Category: Commentary

Two Tips for Public Speaking That Also Apply to Work

From the Praxis blog.

I was talking with one of the September 2015 Praxis participants during the opening seminar about public speaking.  He asked me what are the most helpful things for me when it comes to reducing nerves and getting in the zone as a speaker.  I told him the two most important things for me are:

  • Lots of Practice
  • Unique Content

Practice is obvious.  Public speaking, like digital skills, social skills, bike riding, creativity, or confidence, is not one of those things you can become great at by studying.  You have to do it.  A lot.  There simply is no substitute for doing it when it comes to gaining comfort and skill.

The second point is not actually about the content in any objective sense.  I don’t think there are right and wrong content decisions, topics, formats, tones, or structures that will consistently lead to success and enjoyment as a speaker.  When I say content matters, I really mean crafting a talk that is unique to you.

If I asked you to give a 5 minute schpeel tomorrow on the importance of accounting to business success, your first reaction would probably be to spend all night researching accounting and articles about this topic and trying to become as much of an expert as one can become overnight.  You’d feel ridiculous stress, and while giving your talk you’d constantly wonder if the audience would call you out or know more than you and think you a fraud.  That’s because you’ve approached it with the idea that your content must mirror what others have already done on the topic.  The truth is, you’re never going to be as good as they are at giving their content.  You’ve got to deliver your own.

Maybe you know nothing about accounting.  No problem.  Give a five minute talk that is completely, entirely unique to you and your life and perspective.  You’ll be the expert.  No one knows your story as well as you.  You can do this in almost any area if you’re creative.  For our example, you could tell us that you know accounting is important for business success because when you were a kid you had a lemonade stand and you thought you were killing it with your $10 in sales…only because you didn’t write down or track the $12 you spent on supplies.  That’s a story no expert could beat you at.  It’s your story.

When you pick content that flows out of you, that you know and live and breath, and work your topic around it, you’ll feel far more at ease and give a heck of a better talk than if you try to be something you’re not.  Your philosophy, hobbies, friends, upbringing, or any number of things truly and uniquely you are the place to start from when building a talk.

As I shared these two tips for public speaking I realized how true they are for entrepreneurship, or any kind of work.  You’ll do your best work and enjoy yourself and find your groove and create value the most when you have:

  • Lots of Practice
  • Unique Content

You can’t discover what makes you come alive or what you hate by thinking about it or reading books.  You can’t gain confidence and skill and self-knowledge by listening to lectures.  You can’t find out if your product or idea is a good one by merely polling people.  You’ve got to get out there and test some stuff.  You’ve got to practice.  A lot.

You’re likely to feel a lot of stress if you spend your time comparing your skills to others.  Just because you’ll never be the coder that you’re buddy is doesn’t mean you can’t succeed in the tech world.  Just because you’re not as good a salesman as your boss doesn’t mean you have no future.  Aping their style will only get you so far.  What do you have that’s unique to you?  What do you do better than anyone in your peer group?  What’s something you’ve got that others don’t?

It might be a skill or personality trait.  It also might be something really unglamorous.  When you’re young you often have something very few more seasoned people have.  Time and flexibility.  A low cost standard of living.  Geographical freedom.  Think about how to build on those far more unique assets rather than trying to compete with someone who has a ten year head start on you in something more generic.

Jump in and do stuff.  Do things that are true to you, and where the unique aspects of yourself can do the heavy lifting.  You’ll do better and have more fun.  Whether speaking to a crowd or working on a career.

Check Out A Few Changes to the Website

Thanks to Derek Magill I’ve got some fresh new changes here on the website.

First, signup for the new monthly newsletter which will include my take on a new movie, TV show, book, podcast, or article each month.  It’s content that’s exclusive to the email newsletter, so check it out!

You’ll also notice the Ask Isaac page.  This is a new way to collect ideas and questions for the podcast and blog.  I love getting interesting queries, so send some along.

There is some additional content in other places on the site as well.  Cut me a little slack as I tweak and fill in and update a few things.  Let me know if you notice any glitches.

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Tiny, Ridiculous Daily Challenges Work Better for Me Than Big Goals

I’m not big on goals and goal-setting.  I’ve done it at various points, and it’s had a few positive effects and can be somewhat fun, or at least useful in challenging me to think bigger.  Still, I find that I’m more of an opportunist than a planner.  I prefer to keep building things – myself, my project, social capital, etc. – and be aware and alert to opportunities to leverage those things.

This means creating and succeeding and finishing things in general is more important much of the time than any perfectly plotted sequence of what it is I’m doing.  I try to cultivate creativity as a discipline, while what I use my creative energies for remains flexible to seize opportunities.  I want to also cultivate opportunity spotting abilities and the willpower to act on them and see it through to completion.  “Be ready in season and out of season.”

What this translates into practically for me is a series of very small, daily (sometimes weekly) challenges.  Things that are a little difficult, but simple enough that I have no excuse for missing them.  My typical set of challenges is this:

  • Blog every day
  • Do one form of exercise every day
  • Walk outside every day
  • Consume ideas every day
  • Do one thing to add value to Praxis every day (in the areas of money, talent, and vision specifically)

Many days I do more than this.  I might write a blog post and a newsletter or book chapter.  I might go for a swim and ride my bike.  I might read several articles and listen to a podcast.  I typically do many things to add value to Praxis in a day.  The trick is, doing at least one form of each of these in a day, every single day rain or shine seven days a week.  The fact that they’re so easy is what makes it so hard.

If I had “Run five miles every day”, or, “Train for a marathon” on the list, I wouldn’t feel bad about myself if I missed a day or two.  You wouldn’t look down on me either.  It’s a tough goal, and you might be impressed that I even tried.  But doing one form of exercise every day is so damn easy – some days I literally do a handful of pushups and that’s it – if I miss a few days I feel like a loser, and you’d be a little confused as to how I was unable to complete something so easy.

For me, a big, grandiose, far-off goal like, “Be in peak physical shape”, or, “Make $X by 2017” doesn’t do a lot to help me optimize my days.  It’s too easy to slack and think you can make it up later.  It’s too easy to not push because no one will look down on you for missing your goal.  But blogging every day is totally visible to all and totally doable.  It might suck, but it can be done if you really want to.  I’ve even written some posts on tough days that were nothing more than a haiku about how hard daily blogging is (Salvation by Haiku!).  One day I wrote a post that was a single word.

But I did it.

By showing up and completing it every day, I learn to succeed.  I learn to create as a discipline, not in response to a mood.  I also add value to myself every single day by this practice.  Maybe only a fraction of a percent, but if you know the power of compound interest, you can see how much this can add up when you show up daily.

I recently tried a 30 day experiment going a little more abstract with my daily challenges.  I switched it up so I had to do one thing each day for my…

  • Body
  • Mind
  • Spirit
  • Company

It didn’t go well.  It was too easy to begin to define things in weird ways so that I could check the spreadsheet off (I love checking items off).  I mean, I walked outside, so that’s good for my body, and my spirit, and I thought about stuff with my mind, so I hit them all, right?  But it wasn’t a challenge and I never felt that pride for completing it.  I needed to go back to my tiny, silly, well-defined challenges.

Maybe you work well with bigger, longer term goals and plans.  But if they don’t work for you, try a 30 day challenge of a few small things that you have no excuse for skipping.  You might be amazed at how good it makes you feel to deliver, especially on the really hard days.

The added benefit of doing something creative like writing is that creativity begets creativity, and you’ll become a font of ideas for business, personal, and even other people’s use.  Give them away.  Act on them.  Ideas are infinite and the more you create the more you get.

Four Ideas I Don’t Think Are Crazy (but you probably do)

I think these ideas are so straightforward and unscary that the world wouldn’t even look that different tomorrow if we did this today.  Shortly after tomorrow, the world would look significantly better.

  • Stop funding the Post Office and replace it with nothing.
  • End the TSA and let airlines do security however they wish.
  • End the FDA and replace it with nothing.
  • Scrap criminal law and let civil law handle everything.

How Obsession with Options Can Blind You to Opportunities

One of the first steps in your personal emancipation is to realize that the world is full of options, and the few things currently in front of you are not the only from which to choose.  But there is a difference between options and opportunities.

Options are theoretical.  Opportunities are actual.  Options are statistical probabilities.  Opportunities are singular, concrete instances.  Options can always be added on, and the option set can always grow as an aggregate bundle, so there is no urgency or scarcity in options.  Opportunities are temporary and cannot be aggregated.  Each is too unique and cannot be replicated.

The finite nature of each individual opportunity can be scary.  It feels more comforting to stay in the abstract world of options than to jump in to a real opportunity, which immediately reduces the set of theoretical other options.

Options thinking can be useful to gain some big picture long term perspective, but it’s a dangerous mindset too because it can blind you to opportunities or limit the ways you can gain from them.  Here are three of the downsides to thinking about options instead of opportunities.

Too Good for That

Because options are a giant aggregate of all possible activities, the field will always look better than a specific, individual opportunity.  When you know that the field is available to you (in theory) real actions always seem a little less glamorous.  The problem is that the field is not available to you.  Your life isn’t like gambling.  You can’t pick the field.  You have to settle on specific actions.  Grumpiness can result when you do specific things but obsess about keeping your options open.  You’ll always think you’re too good for whatever you’re doing and never fully throw yourself behind it.  This will, paradoxically, further limit your options as those around you will tire of your attitude of superiority and belief that, if you wanted to, you could be doing something better.  It keeps you from entering in to the moment and doing your best work.

Myth of the Perfect Path

The purpose of options is to be able to choose one or more at some point.  But after spending a lot of time expanding your theoretical option set towards this end pressure can begin to build.  When you finally do choose something specific, you’d better get it right.  Options thinking can make you so aware of opportunity cost (or in many cases, imagined, theoretical opportunity cost) of foregone activities that it puts an unbearable burden on whatever you do choose to be perfect.  This short-circuits the best of all human learning techniques, trial and error.  No trial occurs when error is so feared.  The endless keeping of options open in search for the perfect assumes too much about your ability to know all variables – including your own changing desires and interests – and deprives you of one of the best discovery tools, failure.  All this stress about choosing the mythical one true path leads to another problem.

Paralysis by Analysis

The ceaseless break-down comparisons, the cost-benefit analyses, the consideration of these seemingly weighty matters can itself become an activity so consuming it prevents you from all others.  You can become bogged down in a quagmire of strategic planning and never take the definite actions necessary to achieve anything.  The real problem is that inaction is also an action.  Not choosing is a choice.  Waiting, watching, thinking on the sidelines has a cost that’s even higher than the cost of choosing an imperfect opportunity.  When you take opportunity B it means you can no longer take A or C.  That’s the cost.  But the benefit is you get whatever goodness is to be had from B, and the self-knowledge of how well B suits you.  Even if you fail at it you gain something.  When you get stuck analyzing all three options you not only miss out on A and C, but you forgo the benefits of B as well.

Expanding your options set can be intoxicating.  For a time, it feels so fast paced and exciting.  I could do anything!  Why would I do this one thing when I could keep entertaining all the possible things I could do in my mind?

It’s alright to play with your options and expand them and think about them from time to time.  But you’ve got to put options in their place as subordinate statistical playthings when compared to opportunities.  Options don’t change the world or the holder of them.  Actions do.

Unexpected Ways I’ve Changed in Recent Years

  • I now enjoy Twitter more than Facebook
  • I used to be an extrovert, now I’m an introvert
  • I now prefer cheap, lighter beers over fancy, heavier craft brews
  • I used to only take coffee black, now I quite enjoy cream
  • I now listen to new age type mood music as much as classic rock
  • I now prefer writing to almost any other activity
  • I once found Star Trek boring, now I love it
  • I used to hate politics, now I hate it even more

Does Future Orientation Mean Anything?

It’s not easy to stay out of the future.

I live a lot of my life there.  I don’t know that it’s bad, but there is this universal approval of ideas like, “be in the present moment”, and, “don’t put off living for some future date”.  Those platitudes sound right and put the tiniest weight of guilt on my forward tilt.  I’ve learned guilt is rarely a good road map unless backed by clear reason.  Still, it does seem weird to be always pushing, thinking, dreaming, and building today for some imagined land called tomorrow.

It’s hard to rest.  All rest seems like a stop with a purpose – to recharge and regroup for another forward march.  I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a few purposeless moments, outside of time.  The arrow of time runs always on, left to right, and drives most of my excitement and lust for life.  Stillness, unless deliberately practiced as a way to make me a better forward moving vehicle, feels like stagnation.

Does the relentless, Crusoe-like desire to add on to one’s present options set with ceaseless improvements indicate something about the nature of reality?  Does the magnetic sojourn into the not-yet place we build in our imaginations mean we are hard-wired for something eternal?

I suppose it doesn’t have to.  It sure feels like it does.  It’s hard to imagine all this forward-facing energy coming to an abrupt end in tandem with my bones and sinews.  Where is the arrow trying to fly?

This of course brings up the equally baffling question of from where the arrow came and what gave it thrust.  Is it accelerating, decelerating, or remaining constant like a geosynchronous satellite?

Even when I am in the moment, the thing that gives it that intoxicating flow is the fact that the moment is movement.  It is the process of overcoming a struggle towards some happily anticipated future probability.

It’s hard for me to imagine that I’ll ever be done.  The thought of ever unfolding creation gives me comfort and, paradoxically, energy when I’m tired.

Things got a little mystical there didn’t they?  Must be this yoga music.

Back to my bowl of cereal…and whatever comes next.

Why You Should Apply to Praxis

Why I Started Praxis

Praxis requires the right people.  It’s a challenging program.  It’s not for everyone.

So who’s a good fit?  If you or someone you know fits any of these descriptions, it might be a match made in heaven…

You’re good, but you’re bored

You can do well in school.  You’re typically one of the best students.  You can do well in a job.  You’re typically one of the best employees.  Most social and educational situations are like games, and you’re pretty good at figuring out the game and doing what it takes to win.  Still, you’re restless.

Gaming the school system for grades seems a bit pointless, and you’re jonesing for something more real.  You want to succeed, but you’d like to do it in an environment that’s connected to something bigger, more valuable to the world and to your own future.

You know you don’t know everything and you’re bored getting rewarded for stuff that isn’t all that challenging.  You relish the opportunity to try bigger things, and to be in an environment where open experimentation and failure aren’t the enemy, but stagnation is.

You’ve always got side projects and ideas

Not satisfied with officially sanctioned clubs and activities, you’re keen to create your own.  You’re the one who’s always starting fantasy football leagues or planning poker nights.  What?  No aquatics club?  You’ll remedy that.  Nearest Red Bull supply is too far away?  You’ll start a little delivery service.

From building club websites and Facebook pages to finding someone to make a new logo for your softball team, you never stop coming up with new ideas, jumping on opportunities, and completing projects of your own design.

You know this urge to build things might take you places if put in a more expansive context.  You know you could learn so much more being around others who have built amazing companies and brought big ideas to life.

You can’t stop seeing how everything around you could be done more efficiently

Everyone in line at the airport is staring at their phone and mindlessly wandering through the rope maze.  Not you.  You’re analyzing the way the line is designed and frustrated that they chose such an inefficient configuration.

You immediately see how the class assignment could be done in a much cleaner, quicker way with the same result.  You probably got in trouble for discovering shortcuts and hacks in grade school.  Everywhere you look, you run numbers in your head or ask questions about how the model works.  When you drive through a neighborhood, you’re looking at the cars and houses and estimating the annual salary and debt needed to sustain the residents.  You wonder if they’d have a higher quality of life in a different city with lower cost of living.

You feel like the world is full of inefficiencies but this doesn’t make you angry, it makes you excited.  Where others see pain points, you see opportunity.  You may not know yet how to channel this mindset and you may not have any particular passion, but you can’t turn off that part of your brain that sees areas for improvement all around.

You’d love to enter an environment where that mindset is valuable and cultivated.  You’d love to take it to the next level.

If that’s you, so is this

Praxis is ideal for anyone who fits any of these descriptions.  An intensive 3 month bootcamp on personal and professional skills, 6 months working at an amazing startup, a rigorous series of personal development projects, coaching, and a deep dive into what it takes to be an entrepreneur and self-directed learner.  This is the career and educational experience you’ve always wanted.  No fluff.  No BS.

Why wait to do awesome stuff and work with innovative companies?

Start today.

When Your Kids Call You Out

I walked into the kitchen this morning to grab a snack while working on my phone.  My five year old daughter called to me from the other room.

“Daddy, can you draw a face on this for me?”

I was in the middle of work, trying to get a quick bit of nutrients and return to my office.  I was distracted.  I didn’t feel like scrawling a face on a piece of packaging plastic with a mashed up pink marker.  I responded,

“I’m not good at drawing faces honey.”

I lied.

It is true that I’m not good at drawing faces, at least relative to an average person over the age of eight.  But my daughter already knows that.  She knows I’m not the best artist in the family.  She knows my son and my wife can both draw a better face than I can.  But she also knows I can do one better than her.  She asked knowing full well the extent and limits of my abilities.  So she called me out.

“Just do your best.  Just like I do my best.”

Ouch.

“Just do your best” is one of those phrases I use all the time as a parent, and it usually feels good.  It’s not condemning or harsh or full of phony, undeserved praise.  When your kid says, “But I’m not good at X!” parents can calmly say, “Just do your best!”  We wouldn’t want them to let fear of imperfection stop them, right?

In this case, I wasn’t getting called out for fear of failure.  I wasn’t avoiding face-drawing because I was afraid the face wouldn’t look good.  I’m way past that point.  I was getting called out for lying.  I was trying to pull a fast one on my daughter instead of just using direct, clear, honest communication.  Kids aren’t that easy to fool.

I really had two choices.  Draw the face or don’t draw the face.  Either one would have been morally and practically acceptable.  If I chose not to draw the face, the best thing would have been to give an honest reason.  “I’m sorry honey, I’m in the middle of some other things.  I’ll do it later if you still want me to.” or simply, “Hon I’m not going to draw a face right now.”

Those may sound harsh, at least compared to drawing the face.  But they’re less harsh than the lie I tried to get away with.  My daughter knows my lack of artistic skill is not the reason I didn’t want to draw a face in that moment.  So deflecting with that not only indicated I didn’t want to draw, but also that I didn’t respect her enough to just say so.

She got distracted drawing and went about her business, as I did mine.  I don’t think any major damage was done.  Still, not my finest moment in parenting.

It was a good reminder of how often and how easily we slip into dishonest forms of communication.  If it goes far enough, it can lead to self-deception, where we actually start to believe our false reasons for action or inaction.

If only I could bring my kids with me 24/7 to call me on my BS.

Doing Work You Love and Being Happy Are Not Necessarily the Same Thing

Would you believe me if I told you that people can be happy doing work they hate?

Everyone wants to be happy.  Well, there is actually some debate about what people want and whether the word “happy” is the the most accurate.  Call it utility, or fulfillment, or flow, or bliss, or the good life, or anything else you like.  I’m going to use the word ‘happy’ to describe an existence that maximizes those moments when you feel proud and thrilled to be alive, and minimizes those where you feel the opposite.  Just give me some definitional generosity, or substitute your preferred word that defines what it is you seek.

Now, most people also think that they want to do work that they love.  That is, they want the way in which they procure the resources needed for survival and material pleasure to be an activity that is inherently interesting and fulfilling.  They do not merely want the hunt to be done for the meat, but they want to enjoy it for its own pleasures.  At least that’s what they’ll tell you.

You might be lying

I think a great many people are lying to themselves and others about what they actually want.  A lot of people want to be the type of person who seeks meaning in their work, but they actually care a lot more about just finding a way to get the resources needed to relax more.  Doing work you love is harder than doing work you can tolerate.  I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  There is nothing morally superior or inherently noble about wanting to do work that you love, and there is nothing bad about wanting to just get the money you need to work as little as possible.  These are personal preferences, and either approach can lead to a happy life.  Of course, lack of self-knowledge or dishonesty with oneself about which approach you prefer can lead to unhappiness just as easily.

In other words, doing work you love is not the secret ingredient needed to be happy.  At least not for everyone.

There are people who can never be happy unless they are doing work they love.  For them, it doesn’t even matter if they make a lot of money at it.  If those people chase money and status over fulfilling work, they’ll be miserable.

There are also people who can never be happy unless they have a large amount of money, free time, leisure, and a minimum of stress.  For them, it doesn’t even matter much what kind of work they do, as long as it yields them enough money in a small enough amount of time to do what they really love.  If those people chase a meaningful career with all the material and time sacrifices that requires, they’ll be miserable.

Who are you?

The key to happiness is to discover which type of person you are, be honest with yourself and others about what you find, and have the courage to live it.

Let me illustrate this with a matrix.  I love a good 2×2 matrix.  It’s been awhile since the last one I made (in what is still one of my favorite posts), so I decided to conjure up a new one.  My graphic design skills are once again on full display.  You’re welcome for the visual feast.

Doing Work You Love and Being Happy

Let’s walk through each of the four quadrants one by one.  See if you can recognize people in your life who fit them.

Oh, and notice in particular the fact that the amount of money earned is not the relevant factor in any of the quadrants.  You can have rich, poor, or anything in between in any of them.

“I love my work and I’m happy”

The upper left quadrant represents those people who have gone all-in to find work that makes them feel alive every day.  They may be billionaire tech company founders who live and breath their company, or penniless beach bums who spend all day on the waves and scrape together just enough money giving lessons for a burger and a brew.  I know people so passionately obsessed with their work that they’d rather be doing it than anything else.  Depending upon what that work is, they may be very wealthy or very poor.  They don’t much care.  They care about their craft, and so long as they’re doing it, life is good.

“I hate my work and I’m happy”

The upper right quadrant is where people who have accepted the fact that work is not for them hang out.  They’ve also come to grips with the fact that the things they actually do love require a good bit of money and time, and work is required to get it.  They configure their lives to do the minimum amount of drudgery to get the maximum payoff.  I know business owners who have no interest in their industry, or salespeople who would just as unhappily sell something totally different.  They just found a niche where they can get what they need.

They sometimes live the Four Hour Workweek life, and truly put in almost no time to keep the income stream going.  Those with a longer time horizon and ability to defer gratification may put in a lot more hours upfront and endure a high degree of boredom for the payoff of evenings, weekends, or retirement.  I know people who I don’t think would ever find happiness in any kind of work.  They want leisure.  But they’ve made their peace with this fact and put all their energy into being true to that reality, instead of unhappily chasing an illusive form of work they’d love, or feeling guilty for their material desires.

“I love my work and I’m unhappy”

Ah yes, the martyr.  The people in the lower left quadrant are probably the hardest for me to be around.  They self-righteously remind everyone about how they opted not to “sell-out”, but then never stop bitching about the costs they incurred for doing so.  The truth is, these are people who would be happier seeking money instead of work they think the world will see as meaningful.  This is the jazz artist who gets angry every time the Grammy’s come along and some blonde pop star takes home the hardware.  This is the adjunct professor who chose an obscure academic discipline with almost no chance of good money but never stops yelling about the injustice in the fact that no one values what they do enough to pay them big bucks.

The funny thing is, this is a phenomenon found almost exclusively in rich countries.  The unhappy work purists are typically quite wealthy by world standards, but they can never stop comparing themselves to the richest of the rich.  This obsessive tendency to compare reveals their true preference for material wealth over career fulfillment.  They’d be a lot happier if they were simply honest with themselves and, as my friend Jason Brennan suggests, got a job at Gieco.

“I hate my work and I’m unhappy”

Opposite of the previous category, those in the lower right quadrant believe themselves to be made happiest by money, status, and “normalcy”.  But they are wrong about their true desires.  These people chose the best school, the best major, the best internship, and the job with the best title at the consulting firm because everyone around them egged them on the whole way.  Surely a great job, nice house, respectable resume, and good income will lead to happiness, right?  In their case, wrong.

They find themselves hating their work and not really enjoying the material benefits it brings either.  Their weekends are just as dull as the workweek.  As they keep ratcheting up the career ladder they also ratchet up their lifestyle, hoping that the next level and a new car will bring happiness.  It doesn’t.  But because their material quality of life escalates with their income, they feel trapped.  If they happen to realize that they never cared much for money and status as much as meaning in their work, it seems too late.  How could they give up $180,000 a year to start a band or become a chef?  They might lose their marriage, and surely their social standing.

Knowledge and Honesty

Again, every quadrant has examples of both rich and poor within it.  The two happy categories include rich and poor as well as those who love their work and those who hate it.  The key is not finding the one true path that works for everyone.  The key is finding out who you really are.  Then not being ashamed of what you find and not lying to yourself about it.

Self-knowledge and self-honesty.

Finally, after discovering and being truthful about what makes you happy, go do it.  It’s worth all the costs.

————————————

For more on this topic check out the podcast episode with TK Coleman, “Should You Follow Your Passion or Not?“

Entrepreneurship Needs the Right Context

Entrepreneurship is really sexy right now.  Startup founders are like rock stars and you can’t go a day without seeing articles about them.  As far as it goes, I welcome this trend.  Entrepreneurship, as J.B. Say might define it, is the act of moving resources from lower to higher valued uses, or more concretely, creating a new process or product to solve old problems in innovative ways.  This seems a pretty good thing to glorify, at least compared with some other superficial traits that get a lot of attention.

Still, if entrepreneurship is praised across the board, regardless of the context, bad things can happen.

Absent competition and markets, being entrepreneurial has no value.  In fact, it can destroy value if channeled into the political process.  Political entrepreneurs find new ways to access resources first taken from others by force (taxation), and therefore do not create wealth.  They shift existing wealth around with no value-add, because the profit/loss signals are short-circuited.  Furthermore, they divert resources from productive activity to lobbying, currying favor, or massive projects with populist appeal but no market value.

Just about any entrepreneurial endeavor with the words “green” or “sustainable” has a high likelihood of being a fraudulent political game rather than genuine value creation.  The web of grants and subsidies and tax incentives and price supports and mandates in this industry make it all but impossible to identify real value creation as distinct from political shenanigans.  There are a great many media friendly entrepreneurs who chase government dollars instead of private investor or customer dollars, which are the real indicator of value creation.

Furthermore, all the buzz about entrepreneurship has given tech founders a huge platform from which to weigh in on a great many other issues.  Many people assume anyone smart enough to build a great app or billion dollar company could improve public policy.  The problem is that policy doesn’t get debated and implemented in a startup environment, but a monopolized, violence-backed, and fundamentally warped institution with all the wrong incentives.  The technocratic desire many startup types have to make gov’t more like a Silicon Valley company is what Hayek might call the fatal conceit.  It won’t work.  “If only smart people would control all the resources (and the guns that seize them) we’d make public infrastructure flawless!”  This kind of thinking is more dangerous, even if more noble on its face, than political actors openly seeking their own enrichment and not trying to solve grand problems with central plans.

The same thing happened in the industrial era.  Titans like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie were heroes because of their amazing success at improving the world through entrepreneurial action in the market.  When they turned their attention to politics, Gilded Age entrepreneurs built up a horrific behemoth of graft and monopoly that only slowed progress.

In a free or mostly free market entrepreneurs are the greatest force for good the world has ever known.  More than any amount of philanthropy or good intentions.  Outside the market context there is nothing inherently noble about entrepreneurship, and when directed to the political process it can be downright destructive.

Working Hard Doesn’t Have to Mean Burnout

I often write about how you can succeed by working your butt off to be the most reliable, consistent, effective person in whatever work setting you find yourself.  I talk about the need to be so good and so reliable that those you work with never have to worry about you.  I had an interesting response from a reader who said that these ideas seemed to lay the groundwork for suffering a terrible work environment.  If all your focus is on working hard and making sure you don’t cause stress to your colleagues, you might end up burned out and unhappy.

It’s a fair criticism because I don’t always make explicit an assumption that precedes the work hard advice: don’t stay someplace that sucks.

Don’t do things that make you dead inside.  Don’t stay anywhere – home, school, job, relationship – where you feel devalued or depressed every day.  Don’t settle or compromise.  You may not know what makes you come alive, and that’s OK, but as soon as you find things that make you die, quit.  Exit.  Leave.

Your professional life is too valuable to find some kind of middle ground or happy medium where you kind of like it OK, therefore you kind of sort of do a decent job.  No.  If you’re not kicking ass and being your best self day in and day out, why be there at all?  If grinding it out at 100% results in your being abused or burned out, the solution is not to work less hard, it’s to find new work.

If you’re unhappy, slacking off a bit more will not improve the root problem.  If doing your best work doesn’t bring you joy, you need to find work that does.

Weak Communication Habits You Should Shed

There are small ways that good people can damage their reputation and social capital with their communication.  The obvious culprits of bad grammar, typos, spelling errors, or too much text are of course important to avoid.  But there are a few other communication habits that can hurt just as much but get little attention.

All of these habits share in common a lack of clarity, resolve, and what Napoleon Hill would call definiteness of purpose.  They signal doubt, weakness, a divided mind, and leave the recipient with ambiguity.

Avoid them!

The “I’m not sure if I’m serious” sentence ending

I’ve been seeing a lot of “haha” and “lol” these days creeping into everything from Facebook comments to professional email exchanges.  I’m not a language purist nor do I espouse formal writing over a laid back and conversational approach.  The problem with ending sentences with “lolz” or some other silly word is not that it’s too conversational, it’s that it’s bad conversation.

I’ve had several email or text exchanges like this.

Me: How did the interview go?

Young person: Went really well I think, though I think I struggled a little on the first question. haha.

If this were a verbal conversation the “haha” would be equally uncomfortable.  I imagine someone looking down at their shoes with a muffled laugh.  What does it mean?  Did you struggle or not?  Why hedge your clearly stated opinion with a “haha”?  Someone who gives a sheepish chuckle after everything they say comes across as lacking confidence and doubting their own words.  Say what you want to say.  It can be serious, or controversial, or funny, but just say it and don’t back away from it with a vague textual giggle.

The indecisive meeting time

Person wanting a phone call or meeting: Hey, I’d love to talk for 20 minutes about my project with you.  Would you be up for it?

Me: Sure. I’m flexible anytime after 11 AM on Weds and Thurs next week.  Pick a time and send me an invite.

Person: Cool.  I’m around both of those times and free all day.  Give me a call.

This one makes me damn near apoplectic.  Email exchanges aren’t free.  Neither is calendar carving and scheduling.  I clearly gave two windows of time and specifically asked for one 20 minute slot to be chosen.  Why didn’t you just send me a specific time (preferably as a calendar invite)?  And what does it mean, “I’m free all day for a call”?  Really?  You will literally pick up and answer no matter when I call?  You won’t be in the bathroom at all that day, or on the phone with anyone else?  I know you won’t actually be free every minute, and if I call and you don’t pick up, now we’ve got to start the scheduling process all over again.

Pick a time.  Give it to me.  Stick to it.

The response to immaterial items while ignoring the main question

A good rule of thumb is to not make more than one “ask” in a single communication or what you really want could get overlooked.  It seems even an email with  single ask can fail to communicate the main point if you’re sending it to a vague communicator.  I’ve learned to eliminate as much small talk or bits of detail from emails as possible.  Not just because it saves me time, but because some people will respond to things that demand no response and seemingly forget about the important part.

Me: Sorry for the late response, I was out of the country for my anniversary.  I agree with your assessment of the article and I would just add that it needs a tighter opening.  What do you think is the main point you’re trying to drive home?

Discombobulated communicator: Oh wow, that sounds really cool!  Where did you travel?  Hope it was warmer than the weather we’ve been having here lol!

No!  I am not emailing you about my travels or the weather.  I’m email about the article you’re working on.  Was this a quick, social response while you think things over to give me a more in depth response to my actual question later?  If so, why didn’t you tell me that?  Am I supposed to remove this email from my inbox and move on, or do I need to respond to your non-response and re-ask the question?

Find the core reason for my communication and respond to that before thinking about anything else.

The failure to switch methods

Sometimes I get messages via Facebook or LinkedIn.  Typically, my first response includes my email address with an explicit ask that we move the conversation to email.  This ask alone ends many conversations.  I’m not sure why, but a lot of people’s desire to get their question answered is so weak that they won’t even endure the cost of switching to email.  Why ask it in the first place?

Worse still is the person who responds “OK” or doesn’t respond at all, then proceeds to lay out the entire discussion on the platform I just asked to move away from.  I’ve asked three times in some threads and still had the request ignored.  Some people even go so far as to call me unannounced and unscheduled (telephone is my absolute least favorite form of communication) even after I’ve told them explicitly in past conversations that I always prefer email unless absolutely necessary, and if a call is warranted I’d rather schedule it.

Respect the medium, or if it’s not important enough to switch, don’t start the conversation in the first place.

The earlier-in-the-thread amnesia

If a long email chain has lain dormant for six months, it’s acceptable to ask for a quick recap on some past points.  But in the span of a few days when a multi-email thread has been going back and forth it sends a bizarre signal when you ask a question already answered or make a point that completely ignores earlier portions of the discussion.

Refresh yourself on the thread before each response.  If wording is unclear, ask, don’t assume.

The solution: be definite

None of these bad habits are about writing ability or subject matter mastery.  They seem to me to reflect a lack of confidence, or a lack of focus, or a lack of respect for other people’s time and mental energy, or a lack of respect for your own time, or an avoidance of accountability to your own words, or just laziness.  I’m not entirely sure, but I do know that they make the person you’re communicating with tired, which will make them think twice before texting you about an opportunity because they know the conversational cost is high and it might end with a lack of clarity about next steps.

Decide what you want to say.  Say it.  Mean it.  Respond to the core question first.  Respond in the manner requested.  Respond promptly and consistent with prior communications.  Don’t start a conversation you’re not willing to drive to the finish.

What is College Really All About?

I’ve always found it amusing when someone makes the case that a college degree is not needed for material and career success and a professor responds that college is not about getting a better job or earning more money.  They are offended at such a base standard by which to judge the service they provide, and remind of the wonderful and fulfilling aspects of a liberal education.

The reason it’s amusing is because, whether profs like it or not, the myth that college guarantees a better job is the thing paying the bills at just about every school.  It’s also the thing colleges explicitly, repeatedly market and sell customers.  The belief in the degree as a ticket to a better job is the number one driver of demand for college.  After that probably access to artificially cheap money and overall wealth increases which allow many kids to purchase college as a consumption good; a four year fun time courtesy of other people’s money.  A distant reason for a small number of people is the actual learning they can get from college.  It’s not that the learning isn’t valuable, it’s just that an intellectually curious person has so very many ways to dive in to philosophy or history that it’s a tough case to convince them the only way is to spend tens of thousands and four years.

A lot of people in higher education are so confused about the actual product they sell and so blinded by the trappings of the university that they assume it is a robust, competitive market.  Perhaps compared to government K-12 schools it’s a cornucopia of choice, but it hardly resembles a free market.  Not only is the demand artificially high due to taxpayer grants, subsidies, scholarships, and loans, but a great many careers legally mandate degrees before an individual can even enter.  Law, accounting, just about anything related to health, the growing range of bureaucratic government jobs, and more can get you fined or jailed if you dare practice without a degree.  Laws prohibit employers in other fields from using other measures of ability like IQ tests in hiring.  Add to this the pervasive belief that one simply cannot live a decent life without a degree – a belief more akin to religion than regulation for non-mandated fields – and you’ve got the current higher ed marketplace.

It’s competitive in a sense.  Imagine if every city had a handful of DMV offices, and the offices had budgets partly determined by how many customers came to their particular office to get a license.  This would incentivize marketing and enhancements to the experience as competition between offices emerged.  You might have entertainment while waiting in line, or nicer lobbies to sit in, or food and drink (the price of which would just get added on to your license fee, which could be deferred and paid out over 20 years with subsidies from taxpayers), etc.  Over time, the nicer buildings and other in-line offerings might distract from the actual reason customers were there in the first place.  They had to get the legally mandated license to drive.  Or, to make a closer comparison, maybe only half the people in line legally needed a license, and the other half could drive legally without one but their parents and friends would be ashamed of them and constantly tell them that they’d be better drivers if they got one.

To understand anything about higher education today we have to understand what the actual product is in this distorted, unfree market.  Aside from those purchasing college as a consumption good and some small number purchasing college purely for the learning or “human capital” enhancements, the customer is buying the credential because it is legally or socially mandated.  Object all you want, but it’s not hard to prove.  Colleges themselves sell the degree-as-job-catcher angle harder than any other, and that’s the number one reason given by students for attending.  Besides, even the consumption good and human capital aspects of the product could be easily had for free if you just moved to a college town and took classes without registering.  The reason people don’t is because of the belief – sometimes true due to legal strictures – that they can’t make a decent living without a degree.

The discussion about problems in higher ed is not a discussion about learning or ideas or a liberal education.  It’s phony to respond to a criticism of college with a defense of philosophy.  It’s missing the point to respond to critiques of college with defenses of classroom style learning or other educational methods.  To do so implies that learning valuable ideas is only possible through the arbitrary four year debt-fueled system.  That is an intellectual arrogance of the highest order and a conflation of education and school that is dangerous for the former.

Good ideas are too important to be anchored to the current university system and its jobs focused mythos.  Good careers need a lot more than a prefabricated four-year bureaucratically managed prep process.  Separate the classroom from the credential and both will improve.

Forget Long Term Strategic Planning

We serious adult types really value planning and prepping and researching and approaching problems in a well-considered manner.  We also overestimate our own ability to plan and predict the future, and our efforts to do so can be a big hindrance on living a good life.

When you’re thinking not just of the next move, but a long sequence of moves and counter moves based on the probability of how others will respond, you get into some pretty dicey territory.  If you are an expert chess player, this is exactly how you want to play (or so I’ve heard).  It works because chess is bounded.  There are only so many moves, and when you’ve mastered the game you can quickly narrow down the variables and predict the set of options several moves out.  The squares, pieces, and rules of movement are the same, move after move, game after game.

Imagine a chess board that, as you were pondering and planning a long sequence of moves, changed shape?  Then a third player joined with her own pieces, and those pieces didn’t move by the same rules.  Then the pieces started talking to each other and your Rook quit and joined the white Queen to form an independent alliance.  Then the black Pawns invented machine guns…you get the point.  This is more like life.  There are way too many variables and complexities to plan many steps ahead.

There are some big benefits to taking a more modest approach.  I was recently reminded of a great TED talk about the spaghetti and marshmallow tower challenge.  Teams are given some sticks of dry pasta, a bit of tape and string, and a marshmallow and have a time limit within which to build the tallest tower with a marshmallow on top.  Apparently, MBA’s are pretty bad at the challenge, and little kids are pretty good at it.  The MBA’s spend all their time working on the single perfect plan, then build it and place the marshmallow on top just as time expires.  Then it collapses.  They have so much discussion and prep and detailed delegation of tasks that the plan becomes very rigid, and every single part has to work perfectly or the whole thing will (literally) crumble.

The kids take a different approach.  They just started building immediately.  The throw together small structures and put the marshmallow on top.  Then they take it apart and make a bigger one.  They are rapidly prototyping.  They just start learning about the pieces and possibilities in front of them by directly engaging with them.  They plan no further than the first idea that comes to mind.

I heard a podcaster say she always loses to her young daughter in Jenga for the same reason.  She’s so focused on the position of the blocks five moves from now that she doesn’t always make the best decision in the moment.  Her daughter keeps it simple and lives in the moment, always plucking the safest possible piece on every turn.

That’s how I manage to survive playing tennis with my wife, who actually knows how to play the game.  I know I lack the technique and strategy she has, so I simply go all out to return every shot and just keep it in play.  I figure at some point she’ll make a mistake.  Plus, when I try to get tricky and set up a sequence of shots, it usually goes wrong.

There is overlooked value in the novice approach.  Just taking in the resources currently before you and fully diving in to the problem at hand has major advantages over long deliberation and planning.  When you’re a kid or a novice with nothing to lose, why not take a stab?

We may gain expertise in many things and develop the ability to plan into the future with greater detail, but we shouldn’t mistake expertise at a single thing like chess or tennis for expertise at life.  In life, we are all novices.  We’ve never (as far as we know) lived before, and we have no idea what will happen at any moment.  The way you might plan a single, solitary event like the construction of a house (if you’ve ever done that, you know that never goes as planned either!) doesn’t translate to the span of your life.

Take some pressure off of yourself and don’t stress about what Job A or School B next fall will mean for your retirement account 40 years down the road.  You have no idea.  No one does.  Take stock of your loves and hates, do more of the former and less of the latter, and seize on the best opportunities before you.  If it’s not working, take a lesson from the prototyping kids.  Adapt, grab the sticks, and try a different approach.