In just over a week, I’ll be accepting a new round of members. Unfortunately, like last time, space is limited and you will only have a few days to get in.

If you want in, you’ll need to put your name on the free email list. People on this list will get the first chance to sign-up, so if the launch is anything like last time, regular RSS subscribers or visitors to the website won’t have a chance to get in.

What is Learning on Steroids?

The goal of the program is simple:

1. Teach you what skills rapid learners use to ace finals without studying, quickly become fluent in new languages or go from mediocre grades to straight A’s.
2. Allow you to train those skills with a member’s forum, email encouragement and access to personal coaching.

The price is student friendly, but it’s that last point that means space is limited. Since I personally handle emails and questions, there is a limit to how many learners I can take on in the program.

Should I Sign Up?

First, before you can sign up, you need to put your name on the free announcement email list. As I said before, you probably won’t get a chance to join if you aren’t on that list.

For joining the list, you also get access to an audio interview I did with Liam Martin, founder of VTAMethod, where he explains how the ideas behind the program helped him get an exemption on a recent exam.

If you’re on the list, I’ll be explaining a lot more about the program and taking questions before we launch. So, if you aren’t sure whether it’s right for you, the announcement emails will help you decide (and, of course, you can unsubscribe if you decide it’s not for you).

What’s my Chance of Getting a Seat?

I can’t say exactly. For this new round, I’ve decided the maximum amount of students I can take is 300. However, there are over 5x that many people already on the list and 34x that many people getting this announcement today from the blog.

You can click here to get free email updates about the program.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

Do introspective, intelligent people enjoy life more than the masses? Often not.

Ben Casnocha wrote this after the death of David Foster Wallace. Awarded the MacArthur genius grant, Wallace was brilliant, but unfortunately, as Casnocha writes:

Wallace’s suicide raises for me the question about the correlation between enlightenment and depression. How much truth is there to the phrase “ignorance is bliss”? How unbearable is genius?

Wallace is certainly an exceptional case, but it raises a point about introspection in general. I’ve had many readers email me that they felt both intelligent and thoughtful, but somehow led less fulfilling lives than their apparently unthinking peers.

Is Introspection a Good Thing?

To skip to the punch line, my answer is yes. But, then again, I’m incredibly biased. I’ve centered much of my life around the introspective pursuit of knowledge and the ideal life. Introspectiveness forms such a large component of my identity, even if I were wrong, perhaps I wouldn’t be able to admit it.

So I’d like to present some of the pitfalls of introspection, why it might be dangerous and also what I feel is its ultimately redeeming quality.

Why Introspection Might Leave You Miserable

There are a few easy explanations for why smart, thoughtful people are miserable.

The first is that the world, and life in general, really is terrible. Ignorance is a defense mechanism to escape the inevitable conclusion of nihilism and pessimism. The truly intelligent cannot ignore this conclusion, so inevitably spiral into despair, being unable to delude themselves into happiness.

I don’t like this explanation. It fails to explain why so many intelligent people are also extremely driven and happy.

Another explanation is that introspectiveness and misery are coupled. That the cognitive mechanisms that make someone brilliant also encourage unhappiness. So unhappy thinkers aren’t depressed because they have come to some horrific conclusion about the world, but that their brains are simply hardwired for it.

To a certain extend, I believe this is true. Extreme cases of depression have deeper genetic and biological roots, so it makes sense that some people are just born happier than others. Perhaps the introspective people are hardwired to think so much because they naturally enjoy the sensory and unarticulated aspects of life less, leading to lower happiness.

A final explanation, and my favorite, is that introspection is only half of the skill you need to pursue the ideal life. In addition to introspection, you also need another ingredient. So without this other ingredient, your thoughtfulness can never be realized, so it loses control. The desire for the ideal life is there, just that you’ve become impotent to obtain it.

What’s the Missing Half?

I don’t know if there is a good word to place on the missing half. If I had to pick I would say, “actualization” but that doesn’t seem entirely right either.

Actualization is the ability not only to think your thoughts, but to translate those thoughts into reality. To not just philosophize about the meaning of life, but to live it every single day. If self-reflection never translates into the real world, it simply mutates and multiplies inside your head.

Stanford professor of neuroendocrinology, Robert Sapolsky (another MacArthur genius grant recipient) has spent his entire career studying stress. Yet, even he admits, he faces a lot of stress in his day-to-day life. He worries, in this video:

(Click here if the video won’t load)

“I go around telling people they should live differently, so presumably, I should have incorporated all of this. But the reality is, I’m unbelievably stressed. I’m Type A and poorly coping…”

I believe it’s naive to say that he should just follow his own advice. That’s like saying fat people should just stop eating so much. It’s not always just a matter of will. Introspection and applying those introspective thoughts are two separate skills.

How Well am I Doing?

When I first spoke to Ben Casnocha, his first question was, “well, do you practice what you preach?”

It’s a good question because introspection and applied introspection are separate skills, so someone who is really good at thinking of the ideal life may have little success actually living it.

I’d like to believe I’ve done fairly well at the secondary skill of actualization. When I skim over my journal entries from the last few years, I see far more entries where I write about how happy I am, than those where I feel depressed.

I haven’t done an extensive tally, but I’d also wager that the proportion of happy to unhappy musings has increased largely over time. So, if the question of whether all this productivity and obsessive analysis have made me happier, I’d guess yes.

Even just in the practicing of my life philosophy, I believe I’ve been fairly successful incorporating it into my life. Although the purity of an idea is rarely perfectly translated into reality, I’m still a vegetarian, I write regularly every week, I exercise regularly and I’ve stuck to my principles. Sure, I sometimes slip up, but who doesn’t?

The Redeeming Virtue of Introspection

The genesis of this post came from an email I received several months ago. It was from a reader who wasn’t having much dating success. He complained that his friend, who seems to be completely lacking in introspection, has far more success than he does.

He asked whether the problem was introspection itself. Was it simply that women weren’t attracted to guys who thought so much? How else, with the full powers of his self-reflection at his disposal, could he not be more successful than someone who didn’t even appear to be trying?

I can’t speak for the women in the audience, but I doubt that introspection itself was the problem. It was simply that, as always, introspection isn’t the same as actualization. Even if you knew perfectly how to be attractive and desirable, that wouldn’t necessarily be your reality.

However, I don’t think this means introspection is worthless. In fact, despite this reader’s doubts, I think introspection is probably one of the best qualities you can possess.

That’s because actualization is another form of introspection. It’s a form of introspection that is focused not just on the subject of a goal, but the implementation of it. It’s not just the knowing you shouldn’t eat so much when you’re overweight, but the deeper insight into the strategy and tactics necessary to achieve that.

The major breakthrough in my life came when I realized that my near obsessive ability to think about things could be directed towards the realization of those things. If I wanted to start a business, I couldn’t only obsess over the minutia of business, but also develop an understanding of myself so that I could achieve that goal.

The reader who emailed me might have spent a lot of time thinking about dating. But did he channel that energy into making himself a better person? Going out and socializing? Trying to understand his psychology to notice when he feels more confident or successful and replicating that?

Making Use of Your Mind

I’m not here to argue that you should be more or less introspective. I don’t believe that is useful, because I’m fairly confident that how much you think is heritable. If you’re naturally a go-with-the-flow, intuitive person, then I don’t believe you can radically alter that to live inside your thoughts.

Instead, I’d like to suggest that, for all the self-proclaimed nerds, geeks and chronic overthinkers, that thinking isn’t a bad thing. It may be their best weapon, provided that they can channel it not just onto the subjects of their dreams, but onto their realization.

Martin, over at the University Blog, has a great followup to this article.

I’ve had a few recent email conversations about the subject of passion. We usually agree that passion is important, people have initial interests that guide them towards a passion and that passions develop over time.

However, then I bring up what I believe is an equally important point: society needs to recognize, reward and value your particular passion.

At this point, most of my recent correspondents disagree: “why should that matter?” they argue, “you shouldn’t limit your passions to those things that ‘society’ declares as valuable.”

Passions Don’t Exist in a Vacuum, Incentives Matter

This point of view seems to be a surprisingly common one. Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, was lauded for his ability to ignore societal wants in favor of his personal vision.

Author, Steve Pavlina, doesn’t go quite as far in offering career advice. But he does recommend putting your passions before economic interests or the value you provide to society. His theory is that if you lead with the heart, that the money and purpose will follow.

But for every Roark who successfully answers to no man, how many never leave the quarry? And for each millionaire leading solely with their heart, how many are broke and miserable?

Unrewarded Passions Are Fun, They Just Don’t Pay the Bills

If you’re passionate about something that society doesn’t reward, that’s fine. That’s why people have hobbies.

I didn’t construct the title to attack gamers. I used to love online games, and I’ve had different phases of deep interest in a particular game or hobby. The point that was obvious to me, and most other gamers, is that since society doesn’t reward this output, they are just for fun. You can cultivate a passion, but they aren’t a substitute for a career.

Note: Yes, I am aware that some online gamers have begun to monetize their game playing. But, considering the ratio of dedicated players to those who have it as a career substitute, for the overwhelming majority they are just hobbies.

The Myth of Specific Passion

I believe the real crime in passion-only career advice isn’t that it can result in economic failures. Instead, I believe it is because people can ultimately have many passions, so why choose those that make it difficult to support yourself or large impact on the world?

I’m passionate about entrepreneurship and I love running this blog and the business attached to it. But while the passion may have specific manifestations at times, there is flexibility.

Before starting this blog, I had worked on trying to start an online games business and later software. I don’t know whether this business will be forever, or whether I will shift into another manifestation. I’m also sure I could find a way to integrate my passions, even if my area of mastery turned to computer science, nutrition, psychology or something completely different.

General Interests, Specific Passions

“Love consists of overestimating the differences between one woman and another.” – George Bernard Shaw

I believe with every specific passion there are general interests which can become passions, given effort, time and a little success. It doesn’t make sense to me that we would focus on a particular manifestation that will be extremely difficult to get rewards, when shifting our focus a few steps to the left might make it considerably easier.

This difference in specificity means that you might have a very strong interest in online gaming, and are currently passionate for World of Warcraft. But that space of interests, may also include game design, programming, psychology, graphics design, or other interests which share commonalities.

Picking the skills you will focus on for the next several years, therefore, shouldn’t be just about what your current passions are. They should look at the interest spaces you have, and be a joint decision between your interest in the direction and the impact you can have if you pursue it fully.

Don’t Be the Struggling Artist (Because We’re All Artists)

The idea that “art”, whether that is impressionist paintings or writing database software, should be elevated completely above societal pressures is a popular one. So much, that there is often a sense of pride at being dedicated to a creative pursuit without broader societal value.

However, if passions are just specific manifestations of more general interest spaces over time, is this a sensible way to live?

Why force yourself down the least likely path to success, if you could develop an equally fiery passion for something society actually cares about?

If you’d like to meet, please send me an email. I’m thinking Place St. Michel at 1pm, Saturday the 13th, but that may change so make sure you email first.

I don’t know when I’ll be in the area again, so I’m trying to start the habit of meeting up with more readers when I travel.

Edit: Saturday, March 13 — The meet-up went great. Thanks to everyone who came out, it was a lot of fun and I’ll definitely do another one again during my next travels.

I’m taking a break from my normal, opinionated rants to pose a question: should your twenties be devoted to wandering the world, living in many places, but never deeply? Or should they be spent picking a place to live and investing your time to build a home from that place?

I’ll share my thoughts on this question and then invite you to respond with yours. Because, if blogging for four years has taught me anything, it is that collectively the readers are much smarter than I am.

Why Ask the Question?

I’m in a position where I may be able to run my business from anywhere in the world upon graduating from university. At the moment, this is looking likely, however even if it there are setbacks in my goal, I’ll keep showing up, so achieving the goal of a full-time location-independent business looks likely for me.

Being in such a position essentially untangles my career success from a particular location. I could live almost anywhere, for any period of time, without that decision having a significant impact on my progress in a career.

However, I’m not unique. Even if you aren’t planning to start a business in your twenties, there are many options for spending your twenties as a wanderer. You could:

• Change offices in within your company, moving between different cities and countries.
• Take work or educational exchanges (I’m on one right now, in France).
• Plan mini-retirements or sabbaticals from your work to travel.
• Take up freelancing or a mobile job and work from anywhere.

Yes, extreme vagabonding may not be available to everyone. But I think most people simply assume it is too expensive/difficult without doing any research. I know regular, suit-and-tie accountants that lived in different countries just by switching offices at their firm.

Given that myself and many others have, at least, the possibility of spending our twenties living in different cities and countries, this makes it worth asking the question. Especially for people such as myself, who have mostly decoupled location and career ambition, meaning there is no longer an obvious trade-off between your ambitions and desire to explore.

Does the Added Freedom Need to Be Exploited?

Let’s say you’ve got a location independent job, freelancing gig or business, does that mean you should use it?

If your company has openings in foreign countries, does that mean you should take them?

If your university offers exchanges and opportunities to study abroad, should you start packing your suitcase?

At this moment I’m living in France and it is, without doubt, the best year of my life. Adventures, interesting people, new languages and cultures make for an interesting life.

I believe there is a strong argument for doing a year (or two) abroad for anyone. Even if you later decide never to live in an exotic place again. The marginal value of adding a year as a foreigner is high.

But that begs a deeper question: is it worth it to continue living abroad? If I have the ability, what’s to prevent me (or you) from living in a dozen different countries for nine months at a time?

Do You Dabble or Commit?

This may be one of the best years of my life. But the relationships are also more fleeting. Many people I’ve met, I will never see again in my life. Friends, social circles and people will all get separated over time.

Yes, this will happen even if you never change locations. People will move, switch jobs, or drift apart. However, if you become a permanent vagabond, this becomes more extreme. Sure, you can always keep in touch, but keeping in touch is more difficult than continuing friendships face-to-face.

There is an argument that continuous wandering may create more friendships, but ultimately shallower ones.

There is also an argument against this wandering from a personal growth perspective. Yes, living in new places opens you up to new experiences. But it also creates new obstacles. Living in one location could allow you to build on past successes and create an amazing life, rather than needing to reset every several months.

Wandering also puts other goals on hold. You may enjoy years of travel, but wake up in your early thirties to discover many of your earlier peers have left you behind. They have bigger careers or businesses. I’m not saying the tradeoff isn’t worth it, just that there is often a trade-off to consider.

The Broader Implications of Your Choice

This question has been on my mind a lot lately. I’m living abroad and contemplating where I may set off to next.

However, I think the question is a more general one about how you pursue life. It’s the question of variety or depth, and while I don’t believe you need to be consistent in your answer on every case, your choice in this question also forces you to reflect on other issues:

• Should you date or marry one person exclusively, or have many shorter relationships?
• Should you stick to one job, or hop frequently?
• Should you build one major enterprise or become a serial entrepreneur?
• Should you study one subject exclusively, or broaden your learning to everything?
• Should you commit to lifestyle traits such as religion, vegetarianism, etc., or reinvent yourself every year?

My current opinion is to lean towards wandering. The trade-offs aren’t as large when you are young and have relatively few external commitments. However, I do understand the arguments on both sides.

What are your thoughts? Should you build a life for yourself in one place, or become a perpetual wanderer? What are your thoughts on the broader implications of this choice? Please share in the comments.

Most people vastly overestimate their willpower. After four years of detailed feedback from readers on habit changes, I can come to no other conclusion. If willpower were cash, most people empty their wallets on the first day.

Keeping this in mind, when I set the first 30 Day Trials for the group of students enrolled in my monthly learning skills program, I made a warning to all participants:

Set easy goals. No more than 30-45 minutes per day, otherwise you’ll probably fail.

I know that sounds pessimistic and hardly encouraging, but after hundreds of back and forth emails and several years of doing it myself, I’ve learned one lesson: we’re all far lazier than we’d like to think.

Why We’re Lazy, and How Accepting that Can Help You Achieve More

Despite my warning, many of the members set challenges involving 90-120 minutes per day of work on several different goals. And, unsurprisingly, those were often the people that failed to stick with it.

These people fell into a common trap, which is having too much motivation early on. They get excited about the possibilities and set a challenging goal, which is fine. However, when the motivation simmers down, they can no longer keep up and they quit, which is not.

When I participated with the initial group, my challenge only lasted 30 minutes every day. Could I have done more, certainly. But that isn’t the point. The point isn’t to make a suicide run for the first few weeks, it’s to establish a ritual of behavior that will last for years.

Burnout Bloggers

This is my 800th post for ScottHYoung.com. I’ve been writing for over four years. While my particular strategy and posting frequency has undergone several revisions in those four years, I make a point of always showing up.

I write two articles per week, and aside from rare lapses, I always post two articles per week. That included periods when I had a dozen hours worth of exams in four days, weeks of late nights and international travel and intense competitions.

What’s important isn’t just showing up. It’s also why I’ve been able to show up–because my posting volume is sustainable. I’ve seen many new bloggers write in a frenzy for a few months and then watch their posting dwindle to nothing. They would probably be better off rationing their writing to a sustainable level and keeping it up for years, rather than rush in a frenzy.

Seduced by Willpower

Willpower is the superglue of planning efforts. It’s the substance you use to reinforce pieces of your strategy that otherwise wouldn’t connect. And while willpower is a good thing to have, if you rely on it entirely, you just end up with a mess.

The problem with many of the students setting trials to work on new study skills for 90 minutes every day isn’t their goal, it’s their method. Going from zero effort to 90 minutes a day, without exception, for a month is extremely difficult–even if you are motivated. Any complication (illness, exams, boredom) will completely derail their progress.

If you look at their planning effort, there was a huge gap being filled by willpower alone. The gap between zero work and 90 minutes of work per day was filled with nothing. No steady progression, no dedication of resources, no contingency plans to dodge complications, just willpower.

What’s the Alternative?

There are many alternatives to just relying on willpower. These alternatives may not work in every situation, but you can use some combination to reduce the amount of willpower you need to succeed.

#1 – Habits

The more you can ritualize and automate your plan, the less willpower you need. Here’s the key: if you need to spend a lot of time each day thinking about it, it isn’t a habit.

#2 – Modify the Environment

Want to know a good way to read more books? Have more books available. If you need to hit Amazon or Barnes and Noble every time you want to read something new, you probably won’t.

#3 – Progressions

How do you commit to a detailed, daily exercise schedule? Well you can start by just showing up for 20 minutes every day. Many of the members of my program who were too initially ambitious could have reached their goals with smaller stepping stones.

#4 – Experiments

Change your goal from a permanent new style to a short-term experiment. That will let you know what you’re up against if you decide to stick long-term.

#5 – Obsessive Focus

I’m currently employing a decent amount of willpower into studying French. But, as one of only two goals I’m pursuing actively at the moment, I can afford to do that. If you have a dozen goals, even the heroically disciplined will slip up.

Those are just a few examples, but if you apply them intelligently you can drastically reduce the willpower necessary to achieve the same goal.

Let’s say, for example, I wanted to start an extremely successful blog. How could I reduce the willpower needed to succeed?

I could start with habits. Setting 30 minutes every day to write, or committing to a new article every Monday and Thursday. I could change my homepage to my Wordpress admin panel, so I’m reminded of blogging every time I use the internet.

I could start with the simple goal just to post something every week, and then move to more difficult goals and deliberate practice in writing. I could experiment with different writing styles before committing to them for the long-term and I could make blogging my #1 goal for the next 6-9 months to devote myself to it.

Discipline is Like Gold, Valuable (But Rare)

The point of this article isn’t to say self-discipline or determination are bad things. In fact, the opposite is true, discipline is extremely valuable. What I’m questioning isn’t the value of discipline in its ability to achieve goals. Instead, it’s the supply that is often incredibly limited.

The point of this article also isn’t to say that setting difficult goals is a bad thing. Instead, it’s to argue that if you are going to set difficult goals, you need to recognize your own limitations of willpower and come up with a really intelligent strategy to work around it.

Ultimately, sweat and willpower will always be required. But there’s a difference between putting in the effort to run a marathon, and getting exhausted and giving up because you got lost for several miles.

Since Tim Ferriss coined the term, “lifestyle design” has become a phenomenon. A Google search for the term brings up nearly 83 million web pages. And the term has helped keep Ferriss’s book on the best seller list for over two years.

The most important impact of the ideavirus has been to start the conversation about a different dimension of career success. Now, many people aren’t just looking at the number of zeros on the paycheck, but the freedom and limitations that work creates.

The drawback, I see is that the focus seems to be shifted from earning the ideal lifestyle to picking it. Unfortunately, I believe the most desirable lifestyles are seldom stumbled upon. They are earned painstakingly through practice and deliberate effort.

Is Lifestyle Design “Get Rich Quick” 2.0?

I hate to be critical of the lifestyle design movement, because I do believe that transforming the conversation of career success from “money” to “money +” is tremendous. Now, being ambitious doesn’t just mean chasing six figure paychecks, but building the life you actually want to live.

But the problem I see in design, indeed in many of the suggestions in Ferriss’s book, is the over-emphasis on initial decisions being the key to achieving the ideal lifestyle.

The unstated premise is often that, if we simply chose to pursue the right work, and built up the courage to make that decision, the ideal lifestyle would flow easily from that point. I disagree with this assumption.

People are hasty to criticize “get rich quick” schemes. The problem is simple economics. If a legitimate opportunity is so attractive, and has so few entry barriers, it is usually flooded with new entrants. The flood of new people create more competition and lower the attractiveness.

It’s like a gold rush. The first person who pans out gold from the river can make a fortune. The ten thousandth is often broke, panning shoulder-to-shoulder with every other fool chasing riches.

However, possibly because of its newness, perhaps because Ferriss himself appears to have a magic touch, people don’t draw the same criticisms as readily against lifestyle design. The quickness is rarely questioned, nor is the ability to achieve more without effort.

Earning, Not Choosing

Just because most get rich quick schemes are either scams or illusions, doesn’t mean it’s impossible to become wealthy. Similarly, just because fast and painless lifestyle design probably isn’t a reality for most people, doesn’t mean you can’t engineer a better way to live.

The distinction needs to come from remembering that any desirable lifestyle traits (freedom, location independence, frequent vacations) are much like money. If you want them you need to earn them.

The same rules that allow you to dictate to the world whether you’ll be paid ten dollars per hour or ten thousand, apply to other lifestyle qualities.

If you wanted to become rich, then some attention needs to be paid to the choice of career. If you choose to go into early years education, you probably won’t be topping the Forbes 500.

Yet, within a range, there are many different careers that can achieve the income you want. Entrepreneurship, banking, medicine, engineering, software engineering or pharmaceutical research are all areas where you could become wealthy.

What matters isn’t so much picking to design software versus to design drugs, but the amount of effort you put into building the skills and reputation that demand the income you want. Making the initial choice to go into medicine or finance doesn’t tell you much about whether a person will be rich.

Lifestyle Traits, Like Money, are Earned

This example of wealth could easily be substituted for many other desirable lifestyle traits. Take location independence, for example.

Once again, your career choice will define the upper and lower bounds for this particular attribute. Being a miner or long-haul trucker won’t afford a lot of location independence.

But there are many careers that have the opportunity for a high degree of location independence. Becoming a writer, entrepreneur, consultant, programmer or designer could all be done with little thought to place of residence.

The decisive factor in becoming location independent isn’t whether you chose programming software or designing logos, but how good you are at it. If you’re a great online entrepreneur, you can earn a full-time income living anywhere. If you’re a lousy one, you’ll still need a full-time job, chaining you to an office desk.

Choice Matters, But Not as Much as We Think

I have a hypothesis (borrowed heavily from conversations with Cal Newport) that we overestimate the importance of making the right choices early on. Many of the successful people I know never planned on being in their particular, job, business or sometimes even career, when they started.

The importance of choice is to define the lower and upper bounds for different lifestyle traits. Choosing to become a social worker has a different range of incomes, location independence and variability than deciding to be a writer.

This isn’t always the case. As choosing to be an engineer could place you into job positions with a huge range of freedoms, salaries and opportunities. But there are still some career choices which effectively lock you into a range of desirable lifestyle attributes.

Considering some ranges are large, the key issue to me isn’t making the initial choice, but ensuring you’re in the upper end of that range. Choosing to be a writer isn’t as important as knowing how to write bestsellers. Choosing to be a programmer isn’t as important as dominating your field so you can pick which clients you want and under which conditions you’ll work for them.

What About Passion?

Whether you should spend a lot of time choosing a career or business you’re passionate about is a completely different question. My point of this article is that initial choice doesn’t seem to be the main factor in success in lifestyle attributes.

I don’t lean as far as Cal Newport in saying that passion is irrelevant in the initial decision. I do believe we have interests and drives that exist outside of how skilled we are in a particular domain.

Those interests and drives are also shaped by early environments. If banking success means spending the first two decades in a hellish rat race, you may not have the motivation to win, even if the upper range of desirable lifestyle attributes is high.

However, I do question whether it is wise to spend a lot of time daydreaming about your passion. For most cases, I believe, being interested is enough. If you’re interested in the field, and like the lifestyle it could create, that’s enough to get started. The raging, head-over-heels kind of passion many authors suggest you look for can come with time.

Stop Worrying and Designing and Get to Work

I think a lot about the ideal lifestyle. The entire theme of this blog is asking the question, “what is the ideal way to live?” So, perhaps more than most people, I think about questions of design and the initial choices we make that shape the life we eventually live.

However, I don’t see the point in worrying or obsessively tweaking these choices. To me, this is another form of analysis paralysis, where obsessing about the details overrides the more important need to start working.

The student who hops between undergraduate majors, even though few people will care what she chose a decade from now. Or the person who cycles through businesses every 6 months, instead of creating one that lasts.

Because, each hour spent worrying about designing your lifestyle is an hour not spent working to earn it.

Note: thanks to Cal Newport for triggering many of these ideas in our conversations and his writing.

Edit: This article isn’t meant to be a complete attack on lifestyle design in general, just pointing out what I perceive to be one limitation of the current meme floating out on the internet. I still really enjoy Tim Ferriss’s blog and book!

I have a pet peeve about certain people who attack formal education systems and claim to pursue self-education. Not because universities are spectacular learning environments (they usually aren’t). Or even because self-education isn’t a worthwhile goal (it’s probably one of the best).

It’s because I’ve noticed many of the university-hating self-taught are the kind of people who read a couple self-help books per year and believe that’s basically the same as getting a degree. Then they get angry at the bureaucratic system that won’t let them get their ideal career. Sigh.

Why Self-Education Often Does Worse than Schooling

In my experience, self-education tends to be very good at high-level ideas.

If you wanted to spend a few months understanding evolutionary biology, you could probably read about a dozen books on the topic. These books would give you the broad strokes of what’s going on in the field, the challenges being faced and what science currently understands.

But I’ve noticed that the typical approach to self-education tends to be lousy at the deep, detailed knowledge of a field. Reading those evolutionary biology books won’t give you the statistical methods for analyzing gene selection, or the functions for how a population evolves over time.

For the most part, this omission isn’t a bad thing. I have no desire to do research in evolutionary biology. So if I had only read The Selfish Gene, The Origin of the Species and a few other books on evolution, I’d be satisfied with my knowledge. The broad strokes are enough.

The problem is when one tries to replace self-education for more formal training. Such as trying to give yourself the equivalent to an undergraduate degree in computer science, nutrition or accounting.

Here, the benchmark for success isn’t whether you can keep up a conversation about the ideas at a cocktail party. You also need deeper knowledge of the technical details of the field.

Why is Deeper Self-Education Important?

I really enjoy Ben Casnocha’s “T” model for learning new things. The idea is that, ideally, there should be a wide range of subjects you have a basic understanding of (the broad top of the T). But, in addition, there should also be a select few skills you are an expert in (the narrow stem of the T).

For the top of the T, deeper self-education isn’t terribly important. I’ve read books on linguistics, evolutionary biology, cosmology, gestalt therapy and world history. But I’m not an expert on any of those things, nor do I plan to be.

However, for the bottom of the T, I believe it is critical to know how to develop a deeper approach to self-education. Let’s say, for example, you want the major focus of your learning efforts to be computer programming.

You could take a degree, or even post-graduate education, in the subject. But for a field as rapidly evolving as computer programming, what you learn in school will quickly be replaced. So, even if you pursue formal education fully, you’ll rely a lot of educating yourself.

Alternatively, you could be completely self-taught. If this is your approach, then the necessity to deeply educate yourself is even greater. Quick overviews of topics without understanding mathematics, operating systems or computer architecture won’t make you an expert.

In either case, whether you pursue university doggedly or abhor it, you’ll need to spend a lot of time teaching yourself if you want to become really good at something.

How to Become Deeply Self-Taught

I’m still experimenting with the best approach to this. My major focuses are writing and entrepreneurship, both of which tend to have far less technical knowledge. However, other areas I’d like to expand to a decent level of depth include statistics, web programming and psychology.

These other fields are adjacent to my really important work, so I believe having the equivalent of a year or two of formal education in statistics, programming or psychology would support my major focuses of writing and running businesses.

So, while I can’t offer the magic bullet that will allow you to obtain the same knowledge without the tuition costs, I can share what I’ve found so far.

The Importance of a Curriculum

The reason acquiring deeper knowledge is difficult, is that the further you stare down the microscope, the less relevant it appears to the big picture. This is often why so many students lose motivation at school. Just how is understanding integrals, polymorphism or the ATP-cycle important for my life?

The one strength of formal education is that it forces you to adhere to a curriculum. When you know that you need to learn Statistics 1000 before taking on Statistics 2000, it is easier to focus on learning about p-values and bell curves, even if they seem irrelevant at the time.

Therefore I believe any self-education attempt needs to find a curriculum early on. Think of it like having a map when you’re in an unfamiliar country. No, you don’t need to follow it dogmatically, getting lost can be part of the fun. But having a map with you ensures you don’t stay lost permanently.

Discipline Matters–It’s Why Most Self-Education Attempts Fail

Deeper self-education requires more discipline than university, not less. Formal education has grades, assignments, attendance requirements and all sorts of external incentives to keep you focused.

Those external incentives probably remove some of the intrinsic joy of learning and create new stress, but they also make learning harder to ignore.

A deeper self-education attempt requires some discipline to see it through. Unlike, broad-stroke learning which can be done from curiosity alone, understanding the gritty details often requires a more conscientious effort.

For example, at the moment I’m working on my French. I love learning French and enjoy it more than most of my formal education. However, that doesn’t mean I work on it only when I feel like it. Being my biggest goal during my stay in France, I’ve dedicated a few 30 Day Trials and many hours of deliberate practice.

Many of my peers stopped learning French once their French classes finished. Without some deliberate effort, it’s easy to forget about your self-education goals and give up.

Application Can’t Be an Afterthought

In formal schooling, actually applying the ideas is a far goal. When you first learn statistics, most professors don’t expect you to start doing your own sampling or analysis. The actual use of the knowledge is put in a backseat to passing tests.

But if you’re going to sustain the motivation to complete a deep self-education curriculum, application must be put first. Otherwise, it is too easy to lose sight of the big picture and stop learning.

Effort needs to be made not just to learn the ideas, but to start applying them immediately. When I was previously teaching myself computer programming, I would always have a project I wanted to use the new-found skills on.

I was able to stay focused on learning French while I was still in Canada, as I had a French girlfriend at the time. How’s that for motivation?

What If You Don’t Have the Time?

I have a theory that the most successful people in life aren’t the busiest people or the most relaxed people. They are the ones who have the greatest ability to commit to something nobody else forces them to do.

Many people find time for school. Even if they are taking night classes and have a full-time job, they still manage to show up. It can be stressful, but they do it.

However, far fewer people would stick to a deliberate self-education program. They haven’t paid tuition and nobody is going to fail them if they don’t show up. So often they don’t.

I can’t think of another explanation for why someone who is serious enough to take night classes to learn a foreign language or build a new technical skill, can’t apply the same effort to educate himself.

The Goal of Teaching Yourself Everything

I wrote awhile ago about my personal goal of learning everything. I believe self-education (and especially the deeper self-education I mentioned here) is critical to that goal. And, if we really are living in an information-based world, it’s probably critical to almost every goal you have.

What are your thoughts on deeper self-education? Have you been able to teach yourself a subject to the same standards (or higher) than a university degree? Please share in the comments!

First, check out my free ebook on holistic learning. It is a deeper look at the ideas I explored in the article.

I’m a university student and this blog is my journey to answer the question: what is the ideal way to live? I don’t have all the answers, but with nearly 800 articles on productivity, life philosophy, learning and success, there is a place to start.

If you’re new here, these are some articles worth starting on:

• Double Your Reading Rate
• The Art of the Finish: How to Go From Busy to Accomplished
• Living on the Edge of Incompetence
• If You Want to Be Fit, Don’t Buy New Running Shoes
• What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?

You can also check out my free ebook, How to Get More From Life, which is an overview of all the ideas on the website.

Don’t forget to sign up for the program list for when my rapid learning program reopens. Last time we sold out in just over half an hour, so if you aren’t on the list, you probably won’t get a spot.

You can subscribe to this blog to get the newest articles (usually twice per week) as soon as they go online.

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For the current readers, you can check out my ZenHabits article here: How I Was Able to Ace Finals Without Studying.

Are you happier when you’re working, or when you have time off?

Easy answer right? We work in order to have free time. Everything from basic economics to our deepest intuitions tells us that we must be happiest during our free time.

Turns out we were wrong.

Flow, Flipped Intuitions and A Scientist’s Name You Can’t Pronounce

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi did careful research that discovered that some of our deepest intuitions about work, play and what makes us happy were completely backwards.

He discovered that most people were, in fact, happier at work than at rest. More, he found that people tended to think they were happier in their free time, and would choose to have more free time than work, even though it made them unhappier.

How did Csíkszentmihályi find this?

He did it by having study participants keep pagers (then a new technology) that would go off at random intervals of the day. During those intervals, study participants would not only record what they were doing, but also their emotional state in the current moment.

By adding up this data, he reached the surprising conclusion: people were happier at work, even though they didn’t realize it.

Why You’re Happier at Work

Csíkszentmihályi’s answer to this question was based on the concept of flow. In his research, this is the optimal state of human experience. It is attained when working towards a challenge that perfectly meets our skill level, engaging every mental faculty without overwhelming us.

This state of flow, because it requires both challenge and the application of skill, is more commonly attained at work than during relaxation. As a result, people report higher levels of well-being at work.

Why Free Time Makes Most People Unhappy

Our drives don’t match up perfectly with our reality. We are motivated to relax, but relaxing itself doesn’t create the experience of flow. As a result, we strive to find more free time, even though we tend to use it on passive activities that never allow us to enter flow.

The Solution Isn’t to Become a Workaholic

I don’t believe the solution is simply to work more. Although that may fit within Csíkszentmihályi’s research, I do believe there is a good reason why people avoid work even though they are happier when working.

I believe that reason is commitments. Commitments are often necessary to be accomplished and productive. Without some pressure, either external or internal, it’s likely I never would have built this business, stayed in shape or attended classes.

However, commitments have a psychic toll on us. If you followed the findings I presented above, and turned yourself into a workaholic, you may feel flow more often. Or you may end up a burned-out wreck, one step closer to an asylum.

I’ve experienced this road personally. As I wrote in this article, I made the mistake of confusing the flow-induced happiness of work with adding extra commitments. I survived, but I ended up becoming less accomplished, more stressed and considerably less happy.

Commit to Less, Engage in Mastery More

But Csíkszentmihályi’s research never suggested adding more commitments. His findings simply indicated that people tend to be happier at work because that environment was more conducive to flow.

The solution, I will argue, has nothing to do with working more. Instead, it has to do with designing your free time so that you have more opportunities for flow.

Noncommittal Mastery

Noncommittal mastery is the process of engaging in intense learning and skill-building environments. Ones where the challenge of the activity and your skill are always in equilibrium. However, you engage in those elements without any outside pressure and little internal pressure.

I’ve been using this approach for some time now, and recently I’ve been trying to apply it more deliberately. I recently wrote here about how the noncommittal path to mastery is how I’m pursuing bodyweight fitness. I’ve also been using it to improve my cooking, bicycling, graphic design, computer programming and reading.

In my experience, I’ve found noncommittal mastery tends to achieve less and more slowly than intense commitments. That is, my business projects tend to progress faster and more consistently than my bodyweight fitness training, because I have added pressure.

But, when you’re designing your free time, accomplishment isn’t the point–flow is. And if, by pursuing noncommittal mastery, I get to have more interesting flow experiences without adding new stress, I’ve succeeded.

How to Create Mastery as a Side Dish

Another way to explain noncommittal mastery is mastery as a side dish. Instead of the main course (your biggest focus in life) it is an addition that can be equally enjoyable without becoming an obligation.

I’ve experimented with two ways to incorporate side-mastery into my life. One, which I’ve found usually fails. And a second which works much better.

The mistaken way to add mastery into your life is to create more pressure to do it. When you tell yourself you “should” start cooking more elaborate meals, learn to write fiction or read difficult books.

Unfortunately the “should” method tends to turn the otherwise fun activity into a mild commitment. Instead of being free time it starts to feel a bit like work. The psychic toll of pursuing the activity goes up and your desire to pursue it freely goes down. This is not the way.

A better, but less obvious, way to integrate more side dishes of mastery into your life is to reduce the barriers to play. Instead of creating pressure, you reduce all the obstacles that make you less likely to pursue noncommittal mastery and more likely to waste time in passive activities that leave you less happy.

Removing the Obstacles to Enjoyment

One way you can remove obstacles is to integrate the mastery-seeking activity into your current routine.

Bodyweight training was an easy integration for me because I’d already established the habit of going to the gym several times per week. Cooking became easier to pursue once I got the right tools and ingredients. I’ve written before that biking is facilitated by my current city.

Another way you can remove obstacles is to get past the frustration barrier. By taking an introductory course in yoga, dance or French cuisine, you can get to the part where applying the skill is actually fun.

Or simply make the mastery-seeking activity more available. One way I’ve been able to read more books per year? Always have books to read on my desk. Always having one or two good books in the to-read pile ensures I always have the chance to practice.

Why Following this Advice Means Rejecting Your Intuitions

My proposed solutions of noncommittal mastery and removing obstacles are just my experiences. You can discount them as anecdote if you disagree with me, just as you can discount most of my rants and opinions in this blog.

However, Csíkszentmihályi’s research isn’t opinion. It isn’t anecdote. It’s scientific research that has a more surprising conclusion than I would ever attempt to thrust upon you: that most people are less happy in their free time.

To all the people that reject the concept of active leisure, and believe the happiest life is the passive, relaxed one, I ask you to question your intuitions. Because the research says otherwise.

Perhaps, like I did, you’ll discover it isn’t the activity you want to avoid but the commitment. And you may find that the most enjoyable moments of life aren’t the easiest or least exerting, but those completely engaged in play.