Get Off the Conveyor Belt

Excerpted from Freedom Without Permission.

The reason many people fear opting out is because of a paradigm of linear, externally-defined progress that I call the conveyor belt mentality. This mentality is holding you back and must be demolished. It goes something like this:

You are plopped onto a production line at whatever stage you’re supposed to be based on arbitrary things like your age, class, and gender. Then you let the belt do the work. By essentially doing nothing but what you’re told, you get handed certificates at each next stage. 18? Unless you did something truly outrageous, here’s your diploma. 22? Here’s your degree. Degree? Here’s your job (or so you’re led to believe).

Most people believe this and live it. It’s revealed in the kinds of questions we ask strangers. “What grade are you in?” “What’s your major?” “What kind of job do you have?” If your answer is not the appropriate one for your age and assumed station in life, people worry. “I dropped out of school to do X” is cause for concern to almost everybody, no matter what X is. “I’m a sophomore at university Y” is cause for comfort to almost everybody, no matter what you’re actually doing with your time at Y. So long as you’re at your station, no one much cares if you’re productive, happy, successful, fulfilled, or free.

Parents obsessively check their child against a list of averages on everything from height to reading ability and stress if junior is not “on track.” No one really ever asks who built the track, where it’s going, or whether junior has any interest in arriving there.

The conveyor belt sucks. It’s not taking you where you want to go. Aggregates are not individuals and your goals and abilities are not definable by summing the abilities and behaviors of everyone your age and dividing by the population size. Time to get off.

It’s scary at first, because your mind is trained to think that progress is defined by moving on the conveyor belt in the only direction it goes. Maybe really special or hard working people go faster, like the people who run up an escalator instead of letting the machine do all the work, but everyone is channeled in the same narrow corral moving in the same direction. That’s not progress.

Progress, for you, is moving towards your own goals and desires and becoming more fulfilled as you grow and overcome challenges. There are as many directions as there are people. Once you jump off the conveyor belt, the hardest part is actually discovering what makes you come alive, then being honest and unashamed of what you discover. It’s worth it. You can never start too soon.

The thing is, the mold-breakers who jump the belt don’t struggle any more or less than those who stay on. They have a hard time too. But it’s a different kind of pain. It’s the pain of working to achieve a goal they’re passionate about that has huge rewards when won, not the pain of subjugation to a monotony that brings you nothing in return.

My Monthly Newsletter Is Awesome. You Should Signup.

I wanted to find a way to deliver some kind of uniquely valuable stuff to you, my faithful readers and listeners, in a new format.  Something special and exclusive so you can brag to your friends that you are part of a secret club with decoder rings.

The decoder rings turned out to be too complicated and heavily monitored by the DHS so instead I opted for the next coolest thing.  A monthly email newsletter.

That’s right.  If you sign up (in the sidebar or the tab that says “Monthly Email”, which is a code-word for our secret club) you’ll get something super special in your inbox once every month.  It’s like a cartload of fresh ripe Honeycrisp apples delivered right to your door except it’s an email of words delivered to your screen.

I just sent out the first one yesterday.  I can’t verify, but initial reports indicate life-changing effects rippling across cyberspace.  Did you feel that?  Probably my newsletter blowing someone’s mind.

I will not normally include the content of these newsletters here on the blog.  It’s super secret and special, remember?  But just this once I will do so.  Very big of me, I know.

The newsletter is built around a review of a piece of media each month.  A book, movie, TV show, podcast or some other tidbit.  This month it’s the HBO series Silicon Valley.

You can check out the newsletter here.  More importantly, you can signup here!

Tell everyone.  But be secretive about it.  See you in the club next month with the other cool kids.

How to Search for a Job

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From Life Learning on Medium.

A lot of people are looking for jobs. The thing is, not all job searches are equal. “Looking for a job” might actually mean hoping someone finds your resume online, shooting out a few emails, or posting unsolicited comments on Facebook pages that say, “Are you hiring?”

If you want a job — really want a job — you’ve got to go level five with your job hunt. And call it a hunt, not a search. You’re not hoping to stumble into a pot of gold, you’re tracking your prey and bagging it.

Let’s take a look at how to do it.

Level 1: A Good Resume

While most of the best jobs you’ll get in life will be gotten without a resume, if you’re job hunting you should have one on hand. I don’t particularly like them, but a lot of people expect them. A good resume will never get you a job, but a bad resume could lose you one.

For a resume to actually convey something, serve as a starting point for interview questions, and keep you from being dismissed out of hand, there are really just two main features: Nice appearance and outcomes-based content.

For appearance, keep it simple, clean, a single page, uniform use of line breaks or bullets, not too many indents and sub-sub points, and a clear order top-to-bottom of what’s most important. (Hint: experience is more important than education to most people, even if you assume otherwise). Oh, and get your spelling and capitalization triple checked.

For content most people simply list credentials they have and activities they engaged in. This is boring and conveys a lot less about your ability to create value than what kind of outcomes you produced. Don’t just list that you were a digital marketing intern and ran email campaigns. Show that your A/B test improved open rates by 10%.

Even if you were waiting tables, see if you can demonstrate value created. “Server at Applebee’s” is less interesting than, “My section consistently brought in 15% more tips than average sections.”

Anyone can have a title and do a task. The good ones create value and can show positive outcomes.

Level 2: Good Profiles on LinkedIn, etc.

Whether you like it or not, LinkedIn is hugely valuable in the working world, especially for those making hiring decisions. Have a profile. Have a decent headshot that actually looks like you. Have accurate information. Keep it up to date.

Your LinkedIn profile should be consistent with your resume, but it is not the same thing. It allows you to go a little deeper into who you are, what drives you, who you’ve worked with, what you did, etc. Same goes for Twitter, Facebook, and whatever else you kids are using these days. Be you, but use good judgement. If someone only ever found your online accounts, would they have an accurate idea of who you are and what you want to be known as?

Many people fear all social media and online presence because they think of it as a liability. Some people try to stay undiscoverable online as a protective measure. This is a terrible idea. First, always assume if some hacker wants to find your stuff bad enough they’ll find a way, regardless of your settings. But more importantly, seeing social media as a liability blinds you to the fact that it can be a huge asset. There is no neutral. It’s either helping you or hurting you. Being completely anonymous online hurts you. Take charge of your online presence and make it an asset.

Level 3: A Personal Website

It’s easier than ever to setup a personal website. If you’re serious about finding a great job, just do it. Go over to WordPress and get started. In a few hours you can have a clean, simple website that serves as a repository of all the things you enjoy and want to be known for.

A personal website gives you far more control than profiles on third party sites. You can feature whatever you wish, you can blog, share video, include a longer bio, express aspects of yourself you wouldn’t cram into a LinkedIn profile, and really use the blank canvas to create whatever you wish.

But more than what you have on your site is the fact that you have one. Anyone who has put together a basic, neat, up to date personal website stands out. Not many people do, despite how easy it is, and if you do you’ll have something that gives you far more cred than just a decent resume in a pile.

If you really want to gain an edge, overcome fear, build confidence, and become a better communicator and thinker then take the next step and blog on your site regularly. I recommend blogging daily, but if that’s daunting, try weekly. You can always hide bad posts, but the act of doing it and knowing it can be seen by others will do more for your creative capacity and productive power than any other simple activity I know of.

Level 4: A Portfolio of Projects

If you’ve already setup your personal website here’s a way to really beef up the value. Beyond a nice homepage and about page with a bio your website can feature projects you’ve completed.

Remember when I said the resume should show outcomes instead of just telling about activities? A portfolio allows you to show in much greater detail what you’ve created. It’s especially easy for those with skills in art or coding or engineering to share publicly what you’ve produced. You may think that your management or communication or sales skills can’t really be put into a portfolio that shows what you’ve done, but it can.

Go to a freelancer website and pay someone $50 to design a nice one-pager that shows the results of that event your organized and executed. Have someone build an interactive graph tracking your fundraising or sales campaign. Show articles you’ve written and clicks they received.

If you can think of nothing tangible that you’ve completed to put in a portfolio it’s a good sign you should get cracking! Writers and photographers know that their portfolio of work is what really matters. If they have none, they start out just doing things for free to build it up. You can do the same. Just get started creating something and share the results. Do projects for free that will help you get something under your belt.

The great thing is, the success or failure of your projects is less important at this stage than that you completed it. I’ve talked with tech companies who say they’d rather hire someone who built a cheesy, non-innovative notepad app than someone with a stellar resume who never built and “shipped” anything at all.

Level 5: Unique, Stand-Alone Websites, Videos, InfoGraphics for Your Target Company

Here’s where the great stand apart from the very good. If you really, truly, deeply want to work for a company why not devote yourself to studying them in depth and presenting your unique take?

Remember Nina, whose resume was lost in the heap at AirBnB? She went level five and became internet famous. She put together an impressive site that deserved attention, still it’s telling of just how low the bar is among job-seekers that a simple website was such a viral sensation. No one is doing this. But you can.

One thing employers will tell you when sifting through job applications is that too many people talk about themselves and too few talk about the company they claim to want to work for. “I’m Joe and I’m great at XYZ” tells me nothing about why Joe applied specifically for my company. Does he just want a paycheck, or is he passionate about my business? Does he even know what we do and what we value?

There’s no better way to demonstrate your knowledge and passion for a company than to dig into the industry, business model, customer base, competitors, and build something unique that describes what you love about and what you would do for the company. Don’t think about what would make you look good, think about what would actually be valuable to the company.

I guarantee spending 30 days doing a deep dive on your target company will be more valuable than spending an entire year getting a second major and more clubs to list on your resume. If you can create something of value to the company before you’re even working for them that sends a strong signal that you’re a person they want on board.

What Are You Waiting For?

One of the reasons I launched my company Praxis is precisely because so few young people realize that they have the power to create their own professional future. There are more tools available than ever and more opportunities but so few realize it. You can’t sit on the conveyor belt and expect it to drop you at a fulfilling job.

Look, I’m not saying it’s easy. But don’t tell me there’s no way to get a great job if you aren’t willing to push yourself to level four, or ideally level five. You can probably think of ten more things I didn’t even list here if you really try.

The days of buying a degree and hoping it buys you a job are over. Be your own credential and prove through the work you do that you can create value.

Ask Isaac: Religious Beliefs

After several listener questions about the what and why of my religious beliefs, I decide to answer.

I recorded this months ago, but never aired it. I don’t like to talk about my religious beliefs for two primary reasons:

1) They are ever evolving and I want the permission to freely change and not have people try to hold me to what I’ve thought in the past.

2) Every word on the topic is loaded and everyone has different meanings and feelings behind them. It’s really hard to convey anything concrete without being misunderstood. It’s tiring and too easy to offend or get people distracted by small details and lose the ability to talk about the stuff I’m more interested in.

But I decided to just get it out there, at least in a very general sense, since several listeners have now asked. This is not about what I think you should believe. It is only a description of my own take.

I’m sure there’s something for everyone to disagree with in this one!

Ask you own question via the website.  This and all episodes are available on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Stitcher.

How to Offer to Help Someone

If you’ve ever been moved to help someone, whether by sympathy for their hardship or excitement for their success, you probably did what most of us do.  Made a well-meaning general offer.

“Hey, I’m so sorry for what you’re going through.  Let me know what I can do to help.”

Or,

“I love what you’re doing!  I’m here to help in any way.”

These are not bad offers.  They successfully signal comradery and provide a little bump in mood to the recipient.  But they don’t deliver the kind of help that sticks.  If you really want to do more than signal your sympathy (you are not obligated to do more, so only do if you really want to) you’ve got to get specific.

My nephew passed away two years ago.  Our entire family was in shock and mourning.  Sympathy cards and thoughts flowed in to my sister and her husband.  It was overwhelming to see the support, and it did them good.  Many offered to help and meant it, but it’s just too hard while grieving to think of something a friend or neighbor or stranger can do for you, and it feels weird to ask.  The greatest help came from those who didn’t ask what they could do.  They just noticed something and did it.  They bought dinner.  They took the kids out to get new shoes.  They cleaned the house.

It’s the same for support with exciting projects.  I get a lot of emails from people saying they’re excited about Praxis and want to help.  I love these emails.  It’s great to know people share my excitement for our vision and progress.  There are a rare few who do more than signal.  They don’t ask, they offer or do something specific.  I’ll never forget just after launch when Zak Slayback contacted me and said, “I want to help.  Let me manage your social media pages.”  He had a good reputation and I needed help so I let him.  Then he started doing other things like setting up email newsletters, improving the website, writing blog posts, going to events, and creating marketing material.  Pretty soon we couldn’t live without him and he was hired.  Others help without asking how by making an email introduction to a business partner or potential participant.

It’s perfectly fine and in many cases preferable to let people know you care.  But for those times when you’re really moved to provide support or help a project move forward challenge yourself to not give any open-ended offers.  Before saying, “I’m with you and here to help”, think long and hard about what needs to be done and what you are able to do.  The more specific the better, even if it’s a rather mundane task.  You might have to get creative, but if you learn to offer help in practical solutions instead of generic words you will change people’s lives forever.  They won’t forget.

A lot of what we do in life is signaling.  That’s OK so far as it goes, but it often muddies our ability to identify cause and effect.  Pretty soon we start to believe bumper stickers and ribbons equal change or progress.  It’s the same on the individual level and society at large.  If you push yourself to figure out what will really help, instead of what will signal your desire to help, you’ll begin to see the world anew.

 

Episode 32: Isaac on the Tom Woods Show, Discussing Praxis and Creating Alternative Experiences

Tom Woods brings me on his show to talk about Praxis and the road from theory to practice through creating alternative experiences for people here and now. We talk about what makes a successful Praxis applicant and how to figure out which path is right for you. Tom is a historian, author, Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and a popular podcaster.

Check out tomwoods.com to learn more.

This and all episodes are available on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Stitcher.

You Don’t Have to Respond to Every Idea

I was thinking of writing a post today called “bad arguments of the week” as a kind of catharsis.  I came across an unusually high number of terrible arguments this week in my regular perusing of social media.  Instead I’ll make a broader observation in hopes of offering freedom, rather than simply critique.

You don’t have to respond to every idea.

I reflected on the diverse list of bad arguments I collected and realized they all shared a few things in common.  They were each reactions to an article or piece of news the arguer disagreed with.  They were all written very much in the moment.  None of them actually put forward arguments against the core idea they were reacting to.

All these bad arguments attacked persons and motives.  They took forms like, “If you say X, you’re probably too dumb to realize Y”, or, “Why is this person even writing on X topic when Y other person has more credentials”, or, “Person A said something dumb, so activity B they engage in must also be dumb.”

It’s fun to engage in a little sarcasm sometimes, or playfully mock an idea.  But the arguments I saw didn’t seem all that playful, as evidenced in part by the continued back and forth comments by those making them.

I won’t pretend to know anyone’s motives, but it appeared that in each case the bad argument was made as a sort of addictive behavior.  The arguer saw an idea they strongly disagreed with.  They did not want to take the time or energy to meaningfully engage the idea and offer a logical counter.  Nothing wrong with that.  But then the response addiction kicked in and they had to say something.  In the middle of the moment of frustration, they posted an insult disguised as an argument.  When others responded, the addiction wouldn’t let them leave.  They kept going.

The odd part is, more time and energy is spent going back and forth shoring up weak insults and arguments than it would’ve taken to relax, engage the original idea, and put forth an argument not full of logical fallacies and emotion.

The solution is probably not to make better arguments, but to make fewer.

None of us realistically have the time or mental space to put forth well-constructed arguments for all of our beliefs or against all those we find odious.  That’s OK.  If you know you won’t engage an idea, you don’t have to respond at all.

How valuable is it to you or anyone else to post under an article something like, “This is wrong.”?  You’re signalling two things: first, that you do not wish to engage the idea at the moment; second, that you can’t resist letting people know that you disagree (with an air of condescension).  But if you really aren’t up for discussing, why register your disagreement at all?  Once you do it might be hard to move away from the comments that follow.

Give yourself permission to walk away from bad arguments.  If you don’t intend to put forth good ones of your own, try not responding at all.  Not because you owe it to anyone or you should follow some rules of social media decorum, but because you might end up feeling a bit more free and relaxed yourself.

If you’re not having fun, what’s the point?

Published
Categorized as Commentary

Income Is Not Automatic

Ernst & Young no longer requires degrees for entry level jobs.  A lot of people shared articles about the change on Facebook.  On one thread I noticed the following comment:

“[T]his is great but it could also be an excuse to pay people less.”

The word “excuse” stuck out to me.  Why would EY need an excuse?  If they want to offer less pay they can do so at any time.  Of course any potential hire can just as easily refuse the offer and only agree to work for more.

Employers want the best workers for the lowest possible price and workers want the best jobs for the highest possible pay.  “Best” and “highest” of course include the entire bundle of compensation, benefits, work environment, etc.  Both parties have an incentive to bargain.  Both parties have an incentive to only agree if they don’t think they can get a better deal elsewhere.  It’s a bet on the value they’ll receive from the other party.

The comment reveals a bizarre but common belief about work.  There’s an idea that jobs and income are an automatic and deserved reward for moving on the conveyor belt and jumping through all the right hoops.  It implies that pay is based on a rigid credential scale and companies can only adjust pay if they adjust the hoops to jump through.  It implies that, with ironclad causality, a degree will automatically entitle the holder to higher pay and the only way to pay less is to hire those without one.

A degree has never made someone more valuable.  What you can do determines the value you can create and demand.  The degree is only a signal that, with more or less accuracy, tells employers that you are likely to be better on average than someone without the degree.  That signal is no longer working for EY because the reality isn’t backing up the assumed correlation.

EY does potential employees a favor to announce and implement this policy.  The degree is not signalling enough value to distinguish those with it from those without.  Degrees are very expensive.  Everyone who buys one assuming it will bring them a good EY job is buying under false pretenses.  They need to create value to get hired.

EY is saving potential employees money and time by telling them what’s always been true: it’s about the value you can create, not the paper you have.  The paper was used because it often correlated and it was a quick and dirty way to eliminate some weak applicants.  Now the applicants with degrees are not sufficiently better than those without.

This represents not an excuse for companies to pay less, but an opportunity for young workers to pay less.  You are not required to spend four years and six figures poured in cinder block walls with fluorescent lights to take tests on things you mostly have no interest in.  You are free to learn to create value any way you can.

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Want a better way to get the skills, network, knowledge, confidence, and experience you need?  Want to be more than a worker?  Want to be an entrepreneur?  How about an education that comes with an awesome job.  It’s college plus your first job plus a lot more wrapped into one.  In one year.  For a net cost of zero.  Check out Praxis.

Guest Post: Here’s How I Work, Levi Morehouse Edition

So my brother Levi was asked to do this and he emailed me saying, “I’d like to, but how would I even share it?  I’m like a grandpa when it comes to online platforms.”  I told him I’d share it on my blog because it’s interesting and entertaining to me and, I suspect, my readers, half of which are our mother.

Levi is the hardest working person I’ve ever met, and also (paradoxically) one of the most laid back in some weird way.  I’ll let him take it from here.

———————————————–

(This is Levi)

My former employee James “J-Train” Walpole recently answered the Life Hacker “How I Work” challenge. Now I’ve been called to give an account of how I get things done. Here goes:

———————————————–

Location: Charleston, South Carolina
Current Gig(s): Founder of Ceterus
Current Mobile Device: iPhone 6
Current Computer: Surface Pro
One Word That Best Describes Your Work: Passion (I love what I do)

WHAT APPS/SOFTWARE CAN’T YOU LIVE WITHOUT?

For work: Google Apps, Asana, Zoho CRM.
For clients: QuickBooks Online, Bill.com, ZenPayroll (now Gusto).
For me: Fanduel, Yahoo Fantasy Football, Voxer

WHAT’S YOUR WORKSPACE LIKE?

We have an open office environment, where I often work while walking around outside taking phone calls (I have been told I am too loud to stay inside). The environment is 100% flexible, in that staff can work from the office, their home, or anywhere they can be valuable. For me, this is almost always the office itself.

WHAT’S YOUR BEST TIME-SAVING TRICK?

Inbox management. There is no one way (although mine is pretty awesome and simple), but owning your inbox leads to major time saved.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE TO-DO LIST MANAGER?

Gmail inbox/labels.

BESIDES YOUR PHONE AND COMPUTER, WHAT GADGET CAN’T YOU DO WITHOUT?

My iPhone wallet case. I hate “things”, and until the phone itself replaces my Amex and drivers license, having these affixed to my phone is ideal.

WHAT EVERYDAY THING ARE YOU BETTER AT THAN ANYONE ELSE? 

No one empowers entrepreneurs with innovative financial reporting and on-time bookkeeping better than I do with my team at Ceterus. Note to the reader: asking an accountant this questions will lead to a very lame and boring answer, see mine above. Sorry.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY READING?

I’m currently reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson, and I am always re-reading Zero to One by Peter Thiel.

WHAT DO YOU LISTEN TO WHILE YOU WORK? 

One of the first tasks for my newer employees is to setup a station for me on Pandora. This ranges from hip-hop, to folk and as long as it is loud it works for me.

ARE YOU MORE OF AN INTROVERT OR AN EXTROVERT? 

I enjoy people, but am an introvert at the core.

WHAT’S YOUR SLEEP ROUTINE LIKE? 

I get up at 4:48 on weekdays. I try to sleep 5-8 hours per night, but do not have a set bed time. I wake with an iPhone alarm in the adjacent room. I am currently working to never use snooze (results are mixed to-date).

FILL IN THE BLANK: I’D LOVE TO SEE _____ ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

Isaac Morehouse, as he is so kind to post this for me (a social media neophyte).

[It just so happens, I beat him to it and answered yesterday.]

WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED?

My longtime youth basketball coach, friend and father figure once told me “I only remember the shots that go in”. As a confidence-lacking young athlete who was more focused on not messing up than on being great, this advise was instrumental in my hoops game at the time and in all life decisions since. Play to make the shot, don’t play to not miss.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO ADD?

No.

Here’s How I Work

My colleagues at Praxis and I found this exercise to be fun and useful, so now it’s my turn to answer.

——————————————————-

Location: Mount Pleasant, SC
Current gig: CEO of Praxis
Current mobile device: iPhone 6
Current computer: ASUS Zenbook. It’s gorgeous and wonderful.
One word that best describes how you work: Fast.

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Voxer, WordPress, the Scrabble app, fantasy football apps, and Momentum.

What’s your workspace like?

Tiny.  I purposely have a ridiculously small, clear desk.  I don’t want space for anything on it.  It contains my beautiful sleek laptop, and usually a giant stein of water, and sometimes a few books I’m reading.  I move around and work from different places in the house sometimes too.  My office is actually just a small section of the bedroom, since I got kicked out of my designated office room.  I work from home and as my kids grow they take up more space.  Since I travel a lot and don’t really care where I work, I moved.  I could work in a broom closet as long as it wasn’t cluttered and I got to take walks outside.

What’s your best time-saving trick?

Delete, shred, destroy.  I get rid of absolutely everything nonessential.  Immediately.  I am ruthless with throwing away paper mail, physical notes, business cards, receipts, and other odds and ends.  I am also a strict zero inbox guy, keeping on top of my emails frees my time, but more importantly my mind, to create.

Also saying no.  Often.

What’s your favorite to-do list manager?

I’ve tried Asana, Google Tasks, Slack, and several others.  None of them end up being that valuable.  I use Google Calendar and the native Sticky Notes app on Windows, or if I’m not at my computer the native Notes app on the iPhone.  I leave myself Voxer messages in the My Notes thread sometimes too.  Everything else gets too complicated.

Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can’t you live without?

Since I just bought a Kindle Paperwhite so I don’t overflow my room with more books, I’m hoping it will become indispensable.  I’m still a lover of physical books, so we’ll see.  Otherwise no particular gadgets really matter much.  I did just get a waterproof mp3 player from a friend that lets me listen to podcasts while swimming, so that might become a necessity too.  Until the weather gets too cold to swim.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

Mornings.  I’m awesome when I wake up.  I’m happy, eager, productive, and full of energy and optimism…even before coffee.

I’m also pretty solid at writing good, concise emails.

What are you currently reading?

Siddartha by Herman Hesse, Mimesis by Erich Auerbach, The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, Outwitting the Devil by Napolean Hill (rereading), and Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse (rereading).

What do you listen to while you work?

While writing I either listen to a playlist on Spotify of Moby songs, or a station on Pandora called “Yoga music”.  While doing less creative stuff I might listen to some Led Zeppelin, or ’90’s era hip hop, or 80’s New Wave, or anything sappy with vocals I can belt out.  If I’m not writing, I mix it up quite a bit.  When I’m writing, it’s only ethereal mood music.

Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?

I’m definitely an extrovert based on any personality test or technical definition.  However, in the last 5 years my ratio of time I need to be with people and time I need to be alone has reversed.  Now for every one hour I spend “on” and around people I need four hours alone.  It used to be the opposite.  I can go mix it up or give a talk or be at an event and enjoy it, but I really, desperately need to get out and be alone for long periods of time afterwards, and I am (no longer) ever the last one at the party, but more likely one of the first to leave.  I’d rather be alone writing or reading or watching a Sci-Fi with my wife than anything else.

What’s your sleep routine like?

It’s not always like this, especially with travel, but my ideal routine is: go to sleep when my mind wants to, wake up when my body wants to.

My mind is typically very active in the late evening until around midnight or 1 AM.  I often feel physically ill if I get up earlier than 7:30 or so, and I much prefer getting up at around 8 or 8:30.  I used to feel guilty for that and make myself get up earlier no matter what, but I found my mornings far less productive because I felt too out of whack physically.  I now try not to schedule anything before 9 or 10 so I can wake up, lay in bed gathering my thoughts for a bit, get some food and coffee, and write a blog post before the hustle and bustle begins.

Fill in the blank: I’d love to see ______ answer these same questions.

My good friend and colleague TK Coleman.  I’ve known him for over 15 years, and I still find his work and life habits a total mystery.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

“If it doesn’t affect bowel movements or erections, don’t worry about it.”  True story.  A wise man actually gave me this advice once.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

If you’re not having fun (even if sometimes intense or stressful fun) you’re doing it wrong.

Profit is a Better Goal Than ‘Social Good’

Yesterday I got an email from Kickstarter that at first I laughed off as silly PR and signalling.  Then it made me sad.  Then it made me upset.

I like Kickstarter.  I use it.  It’s a supercool platform and has opened up a whole new world of crowdfunding, the effects and possibilities of which we are only beginning to see.  So what did they send me that rubbed me so wrong?

Kickstarter is no longer a traditional corporation but a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC).  I have not looked into the legal structure of PBC’s nor am I any kind of legal expert.  The way a company chooses to structure itself doesn’t really matter to me.  The thing that got me was the description in the email:

Until recently, the idea of a for-profit company pursuing social good at the expense of shareholder value had no clear protection under U.S. corporate law, and certainly no mandate. Companies that believe there are more important goals than maximizing shareholder value have been at odds with the expectation that for-profit companies must exist ultimately for profit above all.

Benefit Corporations are different. Benefit Corporations are for-profit companies that are obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on society, not only shareholders. Radically, positive impact on society becomes part of a Benefit Corporation’s legally defined goals.

What could it mean to have legal “protection” and, far more ominous, “mandate” to pursue social good?

The most obvious questions are what is social good and who gets to define it?  Even if specific goals or outcomes are written in to a legal charter, who gets to interpret them?  If an investor puts millions in to a business with expectation of financial return and the money gets squandered on a giant made-from-recycled-shoes art project at the office, could it be argued that this was the legally correct move because it’s good for the community or some other undefinable value?

Firms are not profit driven because they are evil.  They’re not even profit driven because they care more about profit than anything else.  No one got together and decided to make firms profit driven as an evil conspiracy.  They simply ended up that way because it’s the best possible method of accountability to value creation.

They’re profit driven because profit is the only uniform, objective measure of all the diverse goals and desires of everyone involved in the enterprise.  Designers might want to make the world more beautiful, customer service people may want to help others solve little problems (except maybe at Comcast), investors may want to be a part of something new and exciting, founders may want to change the world, and customers may want a specific feeling the product provides.  To keep creating value in these myriad ways the firm needs resources.  They can’t be consuming more value than they produce.  They need to create something that is valued by the customers more than the raw inputs were valued on the market.  The only way to measure all these subjective preferences is with profit and loss.

When people decry profit they seem to treat it as a one-sided bilking affair.  Profit is really, really hard.  Loss is far more common.  And loss is just as important.  Loss is the greatest force for resource conservation the world has ever known.  It lets us know that a company is, quite literally, destroying value.  It puts the brakes on fun but destructive behavior.  They are consuming resources valued at X and are only able to sell them at X-1.  They have transformed resources into something less valued by society.

Profit and loss are the best signals humanity has ever had to make decisions about resource allocation.  Relying on warm fuzzies or good intentions is far less effective and can even be downright deadly.  If you allocate resources based on perceived need or good feels you’ll end up with big shortages and surpluses, like every planned economy ever, and the poorest will suffer from lack of access to food, health care, etc.  This is how mass starvation happens.  High minded ideals replace organically emerging prices as the means by which resources are allocated, and well-intentioned elites from on high replace self-interested individual decisions makers on the ground.

I’m not trying to get dramatic here.  For all I know PBC’s could be an improvement over current state offered options for incorporation like 501c3’s or C-Corps or what have you.  I’m also not such a fool to think technical legal jargon so powerful that it can override informal institutions or cause investors to make horrible decisions with their money.  Chances are, if you’re knowingly investing in a PBC, you trust the assumed definition of “social good” or whatever other goals enough to take the risk.

The troubling thing is the rhetoric and the built-in assumption that profit and loss provide worse information about how to improve the world than vague things like a “commitment to the arts”.  Being committed to a high ideal without really knowing enough to bring it about in the everyday lives or real people (hint: none of us do) is a great way to waste a lot of resources and do a lot of damage while feeling good about yourself.  Being committed to accounting profit and loss is a great way to create value for the world, whether you intended to or not.

*BONUS

I was discussing this with a friend on Voxer, and added this very important point about what prices really are.  They’re not only about incentivising people to do things.  Even in a world where people were able to rise above self-interest, prices would still be crucial for the information they convey.  It’s an incentive wrapped in information.  Here’s an excerpt from our conversation:

Episode 31: Is It OK to Sell Your Kidney? Your Child? Your Vote? James Stacey Taylor Says Yes

Are there things that shouldn’t be paired with money?

James Stacey Taylor and I discuss controversial philosophical questions concerning adoption, organs, votes and even personal identity. We look at best and worst case scenarios and how allowing markets would compare to the world we have today.

James is a philosopher, author and Associate Professor at the College of New Jersey. You can find out more about him here.

This and all episodes are available on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Stitcher.

To My Wife on Our Anniversary

Seems just yesterday we got hitched
Not long after, a bun in the oven
Still surprised I haven’t been ditched
Here’s to making it a baker’s dozen!

Five cities, six houses we’ve been
And let’s be honest; some were quite crappy
Three kids, over our heads we’re in
Undeniably crazy and happy.