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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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. :)
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 10:00 am under guide
6 Comments
Whenever I’m in doubt and I don’t know where to turn, I turn to my idols, who never let me down: Brainiac, Two-Face, and Spongebob Squarepants.
Ok, just kidding about Squarepants. The rest is real though.
You know, until recently, if I were asked about my idols, I might have said someone like Marshall McLuhan, or maybe Hunter S. Thompson or something. Boring people. Real people.
Not any more. I have evolved. I now get my advice exclusively from imaginary criminal psychopaths.
It’s time you did the same. Here’s why.
Let’s say a guy wants to rob a bank. He’s a normal guy like you or me. He doesn’t want to do a horrible job for 40 years, but he’s not qualified for anything either. He doesn’t think he has any choices in life, and society isn’t giving him of the upside he sees on television or anywhere else. He’s like “screw it, I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Now, let’s just say that this guy is like most people. He has reservations about killing people. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Thankfully, a bank isn’t people. If the bank gets robbed, nobody feels bad for it. After all, banks rob us every day; they just gradually introduce it so that they slowly get your consent. Besides, all the money is insured.
So our guy figures he’ll end up in a tropical country somewhere with a beautiful half-Latina half-Asian girlfriend or something. Who loses? Nobody. Exactly. Why would a bank losing a million dollars be a bad thing? Seriously, everybody would be happy. I’m not even kidding. Banks fuck over everyone.
So here’s the thing: if nobody feels bad for a bank, and all the money is insured and nobody gets hurt (in theory), why does nobody do it?
Well, simple. Too many things could go wrong, and the consequences for anything going wrong are massive and dangerous. In other words, it’s too high risk.
They deal in social deviance, doing things that most people aren’t willing to do in order to get ahead. This, by itself, is actually fine. There are lots of methods of social deviance that aren’t illegal.
So the problem isn’t social deviance at all. It’s that criminals do it in an old-school way, for which there are laws, and because of that, there’s collateral damage, death, destruction of private or public property, etc. In other words, the problem isn’t that they break the law, or that they’re criminals. It’s that, in doing so, they might harm you or your loved ones.
Criminals do what they do because they see it as a high-risk, quick, low-effort way of making a bunch of money. They go to the edge of what’s acceptable (and over) in order to get what they want. Some of them are horrible people, and others are doing the equivalent of cheating on their taxes– in other words, not much.
So not all criminals do things that are damaging to society. Some do things that average people consider totally fine, but that just happen to be illegal for larger, sometimes antiquated reasons.
So here’s our first distinction. Violent criminals go to the edges of acceptability. They do high-risk things in order to obtain large rewards quickly. They do this because they are impatient and fail the marshmallow test. This is why they end up in jail.
But hold on, there’s more.
I was watching a movie the other week about Jacques Mesrine, the public enemy number one in France and Quebec in the 60′s and 70′s. He’s a sociopath if I’ve ever heard of one, but also an epic success in his own way. They literally had to ambush this guy in the middle of the Paris and blast him with automatic weapons in order to kill him. He was like a modern-day Rasputin. Epic.
It was while watching this movie that it really started to click for me.
Here’s a guy that flaunts the rules in a way that nobody else can. Seriously, this dude escaped from jail and then proceeded to return to jail with automatic weapons in order to help his friends escape.
As homicidal as this dude was, I have no words to describe how much guts he had.
So, in that sense, this is a guy we can learn a lot from. Not murder, not mayhem, rape, or anything else of that sort, but definitely what a few friends of mine and myself have now dubbed “skipping the line.”
Ok, imagine you’re going to a bar and the line is long. You stand at the back of the line like a good customer, and the hostess says your wait is going to be like 15 minutes. That time goes by but you still don’t get a table. You’re still waiting. You’re starting to get impatient.
Then, some guy walks in, goes right up to the hostess, whispers something in her ear and she nods and shows him to a table. How do you feel? Pretty annoyed, I’m guessing. WTF, right?
Now, another scenario. Imagine you’re at the airport. There’s a long line for security, as there was for my flight today, but this guy goes to another line, one that you hadn’t noticed, and just whizzes through everything. You watch him show people his iPhone, and he speeds past a giant line. Everything’s the same, except in this case, the system for skipping the line isn’t covert or hidden. He used a 3D barcode or something to get into a special category.
Now, here’s a trick question. Out of all the preceding examples, which one do you consider the most wrong? The bar, the airport, or the bank robbery?
All of these, done right, are victimless social deviance. They’re just deviance with different levels of risk, correct?
Let’s ask another question: If no one got hurt in either of those circumstances, from a one to a ten, how wrong are each of them?
What you need to do is not “play it safe”– which is downright idiotic– but to find is something as high-risk and high-reward as a bank robbery, but without the massive downside.
Let me give you another example. I end up in France fairly often, and since I mostly deal with Americans for work, one of my easiest conversation points revolves around a guy called Loic Le Meur.
Some of you may know Loic, but you’re probably not French, so you don’t know his reputation in France– a country where the majority view government work as being amongst the highest forms of service and status. Where Loic comes from, he’s considered socially deviant as well. So is my French friend Erwan Le Corre (Movnat is doing a workshop in Montreal, btw, which you should check out).
Guys like this, and they differ by country, have labels that their homelands consider fringe or weird. They aren’t easily accepted. They trot the edge in their own way, and are willing to take risks that others aren’t. They’re skipping the line as well– defining themselves differently and placing themselves at the top of their categories.
Normal people are not willing to do this. We don’t have models if we want to be out on the edge. For most people, they have no one that can relate to their need to be that far out.
Entrepreneurs won’t do. They are too acceptable. Politicians won’t do. They are too criminal and unethical (no, seriously, they are). We need someone else– a group we can look to and emulate, the same way people think “What would Jesus do?”
Society is far too boring. There is no one we can look to, so we have no choice. Magneto, Moriarty, and Mr Freeze– that is who it has to be.
Let me ask you a question: according to Rotten Tomatoes, 94 out of every 100 critics thumbed up the Dark Knight. Why do you think that is?
Is it because of Batman? Guess again.
It’s the Joker.
The Joker is the personification of risk, something the average person finds thrilling. He does things that others would never dare to do, but everyone sees inside themselves. Why is that?
Modern society is stifling. The options for how to behave are limited and unfulfilling. Max Weber called it the Iron Cage because it eventually stifles and crushes anything polarizing. We have no choice but to submit in the majority of our lives.
What we start realizing if we spend enough time in cities is that this society breeds sheep. This isn’t even necessarily bad– it’s largely responsible for the stability of the age we live in. And these people can’t even be held responsible for it– the pressure of our society is so crushing that you have no choice but to submit, even at the cost of your long-term happiness.
The thing is, society also seems to have taken a wrong turn. When you combine it with the technological advancements we’ve had in the past several years, what we have turned ourselves into is a giant garbage production factory that is throwing itself off a cliff. There’s a fucking giant continent of plastic in the Pacific ocean for Christ’s sake, all made possible by the modern division between our actions and their consequences (Marx would have had a field day with this).
Clearly, social deviance is necessary at this point.
So who’s here to save us? Who’s here to make us feel alive once again, like a normal human being whose soul longs to be free and able to live without the crushing consequences of a drone-filled modern environment, where you can’t seem to make a difference and often don’t even know how to muster up the energy to care?
The only people who are capable of doing this are those who have lived outside society, those who have no place inside of it, and who ignore society’s rules.
The Joker is the personification of anarchy and freedom, and those feelings, when expressed to us in theatre or film, are deeply moving. It awakens a part of us that yearns to be free, but doesn’t quite know how.
But no modern hero exists for those that want to figure this out.
Now, here’s the thing: We don’t have to deface property, kill people, or rob banks in order to find edges. There are lots of modern edges to explore. They are valuable because they’re risky, and only through learning from criminals can we truly know what the edge is.
Imagine a map of the world, but flat like it was thought to be a long time ago. At the edges, you fall off and die. But what about right before that, the places before these giant imaginary waterfalls? What’s there?
These are places nobody knows about because no one returns from them, or because no one even goes. If you go there, it changes you. You come back different.
But there’s a problem. The map doesn’t exist for these places. You don’t know how to get there. You need a guide.
Here is my suggestion. If you are looking for an edge and you can’t find one, ask yourself what you would do if you were a criminal, or a sociopath, or had delusions of grandeur, didn’t think you could fail, or that there would be no negative consequences. Ask yourself how you would act if you thought no one had the balls or brains to stop you.
The trick is to take on a personality. Play a character– one with no fear whatsoever, no conscience and no understanding of society’s rules.
Play a total sociopath. Find things with high reward, and act towards them as if there were no negative consequences.
Hard decisions will suddenly seem easy.
Fears that have no consequences will reveal themselves for the mirages that they are. Barriers will vanish.
My guess for what happens next? Your hurdles will have to be set a whole lot higher.
Filed by Julien at 3:10 pm under direction, guide, humour, random, strategy
3 Comments
You’ll often notice guys in airports, washrooms, cafés, etc., talking loud on their phones, disrupting conversations everywhere.
You’ll also often notice that these are often powerful-looking guys: business-types, tall maybe, expensive phones, etc. In fact, you might even have a situation in mind. I know I can think of a few.
Sometimes, these scenes go on for a long time– so long that everyone around them starts looking around at each other. Knowing glances pass between tables.
Then, everyone kind of shrugs, thinking “well, what can you do?”
Watch a scene like this sometime– you won’t have to wait long before it happens. Everyone wants to tell these guys to shut up, but nobody does. No one steps up to the plate because no one wants to be “that asshole,” or because they’re embarrassed or don’t want to be told off.
But these scenes aren’t just random acts of social violence. None of it is not a coincidence. The reason these guys have these symbols of success is because they have balls. They’re willing to do what other people aren’t, have extreme confidence, and get by because of it. It’s why these guys get where they are today, why they have the expensive clothes, the phones, and the loud voice.
They flaunt their status and ignore social cues that their behaviour is undesired. Maybe they feel they’ve earned the right to do so, I dunno.
But no one ever told them no.
This happened to me one time on the Camino de Santiago with an old German guy. He was talking on his phone really loud in a dormitory filled with about 50 people. Everyone was looking at him. They wanted to sleep, but he didn’t care.
I walked up to him in my underwear, about 60+ hours of tattoo work in full view, and gestured for him to fucking close his phone immediately.
He left the room. People started laughing. Everyone was grateful.
Please take this story to heart.
Nobody else will ever say anything, ever. It has to be you.
Filed by Julien at 1:28 pm under community, culture, social hacks
4 Comments
My entire life– my whole existence–this is probably the thing I have been searching for.
Guts are composed of two parts: GUTS and GUT. Both are equally important to the whole.
GUT is where you should start. Gut requires you to have instinct, and listen to it. When you need to know what to do, gut should respond with an appropriate direction– even if you don’t understand why. More often than not, it should be right.
GUTS is the second part of the equation. When you have guts, you can do what is necessary. You can do what GUT tells you to do. Without guts, you can’t go where you need to go, no matter how drawn to it you are.
So both parts, GUTS and GUT, are necessary. But how do you get them?
I believe it comes down to environmental pressure. So the question is not “why was I not born with a good instinct” (GUT) or “a huge set of balls” (GUTS), but rather, “how can I set up my environment so these things develop naturally?”
For some people this happened as children. For others, not so much– it needs to be groomed into you, and nobody else will do it for you, because nobody else really cares that much whether you have them.
I just finished a piece of work (stay tuned) that tries to address the problem of GUTS. But I suspect I have only just begun to truly understand it. Then, GUT, its twin, needs to be figured out as well.
A guy could spend his whole life on these things, if he were so inclined. Once you develop these two, I suspect anyone with even an average level of intelligence could do amazing things.
Filed by Julien at 10:46 am under random
I am working on a small book right now. It’s easily the best thing I’ve ever done.
The editor is better than I could have ever hoped for. The idea is amazing, and something I care deeply about. It should get good visibility. Everything seems like it’s in line.
This kind of thing never happens to me. It probably rarely happens to you.
So, naturally, I’m paralyzed with fear.
This is how the whole world works. When you’re on auto-pilot, no problem. You’ve done it before, so you recognize every pattern you’re in and there’s no need to worry.
But this also means you’re going the wrong way. You’re getting no new input, so you’re not recognizing any new patterns. If this is the way your life is going, you are actually actually becoming more useless. In an increasingly chaotic world, the best pattern recognizers win.
So the way to have an amazing life is to be constantly fearing failure, but driving forward anyway. It’s difficult to be doing this all the time. You need to pick your battles. Most things need to be stable and allow for safety, so you can focus on these one or two very difficult things.
In other words, your relationship can’t be in shambles while you’re building a business. This is natural, and it’s how the whole world works. You need to have the energy to spend where it matters.
So your whole world should be a cycle of balancing and unbalancing, contraction and growth. Imagine weight lifting. The more stable you are, the heavier you can lift.
I suspect that those who can do many things at once aren’t actually doing anything properly. They commit to numerous ideas and try to deliver on all of them, but none end up exceptional. They’re blogging every day but few ideas are truly interesting or have much of a wide spread.
This is how someone like me can end up not blogging for a month. I focus on one thing and make it happen in the best way possible. Afterwards, I’m drained. I have to do something else– anything else– but worry about delivering new ideas.
So today, for the first time in a long time, I feel kind of free. The project feels 90% done. A great weight is lifted off my shoulders and I have energy to deliver in other places.
If you are not doing your life’s work, you will feel perfectly comfortable. There will be an occasional malaise as you wonder if there’s “more” out there, but you won’t know exactly what to do.
What you need to do is become paralyzed with fear.
If you aren’t paralyzed, you aren’t going far enough. If you don’t feel yourself being avoidant, you’re probably settling. This is normal. Your brain wants you to be safe. Your body is built to procreate and die, not thrive. Naturally, facing pain will feel horrible and unnatural. It can’t be any other way. It feels like a threat, and threats must be stopped.
In order to get anywhere in life, you need to be uncomfortable constantly. You need to have new input and absorb new information or you’re not growing. If you don’t want to grow, it’s because things are fine as they are. You should be conscious and ok with the fact that they won’t change.
So do you want to be bigger? If yes, then you know what you have to do. If no, keep moving along.
Postscript: As I wrote this post, an email came in, and once again I’m paralyzed with fear. I must be on the right track. Back to work.
Filed by Julien at 10:06 am under clear thinking, direction, risk, taking action
8 Comments
There are some lessons you can learn from the comfort of your couch– maybe watching a great video on Youtube or chatting with friends.
But there are other lessons that come hard. Here is one of them. But first, some background.
My girlfriend and I just walked 800 kilometers (500 miles) along the Camino de Santiago in Spain, a 1000-year-old pilgrimage route. We did it in Vibram Fivefinger shoes– basically barefoot– on gravel, dirt road, and pavement. 35 days is what it took to complete.
In case you’re wondering, walking 6-8 hours a day across gravel, pavement, and dirt roads for a month hurts– sometimes, it hurts a fucking lot.
Some people were on beaches for their vacations, but we started Day 1 with a 4,500 foot climb up the Pyrenees. Other days involved walking 20 miles in the cold, rain and mud. Yet others were on blistering plateaus with no shade for up to 6 hours at a time. A casual stroll, this was not.
Why would someone choose to do this? Maybe, like John F. Kennedy famously said, we want to do them “because they are hard.” Maybe we are trying to prove to ourselves that we can do it, or to have an amazing experience. We all have our reasons. Some are more insane than others.
There are also some paths that you can get off of. Others, you can’t. You’re midway through and you want to finish, at all cost. You’re hurt and cynical and part of you wants to quit, but the other part of you wants it more than ever.
Why are we doing these things, anyway? Is it for approval? Do you want to be famous? Do you think that if you just get a little bigger or do something cooler, everything will be great and everyone will love you? Then you’re going to get extremely disappointed by life.
Consider the simple finish line.
Chris and I were talking the other day about marathons. Finishing means excited fans throwing Gatorade on your head or whatever. They’re excited and they cheer you on and hand you protein bars. They give you a little medal. Maybe you stand on a pedestal or something. You feel briefly invincible.
Most finish lines are not like this at all. Not a single person is waiting there to cheer you to the end. No one will change their vision of who you are. No one will love you more– in fact, if they do, run away, because that’s probably not a great person.
Midway through our 800km trip, we had this realization. Doing hard things for the approval or love of others is stupid. No one can understand, much less relate, to these kinds of things.
Only those that do it have a way of understanding. We heard this from our fellow walkers who had done it before. You would get back, people would listen, but no one could truly get it. The more marginal the experience, the more normal this is.
To fight this, they say, you get together with those that have done the same. Only then can you relate. Other people just nod their heads and say “cool,” then move on to talking about the Royal Couple or something.
It’s like being in a time warp. You get back home and, for them, nothing happened.
At first, this is depressing. “I did this epic thing and no one really cares.” But it isn’t that they don’t care at all– it’s that there’s no way for them to understand the epicness of the experience. The experience is unique and spans a week, a month, a year, or whatever, and it can’t be distilled into one sentence. It’s like a joke. You had to be there.
You should be grateful for this.
We are in a mass media culture where everything is broadcast for everyone to see. Often, we actually advocate doing so– but there are other things we can’t relate to at all, that can never be presented in a mass media fashion.
This means there’s a chance the experience may be truly different.
But if no one can relate, what does that mean? Well, to others it means that it doesn’t matter whether you’ve done it at all. It also doesn’t matter to them if you succeed or not. They won’t think of you differently.
Basically, you should stop doing stuff to impress people.
There’s no point in doing anything except for the value of the experience itself.
I’ve seen the same with regards to accolades, such as the phrase New York Times bestseller being attached to your name. People nod, there’s sometimes a brief acknowledgement, and then nothing. It might advance your career or something, but not much else. It’s not like people will like you for it if you’re an asshole. On a personal level, it changes nothing.
Yet people continue to search for professional success, or epic experiences, in order to extinguish their crushing inferiority complexes. But this is stupid and it doesn’t work.
True respect doesn’t come from accolades, so don’t try to get it there. Try being awesome to each other instead. (I swear to God that should be a blog post. Maybe I’ll do it.)
Look, we don’t need any more drones. There is no need for yet another person with a useless degree or another miserable doctor or lawyer who’s in it for the money or the prestige. We don’t need any more people hedging their bets or being safe.
We don’t need followers. We need leaders who will bring us where we need to go. In other words…
I was hanging out with a couple from France yesterday who just moved to Montreal. They were seriously bewildered at how easy it is to change careers in Canada/America. In France, you don’t have that. when you choose what you’re going to study, that’s what you do for the rest of your life.
Imagine an 18 year old deciding for you, at your age, what you’re going to do. It’s insane. I’m about to turn 32, so let me tell you, I’d like to change my mind from time to time. But these French people can’t do that– their education defines their career path.
Some things cannot be reversed. If you’re lost in the woods, as I was one day last month (long story), there really is no choice. The only way out is to go through, and that’s a very bad thing. No exit strategy, no way to quit. You have to continue forward until you’re done. This is very depressing.
All of us are on quests in one form or another. Some can be quit, while others cannot.
If you’re on the path to something you’re pretty sure you don’t want to be doing, may I suggest you fucking stop immediately? Because you are wasting your life.
You will die, no one will care, or even know, about all the suffering you went through. The money you’ve accumulated will go to ungrateful descendants who never suffered and it’ll all have been for nothing.
So you have two options. Double down or get the fuck out.
Welcome to the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure section of the post!
Option 1. Due to my infinite wisdom, you have now gratefully decided you need to get the hell out of your current situation. You’ve decided it’s pointless and that you’re going to die anyway, so you might as well make a difference in this world or at least be happy on your current path.
Congratulations. It’s time to double down.
A personal anecdote here might help. I recently realized (more like “accepted”) that it is possible that I have “a voice.” People have been telling me this for a long time, but I never really took it seriously before. Now I accept it, and I’m happy about it. Naturally, it also means I have to work way the hell harder than I did before since I’ve decided it’s something I actually want to do. I’ve decided to double down. How?
Well, in order to practice painting, many artists copy Old Masters drawings to help them understand what these great painters did. (It’s actually quite common practice.) So, my first act of insanity is inspired by Hunter S. Thompson. As he once did once a long time ago, I will open up Moby Dick for the first time, go to the first page, and procede to copy the entire book word for word.
This, of course, is totally ridiculous, perhaps pointless or insane. I agree. But like a month of walking 800km, there is no way to understand the experience but to walk it. And I am willing to waste a month doing this, if that’s what it takes. Even if it’s pointless.
You will need a personal act of insanity. If you’re going to continue and become the best in the world, you must have one. You must prove yourself to the mountain with a sacrifice. And this is the time.
Choose now. Make the sacrifice. See what happens.
Option 2. Congratulations on quitting the useless shit in your life. As Seth Godin once said in The Dip, if you’re not going to be the best in the world, get the hell out. Glad we agree. It’s time to admit you are wrong and quit.
Most of the problem with cutting your ties lies in loss aversion, and nothing more. We have so much trouble because we think that if we break up our long-term relationship, or quit our shit job, we’ll never find anyone again. This is totally nuts, but we believe it anyway.
We’re afraid of never getting anywhere again.
We think we’re lucky, not smart.
We have a feeling that this is as good as it gets.
You know, one day I’m going to tell the story about this trek and I’m going to say it’s for fucking pussies. I’m going to say it’s the easiest thing in the world. I will be that strong, and I know this.
I think that’s the difference. That’s something you need to believe in order to quit and still have your self-esteem with you. You need to realize that it’s a quest, and that quitting the things that don’t matter will give you vision and a better sense of context.
But for now, it was hard. Really hard. There’s absolutely no way for me to explain that to people– and I’m fine with that.
The same should be true with you. Do epic shit. Quit the mundane. Do it for yourself, and let people be confused. Who cares.
Prove yourself to the world, and eventually, the rest will fall into place.
Filed by Julien at 8:02 am under direction, projects, taking action, travel
7 Comments
Ok, I have a confession to make.
I have spent almost my whole life– 31 years– caring far too much about offending people, worrying if I’m cool enough for them, or asking myself if they are judging me.
I can’t take it anymore. It’s stupid, and it’s not good for my well being. It has made me a punching bag– a flighty, nervous wuss. But worse than that, it has made me someone who doesn’t take a stand for anything. It has made me someone who stood in the middle, far too often, and not where I cared to stand, for fear of alienating others. No more. Not today.
Today, ladies and gentlemen, is different.
We’re going to talk about the cure. We’re going to talk about what’s necessary. We’re going to talk about the truth.
Do you wonder if someone is talking shit about you? Whether your friends will approve? Have you become conflict-avoidant? Spineless?
Well, it’s time you started not giving a fuck.
FACT NUMBER 1. People are judging you right now.
Yes, it’s really happening right at this moment. Some people don’t like you, and guess what? There’s nothing you can do about it. No amount of coercion, toadying, or pandering to their interests will help. In fact, the opposite is often true; the more you stand for something, the more they respect you, whether it’s grudgingly or not.
What people truly respect is when you draw the line and say “you will go no further.” They may not like this behaviour, but so what? These are people don’t like you anyway, why should you attempt to please people who don’t care for you in the first place?
Right. Then, there’s Internet trolls. That’s a whole other thing.
Regular people are fine– you don’t actually hear it when they’re talking behind your back. But on the web, you do see it, which changes the dynamic drastically. They have an impact because they know you have your vanity searches, etc. But the real problem with Internet haters is that they confirm your paranoid delusion that everyone out there secretly hates you.
Thankfully, that’s not actually true. So the first noble truth is that most people don’t even care that you’re alive. Embrace this, my friends, for it is true freedom. The world is vast and you are small, and therefore you may do as you wish and cast your thoughts of those who dislike it to the side.
FACT NUMBER 2. You don’t need everyone to like you.
This stuff is crazy, I know, but it’s cool, you’ll get used to it. Here’s the next thing: not only do most people not know that you exist, and some are judging you, but it totally does not matter even if they are.
How liberating this is may not even hit you yet, but it will. Check this out: when people don’t like you, nothing actually happens. The world does not end. You don’t feel them breathing down your neck. In fact, the more you ignore them and just go about your business, the better off you are.
You know when they say “the best revenge is a life well lived”? Well, this is true, but it isn’t the whole truth. A life well lived is great, yes, but it cannot happen while you are sweating about who your detractors are and what they think. What you have to do, what you have no choice but to do, is accept it and move on.
So not giving a fuck is actually a necessary precedent to create a good life for yourself. It can’t happen without it. That’s why you have to begin today.
FACT NUMBER 3. It’s your people that matter.
Ok, so you’ve adjusted to the fact that most people in the world are barely aware of your existence, and you’re also conscious of the fact that those who don’t like you are in the obscenely small minority and don’t actually matter. Awesome. Next you need to realize that the people who do care about you, and no one else, are those you need to focus on.
Relationships are weird. Once we’re in one (with family, a spouse, whatever), we promptly begin to take the other person for granted and move on to impressing strangers instead– say, our boss. Then, once we’ve impressed our boss, we start taking him for granted too, and so on, in an endless cycle of apathy. It’s like we always prefer to impress and charm the new than to work on what we already have.
But these people– your champions– they understand your quest or your cause. They make you feel good when you’re around them, make you laugh or make you feel like you can just be yourself. They make you feel relaxed or at ease. You’ve shared things with them. They’re important. Focus on them instead.
FACT NUMBER 4. Those who don’t give a fuck change the world. The rest do not.
So I’m reading this horrible book right now by Stephen King called the Long Walk. It’s a contest where people walk without sleeping or resting, and if they do stop, they are killed. (That’s actually every Stephen King book– “there’s a clown, but it kills!” “There’s a car, but it kills!” etc.)
I suspect this book is a metaphor for war, but it also captures perseverance very well. What it takes to move past anything is to simply realize that your obstacle is unimportant, and that it can be dismissed. This is true whether you’re running a marathon or trying to get to Mars.
If you dismiss the things that do not matter; if you remove those things from your mind and focus on what must be done; if you understand that your time is limited and decide to work now; only then will you be able to get to the finish line. Otherwise, you will be dissuaded into living a life you aren’t interested in.
Side note: You need to handle failure and obscurity better. You may be in a tough place right now where you feel lonely or like a loser. No worries, we’ve all been there. But it’s time for you to realize how common these things are, and that they’re experienced by even the most successful and happiest people in the world. Those people get past them, and you will too.
You want to know something? This actually has nothing to do with anyone else. It has everything to do with you.
I had a discussion with Jonathan Fields the other week that was about the use of swearing (and “true voice”) on blogs. I watched him on a Skype video as we did this, and I could actually pinpoint the moment where he was about to say “fuck” but almost stopped himself. It was amazing. So I called him out on it. “You felt it just now, didn’t you?”
Everyone has an internetal eye. It always watching. It has been slowly constructed by society at large and by your friends and family, and it checks you for unacceptable behaviour. If you have had it around for long enough, you actually start to believe that the eye is you, and that you’re “being reasonable” or some other rationalization.
But the eye isn’t you at all. It is a prison, and you have justified its existence by obeying it. It’s strong because you let it be strong.
But the secret, the part that’s amazing, is that it can’t do anything to stop you, even if it wanted to. It’s an eye. It can only watch. The rest of you is free to act as you wish.
STEP 1. Do things that you consider embarrassing.
My girlfriend and I have been breaking in Vibram Fivefingers in preparation for the massive walk we are doing. Have you ever seen these shoes? They’re amazing for you knees and give you no blisters, but they are the ugliest thing imaginable. Yesterday, I wore them with a sweet bowtie I put on for Easter. I looked like a crazy person.
As I said at the beginning of this post, I am deeply aware and can become quite upset by people’s judgment– I think a lot of people are, but don’t admit it. But as I walked by people in my techno-clown outfit, not a single person looked at me. Nobody cared, and it slowly dawned on me that even if people did look at me weird, they just walked by. Later, they would forget about me entirely.
You must try this. Find your internal filters and break them, one at a time. Notice how society, like an ocean, smoothes over the waves you make, until what you do gets eliminated, or becomes the status quo. Work with this.
STEP 2. Accept, or deal with, awkwardness.
It’s widely known that interviewers get their best material by being quiet and allowing silence to force words out of a politician or celebrity.
You may be uncomfortable with silence. I know I still am. But I have been working on it and have to say that it is a much more serene state to be in than trying to cover it up with random babbling just to fill up the air. This is one type of awkwardness, a kind that you should feel comfortable about and learn to live with.
Another kind of social awkwardness is this in-between space where you might have done something wrong or been wronged, but don’t say anything. I’ve been given a few harsh lessons in my time and come away realizing that the freedom that comes from talking about an uncomfortable truth is better than the comfort of avoiding that talk altogether.
Someone told me recently that the Clintons’ method for earning respect in politics is this: if someone pushes you, push back twice as hard. This is much better than awkwardness. It’s clear, it’s not passive aggressive, and you know where you stand. Start doing this immediately.
STEP 3. Refuse boundaries.
The video above was taken in 1970, right when the Front de Libération du Québec had killed Premier Pierre Laporte and put his body in the trunk of a car. Trudeau’s “Just watch me” is one of the most famous phrases in Canadian political history. The journalists are trying to trap him into choosing on-camera between a safety/police-state and civil liberties/freedom but Trudeau refuses their boxes.
The Liberal Party of Canada no longer has any balls, but for us, there’s still hope. Walk where you want to walk. Don’t accept false choices. Don’t let people dictate how you should live your life. Definitely don’t listen to the eye.
STEP 4. Tell the truth.
You don’t need to be an asshole, but the world does not need another conflict-avoidant, evasive person. No one wants another individual who steps in line with everyone else. The status quo is doing fine without you, so it’s up to you to call bullshit if you see it.
Don’t mind-read either. Telling the truth means seeing the truth, not adding your own layer of sugar coating or suspected emotion on top of it.
STEP 5. Begin your new life.
This step can’t happen without the others, but once you’ve gotten here, you can safely begin to explore a whole new world– one where anything you do is fine as long as it isn’t seriously hurting anyone else. Wanna explore old abandoned buildings? No problem, as long as you’re ready to live with the consequences. Feel like hanging from hooks or get whipped by a dominatrix? Go ahead, but be safe about it.
Once you begin on this path, you start to discover that practically everyone is capable of understanding the weird things that you do. In fact, it makes you interesting and worth paying attention to, further feeding into your plans of world domination, should you have any.
But none of this fun can happen without you recognizing, and walking past, the eye. Doing this is a powerful act of control which builds momentum and makes you strong.
Take back your self respect. Do it today– try it right now. Wear something ugly. Do something stupid. Tell someone the truth.
It doesn’t fucking matter.
Filed by Julien at 3:04 pm under guide, tips
286 Comments
Life is a series of decisions, one after another. When put together, they make you who you are.
Each decision is a bet. Some are made consciously; others not. Each bet you win shows you what you’re capable of, and what your next bet should be. As you win more bets, you get more ambitious. This is a good thing.
Here is an ambitious bet I just made that I think will interest you: in May, for 30 days, I will be quitting the internet.
Instead, during this time, I will be walking an 800 kilometer, thousand-year-old pilgrimage route in Spain– one that many people have walked or dreamed to, from Paulo Coelho to American President John Adams.
It’s something we’ve been planning for almost six months. It’s pretty cool to be on the cusp of a big trip like this.
But this post isn’t about my personal quest. It’s about yours.
Do you have something to quit the internet for?
Our brains are not wired to be made happy by the internet. Our emotions, like fear and joy, are based in a primal understanding of the world. This is something we can’t escape.
Saying the web is important to your life is like saying that television is important. It might be social, sure, but it’s still media. It can help connect but it also divides in a very fundamental way.
Touching a screen isn’t the same as touching a person.
The best stuff happens outside the web. Outside is new and frightening, not comfortable. Encountering pain helps transform your vision of yourself and forces you to grow.
And there is very little that is new and frightening on the web. The biggest realizations happen when you are in free-fall, not when you have a safety net.
Happiness is not related to Twitter feeds, blog posts, or even books– although books do get closer. What happiness is connected with is unique human experience, often untranslatable into any other medium. Much like Jacques Derrida’s ash or Zen, the quiet and the sacred have no way of speaking for themselves other than personal experience.
So, personal experience is what we must seek out. It’s personal and rare, so unlike what’s easily accessible (the web), it’s valuable.
But your life needs one. Your existence needs a purpose. For now, I have one. It helps me think about the future and will give me time to think and consider what’s important.
You should have a quest for the same reason. You should feel like you’re a part of something bigger, and that you’re going somewhere. You should feel like you have challenges to overcome, things that might even feel insurmountable.
It may interest you to do something like what I’m doing– or you may find it boring. You may have some inkling of what your quest should be, or you might have no idea. It might be crazy and amazing to others, or it might be entirely mundane to them. No matter, because it’s your quest, not theirs.
It doesn’t need to impress anyone but you.
Sarah Marquis has walked over 30,000 kilometers in the past 20 years. As we speak she is walking from Siberia to Australia.
Paul Nicklen goes to the coldest, most miserable parts of the world to photograph and document the animals that live there.
Brett Rogers makes documentaries about rivers by traveling down them in non-motorized craft.
Shea Hembley leaves drawings in nature for people to find, like secret messages.
The examples above are just from TED conferences I’ve attended this year, they weren’t hard to find or anything.
But isn’t it interesting how the examples I mentioned all came from people going to tough natural environments? If you’ve been here a while, you probably already know this about me. I love nature, earthworks and endurance. It’s all right up my alley.
You probably have stuff that’s similar. Do you remember what it is? Often, ideas like these are so buried that you have no idea what you actually care about anymore. Or, you do remember, but don’t realize how long it’s been since you thought about it.
So how do you find something you care about so much you’re willing to take a break from your regular life? In the end, that’s what this is about– finding something that’s so great, you want to take a break from your regular life to do it. Work, the web, your neighbourhood, whatever it is, if you feel like you’d love it more (or as much), you’re on the right track.
You can do this by performing certain exercises– removing boundaries like money, dependents, or the amount of possessions you have. Some people say you should write ideas down until you cry.
But this isn’t about finding your one great idea. It’s only about taking one single step forward, which is much easier.
Quests in movies always go the same way. The hero is seeking enlightenment, or vengeance, or peace. He has to find someone to teach him. He seeks out this person on the top of a mountain or desert– that is to say, a hard place to find. This is a metaphor for how we find clarity and learn new things. It’s hard.
I’ve talked about this before, but it’s worth mentioning again. The stories in our lives inspire us because they are foundational to who we are. And we learn from them what steps we should take in own quests, and where we should go next from where we are.
Joseph Campbell listed a these steps in the Hero’s Journey. Have you ever seen them?
Where are you in here? Do you recognize yourself? Most people get stuck around number 3. Some are later, but not many. Are you one of them? If so, why are you refusing?
Are you stuck at number 7? This is your darkest hour, when you feel that you should give up and quit. It’s another major departure point from the quest, but in order to complete it, you have to go forward. It’s also what Seth Godin calls The Dip, but it’s universal. Have you been tested? Did you succeed?
Some people are at number 1 and have never considered anything outside the corridor they have lived in. Do you know any of them? Well, here’s a secret– most people who seem this way are in fact not here at all. Almost everyone is actually on a quest; they’ve just refused it, or have forgotten it. A temporary sidetrack.
I just got a deck of Pattern Seeker trading cards in the mail from the amazing Imaginary Foundation. On the cover is this message:
Oops, it’s backwards. Ha, the message actually works better that way.
Look, your life has patterns, or corridors, that you need to know in order to become better. You feel pain when you leave the corridor because it is the unknown. In fact, pain might even be a signal that you are on the right track. But in order to see, you need to know what your patterns are– both good and bad.
If you have nothing better to do than spend time on Facebook or hang out at the old bar, your life may need some serious adjustment. If you don’t care about what you’re doing from day to day, or if every day seems like the last, then your whole life will be like this. You have refused the quest. You are done.
With growth and flexibility comes life; with rigidity comes death. This is a truth that expands to all living things. Your body knows this, so you should too.
The easy is not worth doing; only the hard is. It is your exposure to the new should become the norm, and your return to the old should be comfortable, but brief.
Seth Godin recently told me by email that the most important time in any project is the point at which you decide, unequivocally, that it will ship. Before that, it’s just an idea you toy around with.
Think of a relationship. Things are beautiful and perfect when they are new or aren’t real yet– but that’s precisely because they don’t exist. Once they become real, they get messy. That’s what happens when something goes from the imagination to actual existence.
Ideas, in fact, aren’t worth much. Everyone has them, even geniuses, but only those who deliver have an impact, and only those who know themselves are able to deliver.
Act as if you are stupid. Read in order to learn something, then act as if you’re stupid again and read more to make see if you’re right. Then go out into the world. Assume you will fail, but accept it, because it will make you less stupid.
Think this paragraph is funny? Well, it is, but it’s also true. What we know is vastly dwarfed by what we do not, but we act as if the patterns we recognize are all that life is or can be. This is wrong– this is actual stupidity.
If you want to be smart, you have to begin by being stupid. The hard part is staying that way.
A few months ago, a friend pointed me to this essay from Julian Assange’s old website. I remember thinking a lot about it. He had a quest, and in a way, it doesn’t matter what it was. It only mattered that, when he really looked at himself, he was doing what he thought was best for the world.
Good for the world, but not the way that people think Reaganomics is good for the world. The way that children think it.
Because, if you have a quest, then all of the suffering makes much more sense.
If you have a goal, then a lot of the actions you need to take become much clearer.
Even if your goal isn’t perfect, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s better– even 5% better.
You feel like you are a part of something. You feel like you will come back and be transfigured, and that people will see you differently.
But in fact, you will be more yourself than you ever were.
This is my 1000th post on this blog. I’m pretty proud of it.
I remember when I started in 2003, I didn’t think I was a writer at all. I did podcasts because I considered myself a verbal person. Well, I’ve changed.
When I began, I wrote bullshit, self-interested posts that were based on people thinking that my life and myself were interesting. On my show, I played a bunch of hip-hop music. It turned out that what people wanted to hear were my opinions. So I talked more.
The result, I guess, is where I am now.
This blog is now about growth. I’ve said I’d like to be unrecognizable in five years. I’d also like the same for you.
So I’d like you to subscribe. Why? Because quests are important. Top 10 and Twitter posts are not, but they are loud, so they seem that way. Often, the stuff that’s important is quiet. It isn’t obvious.
Your quest is quiet but important. So is mine. Hopefully, we’ll learn something, chat about it, and help each other along.
Thanks.
Filed by Julien at 9:42 am under direction, projects, risk
99 Comments
Human beings are strong pattern machines. Like any machine, we sometimes need updating and fixing.
I picked up the phrase thought code from a reddit post I read last week. It’s a perfect analogy for how we work. Our brains find patterns. We develop habits easily and break them with only a great deal of effort. This can leave even the stupidest habits ingrained in us far too long. If we don’t debug our internal code, we’ll never change.
Everyone has stupid pieces of code they need to get rid of, but we don’t always know how. This means a ton of wasted time and resources when we could be doing things simply.
In other words, we need to debug our own code– our own thought processes and habits.
Personally, one of my most pointless patterns is that when I save any document, I Cmd-Tab into Firefox so quickly it makes my head spin. It happens without me thinking. Next thing I know, I’m reading news, Twitter, or otherwise wasting my time instead of working.
This simple patterns causes an easy half-hour of slacking and distraction per day.
How do I debug this, or any, program? Easy– I break it. If I cause an error to occur, make the inefficiency evident and startle myself into awareness of it.
I can do this by closing all other programs (so I can’t Cmd-Tab into anything at all), or by shutting off my web connection (with Freedom). This makes me notice what I’m doing and laugh at myself a bit. After many broken patterns like this, the awareness of it becomes stronger, and the habit vanishes.
Another piece of stupid code is my avoidance of certain things on my todo list, such as emails I need to send. I break this, once again, by getting verbose with myself– in other words, literal. I ask myself, out loud, what are you afraid of? This jolts me into realizing that there’s nothing to worry about, which frees me to get it done.
The key to success and efficiency in any program, including your own, is recognizing inefficiencies and fixing them. I believe the first, and most important, step in this is awareness of your own mistakes.
The second– the easy part– is coming up with something that’s slightly better. Iterate this process, and the incremental improvement will keep you moving, progressing, and maybe even happy. But none of that happens without seeing what you are doing.
Filed by Julien at 9:24 am under systems
27 Comments
