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September 9th, 2010

Balls

Your fashion choices, your words, your decisions–all need more BALLS.

You worry what people think about you because they won’t like you, or they’ll talk behind your back. But really, they’ll admire your courage and adjust just fine.

You’ll question yourself at the last minute, maybe think you’re crazy, but sometimes, you need to be uncomfortable and make mistakes. Jumping this far will give you the strength to jump further next time.

Sometimes, I like to think about all the people who almost made the right decision. They got to the edge and then just… stopped. These are the almost-Steve-Jobs, the almost-Vivienne-Westwoods, and the almost-MLKs. They all had very good reasons. There are millions of them, and you know none of their names.

Where are you right now? What is the worst case scenario? How likely is it? What about the best?

Either way, you’re going to be dead soon. You might as well do something fun, in the meantime.

At worst, you’ll laugh about it later. At best… well, you know.

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September 8th, 2010

What Fear Means

One of the best books I read while in Paris was The Gift of Fear.

It was recommended to me by Chris Penn a long time ago, and basically talks about how women can deal with creepy guys and/or stalkers. Chris said I couldn’t understand trust until I understood how people abuse and manipulate trust.

He was right. I learned a ton. But here’s something amazing I read that has more to do with fear than trust– something so fundamental you have probably never thought about it.

Fear means it isn’t happening.

Think about it. If you’re afraid you’re going to get raped while walking home at night, you clearly are not being raped. If you were, your animal instincts would kick in (if you listen to them) and you would try to escape, hurt your attacker, etc. But if you’re worried about it, you’re probably in the clear.

This was an amazing thing for me to think about. Just like everyone, I worry about regular daily stuff, I sit next to assholes on the subway, etc., and sometimes I think that something could happen. Since realizing this simple thing, though, I have relaxed significantly.

Let’s say you’re worried about not having a job, or going hungry. If that’s the case, then you are clearly not going hungry. If you were, you would find a way to find food. It’s that simple.

You can apply this to a lot of your life. If it’s happening, you deal with it. If you’re just worried, you’re already probably doing fine.

On the back of the book (which I have recommended so far to at least 5 people), it says: “Fear is a gift, but unwarranted fear is a curse. Learn to tell the difference.” How true– and how vital to the way we live our lives.

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September 7th, 2010

A story about prisoners and a guard

Imagine a prison with a hundred inmates and one guard.

All the inmates want to escape. Of course the guard does not. He stands up on a wall with a rifle and fires at anyone trying to climb it to take him down. If one prisoner tries it, he fails and dies. If they all do, they win.

This is the essence of web businesses. Low startup costs increase reduce the cost of failure, break down barriers to entry and provide opportunity to many more people than previously possible. This reduction in friction leaves you more of a chance, with your stronger opponent being taken from all sides.

So, all that is required to destroy monopolies and hierarchy is for more people to allowed to try. That’s because it doesn’t matter if YOU succeed, as long as they do not.

You can apply this to any circumstance: social coercion, politics, writing, or art. In all cases low cost of failure reduces risk and makes trying plausible. This distributes success more widely across the population (though outliers will still exist).

Here’s what I’m thinking: the society (or individual) who makes the cost of failure the lowest, while retaining the ability to reap rewards, gets the greatest increase in productivity and living quality. In a sense, this increases the biodiversity of a society and therefore, its ability to survive disasters.

This quality could be defined, by your society or yourself, as a right to play, and it’s probably the most important thing you can allow yourself, as a creative person in the web age. Google does this with their 20% time, paying employees for what may result in nothing but could also result in huge hits. They make this viable by defending their cash cow (defense, or the game of the old) while embracing innovation (offense, or the game of the young).

Strategically, I think this means you’re supposed to look for a big hit, then move it into your portfolio when it’s maxed out and look for another blue ocean.

This is turning into one of those posts where I just seem to be rambling, so I’m just going to stop here. Hope this makes sense to you.

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August 27th, 2010

Why We Say “Because”

“Because” is the place where experience ends and faith begins.

Children have two ways of discovering how the universe works: one is to experiment, and the other is to ask “why.” The result is a complex series of if-then conditions that tell a child what can be done, and what can’t, creating flags that are used later to navigate the environment.

We’ve already talked about the first type– now let’s talk about the second.

Children don’t ask why to be careful with a knife if they’ve already cut themselves– they only ask with something that is outside their experience, that is abstract. This is the evolution of because, an if-then condition that is outside of experience, and that we don’t really understand.

The danger of because is that we take things on faith because it comes from an authority. As time goes on and our understanding advances, more of our questions now have actual answers, but the because remains anyway.

God is because. Zeus is why the lightning strikes and good people die but God has a plan for them.

Science can be because. We have faith in doctors who reflexively prescribe medicine instead of get to the root cause, and don’t get second opinions.

Dogma and rules are because. Gay is wrong because it is against nature, and you need to eat breakfast because it’s the most important meal of the day.

Everytime we don’t understand something, because takes its place and we stop there instead of testing. We have faith in the system, even though its purpose is to sustain itself, not to help you.

This is a way that the social system has protected itself since the beginning of time, ensuring that we can work together to build a better world. This works for the system that we live in and can make our lives better, but if you don’t want to be a middle manager, it may leave you feeling incomplete. It isn’t the only way.

You can be outside the system, and you can live well doing it. But your first step will be to ignore because… and to start asking why again.

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August 27th, 2010

Have a good blog? You need a good archive.

Your archive page is probably the least considered of your blog’s design.

Look at any Wordpress blog out there, and you’ll see basically the same thing– a sidebar with links, kind of confusing, not much else.

Stresslimit and I decided to solve this by releasing our first Wordpress plugin.

Justin, Colin, and the rest of the team I work with worked crazy hard to create an archive page that looked as fresh and different as the rest of my site, and the result was what you see below.

20100827-nfd6gnsmc8jim1tsj5jcs27w6u.jpg

I’ve always thought it’s one of the coolest parts of my site, so it’s awesome that it’s now available for free. We decided to release it as a Wordpress plugin, and basically solve everyone’s ugly archive problems forever.

Download it here.

What the plugin does

You can try it out by checking it out on my site (or Robyn’s or Chris’, who just installed it), then download it here and follow the instructions.

Once you’ve installed it, I’d love to hear your opinion on how it works, what could be improved, or what you like– anything, really.

And now, back to our regular scheduled programming. :)

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August 26th, 2010

The Body Remembers

If you have been healthy before, you can get there again, easier.

Research shows that muscles that have been strong remember how to be strong again. Your body remembers where it has been and what it has adapted to, and even years later, it keeps that adaptability the same way those that have been fat gain weight easier. (This is definitely one reason to start working out today.)

The mind remembers too, but it’s in a way that people see in marketing, sales, and in themselves.

The hardest part of getting someone to try your product is to have them try it once– so putting yourself at the crossroads to be seen and tried (like in the famous jam example) is a great way of getting people to cross that threshold.

Sales uses the method of the small yes to get you to a place where they can make a big sale by gradually increasing the level of commitment (increasing the yes) until you arrive at a place where it feels natural.

The same method we use to sell jam can also be used on yourself, on purpose. A small commitment today can turn into something you would never imagine doing, all by slowly adjusting how you think about it. A cold shower can turn into quitting coffee if you want it to (among other benefits), and you can start taking cold showers by reducing the heat gradually, a day at a time. Small stressors also increase your comfort with risk and will make you a more forward thinking, edgy individual.

You can try this yourself if you want by starting a small, inconsequential thing again and again until you are comfortable with it (trying a new food, for example). It will eventually become second nature and your increased comfort with it will extend outward into other aspects of your life. The result is increased adaptability, which means increased success.

But it starts small, and it starts today.

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August 25th, 2010

The Myth of Behind

There is no such thing as past failure. There is only now.

As I write this I am on vacation in Paris, eating like crap, writing no blog posts, not working out– generally doing nothing productive at all. Sometimes, it feels awesome to be this way. Other times, it sucks.

As you read this you may not have exercised in weeks. You may have been sitting there with your RSS reader for hours eating donuts just because they’re there. You may be sitting there in a pile of your own garbage for all I know. Either way, the only thing that matters is what happens today.

I am currently behind on my book list by one week, so over the past two days I’ve read 200+ pages. I am behind on blog posts so I’m going to write two instead of just one, and the same tomorrow. You can do the same thing at this very moment instead of focusing on the time you wasted. It would be easy.

Even though I used the word in the last paragraph, there is actually no such thing as “behind.” The past does not exist. It has molded you, but it does not create you. Everything you do now is your choice, and in this moment, you can become someone new, that does something new if you want it.

Since I’m on a trip, I’d like to mention that a trip is one of the best places to do this (it isn’t the only way, but it does work). In a new environment you don’t feel that anyone will judge you, so you can step outside of convention very easily. Once you return from your trip, people will think it’s natural that you’ve changed, since you’ve been away. Take advantage of it.

The problem with thinking that you are behind is that it drags you down to a place where you’re disappointed and don’t want to do anything, pulling you lower and lower until you basically have no choice but to fall asleep or eat a giant cake to feel better.

But you can do better than this. You can act as if you received the project today, as if you were beginning right this instant, and do one easy task related to completing it. This does the opposite to your emotional state (the exact point of this post) and gets you started in a direction where you feel better and are doing more. Getting a pep talk doesn’t really work the same way– nothing does, except making progress.

The mind is like a cage, and the past is a depreciating stock, whose value doesn’t exist anymore, and does nothing but waste whatever opportunity you have today.

The past is gone, so pretend. Act as if it has just reached your desk. That’ll make it happen.

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August 24th, 2010

Free to Cheap to Expensive

“It’s all chips.”

Chris and I once used this phrase when keynoting at Affiliate Summit last year– it represented the idea that you need to buy-in to every game (like poker) with winnings from another table. As you move from one table to another, the competition gets tougher but you can also win big.

What follows is a basic analogy to help you understand how people begin to make a living from the web. Each table is defined by how well you get paid by it, and for each, you’ll need different kinds of chips.

The first table is easy to understand, and all of us know it well– free. The buy-in for this table is sweat equity, otherwise known as the Crush It method. Free helps you gather audience as long as you do something wild enough, or interesting enough, to get some micro-attention and develop an audience. Free helps you build the channel.

Once you have a powerful channel with a significant audience, you can use that as chips to join the next table in the media game: cheap. You do this to buy onto the next platform of credibility, make an ok living wage (depending on where you live), and free up your time from your job, if you still have one.

Expensive is the final table, and the table stakes is a significant amount of credibility. A huge or powerful audience is necessary, or significant enough credibility that you have become known for what you do. Once you have this you can make a decent or great living, enough to buy back your future time as well as your present (some people would call that a contingency fund).

This series of rounds is a cycle, where you can buy your way from free > cheap > expensive and then back to a different level of free (say, that most people can’t get into) which requires more credibility or access. There is also another table called debt, but I would urge you not to get into that since most of the time, what you really want to spend isn’t money, but time and effort. (Spending money is easy but spending time is hard, so it’s worth more.)

I don’t need to name examples, but you can easily take web household name and apply this model to them and find what table they’re at. Once you figure out which one applies to you, it’ll let you know where you need to be heading and what your gameplan should be.

In poker it’s safe to jump to higher stakes once you have 300 times the big bet. The same is true for any level of this game– if you jump too early you might not have the necessary amount to cover early losses and get wiped out. But I can’t decide this for you– you have to make your own mistakes.

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August 23rd, 2010

We Will All Become Old Men

When we are young we will:

But when we grow old, we will change.

Are all of these things inevitable? I don’t know. But the shock rockers of old world have become the reality television stars of the new, the hippies have become oligarchs, and the champions of the many have become the advocates of the few. Things change.

In every one of us there is a part that wants every one of the above. One side is always stronger, but we can sometimes feel the other breaking through. We feel it when we clutch our purse in the subway or when we feel outrage at what a government is doing. Open and closed are opposite trends but neither will ever die.

Every day we get to choose a side. Every day we embrace the new, we get younger. Every day we aren’t willing to abandon what came before, we get older.

Somewhere in the middle, I’m guessing there’s a sweet spot. Right?

 

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August 20th, 2010

Everyone will judge you (but no one cares)

“No one is really judging you; they’re too busy wondering if you’re judging them.”

I was very easily embarrassed as a child, so this is the kind of thing my mother used to say often. When she talked to strangers, I pretended I didn’t know her, and she’d remind me again not to be so self-conscious. As I got older, I realized she was right.

Teenagers are rebellious, but it’s pretty interesting to note that they’re rebellious only in certain pre-accepted ways. Most of the time, they don’t want to stand out in a different way, because it’s too much of a risk. Only the edge is acceptable, not what is too far out.

What happens when you step out of accepted boundaries? There are usually only a few responses, and you will fit into a few of them.

Eccentric

My girlfriend and I had a few drinks with an eccentric guy last week, who would just say wild stuff to make us laugh, but was otherwise pretty conventional. Eccentric is the easiest category to be in, and in some ways everyone fits into it, just a little, by having some interest that diverges from the norm. It’s fashionable to be geeky so in a way, eccentric is part of the edge, not the chasm.

Iconoclast

Another one but a bit further out than eccentric, the iconoclast is different in many small ways that are obvious. He is edgy in multiple different directions, enough that someone thinks they are on the bleeding edge of things or have a keen eye and care enough to follow that eye. You can become an iconoclast doing things your way (instead of just talking, which probably makes you eccentric).

Ambitious

This is a good one. Most people eventually get lazy or just become fine with where they are. Being more ambitious than that puts you on the edge, too, and you can get there just by trying harder than anyone, having grander plans than seem reasonable, or having an unusual career choice (or none).

Visionary

If you are ambitious, see something happening ahead of time and act on it, you may become a visionary if what you did becomes a big deal. Even if you’re ambitious and a failure multiple times, that’s ok as long as one of your things becomes successful– you then become a visionary.

†

Ok, so you should now be noticing that many of these ways of being different are actually good, and that most are just ways of being labelled instead of being true measures of your identity. But there are bad ones too– here are a few of them.

Asshole

Social convention is strongly tied to acceptable ways of speaking or behaving that follow the common good and that don’t create too many ripples and allow or smooth interactions… and this is truer in English-speaking culture than many others, btw. Anyway the asshole doesn’t care what people think of what he says and he is often willing to say things other people are thinking, but would never say in polite company.

Loner

If you don’t go out, are always seen out by yourself, or reject offers to do things too often, you become a loner, or maybe just a loser (if you do nothing else). Loners don’t choose their label but they do prefer their company to that of others.

Reject

Finally, the reject. The more valuable it is to be on the inside of the circle, the more stringent the social requirements are for membership and the easier it is to be ejected. The more of the circle you spend your time is, the more horrible this is. In high school I was probably really close to this, and I hated it until I realized there was a big world outside of my school. Then, I didn’t give a damn, and now, I get congratulations from these same people for having co-written a bestselling book. Hmmmmm…

I forget why I started mentioning these, but I realize now that I could make a chart out of them if I wanted. That might be useful.

Anyway, all of these are labels that are attached to you if you behave differently. Do you recognize yourself if any of them? If not, you should be worried, because you are probably boring as hell.

What happens when someone judges you is based on how many of the positive traits you have as well as the negative. Asshole +funny or + ambitious might be acceptable, but asshole by itself is not. Visionary +loner works too. Interesting right?

In social environments where you’ll never see people again, none of this matters. When you do see them again, you just need to replace what you’ve done with something acceptable for a while. This doesn’t work as well if you’re an asshole from the start, but this means that everything is basically changeable.

What is the logical conclusion to this? Do whatever you want, no one cares if you change unless it hurts them, and most of the time, they won’t even remember. Become who you want to be– most of the labels for being out there are good, not bad. If you get a bad one, just remember to add something edgy into it, and you’re back into good territory.

In other words, chill the fuck out.

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