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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.

Also of interest: “This Fragile Earth”

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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.

Also of interest: WebbAlert: It’s like Rocketboom, except…

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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?

 

Also of interest: No related posts

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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.

Also of interest: The Myth of Behind

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August 12th, 2010

You Do Not Have an MBA

If you’re John Doe, there are a lot of hoops for you to jump through if you want to become Dr. John Doe.

Between Jane Doe and Jane the lawyer, there are hoops, too. In both cases they’re pretty important to go through a certain way.

This is not the case with an MBA. But they’d like it to be. It isn’t the case for almost any degree at all. But they keep offering them anyway.

There is no single institution in the world which will go away willingly. Even if they were 100% useless, you can bet they would stick around as long as they could siphon us of our money and let us whittle away our years in exchange for their continued existence.

There is no institution in the world that has the one true path to the Answer (or the Truth, or Salvation). But all of them will convince you they will, as will your parents and mentors.

You do not have an MBA, and you do not need one. No one needs to give you permission; you need to take it.

Unless enough of us do this, these same institutions will be around siphoning your children, and their children, and so on until eternity. They will convince you that you need to read their newspaper, or their buy overpriced textbook, or follow their useless path. But none of those things are necessary at all. Many never were.

Oh, by the way, who is it that goes through hoops? Not people, just animals… and clowns. Are you either of those?

Also of interest: No related posts

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August 10th, 2010

Life Doesn’t Start Tomorrow

There isn’t a single thing in this world that’s made better by starting tomorrow.

Everything you care about, everything you are about, needs to begin today or it may never happen.

If you don’t want to do it now, you clearly don’t want it bad enough.

Momentum comes from pushing, not from planning. Confidence comes from scars and risk, not from indecision.

Q: What is a five-minute action you can take today that will make tomorrow better? I don’t care if it’s cleaning your house or writing one paragraph. You’re going to do it now.

A: Drop everything right now, act on that for five minutes, and then come back and tell me what you did.

I am like your conscience, except I don’t accept bullshit. So I expect you to comment here today, or you clearly aren’t actually reading.

Do it now.

Also of interest: The Myth of Behind

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August 10th, 2010

Your World is Not a Corridor

In Sept 2004 I had just moved out of a trendy neighbourhood apartment, and into a nightmare.

The loft that I moved into was 3000 square feet, had huge windows across the entirety of two of the four walls. It was huge, it was a disaster area, and I had moved in willingly… because of “potential.”

Has this ever happened to you? You change your situation to one that’s worse, because of the possibility of more? Well, we believed in this apartment because of how huge it was, but it required an insane amount of work. The walls were painted as though a schizophrenic blind man had chosen colours, and there was stuff everywhere.

The front room was the worst of all. It was as large as my current apartment, but had literally become a hallway to the other parts of the place, with garbage and detritus on all sides. Looking back at pictures before we cleaned up is revolting. It was amazing people lived this way– the whole room was basically abandoned.

When we cleaned it up, the difference was huge.

Your world is a corridor if…

Here are some non-exhaustive examples. Take them as departure points. If you have any of these problems, seriously consider cleaning up that part of your life so you can see the forest for the trees, so to speak.

Your emotional/social world is a corridor if:

You never meet anyone new.

You believe any organization is going to save you in any way, or has the only path to happiness.

You say “so, what do you do?” when you run out of things to say.

Your professional world is a corridor if:

You have gotten every job with a resume or CV.

You have only made money with a 9-5.

You are climbing a corporate ladder.

Your physical world is a corridor if:

You cannot lift your own weight or climb a tree.

You cannot perform basic functions in the maintenance of a home (including cooking).

Your base mode of transportation is a car (then, your world is literally a corridor).

†

Last night, I was making a dessert with coconut flour at my parents’ house when my girlfriend left me in the kitchen by myself. I started kind of panicking out about screwing up, but kept going, because I wanted it to be nice, etc. Sure enough, 10 minutes later, things were fine.

But I needed to learn that by trying, and by being left alone.

Everywhere where our world is a corridor is a chance for a richer, more competent, better life. But we need to know it, and believe that we can. The modern world is highly specialized and it’s easy to fall into those traps and, as a result, lead a life that is entirely ordinary. But they can be broken through, and like the front room of my old loft, we are always the better for it.

Do you recognize yourself in the lists above, or do you have your own? Share them below.

Also of interest: the old world, the new world

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August 9th, 2010

Follower Hyperinflation

All things digital are inherently vulnerable to inflation.

Spam takes advantage of the limits of digital interaction to create scale from the (previously) unscalable, then profit from it. We normally apply this to email, but it could apply to Twitter, Facebook, or Youtube views. It could apply to pageviews to your website or anything else where scale can create money or reputation.

When there is no sacrifice, cost of “production” is near zero, which opens up new avenues of profit. This was the principle of Chris Anderson’s Free, but it’s also the principle by which spammers make money. Both take advantage of the ability of technology to bring the cost of scale dramatically downward, but we don’t talk about the other side of it.

Anyway, this same characteristic of digital technology is what allows people to have 1,000 Facebook friends. The upkeep cost of a friend is near zero, so I can have as many as I like due to reduction in friction. Since social network head in two directions, either more popular (towards ubiquity) or less popular (towards obliteration) every popular service experiences friend/follower hyperinflation which only the most popular can keep up with.

There are four things that I want to mention about this.

Scale divides the friend-poor from the friend-rich.

If you start off with a platform, or you start early, you can keep accelerating at the same rate the service does, keeping you in the top tier of users. But almost no one can do this. Inflation follows, where the number of connections accelerates exponentially while your own go up only marginally. This means you don’t have the same access you did yesterday, just the same way your dollar doesn’t go as far as it did yesterday, either.

To keep up, you must accelerate

You must find a way to keep your channel popular or risk irrelevance.

This may mean you need to take advantage of scale, leveraging existing advantages to keep yourself afloat when 100 friends yesterday has the same value as 200 today. It may also mean you need to gain access to larger platforms to give you more credibility or access to a larger audience. Basically, you only win by giving in to the “more” mindspace by reaching more people, or the same people more often.

The rise of “friend upkeep services”

As more and more people use social networks to upkeep their online presences, a need to upkeep these friendships will occur, and services will arise to fill that need. Facebook shows you your friends’ birthdays for this very reason, and that’s why sending a birthday note on Facebook is not a measure of closeness.

But Facebook and other companies will take it further, mentioning to you that you haven’t talked to someone in a while or maybe eventually suggesting things to say or sending automatic updates. In a sense this is one of the “services” foursquare offers users; same with Farmville etc.

The final measure of success is happiness

None of this matters, because none of it will make you happy. Only real friends will, and those require communal sacrifice to upkeep, and cannot be scaled.

At the end of the day, we’re still human. Our emotions can’t and won’t replace one great friend with 100 acquaintances; it’s simply impossible to create the same feeling, endorphins, etc. and will probably inevitably lead to depression of at least sub-par enjoyment of life.

My point with all of this is to understand that although all of these forces surround us at all times, and the speed of the world accelerating at a point no one can really keep up with, the things that make us strong, healthy, happy, and free are the same as they were two thousand years ago. And those are the things we should focus on.

The end. Make sense?

Also of interest: my website sux0rz

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August 4th, 2010

Being Supremely Useful

“I literally could not come up with a better use for my time.”

I’ll never forget the phrasing of this sentence at the GEL 2010 conference, spoken by Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy. He was justifying why he had created the largest, most exhaustive library of free educational videos on the web (over 1100 ten-plus-minute videos), a kind of Librivox for education, but created by one man. Amazing.

Sal could not come up with a better use of his time. Watch the video below (click here if you can’t see it) to get an idea of what he’s about.

I spent five days in West Virginia in July studying MovNat, a natural way of moving and exercising (and possibly, thinking) founded by Erwan Le Corre and based in the Natural Method. While George Hebert’s slogan was “be strong to be useful,” Erwan’s slogan could be “be strong to be free.”

Later in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport on my way home, I would read some of his quotes from a Men’s Health article I came across. They read like sections of my blog.

During these five days, Erwan and Vic would teach us to climb, swim, run, balance, and defend ourselves more effectively. We came away from it with a sense of increased competence, an understanding of our surroundings not only as scenery, but as environment. You come away with the impression that you can better help yourself and others. It’s a very strong, and addictive, feeling.

I think of this blog as one of the best uses of my time. I write to help me get ideas straight in my head, to help me understand myself and my surroundings better, to spread my ideas, and to help people in the best way that I know how. It literally is one of the best uses of my time. So is writing books. I can help a lot of people at a time, writing about the things I know better than others and spreading those ideas.

This is something everyone can do. You should know that understanding risk, knowing yourself and your abilities, and seeing the world as an environment instead of a corridor will help you become your best self. It’s so important that it should be taught in school. If you don’t learn it there, where better than starting with your body?

Physical competence is running faster than others, jumping over obstacles and not getting winded when you’re going up the stairs, or helping someone out of a burning building.

Social competence is understanding status and not being afraid of talking to people.

Emotional competence is not being stopped by your own flags.

When you have all of these, you are supremely useful, and you are close to being the best human being that you can be. You are also a Renaissance Man (or woman), the kind of person people remember for generations.

Shouldn’t this be everyone’s goal? Is it yours?

Also of interest: Buck 65 strongarms hip-hop

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July 29th, 2010

How Confidence Works

Dogs are great people trainers.

Those of you that have dogs know this already, but my girlfriend and I have been learning it over the past few weeks with a new Whippet/Lab mix. It’s amazing.

A dog will try to exert dominance over you again and again. If you don’t react appropriately, the dog realizes it has power over you. It doesn’t respect your authority because it’s getting mixed messages. The dog wins.

People are also great people trainers. They teach you how to treat them. They test you to see how you react, often without even knowing it.

I have a great story about a girl I know whose boyfriend had cancelled on her one night. She didn’t know what to do, so I suggested she call and say in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t acceptable.

She did this. He showed up with flowers.

I don’t know for sure, but I imagine kids are great people trainers too. If they whine and get a sugary treat to shut them up, they will detect a pattern and act on it. We teach them to do this. Am I right?

Confidence is a circular pattern. It will reinforce itself in either direction, heading either towards zero or infinity, until it is regulated by an outside force. Whatever outside force stops it is an outpost of dominance, a kind of flag that says “beyond this point, you shall not pass.”

These flags eventually start feeling like walls, and these walls impact what decisions you make about your life.

Maybe this is the reason you stopped playing guitar, or stopped working out. This may be why you haven’t quit your job, I don’t know. But the reality is that these markers of confidence are just as fluid as the relationship you have with your dog. They are fluid. They can be changed.

We act as if our life right now is the way our life is supposed to be, but you could just as easily be a CEO as you could be a janitor or homeless… or dead. But you happen to be alive, and you happen to gave a fair amount of freedom in your life.

Maybe it’s time you exerted it.

Also of interest: Life Doesn’t Start Tomorrow

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