything in school could be taught as an outgrowth of curiosity instead of ramming down a curriculum devised by people far away who haven’t seen a classroom for decades.
Turn the teachers and kids loose and let education happen.
(By the way—works for spiritual topics, too. Curiosity led me to mediation, which led to studying the “mystics” and Desert Fathers, which led to studying the Christian thinkers and leaders of the first 300 years of the movement, which led to deeper understanding of the New Testament, which led to deeper meditation awareness…)
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 28, 2025 | Personal Development
Axios Finish Line evening newsletter always brings a brief, insightful nugget into my inbox—sort of like the cherry atop the sundae of the day. Axios is one of my two main news sources. They are journalists and a business, so they do drop into click-bait headlines at times and have too much “he said, she said” reporting with occasional speculation rather than strictly reporting facts. Even so, they are brief and even handed. Finish Line tops off the day.
CEO Jim VandeHei riffed off one of the best scenes in TV history from the Ted Lasso show. This is the dart contest scene (Oh, I forgot I was left handed). As Ted explains to (villain) Rupert, “If you were curious instead of judgmental, you would have asked if I had ever played darts.”
Lasso quotes Walt Whitman (not exactly accurately sourced), “Be curious, not judgmental.”
VandeHei writes, “Those four words can radically shift how you think and feel about politics, social media posts, your employer, and even friends and family.”
It’s natural to react emotionally or defensively when people do or say things you think are wrong — or flat-out bonkers. But try the opposite approach for a week: Be genuinely curious why they do or say those things. Worst case: You’ll burn less and learn more.
He offers four possible arenas to test drive. I’ll offer a glimpse. Click the link above for the full thought (short read).
1. Politics: Stop assuming the “other side” is corrupt, inept or dumb.
2. Social media: Never in history have humans wasted more time getting more worked up over more topics than when doom-scrolling. Instead of taking the bait, take a break.
3. Workplace: One of the smartest things we did when founding Axios was to be extremely transparent about the business and our beliefs. This demystified things internally — dramatically reducing the gossiping and wonderment about what we really think.
4. Family & friends: Almost every time my wife, Autumn, is pissed at me, it’s because I didn’t take the time to ask one simple thing: Why do you feel that way?
Try asking and listening rather than judging and talking.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 4, 2025 | Personal Development
Every year I suggest that all Americans take some time to read a few things to refresh our memories about the founding of our country. It’s probably not a bad practice for all of you who do not live here just for the ideals.
Read
- The Declaration of Independence
- The Preamble to the Constitution
- Actually the entire Constitution
- If not all, at least the first 10 amendments—the Bill of Rights
- Bonus points—read The Federalist Papers
These documents are full of compromises—something that has made it last so long. And something we seem unwilling to do this past decade or so.
