In relentless pursuit of freedom.
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.
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.
Energy vampires are not usually bad people, and often it’s very hard to tell them from genuine connections with whom social capital is valuable. Early in your career, be generous, open, and exploratory. Go to coffee with interested people, see what they’ve got to say/offer, etc. But always be learning and observing and working to get those “I can do big things for you”s into concrete opportunities and action items.
Over time you’ll get good at knowing the difference. Eventually you’ll be able to spot a distracting wasteful contact or meeting right away.
For now, just know that the more successful you become, the more energy vampires you’ll attract.
Oh, and sometimes they hide behind the word “Mentor”.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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?
“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.
Unconscious. Self two. The zone. Flow state.
There are a lot of great names for when you’re performing or creating and your rational, conscious, deliberate mind gets out of the way while you enter an unthinking trance-like form of in-the-moment action. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.
Yesterday, I went down to the basketball court to shoot some hoops and stumbled on a little trick. I’m not a great shooter, and often battle to turn my mind off and stop thinking about my form, because I shoot better when I’m flowing freely. If I make a few free-throws, in a row I start to become more conscious of what I’m doing and the streak is broken.
So instead of my usual routine of layups, turn-arounds, free-throws, and threes until I hit 100 shots (you’d be amazed how long it takes me), I decided to make it really hard to begin with, thinking it might make it easier thereafter. I had to make the first 10 shots with my left hand. Not layups, but 15-footers. I’m a righty and never use my left except occasionally (and badly) around the rim. Those ten left-handed shots were very hard and very frustrating. Because lefty shots are so foreign to me, there’s no zone I can enter. I have to put a ton of conscious effort, focus, and attention to form and detail into every one to try to make the motion even work.
I finally did it, and by the time I did my conscious, form-following mind was totally exhausted. Going back to my right hand was like taking a break from the chain gang to sit by the pool with an umbrella drink. I didn’t focus on my shots, I hit a much higher percentage than usual, and I had a blast!
I think I found a new trick that can be applied elsewhere. Give yourself a really hard challenge that requires far more focus than normal and run your rational mind dry. Wear your brain out. Then start the work. I thought about how I’ve done this a few times with writing. I’ve challenged myself with word counts or other strictures on my form that took tremendous focus to complete. Afterwards, getting in the zone to crank out a free-flowing blog post was much easier.
More experimentation ahead.
TANSTAAFL.
Every decision, action, and opportunity has a cost. To do one thing means you can’t do another.
Weighing costs and benefits when making a decision is useful (though also limiting). But once an action has been taken, it’s best to forget what you gave up. Holding on to the memory of what could-have-been-but-cannot-now-be will only make you worse at moving ahead. The more aware you are of value left in the past, the blinder you’ll be to the value in front of you.
I’ve experienced this with potential Praxis customers. In the application process, questions about the benefits of the program are normal and healthy. But when those questions consistently tack on a reminder of what’s left behind, it’s not a good sign. “I want to know if the program does X, because, you know, I’d be leaving my hometown and my friends and I really have a good thing going right now and it’d really cost a lot to make a change and you’d better be able to make it worth it.” That’s not a customer we want. They’re holding so tightly onto what they’d leave behind that I suspect they’d be looking in the rear-view mirror the entire program and seeking someone to blame for every way in which their new life is harder than what they walked away from. They’d be incapable of seeing the value in the present because they won’t let go to the value they imagine in the past.
It’s like dating someone who’s obsessed with comparing you to their ex. You don’t want that, even if you’re better.
If you want to act, act. Second-guessing and cost-tallying after the fact are useless. Scratch that. They’re worse than useless. They make people leery of connecting with or working with you because they don’t want to be measured against your imagined past. They blind you to present opportunity. They warp your memory of the facts, as each day further from what you left behind it gets rosier.
Screw that. Your past doesn’t exist. It lives only in your mind. Your mind is within your control. Make it work for you. Don’t go to war against past possibilities, create present opportunities.
There are several practical and philosophical reasons a redistribution scheme like Basic Income Guarantee, or Universal Basic Income (UBI) are inconsistent with true liberalism and general human flourishing. Even if none of those arguments mattered, an almost entirely neglected aspect of such a policy is enough for me to oppose it.
There is a real and important consequence to individual meaning and fulfillment when a universal welfare system exists. It creates a permanent dependent class. The compassion behind it is condescending and paternalistic, and sends a message to the heart of each recipient: “You can’t do it without me.” That message works too well.
We all know this. We see it in children with an unconditional parental safety net. We see it in the past with heartfelt, compassion-based, sexist and racist institutions. We feel it in ourselves when we’re loafing on the job in secret or getting credit someone else worked hard for. It’s not just some WASP social construct that eats away at us, it’s our self-confidence getting flabby as the arms of another lift us over every bump in the road.
We’re hard-wired for progress. We need it to be fulfilled. Progress only comes when we overcome challenges. Those challenges start with the most basic. If we cut off access to the simple achievements, the really great ones will be well out of reach.
It’s incredibly shallow and materialistic to assume money equals fulfillment. In some cases, it can be the biggest obstacle to it. Unearned merit is dangerous even in small, unexpected doses. When it’s built into a full-fledged system you can bank on, it has the power to corrode the most creative impulses and hallow out that which makes us human.
Call me flowery or dramatic. Call me cold or callous. Call me whatever you like, but there is no denying that being taken care of when you’re not truly helpless is destructive to an individual’s sense of self and chances for success. Just because this problem cannot be quantified does not mean it can be safely ignored.
Have some respect for your fellow human. Have some respect for yourself. Don’t demand a perpetual redistribution system. Demand freedom and earn and give generously and of your own volition. Guaranteed comfort is a subtle, sinister form of captivity. It may seem to promote tranquility, but tranquility is not always desired. It may quell the very restlessness and rebellion a free society needs to grow and progress – and individuals within that society need to do the same.
This is not about manufacturing obstacles to toughen people up. It’s about removing obstacles, even when they’re covered in velvet and smell like roses.
Compassion and respect for human life compel me to oppose the Universal Basic Indignity of a guaranteed income scheme.
A lot of people tell me they are interested in teaching, researching, writing, and exploring ideas for a living but they see the backwards, warped incentives baked into academia and want no part of it. They feel stuck.
“But I can’t teach without certification”, or, “But I don’t know how to do what I want without becoming a professor.” Fortunately, these fears are unfounded and opportunity abounds. Unfortunately, if these fears loom large you might already be too schooled into a permission-based approval-seeking mindset to seize on the opportunity. Anyone can do it, but years of being rewarded for the opposite of enterprise will make it a monumental task.
There are countless examples of professional intellectuals outside the stale, subsidized halls of academia. Maria Popova, Alain de Botton, Steve Patterson, Dan Carlin, Nassim Taleb, and academic escapees like Thaddeus Russell and Tom Woods, to name just a few. Whatever you think of their work, they have created successful careers around the ideas they love, free from the suffocating mediocrity of educrats. And whether or not you like their conclusions, the quality and quantity of their work and their relationship to their audiences are orders of magnitude better than it would be if they were Academics. Incentives matter.
So how can you do it?
It’s the simplest, hardest thing in the world. Work.
Create. Produce. Ship. Repeat.
Yes, research, read, study, dive in to ideas. That’s a given. Every wannabe intellectual does that. To make a real career out of it requires constant, consistent action. Write articles and books, make podcasts and videos, share and build an audience on social media, curate an email list, and create a findable brand around your ideas and work. Just keep producing. Relentlessly.
There is massive demand for interesting ideas and those who can find and communicate them well. There is a huge market for what you’re peddling. But if you see yourself as the deserving recipient of charity so you can read and write an article once in a while, you’re going to get nowhere in the real world.
Follow comedians. They have a similar product. They are selling their particular batch of ideas and insights and the particular way they communicate them to create a laugh. Substitute “a-ha” for “laugh” and the professional intellectual is the same. Do aspiring comedians sit around and say, “Well I really want to do comedy, but I don’t want to sit through years of comedy certification school and jump through all the hoops, so I guess I can’t”? It’s as absurd as thinking academia necessary to be an intellectual.
Comedians just keep doing open mic nights. Then low-pay shows or contests. Then more. They build a following of friends. Then locals. Then they travel a bit. They share their stuff with their followers. They make videos. They grind. They refine their jokes. They write more. Produce, share; produce, share. It’s not a complicated formula.
Of course, your ideas have to be valuable to others. And you have to produce and share them. Maybe that explains why many seek the corrosive comfort of ill-gotten income in the higher ed bureaucracy.
If you want to spread ideas for a living, open your eyes to the world around you. Don’t see roadblocks (“I don’t know how to edit video”, “I’m not savvy on websites and SEO”). Those are good for you. They’re keeping out those too lazy or fearful to learn (learning is often hardest for the most schooled) or partner with those who can. That means more opportunity for you. The world is wide open and it’s waiting for your ideas and your voice.
What have you created today?
PS – I’ve been speaking here about getting your income from your intellectual endeavors. This isn’t the only, or best, way to be an intellectual outside of academia. You can earn a living doing anything others value and still have plenty of time to research, write, and share ideas. Most people who do earn their living from their ideas began doing it on the side, and many of the best thinkers I know don’t earn their bread exclusively from their erudition.
College is dead.
I’m not talking about the future, I’m talking about the present. Most people just don’t know it’s dead.
It’s not online courses and video lectures that killed it. Access to information is not a problem in the developed world, and not what college students are buying. MOOCs aren’t nearly as disruptive as what killed college.
It’s not new certifications that killed it. Compare the value of “I’m certified in Facebook ads”, with, “Here are my last five Facebook ad campaigns.” Centralized credentials are only valuable in the absence of something better.
Today, something far better is available to everyone.
Here’s my Voice & Exit talk explaining what I mean.
So eager you physically lean over the desk during an interview.
That’s forward tilt.
I once heard a seasoned CEO describe the phrase and how integral it was to hiring at his company. This concept has been really helpful for me, and I’m excited to help you unearth that same mentality and energy and put it to work creating your career.
PodcastCheck out the Forward Tilt podcast, with weekly 5-10 minute bits of inspiration and insight every Friday.
Available on iTunes,Stitcher, Pocket Casts, and YouTube.
Check out the book, an almanac for personal growth, with 52 short entries and action items for a year of forward tilting weeks.
Available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
(Or download the PDF for free here).
Had a great time on this segment discussing the opportunities available today to young people to build a career without debt and years of classrooms.
https://youtu.be/B03CW6DV03w
Humanitarian that I am (you’re welcome), I’m always looking for ways to increase efficiency for all parties.
I think controversial speakers and the protesters who oppose them are spending far more resources than necessary on their antagonistic charade. Imagine instead if a polarizing speaker ran a KickStarter campaign such that, if the right amount of money was raised, they would cancel their speaking tour.
Protesters spend a few bucks on signs and transportation, plus hours organizing and yelling. But with a donation, for just $5-10, they could signal their disdain for the speaker to their friends and help prevent them from speaking in an instant. They could even have donation parties to maintain the social aspect of protesting.
It’s great for the speaker too. Say the speaker earns $10k per speech and gives 20 per year. They also give up lots of time traveling, etc. They could create a threshold of $250k, and if met, they’d cancel the whole slate of talks. Everybody wins! They’d probably get more publicity digitally than speaking to crowds of a few hundred or thousand anyway. As long as the haters shell over the annual sum, the speaker could remain comfortably off the road year after year.
To further capitalize on their polarization, a controversial speaker could even run a bidding war, where supporters could donate to get them speaking, and detractors could donate to keep them from speaking. Whoever raised the most gets their wish. This would have the added benefit of helping observers see who really had a larger, more passionate following.
Everybody gets to signal. Everybody saves time and money. Enemies don’t have to personally encounter one-another, and neutral bystander don’t have to deal with disruptive events and protests.
Markets really do make everything better.