“But this payment goes well beyond my generosity,” the monk responded.

“Don’t say that again. Life might be listening, and give you less the next time.”

- The Alchemist

Back in 2007, I left a good web design job in Ireland and moved to the United States. I remember, in the few weeks leading up to my departure, my colleagues would often mention how much I would be missed. They’d tell me how they appreciated my positive attitude and attention to detail, and assured me that it would be a struggle to fill my shoes.

Every time I was told these things, I came back with a similar response: “Ah, you’ll find someone just as good to replace me, if not better.”

I might as well have been saying, “No, you’re wrong. In reality, I suck.”

Fast forward to the present day. I’ve announced that I’ll be leaving my current job in November. Deja vu: my colleagues tell me that I’m a valuable part of the team, that I’ll be sorely missed, that they’ll have a tough time replacing me. The comments are the same as they were three years ago, but my response is different. Now, I reply with a simple and sincere, “Thank you.”

Somewhere along the line, I came to appreciate my own self-worth. I came to see that I didn’t have to deflect praise, that I could accept it without losing my humility. In short, I learned how to accept a compliment.

Why we deflect

I have a female friend back in Ireland who still has trouble accepting compliments. The girl is absolutely stunning. She could literally be a model, and people often tell her so. I recall a middle-aged lady approaching her mother at a gathering a few years back, and offering sincerely: “You have a very beautiful daughter.” Overhearing this, my friend immediately gave a little laugh, shook her head and responded, “Oh no, not really!”

She’s not alone. Lots of people — my 25-year-old self included — respond in a similar way when offered a compliment. But why?

I believe we deflect compliments for one of two main reasons (and sometimes a mix of both):

1. We don’t believe we deserve such admiration.
2. We want to appear humble.

Both these reasons suck.

With the first, we’re simply selling ourselves short. If everyone tells me that I’m good at something and I refuse to believe them, all I’m doing is holding myself back, killing my self-confidence. I should wake up and give myself credit. I should try to see the brilliance in me that everyone else can see. It’s all well and good to be aware of your shortcomings and to work towards improvement, but if you don’t pause regularly to appreciate the person you’ve already become, you’ll always be miserable, never believing you’re good enough.

As for appearing humble, you can still do that while accepting a compliment. You don’t have to choose one or the other. You can simply offer your sincere thanks and then steer the conversation towards something less self-serving. “Thank you, I’m glad you like my painting. It took a lot of time and effort, so it’s nice to know people appreciate it. Do you also paint?”

Accept with gratitude, humility and sincerity

Next time someone offers you a compliment, let your default response be one of gratitude. Say thank you, sincerely. Realize that the world can never be a more giving place until we all become more receptive to the gifts we are offered.

• Leave my 9-to-5 job at the end of November.
• Return to Ireland and set up my own business.
• Build the business to the point where I’m delivering more value and earning more money than I am now, while working a maximum of 20 hours per week.
• Move to Spain by May 1, 2011.

I have already begun setting myself up for success. One of the ways I’m doing that is by moving decisively towards a minimalist lifestyle.

What is minimalism?

Minimalism is me selling my TV, canceling my Netflix and giving away all my furniture. Minimalism is me realizing that I don’t have to pay $800 a month for rent (I recently moved apartment and saved myself $65 a week). Minimalism is donating all those clothes I never wear and all those books I never reread.

Minimalism is getting rid of all the crap and clutter so I can be free.

I counted up all my possessions at the start of May and found I had 330. As of this writing, that number has been reduced to 193. I’m aiming to own less than 100 things by the time I leave New Orleans.

Why minimalism?

I believe a minimalist lifestyle will help me succeed in my grand plan for several reasons:

Minimalism cuts out distractions
Less clutter helps me focus, helps me keep the main thing the main thing. Since I began the elimination process, I’ve found it much easier to find the focus and time needed to do my writing, planning and studying.

Minimalism saves money
I’m amazed at how much I can now save per week while earning the exact same income that I have been for years. All along, I was spending huge chunks of money on things I didn’t really need. I’ll go into detail about my financial situation and aspirations in a future post.

Minimalism gives me freedom to move
My new apartment is a temporary sublet, but having to move again next month won’t be a problem. I imagine it will take about two hours, total, to pack, load, transport, unload and unpack everything I own. At the end of November, when I move my entire life back to Ireland, I don’t expect I’ll have to check a bag at the airport.

Minimalism detaches me from material goods
Most people fear a big dip in income because it would force them to drastically change their lifestyle and give up all their toys. But what if you choose to embrace a minimalist lifestyle regardless of your income? You’d realize that you really don’t need to live that superficial lifestyle to be happy; in fact, that lifestyle was one of the main hindrances to your happiness in the first place. Having embraced minimalism, I’m well prepared for the temporary dip my income will take when I quit my day job and start my own business.

Minimalism works
I’ve been following people like Everret Bogue, Colin Wright, Leo Babuta, Karol Gajda, Tammy Strobel and Raam Dev; just a handful of online entrepreneurs who have adopted a minimalist lifestyle to achieve success. They’re living proof that minimalism works.

Helping the movement, the homeless, and myself

Everett Bogue’s fantastic e-book is what got me seriously considering minimalism in the first place, so I’ve decided to help spread his message. I’ve signed up to be an affiliate, meaning I get a 50% cut of sales generated through this here blog. The arrangement should give me an idea of what my current earning power is like, so I won’t be starting out clueless when I quit my job in November.

Unfortunately, since I’m currently a non-immigrant worker in the United States, it’s illegal for me to earn any extra money beyond that which I’m paid by my sponsor/employer. This law is in place to ensure I don’t take more work away from Americans by doing side jobs. Damn Government’s holding me down, man.

So since I can’t get paid, I’ve arranged to have my affiliate earnings deposited directly to the PayPal account of a non-profit, namely The Desmond Project, an organization that provides hearty meals to the homeless in New Orleans every Saturday. I’ve volunteered with them several times in the past year and can testify that they’re great people doing great work.

So if you’re interested in learning more about minimalism, feeding some homeless folks, and helping me figure out how much money I can earn through this website, click here and continue on to buy the e-book. The cost is just $17, though you’ll probably end up saving a lot more than that if the message impacts you the way it did me.

But wait

Everett encourages everyone who buys his e-book to make five copies and pass them along to friends, free of charge. So before you go spending your hard-earned cash, leave a thoughtful comment below and you could win one of the five copies I have to share.

Origins

The term lifestyle design was coined by Tim Ferriss in his bestselling 2007 book, The 4 Hour Workweek. Tim was describing the process of figuring out what you want your life to be like, and then actually going out and making it happen. So if, for example, you want to quit your soul-sucking 9-to-5 job, start a small business where you get paid to do work you’re passionate about, all while traveling the world, the advice in Tim’s book would help you do that.

Ferriss wasn’t the first guy to start living life on his own terms, but he deserves a lot of credit for opening people’s minds and showing them the possibilities. And for giving the movement a name.

What’s in it for me?

(And by me, I mean me, not you. But you’ll probably figure out what’s in it for you as I tell you what’s in it for me.)

So, what appeals to me about lifestyle design? In a word: freedom.

The 4 Hour Work Week helped me realize just how brainwashed I had been by modern society, where the priority is always work-work-work and spend-spend-spend. I was spending most of my time as an easily-replaceable cog in the machine, following orders, collecting my paycheck, waiting for the weekend. And I’m still doing that as I write this, but I’m awake at the wheel now, and I’ve set a new destination. I’ve decided to live on purpose, rather than accept the traditional lifestyle that most folks so easily fall into.

What is the traditional lifestyle?

It’s trading time for money instead of value for money. It’s having to ask permission to take a day off work. It’s someone else deciding what projects you do all day. It’s spending the healthiest years of your life in a cubicle, waiting until you’re old and retired to regain full control of your schedule. It’s buying lots of crap you don’t need in the name of entertainment, to compensate for the dullness of your day job. It’s spending eight hours in the office on a Tuesday, despite getting all your work done in the first two. It’s the long wait for Friday, starting on Monday. It’s pumping out work that countless other people could do, rather than expressing the unique art inside of you.

That lifestyle is no longer for me. I’ve decided to choose freedom instead, which is why I’m quitting my day job in November and moving back to Ireland to start my own location independent business.

Reality check

But of course such freedom comes with a sobering dose of responsibility. If you want to break free of the 9-to-5 and design your own life, you better get yourself some self-discipline and some big cojones, because I don’t believe it to be easy. For one thing, there’ll be no regular paycheck every week. For another, you have to make all the big decisions, take all the big risks. Oh, and if you get lazy and decide to spend all day on Facebook and Youtube, it’s not some big faceless corporation that loses a smidge of productivity; it’s you that might be living on nothing but noodles for the next week.

Is lifestyle design for you?

Lifestyle design is for everybody, but it might not be for you right now. I wasn’t anywhere near ready to embark on this journey two years ago, but I believe I am now. I believe I can make a living doing what I’m passionate about, and I’m willing to work hard and smart to make it happen. I know I can make the necessary sacrifices to achieve my goals, and I’m able to surround myself with a supportive group of people who will help and inspire me along the way. I know all this because I’ve set and worked towards lots of goals over the past few years, and I’ve learned what it takes to reach them.

Lifestyle design isn’t yet for you if you fear embarrassment or failure. It’s not yet for you if you fear change. It’s not yet for you if you’re unsure of your passions. It’s not yet for you if you care more about the destination than the journey. It’s not yet for you if you spend all day on Facebook. It’s not yet for you if you’re opposed to hard work and sacrifice.

Lifestyle design is for everyone who feels frustrated and trapped and knows there must be more to life than pushing buttons all day and collecting a check. There is more. You’ve just been led to believe that this is the right thing to do because the vast majority does it, too. But you don’t have to. You can choose different. You can design your own life.

There are no excuses. Lots of other people are already doing this. People with families, people young, people old, people rich, people poor, people in debt, people with much less intelligence and resources than you. It’s very possible. All it takes is hard work and discipline. Being honest and wanting to help people doesn’t hurt either.

What do I know?

Who am I to fill your head with all this stuff? I haven’t even done anything yet. I’m still here working 9-to-5. For all I know, the real world of entrepreneurship and location independence might be too much for me to handle. But hey, I don’t identify with where I am or where I’ve been. I identify with where I’m going. I know what I want, and I have a good idea of what it will take for me to get it.

I often look ahead several years from now, try to visualize what my life will be like. And I know that if I don’t take the plunge, I’ll still be in a cubicle in 2020, still pushing buttons and collecting a paycheck, missing out on so much of what life has to offer. And there’s no way I can let that happen. That’s the worst-case scenario for me. My own business might fail and I might end up in the gutter, but that wouldn’t be as bad. With that scenario, at least I’d have given it my best shot, chased my dream with everything I had. That’s far more acceptable to me than living life on the default setting.

Just think

I don’t expect you to quit your job tomorrow. I read the 4HWW two years ago, and it was only recently that I decided to take the plunge. I’m not trying to convince you to drop everything and embrace a life of change and uncertainty. But I would like you to start thinking about it, start considering the possibilities, start dreaming of how things could be, start looking around for opportunities, start believing that you could break free if you really wanted to.

An increasing amount of people are doing it. You can too.

When there’s an elephant in the room, introduce them.

I liked the sound of that when I first heard it, and since then I’ve been gradually building up my elephant-introducing skills. I’ve discovered from my experiments that broaching the very subject everyone else is afraid to mention usually works out pretty well.

A few weeks back, I asked a lesbian couple what it was like being female and gay in New Orleans. In Naples last month, I got talking with a Nigerian immigrant and asked if he suffered much discrimination in Italy. I’ve also had numerous conversations with homeless people about life on the streets.

And it’s not just the big elephants that I try to introduce, but the little ones, too. I like to talk about an awkward hug right after it happens. If someone’s wearing strange pants, I’m likely to mention them.

It doesn’t always work out well. Some people would rather just ignore the elephant, and they don’t appreciate a forced introduction. But I find that to be the exception rather than the rule, especially if you make the right approach.

How to introduce an elephant

The introduction must be made in a certain way. You can’t go marching up to a guy in a wheelchair and blurt out, “Oh my God! What happened to your legs!?”

No. Elephants must be introduced gently.

A news reporter once told me how. She often had to get people talking about subjects they didn’t want to talk about. She wouldn’t run up to the congressman and ask him straight up, “How do you feel about your wife leaving you for a pool boy?” Instead, she’d ask something like, “Mr. Congressman, this must be a very difficult time for you, but I was hoping you could help me understand what you’re going through.” Effectively, what she was communicating was this: “Mr. Congressman, I want to know what it’s like to be you, to be in this situation. Let me walk in your shoes for a while, see the world through your eyes. I’d like to understand, to empathize.”

People open up when you introduce an elephant like that. They know you’re not looking to judge or poke fun, but simply to understand.

Thanks to a similar approach, the lesbians told me that it’s not too tough being female and gay in New Orleans; their male counterparts are usually the ones getting hassled. Larry the Nigerian opened up about the prejudice he’s had to endure from his new neighbors, despite his obvious intelligence, honest heart and work ethic. Tim and Denzel, both homeless in NOLA, helped me understand the challenges they face every day, and how they came to be stuck where they are.

I’ve also come to better understand hugging etiquette and strange fashion choices.

Recognition

I still have a long way to go, lots of elephants to introduce. I’m getting better at recognizing them though. All I do is follow the fear. I ask myself, “What’s taboo here? What am I afraid to ask this person?” And then I do my best to push through the fear and ask it.

In doing so, I’ve discovered what Marc Pachter, the master interviewer, already knew when he asked Agnes DeMille an unthinkable question: “Was it a problem for you in your life, that you were not beautiful?” Pachter asked that question, and the whole audience held their breath, shocked that he would even go there. But DeMille had been waiting her entire life to be asked just that. Everyone she’d ever known had avoided it. And when it was finally asked, she gladly answered.

I believe most people want to be asked these questions, given those opportunities to open up, to bear their souls, to tell someone what it’s like to live in their skin. We all just want to be understood. We all want a chance to tell our side of the story.

The best part is, when you make a habit of introducing elephants, people come to know you as someone who seeks to understand, someone who will listen and not judge, someone who just wants to connect and share a little humanity. There may be some setbacks along the way, as you encounter some souls that aren’t ready to be bore, but such is life. You just move on to the next soul, introduce the next elephant, and learn a little more.

* You can watch the original, 76-minute speech by Randy Pausch on YouTube, or check out the 12-minute reprisal he gave on Oprah.

The trio of Colin, Andi and Ash have been winding their way from East to West across the States for the last two weeks, putting faces to names and having many a blast. Check out the WBSQ website and download the press release (pdf) for more info on the whole dealio.

We — and by “we” I mean mostly Carl — are still finalizing times and places for folks to come hang out and interact with the WBSQ crew. Check back here closer to Thursday or connect with me via Facebook or Twitter to stay in the loop.

7/14 Update

The schedule is set:

6:00pm – Informal Meet & Greet @ The Orange Couch (2339 Royal St.) (RSVP via Facebook)

7:30pm – WBSQ Get Down Dance Lesson by Shine Step Studios (1003 Spain St.; $10 suggested donation)

8:30pm - Break for dinner

10:30pm – Brass Band & Wandering on Frenchman St.

Monday morning was a good example. I had planned on getting some serious work done over the 4th of July weekend, but instead I couldn’t resist scratching a pesky social itch and so ended up spending the majority of the weekend either out on the town or sleeping in.

There I was on Monday morning, feeling like I’d let myself down, neglected things I shouldn’t have.

But then I got to thinking. I realized that yeah, sure, I failed to follow through on my initial plans, but that didn’t have to mean those previous few days were a complete waste. I put aside the negative thoughts and asked myself a question: What did I succeed at this past weekend?

As it turns out, I succeeded at quite a lot: I donated a bunch of clothes, getting my possession count down below 200 for the first time; I forged lots of great connections; I had an abundance of great conversations; I laughed; I made others laugh; I made people think; I read a whole book; I shared my dreams; I danced to live music; I broke through fear barriers to approach and chat with women I found extremely attractive; I stayed true to myself; I supported local businesses (mostly pubs); I shared stories and experiences; and I pieced together the previous blog post.

Man, what was I thinking? I rocked it this past weekend!

Now I’m wondering if you, like me, ever focus too much on your failures, beat yourself up, oblivious to your successes. Let’s stop doing that and start giving ourselves some credit. We don’t always do what we set out to do, but we can still accomplish quite a lot, even as we’re failing.

Given his success, that daily habit obviously works well for Robin. I was curious to learn about the daily habits of a few of my favorite folks online. So I asked them. The question went like this:

Is there something you do every day — something most people don’t do — that helps you be at your best?

I got great responses from nine impressive people. Here they are…

Corbett Barr, Free Pursuits & Think Traffic

Corbett writes about no-nonsense lifestyle design at Free Pursuits, and also knows a thing or two about building a popular website. His response:

Let every day flow. Creative work takes long periods of intense concentration. To achieve that, you can’t make each day too rigid or pre-planned. Schedules are deadly to creativity, so avoid planned meetings on days when you need the creativity to flow.

Everett Bogue, Far Beyond The Stars

Everett is learning how to sail, but that’s not really important right now. The important bit is that he teaches you how to apply minimalism in order to live and work from anywhere. His response to my question:

There are three elements that I need in my day to make everything work.

1. Movement. I have to either walk, bike or take the train somewhere. This gets the ideas flowing. For instance, today I walked up to the UC Berkeley campus and grabbed a table at a local coffee shop to work.
2. Time constraints. I only let myself work for 2 hours max per day currently. I find that if I say to myself “I have to get everything done by the end of two hours.” Everything falls into place much quicker, and there’s less incentive to get distracted.
3. Eliminating distractions. When I write, I turn everything else off. Tweetdeck, my email, any other projects turned off. I use Writeroom or Evernote on my iPhone to single-task the art of writing until I’m done with whatever idea I’m working on for the day.

Karol Gajda, Ridiculously Extraordinary

Karol writes about freedom, health, travel and life at Ridiculously Extraordinary. He doesn’t mind people stealing his shit. His response to my question:

Yes, there is actually something I do that most people don’t.

Eating a plant-based diet provides a clarity that is not possible to
achieve otherwise.

(Quick aside: Karol no lie. I also found that I could focus better and think more clearly after switching to a plant-based diet. Read about my experience here.)

Chris Guillebeau, The Art of Non-Conformity

Chris helps people live life on their own terms as he visits every country in the world and fights the status quo. His response to my question:

I always try to be thinking about the next action. I work on a lot of projects on any given day, so the goal is to continually push the boulder up the hill on each one, even if only a little. Small pushes combined with a continual bias toward action = highly effective.

Benny Lewis, Fluent in 3 Months

Benny speaks a billion languages — give or take — and reveals how you can speak them, too. He’s also Irish, so you know he’s a legend. His response to the habit question:

Waste no time and read/study/listen at every traffic light, supermarket queue and elevator. Time-box tasks into 30 minute chunks and switch immediately when time runs out so you don’t spend too long at one thing. Enjoy solitude if it helps you focus, but get out of the house, socialise and exercise to make sure your mind is truly balanced.

Jonathan Mead, Illuminated Mind

Jonathan is the good kind of crazy. He wants you to follow your dreams, and delivers self development tools to help you be extraordinary. His response to my question:

Probably the highest leverage habit that I’ve installed in my day is mindfulness of how I feel, and allowing my feelings to guide me. I have a list of the way I feel when I’m doing my best work, and I use those to guide the actions that I take, instead of doing it the other way around. I’ve come to realize that I have access to the way I want to feel right now, without having to do anything to create it. When I cultivate the emotional state I want to be in — and feel good — the actions seem to take care of themselves.

Andi Norris, Instigationology

Some say Andi pees victory and belches respect. Away from metaphors, she thought-provokes, motivates and instigates at her lifestyle design blog. Her response to the habit question:

I don’t do one thing everyday. I have a several ways of getting myself “in the zone” if I don’t wake up in it, such as stream of consciousness writing, running, etc that I rotate through depending on how I feel. But mostly, I do what I want and then what I need and trust that nothing will ever be enough for my hunger but everything will be enough to keep moving forward.

Tammy Strobel, RowdyKittens

Tammy wears cool hats while helping people live simple, authentic and uncluttered lives via her writing on RowdyKittens. Her response to my question:

Rising early is the best thing I’ve done for myself. I’m able to go running, practice yoga, write or read. Incorporating these activities into my morning routine has helped me get centered and focused for the day ahead.

Colin Wright, Exile Lifestyle

Colin writes regularly about lifestyle design, minimalism and world travel. He’ll also be in New Orleans next week, disrupting the rabblement with instigating Andi. His response to my question:

Every day I take 20 minutes to do literally nothing – no music, no games, no reading, no work, no computer – I just sit quietly and let my mind wander as it will. I call it my 20 Minutes of Awesome, and it allows me to clear my mind, reboot my mental CPU and refocus my attention on things that really matter. Often afterward I’ll realize I was focusing my attention on the wrong things and immediately am able to tackle the things that I SHOULD be concentrating on, instead.

…

A massive thanks to all of the above. Lots of good advice in there.

Your inner child

Imagine that the child side of your personality is responsible for all those primal urges and knee-jerk decisions. The child is that side of you that thinks it’s perfectly okay to eat McDonalds everyday, to sit on the couch every evening watching mindless TV shows, and to blurt out stupid things at inopportune times.

The child follows every whim, for better or worse, never thinking ahead or considering the consequences of each action. Sometimes that childish spontaneity turns out to be a good thing, since quite often the best way to learn more about what interests you is to march right up and interact with it directly. The child also has that sense of wonder about the world, and likes to question why everything works the way it does.

Your inner parent

And then there’s the parent side of your personality. That’s the little voice of reason and experience inside of you, less likely to act on impulse. The parent advises against blowing your whole paycheck on a Playstation, reminds you to buckle up, and sends you to your room to think about what you did. On the downside, the parent half of you has been conditioned by society not to go against the grain, not to think freely, not to cause a scene.

Which one should you listen to?

You shouldn’t just listen to one side all the time. Sometimes your parent side will serve you better. Sometimes your child side will. Listen to both when it comes time to make a decision. Identify which side wants what and why, consider the likely outcome of each path, then pick a side and act.

(Granted, it’s not really child-like if you always pause to look before you leap, but that’s okay. Spontaneity will return later, as you internalize what makes a good decision and what doesn’t.)

Which one do you listen to?

Mostly parent or mostly child? Would you be better off listening less to one and more to the other? Can you strike a better balance than you currently do?

Avoid black-and-white simplification, embrace complexity and tolerate contradictions. Complexity and contradictions create confusion for Westerners because they want a right answer. Almost always, there is no definitive one. If you can live with the foggy nature of reality, it is less worrying because oversimplifications for the sake of clarity will be constantly upset by contrary evidence.

Oliver came to this conclusion after doing research in China, a country that doesn’t seem to have high stress levels despite its booming economy. He found that in many cases, Chinese people have the same socially-influenced, materialistic goals as Americans, but they are more prone to adopt them as their own. In Oliver’s words, such “self-deception is essential if you are to cope with this lack of ’self-concordance’ (having a good balance between your life and your values).”

Oliver points to Confucianism to help explain this. One of the tenets of Confucianism is the principle of contradiction and paradox, the belief that good and bad can coexist in the same object at the same time. Think yin and yang.

Acceptance of this belief apparently leads to inner peace. I can see the benefits. Clarity is nice and everything, but there are many issues which simply do not have a perfect solution. Take guns for example. Americans who oppose the right to bear arms will tell you that if no one had guns, the country would be a safer place. On the flip side, others will argue that criminals will always have guns, and so we have to level the playing field by arming ourselves. Both sides make many valid points beyond those, and both will cite history and statistics to strengthen their cases.

The abortion debate draws similar controversy. Pro-lifers argue that abortion is murder. Others will point to a 15-year old girl who was raped and fell pregnant. What is she to do? There are also studies showing that legalized abortion was a huge reason for the crime drop in 1990’s America. But then, the very woman who fought for her right to have an abortion in the 70’s and so started the ball rolling on legalizing the procedure, is now herself a pro-lifer.

Obviously when it comes to issues like these, there are no perfect solutions, only shades of gray. I believe that learning to accept this “foggy nature of reality” is a key part of personal development.

It’s one of my favorite questions to ask. Well, actually, it’s only half of my favorite question. The entire thing goes like this:

What would you do if…

• you had all the money in the world,
• and you knew you couldn’t fail?

I like this question because it gets people to consider what they’re passionate about. How would they spend their time if they were free to spend it any way they wanted? What would they create? What would they share? And what if they weren’t afraid of failure?

See, I’m coming to believe that everyone can make a living doing what they are passionate about. It may take hard work and sacrifice, but I believe it can be done, no matter what floats your boat.

But something I read a few days ago gave me pause. It was this article in The Guardian about the Gulf oil spill, in which I learned that BP boss Tony Hayward has something similar to my favorite question written on a plaque on his desk: “If you knew you could not fail, what would you try?” The insinuation there is that Hayward and BP have never concerned themselves too much with the possibility of failure, and look what that has led to.

And the article may indeed be right: that kind of attitude by BP probably contributed to their poor safety checks and inadequate fail-safes. But if so, it’s because Hayward and his cronies took the fail question way too far. Believing you can’t fail and plunging ahead with reckless abandon is fine if it’s only you that stands to suffer when things go pear-shaped. But when your screw-up can affect others in a catastrophic way — like the largest environmental disaster in US history is doing — then you obviously need to ask yourself some additional questions before diving in.

So that favorite question of mine has had to evolve. It now goes like this:

What would you do if…

• you had all the money in the world,
• you knew you couldn’t fail,
• and you were a good and responsible citizen of planet Earth?

Well?