“I want to go into business.”

What do you mean by business?

“I guess I don’t know.”

I have a lot of conversations like that with young people.  They have some ill-defined desires and fears, and they feel pressure to choose a destiny or at least provide a ready answer when someone asks, “What are you doing?”  The resolution comes from a label.

Pick from a handful of standard labels deemed understandable and acceptable, and voila!  You don’t need to stress so much about who you are and what you want.  It might even provide a superficial sense of belonging to a label group.  “Marketing”, “Creative stuff”, “Hospitality”, “Outdoors”, “Media”, “Entrepreneurship”, and a few other labels get tossed around.

But these labels make self-knowledge harder, not easier.  They provide the illusion of self-knowledge and direction, and distract from the fact that they have no substance.  When you ask, “OK, marketing.  What kinds of specific activities do you want to do for people?” the illusion crumbles.  The dawning realization that, despite the label (partly because of it), you have no idea what you mean by it or what you want.

Same goes for lifestyle labels like, “Travel”, “Remote work”, “Passive income”, “Work I’m passionate about”, “Social entrepreneurship”.  No one is hiring any of those.  People are paying money to get specific problems solved that are valuable to them.  Which problems do you plan to solve?  How will you leverage your skill in solving those problems into a lifestyle you want?

It’s better to eschew labels altogether until you have a lot of clear self-knowledge.  When you don’t, they stymie the process of getting it and lure you into thinking the label provides meaning.  It doesn’t.

Once you have a good deal of self-knowledge and self-honesty, labels can be handy tools to use when communicating to others.  Don’t confuse them with your true identity, but at a cocktail party, it’s nice to have to shorten an uninteresting conversation.  I thought I’d have more to say on the usefulness aspect, but I guess that’s it.

The fewer shiny objects that attract your attention, the better.

To be sure, some of those shiny objects turn out to be awesome, big wins.  But it doesn’t matter.  They’ll find you if you do your work.  If you keep scanning the horizon to find and chase them, you’ll never get work done, so even if you catch one you won’t be able to take advantage.

Just do the day’s work, then move on to the next day’s work again and again and again.  Never stop, never die.

The compounding effect of making yourself better every day and shipping something will lead to more shiny objects than you could ever hope to amass by chasing them.

Head down, work done, on to the next one.

Getting ready to move next week.  Boxing up my books is a delightful task.

I’m a minimalist and throw away almost everything.  Except books.  I have a rule for them.  If it’s a book I’ll read, or if I’ve read it, good enough to read a second time, I keep it.  If it’s a one and done, I toss it.  I’ve gotten rid of more books then I’ve kept, still, I have quite a collection.  Probably 600-700 books.

I probably won’t read most of them a second time.  But I love their presence.

I arrange my books in chronological order on my intellectual journey.  It serves as a physical timeline of my mental and spiritual growth.

Just being in the presence of the books that helped shape my thinking does something.  It reminds me of the ideas and fills me with a sliver of the magic and illumination I had when I read them.

If I never pick them up a second time, they still make my life better as living furniture.

“My goal is to obtain a job in the marketing department for a tech startup.  I really hate college and it costs so much, but I’ve gotta finish my major to get the job.”

No you don’t.  Here’s that exact job right here.  It already pays more than average college grads make and you can start immediately.

“Oh wow, that is such a great opportunity.  Unfortunately, I’ve got to finish four years of college and hope to get that same job then!”

The above is not an exaggeration.  I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had variations on this conversation at Praxis with young people exploring their options.

It always reminds me of the scene at the end of Dumb & Dumber, where Lloyd and Harry are destitute and a busload of super models rolls up…

I don’t know about Lloyd and Harry, but I’ve come to a realization about what’s going on in the cases of young people.

They don’t want their stated goal.

Well, they do, but not as much as they want something else.  All else equal, they’d like that job.  But if getting the job meant owning their decisions and being held responsible for their success and failure, they’d rather pass.  What they want above all is to maintain the illusion that they are not responsible for the outcomes in their life.  They want to avoid the fact of their own agency.

The reality is, every individual has inescapable agency.  But oh how hard we work to persist in the illusion that we don’t!

If you follow the dominant path, those around you will support the illusion that you’re not really responsible for your life.  Stay in school, though you hate it and know it’s a waste.  Get the degree.  If you fail to find a job, those around you will say you did the right thing; indeed, you did all you could!  Good for you sticking it out!  But the economy or some other external force just happened to make things tough on you.

No one will judge your mediocrity or unhappiness harshly if you do the things everyone wants and expects of you.

But if you break the mold and go your own way, watch out.  The illusion that you lack agency will be shattered.  Those around you will hold you accountable for every outcome in your life.  “I told you you never should have moved away/started a company/opted-out of school!”  You won’t be able to absolve yourself, or meld meaninglessly into the phony blob of collective responsibility.  You will be fully aware that you own you.

Good.

The lie is poisonous.

The sooner you can strip away the things that make the illusion of lack of agency easy, the better.

It starts with self-honesty.  “My parents won’t let me do this, so I can’t” is a lie.  The truth may be something like, “I want to do this but I’m unwilling to unless my parents keep funding my life.”  The sooner you can admit to yourself what you’re really going after, the better.  Often, examination reveals that you’re going after nothing deeper than prestige and external approval.  You’re likely to be (rightly) disgusted by this revelation.  That’s the beginning of finding something deeper to pursue and owning your decisions.

Don’t choose the path that brings least scrutiny and maintains the illusion of external control.  Choose the path that awakens you to the inescapable fact of your own agency.

Whether you’re running a business, producing a podcast, selling a book, or writing for a blog, here’s a weird paradox:

Audience stats are more helpful when they’re more boring.

If something you do takes off and “goes viral”, that’s when you’re most tempted to watch the numbers like a hawk.  It’s also when those numbers are the most dangerous.  They can lead you astray, cause false conclusions, and most of all, mess with your psychological and emotional wiring by getting you hooked on the dopamine hit of lots of attention and traffic.  Sure, you can learn from the data in high times, but it’s better to look back on the spikes a little later than risk getting pulled in during the frenzy and forgetting to keep your head down and do the work.

If something crashes and you take a massive dip, that’s also a time to discount the data and delay the deep-dive a bit.  It can induce panic, fear, bad judgement, and depression too easily.  This doesn’t mean there’s nothing to gain or that you should put your head in the sand, but again, you can’t let the bad news keep you from doing the work that day and the next.

When things seem business as usual; a steady flow of attention without a lot of spikes or dips, that’s when data are often the best to assess.  Dive deep and try to understand the source and insight into your audience.  Look back to previous highs and lows and compare to the steady times.  Imagine future dips or spikes and what might cause or prevent them.

The world of instant access to attention stats is amazing and allows for to-the-second agile adjustment…but this is dangerous for emotional attention-seeking creatures too.

When really high or really low, tune it out a bit and focus on the work.  When the data are boring, dig in and learn a much as possible.  It’s the opposite of what the gut wants, but helps a lot if you can do it!

Peter Leeson is no stranger to explorations and explanations of bizarre behavior, nor to making the power of rational choice theory and economic thinking accessible to laypeople.  His academic papers on odd rituals and his books like “The Invisible Hook” do a bang-up job of both.

But WTF?!: An Economic Tour of the Weird, is something else altogether.

As far as content, the book combines eight real world behaviors that make you say “WTF?!”, derived from Leeson’s research and published papers.  Everything from shaking a poisoned chicken to settle a slight, to convicting insects and rodents of crimes in a court of law are examined, revealing sensible, even brilliant logic.  The theme over and again is simple but profound: given the constraints (beliefs, resources, etc.) they face, people behave in rational ways to seek their ends.  Yes, trial by combat and wife sales are rational actions in context.

But what makes the content in WTF?! really stand out is the form.  Leeson’s academic work is accessible, but this book is downright fun.  It’s like Ripley’s Believe it Or Not; enjoyable as much for entertainment as enlightenment.  Acting as a tour guide, Leeson describes strange phenomena and their rationale, while engaging colorful characters on the tour who ask many of the questions readers are thinking.  The guide pokes fun at them, and himself, shares barbs and insults, and connects to stories from his own childhood.

You don’t need to care one bit about economics or social theory to enjoy this book.  Conversely, if you hate fun and frivolity and care only for social science, you’ll find serious economic theory in WTF?!

If you don’t find the world more fascinating and enjoyable, and people more ingenious and clever, after reading WTF?!, something might be wrong with you!

Whether its a church, a workplace, or a college campus, the status you have in any small setting is different than your status in a larger context.

It is easy to forget that though and get stressed about your lack of status in a specific environment. This is especially common for young people at school and at work. They get wrapped up in small games to win favor in small contexts, even when it comes at the expense of their long-term goals.

It’s important to remember the world outside of your workplace, school, or community so that you can decide to win influence when it serves your long-term goals and avoid the game entirely when it doesn’t.

This week on Office Hours, TK and Isaac discuss contextual currency and answer your questions about relationships and relationships to work.

1) “How do I find smart friends?”

2) “How can I become more of a self-starter at my job?”

3) “How do I respond when my employer makes me do something that isn’t my responsibility?”

Check out the new episode of Office Hours now on iTunes, YouTube, direct download and all major podcast platforms.

Topics Discussed:

• Contextual currency and Applebee’s cool
• Deciding when to play the game
• Finding good friends
• How to become more of a self-starter at work
• Creativity as a discipline
• Selfishly doing your job as good as you can

Most kids are conditioned almost from day one to obey arbitrary authority.  No one attempts to explain or justify the source of the parent or teacher’s authority; no consent is sought, and no choice is offered.

Schools demand complete conformity to schedules and activities, controlling everything from when and how long you get to think about what, to when you can eat and go to the bathroom.  The authority is entirely arbitrary.  The main fallback when kids question is, “because I said so”.

Kids are also conditioned to believe that, absent this imposed control, they would destroy themselves.  They’d be dumb, self-destructive, and socially disastrous if they weren’t controlled in every facet by whatever adult has appointed themselves an authority.  Nevermind how stupid, shallow, cruel, or petty that adult may be.

Eventually, kids begin to believe it.  They assume the world cannot function unless they blindly follow orders.  They assume they would hurt themselves and others if they were free.  They cannot see beyond the frightful comfort of conformity.

After nearly every citizen spends the first two decades of their life conditioned to obey authority without question, something odd happens.  People act surprised when those same citizens follow political strong men and seek legislative solutions for every problem.

The real wonder is just how rebellious and free humans still are after so many years of control and conditioning.

I’m reading The Creature from Jekyll Island and, WTF right now, and both are delightful.  Not just the content, but the writing.  It’s playful.  It’s fun, goes by fast, and makes me smile.

Playfulness is an underrated aspect of writing.  If it’s not an enjoyable aesthetic experience to read, that’s a missed opportunity!  I definitely enjoy writing more when I’m playful with words, but it can be hard to break out of the formal/serious rut.

I’m thrilled by the massive decentralization of everything going on right now due to software.  The internet got the ball rolling, and everything from music, movies, publishing, travel, apparel, and financial industries are breaking into smaller units and tapping into open source, peer to peer, and crowd based tech.

It’s easy to see the benefits of power shifting away from central governments and their monopoly business cronies.  But it should not be assumed that centralization, or large pools of resources, are inherently bad.  Centralized models have strengths and weaknesses just like decentralized models.  Economies of scale and lower information and transaction costs on one side, and slower innovation, bureaucratic bottleneck, and lack of variety on the other make bigger resource pools or corporations preferable in some instances, and less valuable in others.

The problem isn’t size or centralization in itself, it’s when those things are artificially incentivized or mandated and free market competition curbed.

Governments are the ultimate evil kind of centralization.  Utterly unfair and hopelessly inefficient.  This isn’t because of their size, but because they face no competition.  It’s hard to imagine an organization in the market surviving with size and centralization of government, but if it found a way to live on nothing but voluntary customers, there wouldn’t be anything bad about it per se.  You may or may not want to work at a very large centralized organization, but as long as it faces market competition and eschews coercion, it’s not harming the world or any individuals in it.

Perhaps Wal-Mart or Amazon wouldn’t survive in a fully free market.  Who knows.  But to the extent that they face market competition, there’s nothing bad about their bigness or centralization that should make us want to end them.  Any downsides present entrepreneurial opportunity to newcomers, and powerhouse companies are not safe forever.  Markets are relentless.

Markets, if left free to operate, always push resources toward their highest valued use.  Whether that’s dispersed to a million mom and pop shops or a few dozen large organizations or a mix of both and everything in between, the important part is a free market that lets things flow.  It doesn’t much matter where resources are and in what concentrations at any given time; it matters that the process remain free and open. This maximizes the possibility for benefit across society and on the individual level.

I’m 34 today.  I always looked at 34 as a milestone, since my dad got in a car accident at 33, and of course Jesus was crucified at 33.  Making it to 34 feels like reaching some kind of safe zone.  I’m invincible!