October 18th, 2011
A Misunderstanding of Risk
1000 years ago, the amount of moves a peasant could take were limited. He understood the risk in his world well, but it isn’t because he was super smart. It’s because his world was small.
The world is now too big to understand how risky a single action can be. Still, some people are more adept at understanding risk than others.
How adept you are at assessing risk has a lot to do with how much practice you have. If you’ve never done it before, you don’t truly know what the consequences will be. This either prevents you from acting entirely or it changes what moves you will make.
One of the best ways to understand this is to watch parkour videos, or skateboarding videos. Here’s one that my friend Julie Angel made.
As you can see, risk is relative. These guys are not born geniuses with their bodies, they were made geniuses through scars and experience.
So, being able to assess risk does not mean you are special. More often than not, it just means you are practiced. And because most people are not willing to practice, most people are not good at assessing risk.
Meanwhile, those that get good at it get very good. Their understanding of the world grows. They see shortcuts where others do not. They take advantage of them. This is what parkour is all about: finding shortcuts through the environment.
Sometimes this is ok, and it’s moral. Some find loopholes, disrupting using technology which, at the core, helps make the human experience better. Other times, it’s largely about personal gain, and not about the human experience at all.
Everyone has to decide what place they want to occupy on the slider. Nothing is entirely black or white. To some people, getting a job through your connections is a lot like skipping the line at the airport. It pisses people off and seems wrong. To others, it seems perfectly fine.
As these Occupy Wall Street protests spread, I’ve been thinking a lot about risk and how it is misunderstood. I originally ended up in school and, had I not found it horribly boring, I probably would have graduated and tried to find a job in my field (likely social sciences). At 32 I would probably be making ok money and feeling like I was making my way in the world. Little would I know that dropping out and working horrible phone jobs for 5 years would eventually lead me to where I am today.
The situation is a bit the same for those who feel that the social contract has been broken for them. They were told to go to school and that it would make them more employable, but little did they know that the infrastructure beneath them is largely about money and risk avoidance, and designed for a factory system that is already filled to the brim with people who do not want to (or can’t) leave their jobs. They feel screwed, and I can relate. It could have been me.
You also see people who moved through the world and, through a series of coincidences and smarts, ended up making millions by finding loopholes that allow a disproportionate reward in comparison to the risk they’ve had to take. These people worked hard, and they’re probably smarter than average, so they feel they deserve what they got. After all, they found the loopholes and saw the world as it was, maybe. There will always be loopholes, after all, so there will always be people like this.
It’s almost like a game of snakes and ladders. Some people got bad directions from people they trusted and went in the wrong direction. Others happened upon ladders that got them places fast.
The problem is that we need to understand risk much more completely than we currently do– and there is no concrete method for doing so.
Imagine that you’re a child and that you’re afraid of the dark. This fear is in fact quite logical, and for millions of years, humans who did not fear the dark got eaten. Now, however, it’s useless. So your parents explain to you that you don’t need to be afraid, etc, and as time goes on, you are no longer afraid.
This system is what we need to understand the rest of the world. It needs to be organic and it needs to be complete, because the modern world is too unlike the world we evolved in. The system either needs to be taught to us, or we need to develop one.
Right now, it’s all about lucking upon the right answers– this is not how a fair, modern system should work.
Filed by Julien at 12:47 pm under risk
13 Comments
October 12th, 2011
Everything has been done. Give up now.
The list for what has never been done is very short.
If you’re looking for something new before you even begin, you may as well abandon the quest. You will probably fail.
Everyone has a voice now. Everyone has a camera, too. Every picture at every monument has been taken better by someone with better equipment. You’re screwed.
The picture itself is no longer interesting, because it has been taken already. Objectivity is not useful.
I just recently came face to face with the fact that almost everything I’ve ever done has been done better, before me, by someone else. Has this happened to you yet? If you ever do anything interesting, it will.
When it does, you will be faced with a moment of doubt that may crush you and prevent you from continuing– unless you have faced it before and seen that you can win.
But this fight is one that you can subvert and avoid entirely if you realize that the information is not what is interesting to most people– the story is.
The story is something that people can relate to. The subjective and personal is human. Human is relatable. Information is not.
The best storytellers are translators of information. They take an experience and create layers on top of it, like an onion, that get peeled and reveal deeper insight.
But the depths, of course, are dark. They are hard to map. They contain secret tunnels. They don’t reveal themselves to you instantly. They need time.
But time is not what most people have. They want quick and immediate insight. They want the information so they can move on.
Avoid the temptation to talk about information. Information is the realm in which the how-to rests, and the place where machines can easily replace humans.
If you want to stay valuable, you cannot stay where machines can replace you. The experience you provide has to be uniquely human.
But do you even know how to do that? If not, how will you learn?
Hi, I’m Julien Smith.
I help people lead more productive, awesome lives— one day at a time. This is my blog. If you like it, please subscribe below.
Filed by Julien at 11:47 am under challenge, random 34 Comments
September 22nd, 2011
Information is not the problem
This is the information age. Anything you want to learn how to do, you can.
If you want to ride a bike, there’s a 26 step process for doing it right here.
Yet every day, people look at the steps of what they want to do and say “no.”
Those who want to go for an early morning run sleep in, instead.
They say they’ll write 1000 words but end up watching television.
They decide that they can have one last one (no matter what that is).
And you are one of these people. We all are. Why?
This leaves one of two options:
ONE. The information is right. The steps are right there in front of you. You just aren’t doing them. This is simply a willpower issue. Point final.
TWO. Part of the equation is missing. It’s about more than the information. Some of the steps are missing; not just from riding a bike, but everywhere. There is a big X in the equation, an unknown– maybe several of them– and they are stopping you, me, and everyone.
Which is it?
Filed by Julien at 10:07 am under taking action 30 Comments
September 20th, 2011
You are nothing without effort
You are not born to live a long life. You are not born to succeed.
You are born to go through puberty, reproduce, and die.
Exerting effort for any other purpose than producing more children is a deviation from the natural order. It’s against your programming.
Every push to improve yourself is an act of will against the universe.
So without effort, without willpower, you are just a shell for your genes.
How you behave, how you react to this, is up to you. Making safe decisions for yourself and your children is telling yourself (and them) that what’s important is to survive and reproduce for the next generation.
If you create unique experiences for yourself and your children, if you strongly deviate from the path, you are also creating someone unique, someone who can give back to the world in a singular and powerful way.
We need both kinds of people, of course. We can’t have all iconoclasts, all rebels, or all deviants.
Filed by Julien at 9:51 am under direction, random 17 Comments
September 19th, 2011
How To See the Invisible
Many generations ago, long before Blackberries and Starbucks, there was a time when we could only interact with other people while they were still alive.
Things now are not so simple.
First, writing was invented; then television, and now the web.
The whole environment has changed, but our brains have not. We are still made for jungles and savannahs but we interact more with iPhones and computer screens than anything else. Surely, this has had an impact.
A long time ago, the only things we interacted with that we couldn’t see were ghosts and gods. Now, we interact with more invisible people than we ever have. What happens as a result of this is indescribably complex and will likely take generations to truly understand. Marshall McLuhan figured a bit of it out, but media keeps changing, so it’ll take much more than that.
But there’s something else. This is the first generation when most of us have interacted so much with our own media. We used to think of Dan Rather as exemplifying trust. We believed in his story, had faith in his myth. But now it’s ourselves we’re seeing on a screen. What happens then?
I know that when I interact with a blogger or a celebrity of any kind, I am interacting with a blurry, half-constructed version of a person, with only what I’ve read or seen to base the interactions on. I engage with the construct instead of the person, and only later discover who the real person is. I know people do this with me too– I can see it by the emails I receive.
My question is this: are we starting to believe our own myths? Is producing, and watching our own media leading us to believe the images we create? I don’t know the answer, but I do have a feeling about it.
Comments on blogs lead us to interact with people who believe in our myth.
We get calls from media talking to us as though we are experts instead of people.
This was rare before. Now it happens to more of us than ever.
What happens now? I don’t know, but I believe that what we need more than ever is to see through our own bullshit, as well as everyone else’s.
School will not teach us this. Our government will not tell us either. It is up to us.
We need to build a resource that will show us what our own lies really are.
Filed by Julien at 11:32 am under social media 31 Comments
September 15th, 2011
NEWSFLASH: This isn't my little fucking pony
Tweeting is not a business model.
Rainbows and unicorns will not cut it.
The universe doesn’t care about you. Its natural state is to want to wipe you off the planet. You are temporary. In fact, for a large portion of the planet, you are food.
Is social media is the new real estate? Everyone’s in it, and no one can lose.
Or can they? Hours of your life, attempting to get attention to stuff that isn’t even that interesting in the first place. Why?
Give up on hope and luck. Abandon faith in yourself. Have faith only in the system. (Don’t have one? Try this.)
Yesterday I was asked in an interview whether “passion” was enough of a business model on the internet. The picture on the right is my answer.
Don’t let me catch the rest of you talking like this. This is war, and I will personally eat your fucking heart.
Filed by Julien at 9:37 am under rant, social media 35 Comments
September 14th, 2011
I was born very stupid and will die very smart
If this isn’t the slogan for your life, it should be.
You were born extremely dumb. There is no question about it. So the first side of the equation is set; it’s the second you have to worry about. Will you die very smart?
Smart is relative. Yes, humans read more than they ever have. They have more schooling than ever. Yet most of it leads to nowhere. If this is all you do, you will not die very smart.
Let’s make a giant list.
Let’s try and figure out how to die smart, right here and right now. Not a little smart– how to die being the smartest person you know. I’ll start, and you can add to it by leaving a comment below.
Start by reading a book every week. Most people read a book a year. If you do this, you get more in a year than most will read in their lifetime.
Next, travel as often and as cheaply as possible.
Consider avoiding school entirely– you’re looking to learn at your pace, not be slowed down by others or be sucked dry by fees.
Meet smart people constantly. You end up learning a lot from conversations if you’re good at listening. Set up meetings with them to learn what they know.
Don’t be afraid of failure. Remember the process of learning to ride a bike. You can’t pick it up from a book. You have to try and fail. It’s integral to the process.
Test perceived boundaries. Make sure there are no assumptions in terms of what is important and what is not, or what is dangerous or safe.
Now you. Show me what to do.
(Or, check the comments if you want to see what others wrote.)
Filed by Julien at 9:47 am under direction 52 Comments
September 13th, 2011
DISOBEY
You will not achieve anything unless you are capable of this fundamental act.
As a child, you excelled at it. You snuck out at night, smoked when you weren’t supposed to, and made out with someone you weren’t supposed to.
None of this killed you. In fact, the more you disobeyed, the more interesting you became.
As time went on, your patterns became more rigid. You disobeyed less. You started “figuring things out.” You stopped falling and getting hurt, and started standing tall– perhaps a little too tall.
Disobedience, in the beginning, creates independence. But the later acts of disobedience that most of us perform don’t creating anything. They’re small and pathetic. They are useless acts of control performed to create an illusion of agency that no longer exists.
What you need now is a big act of disobedience.
You need to see how bad the consequences really are.
You need to see that you can live through it.
Filed by Julien at 9:34 am under challenge, taking action 16 Comments
September 12th, 2011
For the love of God, please stop marketing
Look, here’s the truth.
Fundamentally, the real reason your company doesn’t grow has nothing to do with the marketing being right. The reason your idea falls flat is not about your follower count. Right now, your problem is more fundamental than that.
Go to any event and you’ll see sponsors. Get on any bus and you’ll see billboards. Go to any website and you’ll see ads. Yet nobody clicks on these things, and nobody admits to being convinced by advertising.
But they’re being convinced by something. They’re trying new drinks and looking at new websites. They’re watching new movies and switching providers. Why are they doing these things?
Fundamentally, the entire marketing industry is slowly working itself into a hole. Any effective tactic gets discovered by spammers and is affected by the tragedy of the commons. Soon, you have to move again because what you do isn’t working anymore.
Yet at the same time, some books become classics. Some companies get acquired. Some websites “go viral.” Why?
1. The best idea;
2. the simplest delivery;
3. the largest platform.
Anything else is secondary. FACT.
Filed by Julien at 10:37 am under marketing 24 Comments
September 9th, 2011
The Brief Guide to Sucking at Life
I will admit, I am not known for being sensitive.
Yet, at the same time, I feel I’m one of the most optimistic people I know.
I have faith in everyone. I don’t believe anyone is a loser. I don’t believe anyone is incapable. It’s born into me. I can’t help it.
Homeless people. Drug addicts. Ex-girlfriends. I believe in every person’s potential, forever. I think people can turn themselves around, even after the hardest falls. I always have. It’s in my nature.
This post is an experiment. It is an attempt to put together a coherent guide, helping us figure out why people are sucking, without any cliches or condescension.
Finding out why you suck is difficult. You might recognize it but don’t know how to fix it. You might not know it and make mistakes unconsciously. But you want to know when you’re sucking because often, no one will actually tell you. They won’t have the balls or know the right words to use. They’ll want to help but they won’t know how.
Even if you don’t need this guide today, you will at one point. So bookmark it. In time, it will become extremely useful.
It’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong when no one else will.
Why you’re an asshole
I start with this one because I fall into this category and I’m trying to figure it out. Here’s what I’ve got so far.
First, everyone has thoughts they shouldn’t express. So being an asshole has nothing to do with what you’re thinking. Unless you’re a total sociopath, what you’re thinking is fine. The problem is execution.
Assholes such as yourself often have a filter that’s broken. They say things that come back to haunt them later on because they don’t realize what they’re saying. They have no social graces. They miss social signals that other people catch, have a weak impression of the rules of the game, or ignore the rules entirely.
Or, another way to be an asshole is simply to be crass with his body language, gestures, and manners. If you never open the door for anyone or offer help in the kitchen, then being an asshole simply coincides with being selfish or not thinking much about what other people are feeling (high self-orientation on the trust equation).
Whatever the case for your assholishness, the solution appears to be to get someone else to call you out on it. Being a bit of an asshole is good, and can be funny– but being a lot is just not good. And there is a strong argument for having manners, too, even if you’re a deep left-leaning anarchist type such as myself. Check out this quote from Glenn O’Brien’s book How To Be a Man:
I believe that the true anarchist, the exponent of freedom and enemy of intrusive government, must see good manners are the inevitable substitute for laws. A healthy society doesn’t need many laws because offensive behaviour “just isn’t done.”
In other words, the freer you’d like to be, the more you need to be a gentleman. Honestly this is a kind of breakthrough for me. Hope it is for you too.
Why you are boring
Fact. Boring people do not exist. What some perceive as boring is in fact one of two things:
Option 1: Boring = Good conversation in wrong context.
Imagine that you’re talking about physics at a dinner party full of Glamor Magazine fans. The problem isn’t that what you’re talking about isn’t interesting– it’s probably very interesting, but not targeted to the people you’re in talking to.
The problem is actually that you’re just not able to relate to their situation. You’re not empathetic enough. It doesn’t actually occur to you that what you’re talking about is out of their context. Talk about writing with writers or food with foodies, and you’ll find it much easier than going against the grain. Ask them questions if they know more. You’ll learn something.
Sub-fact. In most contexts, no one wants to hear about you. In fact, I’ll go even further– how much you talk about you defines not only how you’re perceived, but your actual personality and sometimes your own health. The more you talk about yourself, the less healthy you tend to be. Fact. So start asking about other people.
Option 2: Boring = No idea what to talk about.
This relates to the above, but is also a different problem. You could simply have run out of things to say, or have no stories to tell, or whatever.
Contrary to popular belief, the problem here is not that you are boring, or have a boring life. Boring people aren’t boring because of what they’ve done or not done, they’re boring because they don’t know how to be interesting.
Even the most boring subjects, narrated properly, are super interesting because the people themselves know how to make the subject interesting. They relate it to the people they’re talking to by asking questions or relating them to universal subjects. For example, absolutely any subject can be related to a good 80′s movie. So if you’re having trouble relating to people, bring up 80′s movies. True story.
There are actually a number of ways to find things to talk about. Do you hate small talk? Then you’re probably doing it wrong. It’ll lead to interesting subjects if you ask the right questions. Or, optionally, you could just learn to read more. I’m now reading 60 books per year and, trust me, it helps.
Why you’re depressed
Some people say depression is caused by the brain, other by environment, blah blah. I’m not going to get into that.
For our purposes, being depressed (lower-case, not capital, D) happens when you think what happened in the past is better than what will happen in the future. You think your best years are behind you, so obviously there isn’t much good stuff to look forward to. You become moribund and lifeless. You don’t feel like doing much and don’t see the point to it. Etc.
Positivity is a virtuous/vicious circle. If you’re happy and do cool things, you get happier, but if you’re sad, you get sadder through doing nothing. It’s circular and builds on itself. This is how a blog ends up abandoned and how you end up gaining 10 pounds before you end up doing something about it. Then, you’re further behind than when you started. It sucks.
I can’t pretend to solve your depression problems but I can say that what has helped me the most is the idea of small successes, some of which I picked up from this book, and I guess in a way could also come from What About Bob?
Pick one small thing to do, so small and inconsequential that you will inevitably succeed and that will also make you feel at least 5% better. Do it right when you get up, as your first thing of the day. Then, tomorrow, add something to it. Make it a chain, and it will begin to happen automagically.
Why you’re in a dead-end job
My girlfriend pointed something out to me yesterday. All these people who are being educated by the system, who are buying into it with school, work, etc, and hope to be ok for retirement (and there are tens of millions of them btw)– what happens when this system decides that your purpose is to answer phones for a living? What happens then?
I mean, this is the system that educated everyone and that everyone believes in, whose mythologies are the cults of personality of Kanye West, Oprah, etc. What happens when this thing looks at your hopes and dreams and says “no, for you it’s going to be a convenience store clerk.”
Fun fact: about 7 years of my life were spent in call centres before I ended up podcasting for a living in 2005. I just kept pushing my way up the ladder, slowly. It never really worked out for me, though. I never felt like I belonged. I imagine you feel the same.
For me, things changed when I quit my last job. I felt like it was suddenly up to me. I was dead broke for a while, but at least I was in control.
I have a blog post I’ve been meaning to write up for a while about something called acts of control; maybe writing about that here will help. An act of control is something performed by someone in order to feel as if they are in control of their own life. A hunger strike is an act of control, and so is skipping work. These things are done to spite those in power. Often they involve a sacrifice, but unfortunately, the acts people choose often serve no purpose.
But I would like you to think about what kinds of acts you can perform, in small ways, to feel like you’re in control of your own life. Refuse extra work or overtime. Show up on time but never early. Don’t do extra if the system does not reward extra. Spend your energy where it matters.
In the long term, the good news is: unemployment allows you time to reinvent yourself. Dead-end jobs do not. So you must inevitably transition out of your job and into something better. This is when the minimalist guys will help you. They will help you focus on what matters. I wish I had their advice when I was living off less than 1000$ a month.
Why you’re a loner
As I’ve mentioned before, loner can sometimes be ok, socially acceptable even, if it’s tagged along with something else (smart, ambitious, or what have you). And if you’re happy being a loner, there’s no problem. But if you’re having trouble finding people to hang out with, if you want to spend time with people but don’t know how, you’re going to have a long, tough life.
Here’s my proposal for you, as someone who often feels like they’re distanced from people in real life due to travel, not having a 9-5, etc.: set up weekly meetings with people you like.
Currently, I have less than 5 of these meetings with people I didn’t see often enough. So I set up weekly meetings that happen automatically without needing to be discussed. Result? I end up seeing Mitch, Greg, Justin and others far more often than I would otherwise. For your social life, it’s honestly the best idea I’ve had in a while.
Who are the people you respect and that challenge you? Who are the people that make you laugh? Offer to cook them dinner once a week. If you don’t have anyone, connect via your interests– I don’t care if it’s World of Warcraft, but find some– and set up a get together. Finally, work on follow-ups. Text people from a long time ago that you have been meaning to talk to and say “we’re due for a hangout!” Especially if you miss them!
Conclusion
There are a million ways your life could suck. I can’t list all of them, but hopefully I’ve lumped a bunch of them together in ways that have helped a little.
Feel free to write your own post about it if you want and send it over, I’ll be glad to link to it. And please subscribe and tweet this out. Thanks. :)
Filed by Julien at 10:00 am under guide 7 Comments
