Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 33

How Dropping Out Of College Can Save Your Life

“One has to kill a few of one’s natural selves to let the rest grow — a very painful slaughter of innocents.” – Henry Sidwick.

You, the ambitious young person, how many of your natural selves have you identified yet? How many of them are suffocating? Are you prepared for the collateral damage that’s going to come along with letting the best version of you out?

My victims:

Ryan, college student 1 year from graduating with honors

Ryan, the Hollywood executive and wunderkind

Ryan, director of marketing for American Apparel

All dead before 25. May they rest in pieces.

I am a perpetual drop out, quitting, abandoning or changing paths just as many others in my position would be getting comfortable. By Sidwick’s terms, I guess I am a serial killer. This “slaughter” made room for the exponential growth of Ryan Holiday, published author. But he better not get comfortable either. Because he too may have to be killed one day. And that will be a good thing.

Because the future belongs to those who have the guts to pull the trigger. Who can drop out and fend for themselves. If you’re reading this site, you might already be contemplating a decision like that. I want to show you why it might be the right call for you and how to do it.

The Big Myth

“It wasn’t quite a choice, it was a realization. I was 28 and I had a job as a market researcher. One day I told my psychiatrist that what I really wanted to do was quit my job and just write poetry. And the psychiatrist said, ‘Why not?’ And I said, ‘What would the American Psychoanalytic Association say?’ And he said, ‘There’s no party line.’” – Allen Ginsberg

Let’s get the big myth out of the way. There’s not much dropping involved in dropping out of school. When I did it, I remember walking to the registrar’s office — I was so nervous. My parents had disowned me, I needed to move to a new city, the girl whose job I stole hated me. Why was I doing it? I’d just helped sign my first multi-platinum rock act and I wasn’t about to go back to the dorms and tolerate reading in the newspaper about other people doing my work. I was 20 years old.

I’m here to drop out of school, I announced to the registrar (like I was some presidential candidate who thinks he literally has to throw his hat into a ring). In fact, as my advisor informed me, that wasn’t exactly necessary. I could take a leave of absence for up to a year and possibly more, without even jeopardizing my scholarship. I braced for the same condescending, paternalistic lecture I’d gotten from my parents. It didn’t come. These people were happy for me. And if I submitted the right forms, I might even be able to get course credit for the work. How’s that for a party line?

So I took the plunge, and like many big risks, it turned out that dropping out of school was more manageable than I could have ever anticipated.

What I Wish I’d Known

I get a lot of emails from kids who are on the verge of dropping out. They always seem so scared. And I empathize with them. I know I was scared when I quit. Even billionaires, years removed from the decision that has now, in their case, been clearly vindicated, still speak of the hesitation they felt when they left school. Were they doing the right thing? What would happen? Were they throwing everything away?

It’s the scariest and most important decision most young entrepreneurs, writers, artists will ever make. So naturally, they take it very seriously. But doing that — taking it so seriously — almost wrecked me.

I remember pulling into a parking space one day a few months after dropping out, stressed and on the verge of a breakdown. Why am I killing myself over this?, I thought. It’s just life. Suddenly, a wave of calm washed over me. I was doing what young people are supposed to do: take risks. There is no need to stress over anything so seriously, let alone school (as someone told me later, he’d gotten sick when he was in college and missed 18 months of school. He’s 50 now and a year and half seems like two seconds). I’m not going to starve. I’m not going to die. There is nothing that can’t be undone. Just relax. Relax. And I did. And it worked.

If I’d realized it sooner, I could have avoided many needlessly sleepless nights.

I also wish someone had given me some more practical advice:

Try to have a few months money on hand. It makes you feel less pressure and gives you more power in negotiating situations.


Keep a strong network of friends — college friends especially. The unusualness of your situation is a warping pressure.


Keep connected to normal people so you can stay normal.


Take notes! I wish I’d written down my observations and lessons for myself the first time I dropped because it wasn’t my last time and I could prepared better for round II and III.

Why I Did It Again (and again)

When I dropped out of school, I was betting on myself. It was a good bet (one that surprised me, honestly). In less than 3 years, I’d worked as a Hollywood executive, researched for and promoted multiple NYT bestsellers, and was Director of Marketing for one of the most provocative companies on the planet. I had achieved more than I ever could have dreamed of — the scared, overwhelmed me of 19 could have never conceived of having done all that. (Which is why I killed that younger version of me). Yet, I knew it was time to drop out again. The six-figure job had to go. It was time for the next phase in my life. What I had, just like college had been, was holding me back.

That’s exactly what I did. I left and moved 2,000 miles away to write a book. It was wracking and risky and hard for everyone in my life to understand. But I was prepared this time. I knew what to expect. I’d saved my money, I built up my support system and I refused to take it too seriously. Whatever happened, I probably wouldn’t die.

…and I didn’t. In fact, within six months I’d sold the book to Penguin for several times my previous salary and was securely on my new path.

Welcome to the Future

I, and the many people who email me, seem to have a funny habit: We repeatedly leave and give up the things that most people work so hard to achieve. Good schools. Scholarships. Traditional jobs. Money. We don’t believe in sunk costs. If that sounds like you, then you’re probably a perpetual drop out too. Embrace it. I have.

I know that I will do it again and again in my life. Why? Because every time I do, things get better. The trial by fire works. It’s the future. The institutions we have built to prop us up seem mostly to hold creative and forward thinking people back. College is great, but it is slow and routine. Corporations can do great things, but fulfilling individuals is not one of them. Money is important but it can also be an addiction. Accomplishments like a degree or a job are not an end, they are means to an end. I’m so glad I learned that.

On your own path in life, remember the wise words of Napoleon and “Trade space for time.” (Or if you prefer the lyrics of Spoon “You will never back up an inch ever/that’s why you will not survive.”) Space is recoverable. The status of a college degree, the income from a job — recoverable. Time is not. This time you have now is it. You will not get it back. If you are stuck in a dorm room or wedged into a cubicle and what you are doing outside of those places is actually the greatest possible use of you, then it’s time to drop out.

Acknowledge, as Marcus Aurelius writes, the power inside you and learn to worship it sincerely. It may seem counter-intuitive that dropping out — quitting — is part of that, but it is. It’s faith in yourself. It’s about not needing a piece of paper or other people’s validation to know you have what it takes and are worth betting on. This is your life, I hope you take control and get everything you can out of it.

This post originally ran on Thought Catalog.com. Comments can be seen there. I also recommend this post 15 Reasons Why You Should Drop Out of College.

How To Travel — Some Contrarian Advice

Why are you traveling?

Because, you know, you don’t magically get a prize at the end of your life for having been to the most places. There is nothing inherently valuable in travel, no matter how hard the true believers try to convince us.

Seneca, the stoic philosopher, has a great line about the restlessness of those who seem compelled to travel. They go from resort to resort and climate to climate, he says. “They make one journey after another and change spectacle for spectacle. As Lucretius says, “Thus each man flees himself. But to what end if he does not escape himself? He pursues and dogs himself as his own most tedious companion. And so we must realize that our difficulty is not the fault of the places but of ourselves.”

It’s hard for me to see anything to envy in most people who travel. Because deep down that is what they are doing. Fleeing themselves and the lives they’ve created. Or worse, they’re telling themselves that they’re after self-discovery, exploration or perspective when really they are running towards distraction and self-indulgence.

Is that why you’re packing up your things and hitting the road?

Are you, as Emerson once put it, “bringing ruins to the ruins?”

The purpose of travel, like all important experiences, is to improve yourself and your life. It’s just as likely — in some cases more likely — that you will do that closer to home and not further.

So what I think about when I travel is that “why.” (Some example “whys” for me: research, to unplug, to go straight to the source of something that is important to me or I need to see in person, a job or a paying gig, to show something that’s important to me to someone who is important to me, etc etc) I don’t take it as self-evident that going to this place or that place is some accomplishment. There are just as many idiots living in Rome as there are at home.

And when you make this distinction most of the other travel advice falls away. The penny pinching and the optimization, the trying to squeeze as many landmarks into a single day, all that becomes pointless and you focus on what matters.

So what I am saying is that saving your money, plotting your time off work or school, diligently tracking your frequent flyer miles and taking a hostel tour of Europe or Asia on budget is the wrong way to think about it.

In the vein of my somewhat controversial advice for young people, I thought I’d give some of my thoughts not just on traveling but on how to do it right.

My Travel Rules and Criteria

[*] Instead of doing a TON of stuff. Pick one or two things, read all about those things and then actually spend time doing them. Research shows that you’ll enjoy an experience more if you’ve put effort and time into bringing it about. So I’d rather visit two or three sights that I’ve done my reading on and truly comprehend than I would seeing a ton of stuff that goes right in and out of my brain. (And never feel “obligated” to see the things everyone says you have to).

[*] Take long walks.

[*] What are you taking all these pictures for? Oh for the memories? So just look at it and remember it. Experience the present moment.

[*] Read books, lots of books. You’re finally in a place where no one can interrupt you or call you into meetings and since half the television stations will be in another language…use it as a chance to do a lot of reading.

[*] Eat healthy. Enjoy the cuisine for sure, but you’ll enjoy the place less if you feel like a fucking slob the whole time. (To put it another way, why are you eating pretzels on the airplane?)

[*] Try to avoid guidebooks, which are superficial at best and completely wrong at worst. I’ve had a lot more luck pulling up Wikipedia, and looking at the list of National (or World) Historical Register list for that city and swinging by a few of them. Better yet, I’ve found a lot cooler stuff in non-fiction books and literature that mentioned the cool stuff in passing. Then you google it and find out where it is.

[*] I like to go and stand on hallowed ground. It’s humbling and makes you a better person. Try it.

[*] Come up with a schedule that works for you. Me, I get up in the morning early and run. Then I work for a few hours. Then I roll lunch and activities into a 3-4 hour block where I am away from work and exploring the city I’m staying in. Then I come back, work, get caught up, relax and then eventually head out for a late dinner. In almost every time zone I’ve been in, this seems to be the ideal schedule to A) enjoy my life B) Not actually count as “taking time off.” No one notices I am missing. And it lets me extend trips without feeling stressed or needing to rush home.

[*] Don’t check luggage. If you’re bringing that much stuff with you, you’re doing something wrong.

[*] When you’re traveling to a new city, the first thing you should do when you get to the hotel is change into your workout clothes and go for a long run. You get to see the sights, get a sense of the layout and then you won’t waste an hour of your life in a lame hotel gym either.

[*] Never recline your seat on an airplane. Yes, it gives you more room — but ultimately at the expense of someone else. In economics, they call this an externality. It’s bad. Don’t do it.

[*] Stay in weird ass hotels. Sometimes they can suck but the story is usually worth it. A few favorites: A hotel that was actually a early 20th-century luxury train car, a castle in Germany, the room where Gram Parsons died in Palm Desert, a hotel in Arizona where John Dillinger was arrested, a hotel built by Wild Bill Hickok, etc etc.

[*] Add some work component to your travel if you can. Then you can write it all off on your taxes.

[*] Don’t waste time and space packing things you MIGHT need but could conceivably buy there. Remember, it costs money (time, energy, patience) to carry pointless things around. (Also, most hotels will give you razors, toothbrushes, toothpaste and other toiletries).

[*] Go see weird shit.

[*] Ignore the temptation to a) talk and tell everyone about your upcoming trip b) spend months and months planning. Just go. Get comfortable with travel being an ordinary experience in your life and you’ll do it more. Make it some enormous event and you’re liable to confuse getting on a plane as an accomplishment by itself.

[*] In terms of museums — I like Tyler Cowen’s trick about pretending you’re a thief who is casing the joint. It changes how you perceive and remember the art. Try it.

[*] Don’t upgrade your phone plan to international when you leave the country. Not because it saves money but because it’s a really good excuse to not use your cellphone for a while. (And if you need to call someone, try Google Voice. It’s free).

[*] You know there are lots of cool places inside the United States. The South is beautiful and chances are you haven’t seen most of it. There’s all sorts of weird history and ridiculous things that your teachers never told you about. Check it out, a lot of it is within a day or two drive.

In other words…

Travel should not be an escape. It should be part of your life, no better or no worse than the rest of your life. If you are so dissatisfied with what you do or where you live that you look forward to NOT being and spend weeks and months figuring out how to get a few days off from it, that should be a wake up call. There’s a big difference between wanting a change in scenery and some new experiences vs. needing to run away from a prison of your own making.

There is to me, a lot more to admire in someone who stayed put and challenged their perspectives and habits and lifestyle choices at home than there is to some first world Instagram addict who conflates meaning with checking off boxes on a bucket list.

So ask: Do you deserve this trip? Ask yourself that honestly. Am I actually in a place to get something out of this?

Over the years, I feel like I have mastered the art of something I wouldn’t call travel. I’d call it living my life in interesting places. When I can help it, I try to get paid to go to the places I go. What I don’t do is pine for the “opportunity” to go somewhere — because if I want it, I will make it happen.

These rules and tricks have helped make that possible. Maybe they’ll work for you too.

This post originally ran on ThoughtCatalog.com. Comments can be seen there. A different, expanded version, also ran on Fourhourworkweek.com.

So You Want To Write A Book? “Want” Is Not Nearly Enough

Painters like painting, the saying goes, writers like having written.

Are there exceptions to both sides of this rule? Of course. But anyone who has run the gauntlet and written a full-length book can tell you, it’s a grueling process.

You wake up for weeks, months or years on end, and at the end of each working day you are essentially no closer to finishing than you were when you started. It’s particularly discouraging work because progress feels so elusive. Not to mention that the pages you find yourself looking at rarely match what was in your head.

It’s for this reason that “wanting” to write a book is not enough. It’s not therapy. It’s not an “experience.” It’s hard fucking work.

People who get it into their heads that they “may” have a book idea in them are not the ones who finish books. No, you write the book you HAVE to write or you will likely not write it at all. “Have” can take many forms, not just an idea you feel driven to get out. You know, Steig Larsson wrote the Dragon Tattoo series to pay for his and his wife’s retirement.

If you honestly think you might be fine if you nixed the project and went on with your life as though the idea never occurred to you–then For The Love Of God, save yourself the anguish and do that. If, on the other hand, this idea keeps you up at night, it dominates your conversations and reading habits, if it feels like you’ll explode if you don’t get it all down, if your back is to the wall–then congratulations, it sounds like you’ve got a book in you.

Some tips:

-Writing a book is not sitting down in a flash of inspiration and letting genius flow out of you. Most of the hard work is done before you write–it’s the research and the outline and the idea that you’ve spent months refining and articulating in your head. You don’t get to skip this step.

-One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was to–before I started the process–articulate the idea in one sentence, one paragraph and one page. This crystallizes the idea for you and guides you on your way.

-Taleb wrote in Antifragile that every sentence in the book was a “derivation, an application or an interpretation of the short maxim” he opened with. THAT is why you want to get your thesis down and perfect. It makes the whole book easier.

-Read The War of Art and Turning Pro.

-James Altucher wrote a very good post on “Publishing 3.0” over the weekend. Read that.

-Don’t think marketing is someone else’s job. It’s yours.

-Envision who you are writing this for. Like really picture them. Don’t go off in a cave and do this solely for yourself.

-Do you know how a laptop feels when you think you’ve closed it but come back and find out that it’s actually never shut down? That’s how your brain feels writing a book. You’re never properly shut down and you overheat.

-Expect your friends to let you down. They all say they are going to give notes but few actually will (and a lot of those notes will suck).

-Work with professionals. If you’re self-publishing, that means hiring them out of your own pocket.

-When you hit “writer’s block” start talking the ideas through to someone you trust. As Seth Godin observed, “no one ever gets talker’s block.”

-Plan all the way to the end, as Robert Greene put it. I am talking about what the table of contents and the bibliography are going to look like and what font you’re going to go with. Figure out what the final end product must look like–those are your decisions to make. Or someone else will and they’ll make the wrong choice.

-Good news: You used to have to worry that no one would ever see this thing you put your whole soul into. (It’s such a scary thought that John Kennedy Toole killed himself over it.) Well, you don’t have to worry about publishers rejecting you anymore. Obviously, it’d be better to have a major house backing you, but remember, you can always self-publish. So fuck ‘em if they reject you.

-Have a physical activity you can do. That will be the therapy. Trust me, you’ll want the ability to put the book down and go exert yourself. Plus the activity will keep you in the moment and many of your best ideas will pop into your head there. (Personally, running and swimming work for me.)

-Have a model in mind, even if you’re doing something totally new (read The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry if you’re interested in this psychologically). Thucydides had Herodotus, Gibbon had Thucydides. Shelby Foote had Gibbon. Everyone has a master to learn from.

-Plan for it to take longer than expected. Way longer.

-As Fitzgerald wrote in The Crack Up, avoid the temptation of “going to somewhere to write.” You can write anywhere–the idea that you need to travel or go away to put words down is often just a lie or a procrastination. (That being said, for my first two books, I moved thousands of miles away to places I didn’t know anyway. This can work.)

-You’ll “lose your temper as a refuge from despair.”

-Don’t talk about the book (as much as you can help it). Nothing is more seductive (and destructive) than going around telling people that you’re “writing a book.” Because most non-writers (that is, the people in your life) will give you credit for having finished already right then and there. And you’ll lose a powerful motivation to finish. Why keep going if you’ve already given yourself the sense of accomplishment and achievement? That’s the question the Resistance will ask you at your weakest moment and you might lose it all because of it.

-“Don’t ever write anything you don’t like yourself and if you do like it, don’t take anyone’s advice about changing it. They just don’t know.” – Raymond Chandler

–

Everyone has their own tricks and rules and they’re going to be a little different than mine. I’m not saying every single one of the tips above will work.

But the idea around which they are based is not a controversial one. Books are hard. As in one of the hardest things you will likely ever do. If you’re only marginally attached to your idea or the notion of writing a book, you will not survive the process. “Wanting” is not enough. Write the book you HAVE to write, and if you’re not at that point yet, wait, because the imperative will come eventually.

The good news is that everyone who has been there understands. They remember and empathize with Thomas Mann’s line, “A writer is someone to whom writing does not come easily.” You can ask them for advice. They will be, in my experience, incredibly understanding and approachable.

Good luck. And don’t let this kick your ass.

This post originally ran on ThoughtCatalog.com. Comments can be seen there.

How I Did Research For 3 New York Times Bestselling Authors (In My Spare Time)

I’m going to talk about research. No, research is not very fun, and it’s never glamorous, but it matters. A lot.

If you want to be able to make compelling case for something — whether it’s in a book, on a blog, or in a multi-million dollar VC pitch — you need stories that frame your arguments, rich anecdotes to compliment tangible examples, and impressive data so you can empirically crush counter arguments.

But good research doesn’t just magically appear. Stories, anecdotes and data have to be found before you can use them.

You have to hunt them down like a shark, chasing the scent of blood across the vast ocean of information. The bad news is that this is an unenviable task … but the good news is that it’s not impossible.

It’s not even that hard … once you learn what you’re doing — and I’m going to teach you those skills.

By the time I was 21, my research had been used by #1 New York Times Bestselling authors like Robert Greene, Tim Ferriss, and Tucker Max (all of whom helped me immensely and improve as I went along). Was I a slave to study? Did I have to become a library hermit to accomplish this? No, I did it all in my spare time —on the side, often with just a few hours of work a week.

Here’s how I did it…

Step 1: Prepare long before gameday

In The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb proposes a test.

Someone walks into your house and sees your many books on your many bookshelves. Have you really read all these? they ask. This person does not understand knowledge. A good library is comprised in large part by books you haven’t read, making it something you can turn to when you don’t know something. He calls it: the Anti-Library.

I remember once in college, the pride I felt about being able to write an entire research paper with stuff from my own anti-library. We all have books and papers that we haven’t read yet. Instead of feeling guilty, you should see them as an opportunity: know they’re available to you if you ever need them.

When I met Robert Greene and he asked me to become his research assistant, the only thing that changed was that I started getting paid.

I’d already marked and organized hundreds of books with interesting leads and material and many other relevant books I had yet to get to. I had a Delicious account with countless links to articles and pages that might “someday” be of use. I’d been practicing on my own by researching examples of some of the famous laws in his books after they’d been published — in case I ever got called up to the big leagues. What Robert did was show me how to organize and channel this energy in the right direction.

This is the mark you must aim for as a researcher, to not only have enough material — and to know where the rest of what you haven’t read will be located — on hand to do your work. You must build a library and an anti-library now … before you have an emergency presentation or a shot at a popular guest post.

Google is great, don’t get me wrong, but you’re screwed if you haven’t prepared beforehand.

Step 2: Learn to search (Google) like a pro

How do you find a needle in haystack? Get rid of the extra hay.

What seems like an overwhelming mass of information is often mostly noise. Eliminate it. Take a tip I learned from Tim Ferriss. When he was researching for the secrets behind health and diet, he used a few specific hacks to drastically reduce the search area he needed to cover.

For example, if he was looking for a high level athlete, he’d go on Wikipedia and find the world’s first and second-best athletes in that sport from a decade ago. Why? It meant there would be plenty of available material and unlike athletes currently on top of the world, these would be willing and available to talk.

He’d search Google with phrases like “[My closest city] [sport] ['Olympian' or 'world champion' or 'world record']” A search for “San Francisco bobsled Olympian” might get him a recently retired team doctor — the perfect lead to start with.

In other words, don’t look for just any needle in your haystack of choice. Look for the right needle.

Me, I like to look for phrases, in order to find unlikely subjects.

Let’s say you were looking to talk about a great fighter pilot — not some legendary WWII figure but someone current, relevant to today. You’re not in the military, how are you supposed to find this guy? I like to think about it from the perspective of the writers who came before me, how would they have described the person I’m trying to find? What superlatives would they use? Probably stuff like “The Last Ace,” “Living Aces,” or “America’s greatest living airman.”

You’re looking for words that will appear in a profile or even in the headline of an article about the person you are looking to find, so that you can troll LexisNexis, Google News Archive, and even Google itself to find that person.

The phrase “The Last Ace,” as it turns out, happens to be the title of a fantastic article in The Atlantic by Mark Bowden and now you’ve got your fighter pilot (and one of the main subjects of Robert Greene’s new book).

Step 3: Go down the rabbit hole (embrace serendipity)

A couple years ago, I was contributing to a project and needed to make an analogy to mountain climbing — about a climber’s feel for the mountain.

Well, I don’t know anything about rock climbing. But I did remember seeing a commercial once with the founder of Patagonia talking about how he loved it. I found my example but decided to take a chance with something more: buried in the founder’s Wikipedia page was a mention of his friend, a named Fred Beckey. Who is he? I had no idea, but I started reading about him and it turns out he was awesome. And he led me to another climber, who ended up supplying me with the perfect quote.

You have to embrace the accidental.

In researching my first book, which was sold to Penguin for a major, six-figure advance, I read nearly everything I could find about the history and ecology of media. But that’s not where I found my best material.

In a book about media (and my own personal experiences) I somehow made my strongest citations from Ender’s Game, The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren, Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton, and a handful of other books.

Directly, these books had nothing to do with what I was writing about, but because my mind was primed to see connections, I found them in the most unusual places.

I can’t tell you how many leads I’ve tracked down from random Wikipedia citations. Explore what you’re curious about and know, and let it lead you to what you don’t.

One of my rules as a reader is to read one book mentioned in or cited in every book that I read. It not only solves the problem of ‘what to read next’ but it sends you on a journey down the rabbit hole.

Step 4: When in doubt, turn to the classics

Remember, there is nothing new under the sun. And if we’re all just saying the same things with new words, what quote is going to have more authority: one from Tacitus or some flavor-of-the-month blogger?

For me, when I research, the blank icon of an out of print book on Amazon is a clue not just that I have found something unlikely to have been overused by others, but something I can mold to my purposes (plus they only cost like $.01!).

There’s a character in Murakami’s Norwegian Wood who wouldn’t read books unless the author had been dead for 30 years. That’s a little ridiculous, but it’s a start.

The Classics are “classic” for a reason. They’ve survived the test of time. Consider it the survivorship bias put to your advantage. Von Clausewitz once said that military historians love to cite Greek and Roman history because, as the oldest and most obscure, it is the easiest to manipulate. I don’t see that as an admonishment, I see it as a helpful suggestion from a master of persuasion.

Step 5: Keep a commonplace book

While researching an article I wrote for Tim Ferriss’ blog, I discovered (and subsequently borrowed) a tool used by the famous essayist and experimenter Montaigne.

Montaigne kept what he called a “common place book” — a book of quotes, sentences, metaphors and  miscellany that he could use at a moment’s notice. I keep a more modern — but still analog — version of this book. I write everything down on 4×6 note cards, which I file in boxes. (You could do this digitally, I suppose, but the physical arrangement — being able to lay them out on a desk — is critical to my work). I picked up this system from Robert Greene, who also used it for his books.

This means marking everything you think is interesting, transcribing it and organizing it. As a researcher, you’re as rich as your database. Not only in being able to pull something out at a moment’s notice, but that that something gives you a starting point with which to make powerful connections. As cards about the same theme begin to accumulate, you’ll know you’re onto a big or important idea.

For me, I have two book ideas percolating, each about 200 index cards full. Will something come of them? I don’t know, it depends on how many more connections I make, how many random coincidences align to bring those connections to light.

All I know is that my last book (close to 1,000 cards) came together this way.

Why research?

Maybe you’re not a writer or a blogger. But, we’ve all found ourselves in a position where we need to convince people to do things they are not inclined to do.

When force is not an option, what do we do? We use the next best thing: persuasion. And when it comes to persuasion stories are important.

Anecdotes are persuasive.

Data dominates.

These things do not appear from thin air, or fall in our lap. We must search for them like a professional.

But as I’ve shown, this doesn’t need to consume your life. It can be done efficiently and expertly by focusing our efforts on the right levers. With preparation, we lengthen our runway. By eliminating noise, we drastically reduce the size of the search. With serendipity, we set ourselves up to be lucky and by relying on the classics, we give our arguments more weight. And by organizing and collecting this information properly, it is there wherever (and whenever) we need it.

Even if our research isn’t used today — or even tomorrow — it can still have immense value for us throughout our lives. I’ll leave you with Seneca’s persuasive case for noting, repeating and memorizing material …

My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application — not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech — and learn them so well that words become works.

This post originally ran on ThoughtCatalog.com and Copyblogger. Comments can be seen there.

“We want more. We want more.”

Yesterday I read this interview with a famous popstar and after I finished, I said to myself, “She is just not very smart.”

This is ridiculous if you think about it. What the fuck do I care if she is not very “smart?” Being smart is not her job. And to judge someone who is, in other areas, incredibly skilled and talented, as being somehow deficient because they lack some other additional thing? Selfish and entitled are the only words.

Bill Simmons wrote a good article Tracy McGrady a few months ago. He talked about car washes and how they usually have a couple packages, the most expensive one having basically a complete list of amenities (even though the cheaper middle packages have pretty much everything you could reasonably want). People don’t like T-Mac because he may or may not have been gifted with it all–and didn’t make the most of it.

But that’s kind of the problem huh? We go around expecting everyone to be the “Everything Package” and then we write them off as being failures if that turns out not to be true. We do this for professional athletes. For musicians. For politicians. For potential boyfriends or girlfriends. For the people in our own lives. When the reality is that the full package is extraordinarily rare. Only children don’t understand this.

Yet, we sit around expecting more and more from people, instead of accepting them as they are. We somehow tell ourselves that they’re letting us down instead of the other way around.

We’re the asshole. We’re the one with a glaring hole that needs to be fixed: Whether Tracy McGrady is making the most of his talents is not our concern–at least not one we’re allowed to get genuinely upset about. What other people do and how they are is up to them. Going around expecting more, more, more out of people is a recipe for a very unhappy existence.

It’s called setting yourself up for disappointment. It’s called distracting yourself from the task at hand (your own life). It’s called wasting your energy on things you can’t fix.

So You Want To Be A Writer? That’s Mistake #1

There are two types of writers, Schopenhauer once observed, those who write because they have something they have to say and those who write for the sake of writing.

If you’re young and you think you want to be a writer, chances are you are already in the second camp. And all the advice you’ll get from other people about writing only compounds this terrible impulse.

Write all the time, they’ll tell you. Write for your college newspaper. Get an MFA. Go to writer’s groups. Send query letters to agents.

What do they never say? Go do interesting things.

I was lucky enough to actually get this advice. Combine this with the fact that I was too self-conscious to tell people that I wanted to be a writer, I became one in secret.

I’m not saying I’m great at it or anything, but I am a bestselling author at 26. I have a column with a major newspaper. I get paid to write professionally. A fair amount of aspiring writers are nice enough email me questions about becoming a writer. I usually have the same answer: Well, wanting to be a “writer” is your first mistake.

The problem is identifying as a writer. As though assembling words together is somehow its own activity. It isn’t. It’s a means to an end. And that end is always to say something, to speak some truth or reach someone outside yourself.

Deep down, you already know this. Take any good piece of writing, something that matters to you. Why is it good? Because of what it says. Because what the writer manages to communicate to you, their reader. It’s because of what’s within it, not how they wrote it.

No one ever reads something and says, “Well, I got absolutely nothing out of this and have no idea what any of this means but it sure is technically beautiful!” But they say the opposite all the time, they say “Goddamn, that’s good” to things with typos, poor grammar and simple diction.

Good writing saves nothing. On the other hand, a deep, compelling or stunning message can float writers who struggle to even complete a sentence.

So if you want to be a writer, put “writing” on hold for a while. When you find something that is new and different and you can’t wait to share with the world, you’ll beat your fat hands against the keyboard until you get it out in one form or another.

Everything that is good in my writing came from risks I took outside of school, outside of the “craft.” It was sleeping on Tucker Max’s floor for a year. It was working as Robert Greene’s assistant. It was working at American Apparel, watching the office politics and learning how to get stuff done. It was dropping out of college at 19. It was saying yes to every meeting and introduction I got, and hustling to get as many as I could on my own. It was reading dozens of books a month.

It was going to therapy. It was getting into pointless arguments. It was having friends who are smarter than me. It was traveling. It was living (briefly) in the ghetto. I was able to write about the dark side of the media because I put myself in a position to see it firsthand.

All these things gave me something to say. They gave me a perspective. They gave me a fucked up writing style that makes my voice unique. They gave me opinions that tend to piss people off.

It also gave me money and the marketing experience to make my projects a success.

I don’t know the first thing about how to write (as you probably noticed in this post). I nod along and pretend that I know what things like “subject” and “predicate” and “passive tense” actually mean. I mean, I think I have an idea, but it hasn’t held me back so far. To quote Schopenhauer again, “to have something to say” is “by itself virtually a sufficient condition for good style.” I’ll take grade school dropout writing passionately in his prison cell over some empty, superior Yale MFA any day.

Part of what I’ve said here is my opinion. There are many ways to become a writer and though my way worked for me, you may prefer a different route. So you can take that part or leave it. But another part of it is an undeniable change in the economics of the business of writing.

See, it used to be that getting “published” was the hard part. You had to impress some gatekeeper and that gatekeeper was an agent or an editor at magazine, at a newspaper or at a book publisher (all of whom were typically trained writers). Well, today there are essentially an infinite amount of outlets to feature your writing. And no matter where you ultimately do get your writing out, you’ll have to bring your own audience with you anyway.

Getting published is easy. Getting anyone to care? Well, that’s the hard part.

What matters more now than any other single thing is that what you’re saying is different–that it’s interesting, that it provokes some response from people. You’ll only accomplish this if you’ve got something you have to say. Better yet, you need to have something that you can’t NOT say.  If what you’re writing is a compulsion rather than a vehicle for your display how smart and well practiced you are.

So think about it one more time. Is it that you want to be a writer? Or it’s that you have these things inside you that you want very badly to communicate to people and writing is the best way to do it?

Getting the answer to that question right is the day you really become a writer.

This post originally ran on ThoughtCatalog.com. Comments can be seen there.

How To Read More — A Lot More

When you read a lot of books people inevitably assume you speed read. In fact, that’s probably the most common email I get. They want to know my trick for reading so fast. They see all the books I recommend every month in my reading newsletter and assume I must have some secret. So they ask me to teach them how to speed read.

That’s when I tell them I don’t have a secret. Even though I read hundreds of books every single year, I actually read quite slow. In fact, I read deliberately slow, so that I can take notes (and then whenever I finish a book, I go back through and transcribe these notes for my version of a commonplace book.

So where do I get the time? (Well for starters I don’t waste any of it asking dumb questions).

Look, where do you get the time to eat three meals a day? How do you have time to do all that sleeping? How do you manage to spend all those hours with your kids or wife or a girlfriend or boyfriend?

You don’t get that time anywhere, do you? You just make it because it’s really important. It’s a non-negotiable part of your life.

I think there are three main barriers that hold people back from making this happen and I want to disassemble them right now so you can start reading way, way more.

Time

The key to reading lots of book begins with stop thinking of it as some activity that you do. Reading must become as natural as eating and breathing to you. It’s not something you do because you feel like it, but because it’s a reflex, a default.

Carry a book with you at all times. Every time you get a second, crack it open. Don’t install games on your phone–that’s time you could be reading. When you’re eating, read. When you’re on the train, in the waiting room, at the office–read. It’s work, really important work. Don’t let anyone ever let you feel like it’s not.

Do you know how much time you waste during the day? Conference calls, meetings, TV shows that you don’t really like but watch anyway. Well, if you can make time for that you can make time for reading. (Or better, just swap those activities for books)

Money

If I had to steal books to support my reading habit, I would. Thankfully you can buy some of the best literature ever published for pennies on Amazon.

But forget money entirely when it comes to books. Reading is not a luxury. It’s not something you splurge on. It’s a necessity.

As Erasmus, the 16th century scholar once put it, “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”

On top of that, books are an investment. I hear from people all the time who tell me they plan to buy this book or that book. Plan? Just buy it. I promised myself a long time ago that if I saw a book that interested me I’d never let time or money or anything else prevent me from having it. Not money, not time, not my own laziness. Don’t wait around for some book you want to read to come out in paperback–trying to save $2 or $3 is the wrong mindset. If it’s a book you’ll read, then read it now, not in a year.

(One related note: I don’t check books out from the library and haven’t since I was a child. This isn’t like renting a mindless movie. You should be keeping the books you read for reference and for re-reading. If you are OK giving the books back after two weeks you might want to examine what you are reading).

Purpose

Perhaps the reason you having trouble is you forgot the purpose of reading. It’s not just for fun. Human beings have been recording their knowledge in book form for more than 5,000 years. That means that whatever you’re working on right now, whatever problem you’re struggling with, is probably addressed in some book somewhere by someone a lot smarter than you. Save yourself the trouble of learning from trial and error–find that point. Benefit from that perspective.

The walls of my house are covered in books from floor to ceiling. The last time I moved, I had to rent a U-Haul exclusively for books. At first that frustrated me, and then I remembered that books paid the rent on both those houses. They kept me sane, they made me a lot of money.

The purpose of reading is not just raw knowledge. It’s that it is part of the human experience. It helps you find meaning, understand yourself, and make your life better.

There is very little else that you can say that about. Very little else like that under $20 too.

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Look, you either get this or you don’t. Reading is something you know is important and want to do more of. Or you’re someone who just doesn’t read. If you’re the latter, you’re on your own (you’re also probably not that smart).

Think of someone like Frederick Douglass, who brought himself up out of slavery by sneaking out and teaching himself to read. Books weren’t some idle pursuit or pastime to him, they were survival itself. And despite this dire situation, he managed to read  and, as the writer Thomas Sowell once put it, “educate himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today’s expensively under-educated generation.”

What excuse do you have?

If you want to read more, there’s no real secret. It’s about adjusting your priorities and your perception so that reading becomes an extension of who you are and what you do.

When that happens, you’ll be the person that people now ask: How do you do it? And the answer will be: I just do.

This post originally ran on ThoughtCatalog.com. For more comments, view it there.

The Differences Between Perception and Reality

I was reading Michael Lewis’s amazing essay “Jonathan Lebed’s Extracurricular Activities” yesterday (in The New Kings of Non Fiction) and I realized that this paragraph basically explains how Trust Me I’m Lying happened. Jonathan managed to accidentally see the inherent problems, and inherent manipulations of the market, whereas I saw it in the media, but the point–and the realization–are fundamentally the same.

“Still! That a fourteen-year-old boy, operating essentially in a vacuum, would walk away from a severe grilling by six hostile bureaucrats and jump right back into the market–how did that happen? It occurred to me, as it had occurred to Jonathan’s lawyer, that I had taken entirely the wrong approach to getting the answer. The whole point of Jonathan Lebed was that he had invented himself on the Internet. The Internet had taught him how hazy the line was between perception and reality. When people could see him, they treated him as they would treat a fourteen year old boy. When all they saw were his thoughts on financial matters, they treated him as if he were a serious trader. On the Internet, where no one could see who he was, he became who he was.”

Now that I think about it, this is probably a similar awakening that a lot of “digital natives” went through early on in their lives. It will be interesting to see how this changes our culture and lives.

25 Rules For Living From A (Semi-) Successful 26-Year-Old

I’m not saying I have everything figured out. In fact, I’m saying the opposite. My parents were good to me growing up, at least in terms of my physical well-being and my material wants. But the one thing I didn’t get was advice. I don’t recall many situations where my father took the opportunity to use a particular instance to give me general advice. Which of course, is the best way to learn about the world.

Now that I think about it, they didn’t really teach much how to do a lot of basic things either. I’m not talking about how to fix a flat tire or how to change your oil–you can pay someone to do that. This is embarrassing but I remember checking into my first hotel as an adult, during college probably, and getting assigned to room 1214 or something and actually thinking for a second: “How am I supposed to know what floor that’s on?” All I’m saying is that it would have been really nice if one of my parents, during the several dozen times we’d stayed in a hotel as a child, had taken two seconds to say, “Hey six year old, this is how this whole system works.” You know, instead of hoping I observed everything (which in the case of the elevator thing, I probably should have but clearly did not).

That being said, I turned 26 this week and all things considered, I’ve done pretty well for myself. Stumbling and fumbling through the dark, I’ve managed to become a bestselling author, work for some pretty cool people, start my own company, not fuck up my relationship with a girlfriend I love, and for whatever reason, now people come to ME for advice.

I’m sure many of you will disagree with these rules and shortcuts. You’ll say they’re cheating or wrong or inefficient. You may be right. They are, after all, the rules of someone who is completely self-taught. All I can say is that they work for me.

[*] Talking about what you’re going to do makes you a lot less likely to actually do it. Keep your plans to yourself.

[*] If it’s less than 2 floors, never take the elevator. Take the stairs. Nassim Taleb talks about this too: Carry your own bags. Take the stairs. Walk instead of taking a cab. You were already planning to go to the gym later, don’t be an idiot. Exercise is exercise.

[*] Always pull the car up to the very end of the curb (never waste a parking spot)

[*] Public speaking is only hard or scary if you don’t think you know what you’re talking about. That’s relatively simple to fix.

[*] Never recline your seat on an airplane. Yes, it gives you more room–but ultimately at the expense of someone else. In economics, they call this an externality. It’s bad. Don’t do it.

[*] After you’re done eating at a restaurant, just hand the waiter your card. You don’t need to see the receipt first (99% of the time it’s right and if it isn’t–it’s their fault. Send them back to fix it). Also, there’s no need to calculate the tip. I just enter the final number I’m paying. I’m paying them, they can do the math for me. (Provided you actually tip well.)

[*] If someone wants to go faster, let them pass.

[*] When you’re traveling to a new city, the first thing you should do when you get to the hotel is change into your work out clothes and go for a long run. You get to see the sights, get a sense of the layout and then you won’t waste an hour of your life in a lame hotel gym either.

[*] Never correct someone’s pronunciation of a word with the more appropriate ethnic accentuation. Only small people care that much about grammar or pronunciations.

[*] Everything your doctor, school and parents said was healthy is probably bad for you. Whole grains, soy, corn, wraps, milk. Ask yourself: does what I am about to eat even remotely resemble something my ancestors evolved to eat? If the answer is no, put it down. If, like me, the allure of these foods is too much, save them for one day a week where you splurge (and then hate yourself and swear them off for another week).

[*] Unless it’s an atrocity, take responsibility for it. You’re probably more at fault than you know.

[*] Get a dog, not a cat. One will make you a better person, the other is just an animal that lives in your house.

[*] In business situations, your first instinct is to start negotiating. Stop that. How much is significantly less important than whether you truly, truly want to do this thing. If you do–and I know this advice is controversial–just take the deal, provided its half way decent. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Bird in the hand. Blah blah. If you don’t want to do it–don’t let money sway you. Take the deal, do a good job, get more money on the next one. This is the philosophy of doers. Sharks and sociopaths care about squeezing every penny because they’ve confused money with their worth.

[*] Shame is a powerful emotion that can be used for good. If it’s something you want to hide or are embarrassed about, think twice about whether it’s actually the right thing. (Two good one liners about this here).

[*] Be in the middle of a book at all times. Better still, carry one with you at all times–a physical one. You’ll be amazed at how impressed people are by this.

[*] Frequent Flyer Miles are for people whose time is worthless. Here’s what I do: I use a Southwest Visa card. It means I get a few extra free domestic flights a year without ever having to do anything. And then on everything else? I never, ever think about it–even though I fly close to 50,000+ miles a year. If I am going to have to juggle a bunch of arbitrary, meaningless numbers for piddly rewards, I’d rather juggle sports stats or play games on my cell phone. At least those are entertaining.

[*] Most people are lying when they describe what their life is like. Don’t listen, don’t use what they say as a baseline, don’t get jealous, just nod and then forget it.

[*] Speaking of which, people are constantly trying to bribe you to be like them and take on the same burdens as them. DO NOT ACCEPT.

[*] Traveling for the sake of traveling is stupid.

[*] If there is a long line and you don’t want to wait in it, walk up to the front (or walk through the back or opposite way) and pretend you didn’t know you were doing things incorrectly. It almost always works. And when it doesn’t, no one thinks it was malicious. After all, you were just turned around. Note: pretending you forgot something–like you were just walking up to grab silverware at the buffet line–works well too. Grab your stuff and make a getaway.

[*] The best way to flirt is to ask provocative questions. And provocative is anything people aren’t expecting to be asked–it doesn’t have to be sexual.

[*] Eliminate options, concentrate your forces. Here I am combining two lessons from Tim Ferriss and Robert Greene. For example, in terms of clothes and meals, just pick a few favorites and then stick with them. This means less time is wasted thinking about choices on a daily basis. But more importantly, concentrating your limited dollars/time on fewer entities gives you more leverage. I mostly eat at the same restaurants over and over–and you know what, they always hook me up. The fastest way to VIP status on anything is to cheat by going or buying a few times in a row. There’s a saying behind this too: More wood behind fewer arrows. It applies to more than just dinner perks.

[*] Conference calls and meetings are mostly a waste of time. If the person is more important or successful than you, consider going. If not, beg off as best you can.

[*] Current events/the news should be followed only if it fits one of the following criteria 1) It directly affects you in someway. 2) Knowing about it would make for interesting conversation. If you’re watching something and you can’t tell yourself that you either plan to do something with that information or it will make you seem smart, turn it off. Or flip it over to Comedy Central because you may as well be watching pure entertainment.

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This isn’t conclusive. It’s just some stuff that occurred to me and that I think about often enough to have a policy on. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of them line up with sayings or cliches. Those are cliches for a reason–namely that they’re true for a lot of people and have been for a long time.

All I know is that I wish I hadn’t figured them out on my own (or in some cases, heard from mentors and other smart people, but only well into my twenties.) Because missing these rules was painful. It wasted time, money and energy.

Hopefully they save you some trouble. And I guess, the message, at the end of the day, is that it’s never too late.

This article originally ran on ThoughtCatalog.com. For my thoughts on the response and any of the more controversial rules, read the comments there.

Smarts and Success

Here’s the problem with success.

A lot of people are not successful because they are not smart.

Yet you meet a lot of successful people who are not smart.

By smart we do not mean IQ, we mean the more general “know what they’re doing” and “aren’t totally delusional head cases.”

It’s obviously hard to draw a clear line around who is what but it’s not an outrageous statement to say that people are often their own worst enemies…many achieve things blissfully unaware of this fact, or on occasion, in spite of it.

This is not so much a paradox as it is the factor of luck (God favors fools, as they say). Or you could call it injustice, I suppose, because sometimes on days where stuff isn’t going well for that rest of us, that’s just how it feels.

But you cannot let this fact of life discourage you. You can never let it be a reason for slacking off or not having your act together. That some idiot might have be rewarded says what, exactly?

That you wish you were more like them? I don’t think so.

Focus on yourself. Attend to the areas where lack of understanding or skills are holding you back. Let the others be “lucky.”