Month: April 2017

Kevin Garnett was famous for blocking meaningless shots after the whistle. He never wanted the opponent to see the ball go in. He wanted a dramatic reminder of who owned the rim. 

According to the scoreboard, those blocks (or goaltends) didn’t matter. But they mattered to Garnett. And they set a tone for the team. We’re not here to screw around. We’re here to dominate you. 

Tonight’s blog post is like a Garnett post-whistle block. Even though it doesn’t really matter, it matters. I blog every day. Big moment or not. Playoffs or not. 20 point beat-down or not. Whistle or not. 

Resistance won’t get a clean look. Not in my house. Every shot matters. Even those that don’t.

A good friend sent me a YouTube link yesterday to a fascinating classroom lecture about games and meaning.  I listened to it on my walk, and it was painfully obvious: podcasts are better than classes.

This professor possessed tons of interesting information about the topic.  But he rambled for nearly two hours and the good stuff was buried in bunny trails and non-linear hodge-podgery.  It was really awful in terms of structure and efficiency of information.

But that’s exactly what you’d expect.  Professors bulk up on tons of ideas for years, then are given a few hours a few days a week to say anything they want to a bunch of students who may or may not pay attention anyway.  It’s a recipe for horribly presented information.

There is a massive difference between knowing interesting information and knowing how to structure information interestingly.

Even a decent podcaster knows how to structure information interestingly.  It’s what a good conversation does naturally.  A host can work with time constraints, a desire to get specific questions answered, order the information in a logical or chronological manner, and set it in a meaningful context.

I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts where professors or other possessors of information are interviewed by those who know how to constrain and present that information.  The results are almost always better than an unconstrained lecture.  A podcast interview is more likely to get to the heart of the idea faster and better.  It forces the presenter to get outside their own head and present in a way that matters to others.

I’ve also listened to tons of lectures in my life.  Most awful.  Some good.  A few great.  The good and great ones are those that have tight constraints, and typically have been presented hundreds of times, and gotten lots of active feedback so the speaker has it dialed in.

Put a smart person in a room with no constraints and tell them to talk and the results will be most sleepy college courses.  Pair them with a person who can structure information well, and the result will be much better.

This is not an anti-intellectual observation.  The opposite.  The anti-intellectual position – the one that doesn’t value big ideas nearly enough – is the one that advocates just letting the possessor of those ideas blab about them unconstrained whether anyone’s gaining from it or not.  Ideas are too valuable to be confined to lectures with minimal structure, efficiency, or feedback.

I’m bullish on podcasts for this reason.  A lot of people think the podcast market is saturated, but compared to books and lectures, it’s just getting started.  I welcome growth in the format.  It’s good for ideas.

(The best way to get your questions answered is to host a podcast.  It’s easy to get started.)

Carrot and stick.

If you show some momentum and forward tilt, some people will want to control you.  They’re not always conscious of their controlling efforts.  They’re usually people older than you, and more advanced, but people who have already peaked while your potential trajectory will surpass them over time.

How will they try to control you?

Method #1: “You Suck”

People will try to control you through fear.  They’ll berate you, warn you ‘for your own good’ that you’re doing something wrong, or dangerous.  They’ll tell you the pitfalls and dangers.  They’ll try to intimidate and crush you with anger.  They’ll try to get you to change direction at their threat, or at least apologize.  The minute you do, they have hooks in you and they get off on it.

Method #2: “I Can Do Big Things for You”

Other people will entice you with flattery then appeal to vague notions of powerful connections they can deploy on your behalf, if only you play your cards right (a.k.a. be controllable).  The minute their name-dropping or financial braggadocio makes your eyes widen, they’ve got hooks in you.

The Bizarre Hybrid: “You Are An Idiot…I Want to Invest In You”

This one is especially odd.  One minute, this person is dressing you down, hoping you cave and pander to them.  When you don’t, they’re reeling.  They aren’t able to control you with fear so they search for new footing and attempt a different power position with flattery.  “You need to get your shit together!”, they say.  You say, “Thanks for the input.”  They pause, then respond, “Hey, despite that you’re pretty bright.  I might be able to help you.”

Nope.

A lot of great people can give good critical feedback.  A lot of great people can offer resources and connections.  But when they come on strong and uninvited, hoping you’ll dance to their tune – be it fear or flattery – politely decline the dance.  You don’t need them.

And if you ever encounter the control two-step that goes from harsh critique to generous offer in the same conversation, run.

The most valuable conversations are with people who know some about what I do, but aren’t experts.

Every step of the way with Praxis, I call my brother Levi when I hit a bump in the road.  He knows me, he knows business, and he knows the general idea of Praxis.  But he’s not an expert on apprenticeships, marketing to young people, building a curriculum, coaching, or really any of the components of our industry and activities.

Still, I get the best advice from him.  It’s because he asks good questions.  The right questions.  The ones that matter.

Domain expertise and technical problems are fairly easy to solve.  There are people and resources to solve them.  The real value comes when what you think is a technical problem turns out to be a philosophical one.  A problem of vision, business model, talent, market, or management style.

A person with domain expertise will help you solve your technical problem.  Sometimes that only makes the root problems worse.

A person without domain expertise, but with genuine interest in you and your project, will ask good, penetrating questions.  Why do you want to do this?  Who does it help?  How does it help them?  How much does it cost?  Compared to what?  When will you do it?  Is it what you want to be doing most?  Is it the most pressing problem?  Does it line up with your core vision?  What is your vision?  Does it need to change?  What’s the elevator pitch?

Damn.

Those questions kick your ass.  They force you to clarify your thoughts and feelings.  They strain knowledge and direction from a semi-conscious soup and ladle it into obvious, actionable buckets.

The questions themselves tease out the answers you sought, or reveal you were asking the wrong question altogether.

Years ago, I knew a guy people came to for advice and counsel.  I’m not really sure why people came to him, because his advice was always the same.  “Be happy!  Smile!”

He said it sincerely, he meant it, and he lived it.  He was always happy.  But I didn’t want his life.  It didn’t appeal to me at all.

I once heard an interview with Kobe Bryant where the reporter asked, “You’ve achieved all of these things, but are you happy?”  It was a trap.  She was ready to reveal the ugly side of success.  Kobe doesn’t fall into traps, he sets them.  He responded earnestly without missing a beat, “I don’t believe in happiness.”

That inspired me.

Kobe played angry.  Jordan played angry.  Their fire didn’t come from happiness.  That doesn’t mean it has to come from unhappiness or bitterness.  But it’s not happy.

I’m an optimist, part natural, part learned.  I’m also what most people would consider a happy person.  I have fun, smile, and laugh easily and often.  But I’ve discovered that I don’t value happiness.  It may or may not be a part of my day, that’s not really important to me.  I’m pursuing greatness.  Growth.  Progress.  Relentlessness.  Fulfillment.  Happiness doesn’t do much for these.  In fact, it’s often a threat to them.  The pursuit of greatness is more likely derailed by a warm blanket than an epic battle.

Happiness is a social phenomenon more than an internal one.  It’s about pleasant alignment with the external world.  But change comes from dissatisfaction with the external world.  I like the combination of optimism and discontentment.

It’s felt good to free myself from the standard of happiness as perceived by the world – the thing the reporter was trying to make Kobe feel bad for lacking.  I’ll forgo the bargain with society to take the edge off my efforts and get some smiles in return.

I want drive.  Happiness is overrated.

You need to learn not to accept questions as worth answering.  Instead, answer what you want to be asked.

TK Coleman conveyed this idea in an episode of the podcast series Deschool Yourself.  I love it.  The way I summarized it sounds a little crude or narcissistic, but that’s not what TK meant.

The discussion was about conversational conventions that lead us to define ourselves and others by our station on some boring coerced conveyor belt.  Age, rank, grade, major, etc.  Even after compulsory schooling ends, it’s easy to slip into a work/identity trap.

I harp on finding ways to ask better questions of others – questions that get into story, not status.

But TK took it a step further.  When someone asks you, “How was work?”, or, “So where are you going to school?”, don’t do what a schooled mind is trained to do.  A schooled mind is trained to accept all questions as legitimate.  Answer them, or get downgraded.  But most questions aren’t valuable or interesting.  Don’t waste time on those that aren’t.

Instead, own the conversation.  Don’t let yourself slip back into the school/work/identity trap by lazily answering robotic status questions.  TK suggested something like, “Work is great, but that’s not as interesting to me right now as what I keep hearing about this movie I’m going to see.”

There are endless options to turn a conveyor belt conversation into something fun and productive.  Ask yourself, “What do I really want to talk about?  What would I like to know about this person, or want them to know about me that can’t be found on LinkedIn?”

It doesn’t mean there’s no place for small talk, or quick give-’em-what-they-want-so-you-can-move-ons.  And until you’ve extracted your identity from external signals, changing the conversation won’t matter anyway.

But if you’ve worked to define yourself by something better than a bullet-point, the next step is to not let others drag you back into the pigeonhole with common conversation.  Own it, and make it fun.

I love playing LEGO with my kids.  Just like when I was a kid, I’ve gotta paw through giant bins of pieces, sifting and scanning to find what I need.

Today it was airplane parts.  I realized something I’ve been tacitly aware of all my years of playing LEGO.  When I’m looking for more than one piece, I find nothing.  When I focus on one specific item, I end up also finding other things I need, or noticing things I didn’t know I needed.

This is the same reason I try to relax young people when they worry about the first job they take, and whether getting good at, say, sales, will somehow prevent them from doing other things later.  It won’t.  In fact, getting deeply good at almost anything probably increases the odds you can get good at other things.  It’s for the same reason you can’t find anything when you try to find four pieces at once, but you find several when you focus on one.

It’s the act of focused, deep LEGO searching that leads to discoveries.  Picking a single piece hones your eyes and mind.  You become good at finding pieces in general by trying with all your might to find a specific piece.

The act of mastering a single type of work teaches you how to master things more than it teaches you the thing you master.  Diving deep into focused acquisition and practice of a new skill is highly transferable to other skills.  Getting lost in something is often the best way to find other things.

Conversely, just like shallow brain overload prevents fruitful digging when you search for several pieces at once, shallow skill and interest overload can prevent you from meaningful self-discovery and confidence/knowledge/network/experience building in your life and career.

Don’t be afraid to narrow your focus.  You’ll find the immediate thing you’re looking for faster, become better at finding things in general, and probably stumble upon interesting opportunities in unknown shapes along the way.

*An obvious exception is if you’re doing something you truly hate that sucks your soul.  Don’t master that.  Quit.  Another exception might be if what you’re doing is of unclear value but has an extremely high opportunity and exit cost.  Think law or medical school.  Then you might want to try low-cost dabbling before you go all-in.

I love doing this podcast.  One of my favorite weekly activities is plugging in the mic and riffing on an idea for five to ten minutes.

Today we released five episodes of Forward Tilt instead of the usual one.  This will give you a nice backlog to catch up on during your morning commute or daily walk.

Enjoy!

They mean well.  They spot momentum and they can’t resist.  They are full of possible “synergies”, but short on concrete proposals.  They love coffee.

I shared something about EV’s with Praxis participants and alumni yesterday:

As you begin to build momentum and get noticed as someone who’s going places, you will begin to attract energy vampires.

EV’s are well meaning people who cannot resist latching on to a rising rocket. You’ll be flattered by their attention and compliments, and you’ll get excited about the vague but interesting possibilities they reference. Maybe they know people that can get you that thing? Maybe THIS is the big break!

There is no big break. The big break mentality is a killer. There’s a constant Getting of Shit Done, and a ceaseless building of social capital.

I’m reading The Magic of Thinking Big right now.  It’s my current ‘Sit up straight’ book.  I’m also reading a few others concurrently, more abstract stuff like Notes on the Synthesis of Form, and about to start a Bill Bryson book called At Home.

This is my typical pattern, to read a handful of books at once, and I’ve found it always helps if one of those is a ‘Sit up straight’ book.  SUS books are those packed with practical wisdom and inspiration.  The kind that you can’t read while slouching or you’ll be in contrast to the ideas in the book.  I can’t read a lot of these books, and I don’t read more than a few pages at a time, but interspersing other readings with some SUS is a great way to keep me from getting pulled too deep down the thought hole.

It’s no exaggeration to say taking on the challenge issued by TK Coleman to blog every day led directly to the creation and launch of Praxis.

I had a great job, lived in a great place, found my work meaningful and largely autonomous, and had already surpassed any notion I’d had about what success looked like.  But I was restless.  I told TK something must be wrong with me.  I have a great life but I’m itching more than ever for something I can’t define.

He told me it was obvious.  I needed to create.

Not when the time is right or in the future or when some grand idea for an epic novel comes along or when my guitar skills were sufficient to write great music.  Now.  Not just now.  Every single day.

He’d been blogging daily for almost a year at that point and I’d seen the amazing transformation.  His skill, confidence, curiosity, and communication had exploded.  If he could do it, why couldn’t I?

So I did.

Only a few months in to blogging every single day seven days a week and my life changed dramatically.  Not from the outside, but from within.  I was shifting and moving and bubbling; like molten power beneath the crust, something was beginning to stir.  An eruption was imminent.

The idea for Praxis hit me, and a thousand smaller ideas and experiences instantly connected.  I saw things I had totally missed before – they were right in front of my face!  Why?  Because daily blogging forced me to see better.  I had to pull ideas from the foggy depths and clarify them.  I had to see connections just to have enough content to crank out a post every morning.  I turned creating into a discipline.  And I couldn’t shut it off.

Not only the idea – I’d had ideas before – but the ability to execute on it came directly from daily blogging.  Never before had I been so aware of my own ability to succeed at something when the odds were against me.  Never had I felt the power of sheer will to make progress.  I knew how to ship.  Every day.  That confidence and experience was crucial.

Small acts of uninspired creation every single day are more likely to bring about big acts of inspired creation than sitting and waiting for the latter.

This is not a judgement, it’s just a fact.

A degree is information.  Information is an incredibly valuable resource in the market.  But in the case of the college degree, far better information is available for far less time and money.

The information contained in a degree is flabby and ridiculous

Let’s get concrete.  Say you want to work for James Altucher.  Two candidates apply.  Candidate one sends a resume that says, “Marketing Major at Least Common Denominator University”.

Candidate two sends examples of copy from three email drip campaigns they created, results of their Shopify store, and the CPC they got on a Facebook ad set.

Which one provided better information about the value they can create for James?

Let’s go deeper

Better yet, consider applicant three.  She sent Mr. Choose Yourself an email describing how she made $100 one week in Amazon affiliate fees by doing a podcast episode about James’ book, a lengthy Amazon review also posted to her blog with an opt-in, and an email newsletter about it.  She also noticed he had a 2D image of one of his books on his website, so she sent him a 3D rendering of it he could use for free.  She ended by saying she hopes her book promotion and the image are useful to him, and if he wants more where this came from, let her know.

That’s some damn good information.  She didn’t just tell him her status like candidate one.  She didn’t even stop at demonstrating her value like candidate two.  She actually created value specifically for him.

Both candidates two and three sent information ten times more valuable than a degree, without spending five years and six figures sitting in classrooms learning how not to create value.  What they did is easy and accessible to all.  It takes a little courage, hard work, experimentation, creativity, and persistence.  It doesn’t take any kind of privilege, a trust fund, a GPA, or any other dumb external paper prestige.

“But most companies list degrees as requirements!”

Information, my dear, is costly and imperfect.  Companies are imperfect too.

Employers use degrees because they’ve seen a correlation (not causation) between degree holders and minimum threshold of employability over non-degree holders, on average.  Not because college does something to make people better at their work.  Employers know it does nothing of the sort.  They have gobs of info to sort through, and they look for quick easy ways to trim down pools of applicants.  It’s illegal to use IQ and other measures, so they put together a bag of info that they think is a decent approximation.  A degree is one data point in that bag.

They use it in the absence of something better.  But if you have something better, it trumps the degree immediately.  Companies (especially HR departments) aren’t always super creative.  Sometimes you have to be to open their eyes.  Can you provide information that signals your value better than a degree?

I hope so.  Because even if you have one, you won’t get a job because of it.  You’ll get the job based on other things that are more valuable.  Which leads to the question, why get the degree at all?  Once you have those first few awesome jobs on your resume, no one asks about your high school GPA.  Similarly, once you have those first few awesome projects or experiences, no one cares about your degree.  You’re better off skipping it altogether to build the valuable stuff sooner and save some serious dough.

Companies don’t require degrees, they require information.  With a little creativity and hustle, you can provide better info in better ways.  Oh, and as a general rule, the more interesting the company, the less they care about degrees.

If a college degree is the most interesting thing about you, you’re boring

Truly.  Look around the average college classroom.  I’ll give you a minute to wait for a few students to pull their hungover heads up from their desks…

Take it in.  Now remember, what you’re buying is a piece of paper that says, “I’m probably no worse than these people.”  Pretty thin calling card.

A lot of students agree with this, and say stuff like, “College sucks and the degree won’t get me a job, but I’m making it valuable by working and networking on my own and doing a bunch of side projects.”  That’s great, and necessary.  But then why are you still paying tuition?  It’s only slowing you from the valuable stuff and instilling bad habits that actually make you less valuable in the real world. (Why do you think professors are so scared of free-markets?)

Get busy building a track record of skills and experiences that make your degree status the least interesting thing about you.

College is a better value for dumb, lazy people

I told you already, I’m not passing judgement, I’m stating facts.  This one is just economics.

Some edumacation types agree that college is over-hyped.  But they say it’s got too many dumb, lazy people, and only the bright, ambitious ones should attend.  From a cost-benefit standpoint, they have it precisely backwards.

Smart, hard-working people can quickly and easily create a more powerful signal than a college degree to demonstrate their value in the marketplace.  Remember, the degree screams, “I’m about the same as other degree holders.”  If you’re better, you need better information than a degree to show it.

But for those without a lot of gumption or sense, a degree is a less-bad investment.  Sure, they too can probably find better, cheaper ways to tell the world they’re “meh”, but a degree at least upsells them.  If you are below average, a piece of paper that tells the world you’re probably average is an upgrade.  You’ve met people like this.  HR managers realized too late that their degree was the most impressive thing about them.  Oops.

Bottom line, if you’re sharp and have half an ounce of hustle, a degree is a bad investment compared to your other options.  But if you’re so lazy and uncreative that you’re incapable of building a better signal, buying the “I’m average” paper actually raises your perceived value.

You’d better hope that’s not you, or you’re gonna have a bad time, degree or not.

“But I waited and worked my whole life for this!”

(Well, my parents did anyway.)

I’m sorry to be the bearer of such good news, but whether you (or your parents) like it, a college degree isn’t that impressive.

I know, this is very hard to hear for parents who made every sacrifice for their kid to go to college.  Maybe they couldn’t afford to, so they committed to busting hump so someday their own children could.  For them, college is the apex of parenting success.  I’ve heard parents praise their loser, live-in, jobless-but-degreed kid while bashing their business-owning, happy, successful dropout kid.  They became so focused on college as the shorthand for happiness that they don’t even hear when you say it’s crushing your soul, or that you’d do better without it.

I admire parents’ drive for their kids well-being.  I get the pressure for prestige.  I’m not judging.  But factually, it won’t do much for them.

I’m not talking about the future, I’m talking about right now

This isn’t some far-flung, soon-to-be, if the AI and the internets and the drones and the 3D printers do the exponential thing prediction.  This is today.  It’s already here.  College is dead (here I am saying it on a TED talk-like stage, so you know it must be true).

People think the past informs us about the present, but the future is a better source.  The day the automobile became commercially viable, the buggy whip industry died.  It wasn’t going to die, it was already dead.  Most people just didn’t know it for a while.

The underlying value of the college product (the information signaled by a degree) has been supplanted by something  better, available now to any who want it.  The entire business model of college is screwed.  Any old non-sheepskin holder can now demonstrate their ability, prove their value, vouch for themselves, and create opportunities.  Hard times for the Ivory Tower.

The coolest part is that the something better that’s supplanted the degree isn’t locked behind any door.  The something better is you.  You are your own credential.  Your knowledge, network, skill, experience, confidence, and ability to show how they can help others are your calling card.

This is an important point.  It’s not some trendy new college or online degree.  It’s a new mindset, put into action by you, leaving behind a digital footprint that speaks louder than any piece of stamped paper.

Look, I’m telling you this as a friend. My college degree is worthless too.  Are you going to mope about it, or are you going to go build something better?

Hold up!  A few objections…

“You said it’s me, not some new program, but didn’t you start a program?”

Yep.  My company Praxis is not selling our credential, but helping you, if you’re ready, to dominate the world where you don’t buy a credential, you are the credential.  We’re awakening the world to the possibilities that exist today, helping you deschool your mind, build a valuable signal, and apprentice at awesome companies to get your hands dirty now, not after passing some test.

“Wait a minute, are you trying to sell me something?”

Damn right!  I’m openly selling you this idea and mindset, and I’m letting you know if you agree and think Praxis could help you take advantage of it, check us out.  If I’m right and we’re useful to you, we’ll make a profit.  If I’m wrong and we create no value, we won’t.  Or heck, just follow the Praxis blog for free and get busy adopting the mindset.

(Professors are the ones who commonly lob the above objection.  Because, you know, they don’t make any money off of the dominant narrative that college is above cost-benefit examination and everyone must go…)

“But the value of the college experience is intangible!”

So.  This is a post about degrees.  I met my wife on a campus, but guess what?  After I flirtily said “Hi”, she didn’t ask, “Are you current on tuition payments?”.  You can have every single element of the college experience – including sitting in classrooms – without registering or paying a dime in tuition.  No one does, because they’re there for the paper, not the “intangibles”.  You want the parties?  Move to a college town.  You want a cool career?  Do some real work.

A friend of mine tweeted that “Mindfulness” and “Emotional intelligence” are meaningless buzzwords.

I liked (hearted?) the tweet, because I dig the fight against fluffy feel-goodisms run rampant, and I appreciate his playful annoyance.  I’m irked by overuse and broad-to-the-point-of-meaningless application of these words too – and several others (“Hack.””Flow.” Barf).

Of course I’ve probably used all of them.  I’ve certainly written and talked about the concepts behind them.

That’s the trouble with buzzwords.  You need words to define concepts.  If you pick a good one, it catches and spreads, often to the point of absurdity.  It become a buzzword.  Or in your search to wordify an idea you can find nothing better than an existing buzzword.  Avoiding it would be ridiculous and complicated.  Communication is best when direct.

I play both sides.  I mock buzzwords and I use them.  I don’t get bent out of shape at linguistic use and abuse because I love words too much to spend my time caging them or attacking overusers.

Don’t take your buzzwords so seriously.  Poke fun.  But don’t take disdain for buzzwords seriously either.  Good ideas sometimes hide behind cheesewords.

 

If you ever find yourself thinking, “Easy for them, they have [insert advantage you lack]”, this post is for you.

You’re wrong.

It may or may not be easy for someone else to do what they do.  You’re not them, so you can never know.  But you’re wrong for letting yourself off the hook in pursuit of your own dreams because you lack what you imagine someone else has.  You’re being a coward, a liar, or both.

Here’s the truth.  If you had [insert advantage someone else has] you’d do worse with it than they do.  Even if you could, getting something handed to you doesn’t help you learn how to use it to your benefit.  In fact, it’s the opposite.

You can nitpick this post and think up all kinds of but-what-about’s and exceptions.  Or you can just stop measuring and weighing yourself against others on the impossible pain-privilege meter and build your own life.

Oh, and for the record, if you had this blog you wouldn’t do it any better.