I recently had a spoke with Cal talking about ideas such as:

• Why following your passions can be a trap
• The power of the “failed-simulation effect” in allowing remarkable accomplishments without agonizing effort.
• How doing less in an unusual way will actually achieve more

I recorded the conversation and you can listen to it here. It’s a bit over thirty minutes, but if you’ve enjoyed my latest articles about the pursuit of the ideal life and some of the unconventional strategies to reach it, I think it’s well worth the listening time.

Click here to download or listen to the full conversation.

Notes on the Conversation

Here are my notes from the conversation which you can also use as a guide when listening:

0:00 – I introduce Cal and his new book
3:05 – Cal and I discuss the “superstar” effect and how it impacts your life
5:20 – What counter signaling is, and why putting club president on your resume might make you look worse
7:15 – Why the rules of success change when your goal is to be world class
11:00 – We explain what the failed-simulation effect is, why it works (and why it’s underused)
19:00 – Cal attacks the dominant ideology that you need to “find your passion”
21:30 – Don’t follow your passion—build one in a field where you can win
23:30 – Take advantage of poorly defined competitive structures
25:10 – What the research actually says on how people find passions
28:00 – How to achieve more while doing way less work
31:20 – Being best in the class versus being best in the world
33:40 – Cal’s advice on being incredibly impressive (hint: it’s not by suffering now to win later)

How to Become a High-School Superstar

I highly recommend getting Cal’s book, where he goes into way more detail on his research into what makes people stand out and achieve more. You can pick up a copy here, and definitely check out Cal’s blog StudyHacks.

“I’m not really into that personal development stuff.”

A friend said this to me the other day. I found it interesting not because it’s unusual to say, but because it’s common. I know many people who wouldn’t be caught dead walking around the self-help aisle of a bookstore, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the desire to live a better life.

Self-help is an interesting field because while practically everyone is interested in how to be happier, richer, healthier or more successful, many of those same people will never read a book or blog about it.

It’s easy to understand why some people don’t learn about car repair or computer programming. It just doesn’t interest them. But since pretty much everyone is interested in having a better life, why are self-improvement junkies the minority?

The Difference Between “self-help” and Self-Help®

I think the key to understanding my friend’s sentiment and many people’s lack of enthusiasm over self-help is in understanding the difference between lowercase “self-help” and uppercase Self-Help®.

The terms self-help, personal development, self-improvement, lifestyle design, wellness or whatever you call them can have two different meanings. The first meaning being the overall philosophy of striving to live better, particularly with the individual as the agent in making this possible.

I think few people object to this first definition of self-help. Almost no one wakes up in the morning and says to themselves, “I really hope my life gets worse today.” Self-improvement of this kind is hardwired in the human condition and we’re all devotees to some extent.

The second definition is of Self-Help®. Instead of representing the broad struggle for meaning and happiness in life, it represents a much narrower opinion on what the answer to that question is. More than that, it often represents a business of advice-giving which if not entirely corrupt and fake, certainly isn’t without flaws.

When people like my friend in the introduction say they don’t like self-help, it’s because they don’t like Self-Help®. They want better lives, they just don’t want to buy seminar tickets from a self-appointed guru.

The Two Things Wrong with Self-Help®

There are two reasons I see for disliking Self-Help®. The first is that you dislike the substance of the philosophy backing Self-Help®, the second is that you dislike the style in which this philosophy is delivered.

Many people are eager to criticize the style of self-help. This definitely has flaws, but as someone who strives to write about self-help but often falls into Self-Help®, I think there are reasons why these stylistic flaws exist.

More than style, however, I believe it’s the substance of self-help which is what people should be thinking about. But, just as political junkies should care more about the policies of elected officials, rather than the party they represent, too many people attack or worship Self-Help® without really viewing its contents.

Gurus, Goals and the Style of Self-Help®

“A self-help book you don’t like is self-help. A self-help book you like is just a book.” - Seth Godin

There are a couple big flaws in the style of self-help:

• Guru-worship – the tendency to turn one pundit into an infallible expert.
• Profit-bias – emphasizing ideas that are easier to sell as information products
• Answer-bias – emphasizing easy answers over ambiguous ones
• Anecdote-bias – focusing on emotional stories, rather than robust evidence
• Success-bias – speaking from a minority of successes, ignoring hidden failures
• Circular-authority – where the proof of your expertise is mostly in your success giving that same expertise

I could go through them one-by-one, but I see most of these stylistic flaws as having one of two root causes, self-help as a business and being a full-time advice-giver.

Self-help as a business creates many of these biases. Consider the tendency for self-help pundits to become gurus. Why is this? Well a big part of it is that there’s a large section of the population that wants gurus. They want to feel like they are following a leader who has all the answers.

People say they want healthy food, but end up buying greasy burgers, so McDonalds responds by mostly selling greasy burgers. Similarly, people say they want intelligent discussion, but they pay for gurus, so business pressures push pundits to turn themselves into gurus. I’m not saying it’s right, or inevitable, just that those pressures shape the business of self-help.

Answer-bias occurs because people are more willing to pay for answers than ambiguous, albeit more honest, questions. Success-bias occurs because people are willing to pay for how to be successful, not the cold facts about success rates.

Even if we ignore the profit incentives that warp the style of self-help, simply being a full-time advice-giver creates stylistic flaws. Circular-authority, particularly with the top people, occurs because it is insanely difficult to achieve extraordinary success both in a field and also in a field giving advice. At some point, your major claim to fame will eventually be your advice-giving business.

Realizing that these stylistic-flaws originate, in part, because of the pitfalls of trying to make money off giving advice and following that pursuit full-time, is a way to avoid some of them. I’d avoid the people and ideas you feel are too biased to be trusted, but expecting mild bias even in the people you do trust is a way to correct for it.

Optimism, Passion and The Substance of Self-Help®

While many people will attack or defend Self-Help® based on it’s stylistic flaws, what I think really matters is the substance of those ideas. What is the philosophy of Self-Help®, how does it say you should live and make decisions?

Unlike the stylistic flaws which influence all Self-Help® to a certain degree, the substance of Self-Help® varies dramatically. Some argue you should be disciplined, some argue you should relax. Some argue you should set goals, others say you should stay in the moment and ignore future worries. Save and invest or enjoy the present? Family or career? Faith or atheism?

The part I find most interesting is that many self-help junkies enjoy the majority of self-help books, even when they contradict wildly in actual substance. Similarly, many people hate Self-Help® even when they would agree with everything an author says on how to live. People emphasize the style over the substance, and buy the book because they like the cover, not because they actually have a well-thought agreement on anything the author is saying.

However if you’re interested in lowercase self-help (and who isn’t?) it’s this substance that really matters for your life. Assuming you’re not just buying books as paperweights, or avoiding the self-help aisle out of principle, what should matter to you are the actual ideas, not who they come from.

The Role of Self-Help® in “self-help”

I’m a devotee to lowercase self-help even though I’m often a sceptic of Self-Help®. I think there are many ways intelligent people can avoid the stylistic biases that often plague the business of self-help without giving up on their journey to thoughtfully pursuing a better life philosophy.

Some suggestions:

• Read books you disagree with, particularly those outside of Self-Help®.
• Practice critical thinking, not so you can destroy ideas you disagree with, but to be aware of the flaws in the ideas you do agree with.
• Accept the multiplicity of life, in that many contradictory philosophies can end up working equally well.
• Look actively for starting points of discussion, not final answers.

Final Thoughts

I’m both a reader and writer of lowercase self-help. And, yes, I do possess some of the stylistic biases of Self-Help®, as much as I try to avoid them. I even have a new video course coming out, so I’m very aware of how all these critiques could be equally applied to me.

Part of the solution for me has been to create a division between my blog and the business attached to it, so that I can still create money without turning every article into an extended sales pitch. Another part has been to focus my business end to a narrower spectrum of how-to advice (mostly rapid learning, and personal productivity) so that I can still explore the big ideas of life without making myself an expert in every facet of that big picture.

But ultimately, even I can’t avoid every trace of bias, so it’s up to you as a reader to think critically, read from diverse sources and have thinkers you respect, but none that you worship.

Learn More, Study Less – The Video Course

Holistic learning, the strategy I’ve used to ace finals without studying and maintain a GPA between an A and an A+ in university while growing a business, has consistently been the most popular subject on my blog. I still get emails every day about the free mini ebook I wrote on it, and Learn More, Study Less is still the best selling guide on this website.

It’s taken almost three years, but I’ve finally put together a video course. This is a 12-module course that expands my biggest-selling guide with six hours of video instruction, expert audio interviews and a 38-page bonus manual walking through how just a handful of students have used the tactics to get better grades with less studying.

The course is also going to be offered with a re-opening of Learning on Steroids, my rapid learning tactics training program. I’ve only accepted new students twice in the last eight months, and for less than four days in total.

The program will be launching on the 10th of September here, but if you’re interested in the program, I’ll be giving an early sign-up date as well as a 2-hour bonus video, only to the people on my free prelaunch email list.

I know plenty of people reading here aren’t interested in the business end of ScottHYoung.com. That’s completely fine. But that means people on the email list get more information, as well as discounts and giveaways I don’t announce on the main website.

In Vancouver August 29th? Want to Meet-Up?

In March, I had the first reader meet-up in Paris. About a half-dozen people showed up, we went for lunch, talked about life, philosophy and entrepreneurship, and had a great time.

I’m flying to Vancouver next week as a holiday, and I’d like to meet some of you. If you’re from Vancouver, or can be in Vancouver on the 29th, shoot me an email to vancouvermeetup@scotthyoung.com. It will be pretty low-key, probably just drinks or coffee somewhere. I’ll email the time and place once I know who’s coming.

If you’re only here for big ideas or practical how-to’s, feel free to skip this post. No worries, I’ll be back next week with more of the articles you’ve come to expect.

Quick Points on My Last Trip Around the Sun

Here are some of the things I’ve been up to in my last 12 months:

• Lived in the south of France for 11 months
• Learned to speak French
• Traveled to several new countries
• More than tripled my business income from 2009
• Launched a new rapid learning skills program
• Produced a Learn More, Study Less video course (coming out in September)
• Vastly improved my cooking skills

This was an exciting year, both personally and professionally. Living abroad was fantastic, and not only taught me a lot about myself, it also forced me to reconsider many of my assumptions about life and success. Professionally, I can say after five years of working on this blog, I’m now in the comfortable full-time income range, which is a huge milestone for me.

Parlez-Vous Français?

Throughout this year I wrote about my ongoing goal to learn to speak French. In rating my French, I would say my ability isn’t quite fluent–I still have trouble with television and I really have to work to follow a conversation with 3+ native speakers—but it is advanced enough that I can confidently say I can speak French.

I’ve learned that, between the intermediate stage of a novice, and total fluency of an expert, it’s important to practice the language how you actually want to use it. I’ve heard from polyglots who claim speaking immediately is key, and I’ve also heard from other linguists that listening passively is superior.

Frankly, I think the distinction isn’t as important as practicing the language how you actually want to use it. I wasted a lot of time on my French with sources of French that weren’t as important to me. I’m still not very good with television, radio or movies because, at the time, I didn’t have television and hated the French-dubbed movies in the theaters.

My #1 criteria was being able to live in the culture effortlessly and have deep conversations with the locals. For that goal, I was very successful. Even as early as February (I stayed another 5 months) I had gone on dates completely en français, and had friends who I spoke exclusively in French with.

My #2 criteria was being able to read classic French books. I was happy with my ability to do this as well, finishing The Count of Monte Cristo and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I’m about halfway through The Three Musketeers, and I’m hoping I can pour into the works of Albert Camus, Victor Hugo and non-literary works from René Descartes soon.

My #3 criteria would be the ability to watch actual French movies, and I admit, I’m still pretty weak here. I can certainly understand from the context what is being said, but movie dialog is quite different from actual conversations. That said, I hope to continue working on this aspect of my French, watching French cinema from home.

Now that I’m outside the country, I’m interested to see how my French level will improve or decline. I want to put some effort into maintaining it, speaking with friends in France on Skype, reading books and watching movies. But I also want to pursue new language and learning goals, so I’ll have to find a balance.

Business Growth and the Long Journey

This year I’m expecting my net income to be between $30,000 and $40,000. Although, it could be closer to $50,000 if my upcoming video course proves to be popular. It’s a modest amount, but it needs some clarification:

I’m all for people starting blogs, becoming entrepreneurs and wanting to make money online. Considering it’s afforded me so many opportunities, both for self-improvement and for income, who am I to say you shouldn’t go out there and start writing?

However, amidst all the hype and bloggers whose major claim to fame is writing about becoming a successful blogger, I think there needs to be some reasonable expectations.

It’s been almost 7 years since I committed myself to starting an online business. It’s been 4.5 years that I’ve been running this blog, during which I’ve written just under 1000 articles, 4 books and gone through several failed business models.

It’s been seven years I wouldn’t trade for anything, but they weren’t always profitable. Yes, I was also a full-time student at the time, but I still put a lot of work into my business efforts, even when they weren’t paying me anything.

I definitely think that anyone who wants to start an online business (and a blog is probably not even the best kind) can eventually make it work. Otherwise, how could a kid with no prior business experience, no network, no resources and basically zero marketable skills make it work?

But at the same time, I’m going to strangle the next person who writes me an email confident that they’ll be making six figures, just a couple months out of the gate. And after I strangle them, I’ll move onto the people selling products who told them that 3-6 months to $200,000 per year is a reasonable expectation.

I’m not saying this because I’m unhappy it took me so long. I loved running this business and blog almost every second of the way, and I would have been happy putting in another 10 years of it part-time, even if I could never make a run of it.

Simply that I feel it’s dangerous to hype blogging earnings, without pointing to the lengthy run-up period. I’d much rather convince one person that they can make it, provided they have the patience and discipline to put in the hours over years, rather than convince ten people that the internet is a great way to make a quick buck.

That said, I’m happy to share details of my business, since I remember how much I wanted that information when I was still figuring things out.

Learning on Steroids, Blogging and Building a Business

So far in 2010, my average monthly income is just under $3500, although since the last six months were focused on building this new video course, it may be higher in the end. In 2008, my total earnings were about $18,000 and in 2009 they dropped to just over $9,000.

Seven years ago, when I first started a business, I set a goal to earn $20,000 per year from an online business. Not riches, certainly, but enough to have a foothold and an amount I believed would be enough to live on full-time. I had set the goal for five years.

Well, it took two years of overtime, but I’m extremely happy to say that 2010, I’ve finally reached it (actually I reached it before June).

Most of my income growth came from two separate, but important steps.

First, I set up a rapid learning skills program called Learning on Steroids. The format of a monthly program, with access to forums, coaching and regular communication turned out to be a popular one. The lesson is that having the right business model is crucial, as I’ve quadrupled my earnings, when my audience grew only about 50% in the last year.

Second, I communicated about the program almost exclusively through an email list. This worked much better than writing a blog post. This allowed me to separate uninterested readers from people willing to invest in a program, so I could inform the latter without annoying the former.

Neither of these steps were huge, they were simply tipping points. If there weren’t any readers, or I didn’t know anything about crafting a sales pitch, or I hadn’t previously written about the ideas in the course extensively, they wouldn’t have succeeded.

“The urge to quit is strongest, right before you make it.”

I remember reading that quote from Bob Parsons, founder of GoDaddy, years ago. At the time I didn’t pay it much attention. I figured the desire to give up was strongest right before you give up, not before success. The closer you get to succeeding, the more confident you should become, right?

Well I can’t speak to the universal applicability of this quote, but I can say it was true for me. At the end of 2009, after a year of declining income and a few failed projects, I was almost ready to give up.

I wasn’t prepared to give up blogging—I love writing, and I’d continue it even if I wasn’t paid a dime. But I was seriously contemplating giving up on trying to create a business through my website. Maybe I’d keep writing, but focus myself on a new business with better chances of success.

The contrast between my predictions of the future then, and just 4 months later when I had my highest earning month on the blog ever (just over $5000), was striking. Now I think Bob Parsons was probably right—keep going until that urge to quit is irresistible, then go a little bit further.

My Future Goals and the Difficult Decisions of the Emerging Lifestyle Designers

In some ways reaching successes makes life more complicated, not easier. Knowing I can adapt to living in a foreign country, learn the language and having reached a seemingly stable business model that can offer full-time, location-independent income, certainly broadens my choices.

Had I failed miserably in my travels, I would be narrowing my focus to staying Canada. Had my business still been struggling, I would be planning to get more education or get a job. Successes may make life more interesting, but they also make the choices harder.

I think as we enter an age where the traditional lifestyle is no longer a necessity, we’ll see a lot more young people entering so-called “quarterlife crises” as the ever-multiplying options of how to live explode beyond the reasonable ability of people to choose the best one.

For the moment, at least, my choices are fairly easy. I’m staying in Canada for at least the next eight months to finish up my degree. During this time I want to focus aggressively on my business, so I can be confident that the model I’ve worked out is stable and increase my savings to provide a landing cushion if something goes wrong.

After that, who knows? I might stay in Winnipeg where there are friends and family or move to another Canadian city (Montréal and Vancouver, being my current top picks). I even have a widget on my computer desktop telling me the local weather in Tokyo, just in case.

Beyond location, there are also many other questions. Should I aggressively build a modest living into a much larger business, expanding my learning skills programs to offer courses, tutoring or seminars? Should I keep the business low-key and gain experience in other areas of life through travel, classes and life experiments? Should I even mix the two, living more intensely to share my experiences with other people, as people like Steve Pavlina, Benny Lewis and Tim Ferriss have done?

All of these questions I have no answers to, and I think that’s probably a good thing. At the very least, it will give me lots of opportunity to write about the pursuit of an ideal life in a world that is affording an ever-increasing menu of choices.

Discipline can help you become good at something, but it can’t make you world-class.

If you want to be in good shape, it’s not unreasonable to expect success if you put in enough hard work. Same is true if you wanted to be a decent guitar player or a better-than-average writer. Show up, put in the hours, be patient. You can win because most people aren’t trying very hard.

What if, instead, you want to be one of the world’s best guitar players or athletes? Discipline matters, but it’s merely a prerequisite. But now your benchmark isn’t the unfocused majority, but the <1% of the people that are also obsessed, focused, driven and passionate.

When your aim is not to be good, but the best, the logic of “try harder” doesn’t work, because the people you need to try harder than are also following the same approach. Discipline switches from being the key to success, to a mere precondition assumed before you start.

Sink or Swim?

I started thinking about this idea after talking with a family friend. His daughter is around 13 years old, and engaged in competitive swimming. The conversation reminded me of being that age and competing in swimming, except she was actually really talented at it.

This girl was competing in national and international swim meets for her age group. She obviously had a gift, but what struck me was the amount of time she spent training. Up at 5am most mornings to swim for a few hours before classes, and not home until 7-8pm to keep training after school.

The amount of discipline and passion for the sport she possessed was incredible. Much of her life revolved around swimming and she was barely a teenager.

However in this environment, of international competitions, her level of dedication wasn’t unusual. And considering her parents are relatively well-adjusted (unlike some child athlete’s parents who aim to live their ambitions through their children) she may even be a bit less disciplined than her competitors.

If being completely obsessed with the sport and training hours every day while going to school full-time doesn’t even separate you from a crowd of tweens, how can “being more disciplined” possibly make you world-class?

You Can Be Good at Many Things. You Can’t Be the Best at Everything

Last week’s post about the reality of trade-offs in lifestyle decisions sparked a lot of reader comments. Many people disagreed with me, pointing out supposed examples of how people can excel in many different areas of life without having to sacrifice one or the other.

I don’t disagree with them, but I think it depends on how you frame the issue. If you want to be good in several major areas of your life, you can probably accomplish it.

Right now, I feel almost all major areas of my life are good or great. My business is doing well, I’m in decent shape, I’ve been traveling and although recently moving has flipped up my social life again, I’m confident that will be rewarding too.

But all those things are issues of being “good”. While being good at anything isn’t easy, and it requires a fair bit of work, it is a qualitatively different challenge than being world class.

Choosing To Be The Best or Just Good Enough?

The discussion from this and last week’s article bring up two questions in my mind:

1. What do you want to be the best at, merely good enough and what will you ignore altogether?
2. How will you define “the best” narrowly and creatively enough to allow you to succeed and to still live an enjoyable life?

As for the first question, being the best has both high rewards and high costs. High rewards because being #1 often pays disproportionately to being #2. As Cal Newport explains:

“In other words, both Florez and Pavarotti are exceptional tenors, but Pavarotti was slightly better — the best among an elite class. The impact of this small difference, however, was huge. Whereas we estimated that Florez was well off but not wealthy, when Pavarotti died in 2007, sources estimated his estate to be worth $275 to 475 million.”

But with the high rewards come high costs, as the competition becomes just as smart, fierce, talented and, yes, even as hard-working as you are. Discipline and ruthless focus switch from being decisive factors in winning to mere entry fees just for a chance to play the game.

Therefore, it makes sense to aim to be the best at a tiny minority of your life, perhaps even one sole pursuit.

Is Polymath a Dirty Word?

I think it’s certainly possible to be good, if not great, at several different skills. I know people who are decent artists, musicians, history buffs and make a good living with happy personal lives. Talents often support one another, so being good at one enhances your skills in another.

I don’t believe polymath pursuits are a bad thing. If you have multiple interests, why not try them all out? Learning new things is part of what makes life interesting. Even if your guitar lessons don’t lead to a record deal, that doesn’t mean they were a waste of time.

But my sense is these polymath pursuits, and indeed how well you master the multiple areas of your life, are deeply connected to how you answer the first question. If you decide to be the best in a fiercely competitive field, you either need to make heavy sacrifices with no guarantees of success, or be lucky and talented enough to get away without needing them.

If, in contrast, your answer of which pond you want to be “the best” at is not swimming with sharks, you make it easier to succeed in life’s other pursuits and decrease the chance that you’ll drown.

One way to do this would be to select a pond that is small enough that you can succeed without becoming a slave to your ambition.

Perhaps a better way is to creatively redefine the ponds, so that you can succeed (often on the strength of multiple talents) because nobody realized you could swim there.

Redefining the Game

My friend Benny has been enjoying a lot of success from his blog. In speaking eight languages fluently, he certainly deserves it. But as Benny explains, as far as polyglots go, he isn’t unusual. As part of his guide he interviewed people who speak 30+ languages to varying degrees of fluency.

In response to this, he explained to me:

“My goal isn’t to have the most languages, but maybe to be the best extrovert polyglot.”

Instead of trying to be the person with the most languages (a nearly impossible task) he redefined his mission to focus on the speaking, travel and social aspect of the languages which makes his job of being unique and world-class much more achievable.

Discipline is a necessary ingredient. But, in aiming for something remarkable, perhaps success owes less to the brunt force of effort, and more to guiding that effort in an uncommon direction.

Few clichés in self-help are as popular as hatred for so-called “scarcity thinking.” Scarcity thinking being the evil mentality that assumes somewhere life has trade-offs.

Steven Covey told us that synergy was one of the 7 Habits, the opposite of scarcity thinking. Entire books have been written about having an abundance mindset, and avoiding a “zero-sum” mentality.

Recently, I was in a negotiations class where the scarcity/abundance dilemma was made the first topic. The two approaches were simplified into two graphs. One where participants fight over pieces of a pie, the other where they focus on growing the pie and each having larger shares. The metaphor was an interesting choice, because I’ve personally never witnessed a pie grow in response to demand for more of it.

Even if the abundance mindset is a good strategy much of the time, it’s wrong often enough to warrant skepticism. Which is why I loved the recent article by Chris Guillebeau:

“I like this quote from a David Sedaris article. Sort of an adapted ‘carpenter’s triangle’:

‘One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work.’

The gist is that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.”

…

We’d all like to think we can be successful without cutting off one of the burners. But when you start deconstructing it, I’m not so sure.

The real flaw of the abundance obsession is that it makes us forget life has tradeoffs. As David Sedaris suggests, it might be impossible to glow brightly with one of life’s burners without having to turn another off.

Good Enough or World Class?

Abundance thinking works well if your aim is to be “good enough”. With the areas of your life, if you narrow down your categories enough, you can probably beat the average on all of them. You could be in decent shape, have an alright social life and okay professional success. It might take a lot of work, but it doesn’t need extreme sacrifices.

But to me, this thinking breaks down when you want to move from “good enough” to “world class.”

Getting into better-than-average shape isn’t too hard considering most people don’t even exercise regularly. But getting into world-class shape is a full-time job.

The reason good enough doesn’t need extreme sacrifice is that your competition isn’t trying very hard. When your aim is moderate success, you’re mostly competing against the millions of people who put in almost zero effort. The solution to good enough is often just to work hard enough.

But becoming world class changes the competition from the hoards of slackers to the elite individuals who are already trying their hardest. Getting more here often means giving something else up. Whether that comes from your personal life, as Sedaris suggests, or from your professional life as you sacrifice other skills to become the ruthless master of one.

Success may not be a direct function of how much you sacrifice for it. Some people will have more talent. Others will stumble upon creative strategies that accomplish more. But if your arena is filled with the self-selected best and they are already trying their hardest, it seems stupid to assume you can get away with anything more than lip-service to fuzzy notions like life balance.

Big Pond or Little Pond

The degree of life imbalance necessary, would seem to depend on two things:

1. Just how “world class” you want to become
2. How big is the competition

In other words, how big a fish do you want to be and how big is the pond you’re swimming in? If you want to be in the NBA, you need to be a huge fish (there are only about 360 players in the NBA) and you’re in a pretty big pond (just think of how many people love to play basketball).

A good example of selecting different ponds is the contrast between two of my favorite bloggers, Ramit Sethi and Cal Newport. Both original thinkers and great writers. The difference is simply that they’ve both opted to swim in different ponds.

Cal, in addition to running his blog, is also a post-doc at MIT. He blogs less frequently, doesn’t have a Twitter account and does little in the way of monetizing his online efforts, aside from furthering his side-career as an author.

Ramit, by contrast, works at his blog and the associated business full-time. He blogs more often, sometimes investing 15+ hours into a single article, he’s active on Twitter, constantly optimizes his website and recently moved to New York to grow his brand and increase his television exposure.

Both are successful and, I would argue, big fish in their respective ponds. But while Cal’s pond consists of having a loyal audience and a platform for his ideas, Ramit’s also includes television appearances and a six-figure business.

The bigger the pond you decide to swim in, the greater the chance you’ll drown. Sacrifices might be necessary, but they certainly aren’t sufficient. You need talent, luck and all those things self-help clichés usually say are unnecessary for success.

The bigger fish you want to become, the more you’ll need to consume from every other area of your life. Again, sacrifices won’t be sufficient, but if you want to be the best you probably can’t do it as a part-time hobby.

Scarcity Thinking and Choosing Ponds

The value of scarcity thinking is that it helps you choose ponds. If you prevent yourself for one minute from seeing the world as an ever-expanding pie, but as one of stricter tradeoffs, you can pick the life you want to live, and what pond would be comfortable for you.

One example for me is travel and language learning. Having recently lived abroad in France, learning French, this is something that interests me. I’d love to be able to visit every country on earth, or learn several languages fluently while living in dozens of countries.

But the demands needed for full-time travel or nomadic polyglotting are high too. Picking a pond of traveling-when-I-get-the-chance, or becoming fluent in 2-3 languages in my lifetime, may not be as exciting, but it lets me focus on building other elements of my life I feel are more important.

Another example is entrepreneurship. I’m building a small business which may eventually have a few employees and make me well-off by most living standards. It’s not an easy pond to swim in (there will still be thousands of people trying hard who don’t make it), but it’s a considerably smaller pond than trying to build a VC-funded company with an army of employees and hundreds of millions in revenue.

I’ve had a chance to meet people who have become successful in both of those ponds, and the latter, unsurprisingly, requires considerably more personal sacrifice.

Lifestyle First, Pond Second

My feeling is that it’s better to think about the lifestyle you want first, before picking which pond you should swim in. Most pundits suggest the opposite, Bunker Hunt was quoted as saying:

“There are only two choices to make in life: First, figure out what you really want and the price you’ll need to pay to get it. Second, resolve to pay that price.”

I’d argue that, instead, you should think seriously about how you want to live. Not just widespread fantasies about what ideal living is (endless world travel and minimal working hours), but what mode of living actually makes you fulfilled. Then spend some time thinking about what pond your ambitions could swim in that allows for that life.

The point isn’t that you should water down all your goals, and strive to live in the lukewarm state of “life balance.” Rather, it’s to accept trade-offs exist when deciding where to swim.

Image thanks to star5112

If you’re like most people the answer is probably not very often at all. Psychologists even have a name for it, the confirmation bias, or the tendency of humans to seek out information that confirms their beliefs. People search for more certainty, not less.

This bias has never sat well with me. Every mistake you make becomes a double one. Not only will you end up being wrong about the major idea, but you’ll waste a lot of time and energy trying to defend that false belief. Living in a self-made bubble of certainty is a pricey delusion.

Given this, I try to adopt an attitude of deliberate wrongness–that is allowing, and even encouraging myself, to be wrong about major ideas frequently.

Deliberate Wrongness – You Need Certainty, But it Also Traps You

The standard rationalist approach I’ve seen to the problem of the confirmation bias is to rarely have certainty about anything. Always hedge your bets, wait until more evidence comes in and be agnostic about every major idea in life.

While this rationalist answer may appeal to philosophers and scientific critics, I don’t think it’s a useful solution for anyone who actually wants to do anything. Taking action requires a degree of certainty. If you’re constantly doubting yourself, you’ll often lack the boldness to get started.

The mind lacks the Bayesian ideal of perfectly calculated likelihood percentages weighted on evidence. Instead it tends to fall into two largely fuzzy emotional states of confidence and certainty on the one hand, or doubt and questioning on the other. Never letting yourself be confident means you lack all the positive traits of that mental state of boldness, drive, ambition and enthusiasm.

If you’re launching a business, once you’ve reviewed your options, you need to have almost an obsessive belief that you can make it. The world will provide you with plenty of doubts, so you need to have certainty to get yourself to work hard every day.

Same is true if you’re writing a novel, starting a charity or setting any goal. If you don’t believe your writing will reach people, your mission will impact the world, or you’ll achieve you’re goal, you won’t have the resolution to keep showing up, every day.

The Price of Certainty

But with this certainty comes the trap of the confirmation bias. You’ll see the world through your preconceived ideas, and this often traps you.

I would argue that most plateaus and persistent obstacles in life are not overcome with more discipline and willpower. Yes, discipline is important for kicking yourself over the obvious fences that hold you back. But when you’ve tried everything and still make no progress, what works then?

In almost all of these cases, it’s the unimagined third alternative that provides the answer. Something you hadn’t considered because it violates your beliefs about what is possible and how the world works. Sometimes more hard work is the answer. But hard work can’t help you if you’re in a dead-end of your own false assumptions.

Running this business has been a perpetual example of this.

When I started, I thought the way to succeed was through advertising. I put up ads and tried to make money off them. I started earning about $40 per month, and after several months of work I was able to get up to $100-$250 per month but the ads were clogging the website and I was burning myself out trying to write articles to generate enough traffic.

What got me out of this problem wasn’t writing more and more, and hunting more traffic, but to start writing ebooks. With that step I was able to move from my $200 per month to $700-$1500, after several months of work. Eventually this peaked and I was stuck once more.

Getting out of this step had several dead ends, but setting up a service-based monthly program turned out to be a great solution–going from $1000 per month and worrying about the bills, to $3000-$5000. I don’t know when this direction will eventually peak, but I know that if I wanted to create an even larger business that could impact more people–it will be from doing something I haven’t even considered.

Each of these shifts didn’t just require trying something new–but also fixing incorrect beliefs I had about how my business worked. If I had never revised those beliefs, I’d still be under the assumption that I should be chasing traffic and advertising dollars. And I’d probably be preparing to look for a day job after I graduate.

Practicing Deliberate Wrongness

The rationalist answer to the certainty problem–that you should refrain from being too certain without proper evidence, fails to spur action. Especially in environments where taking action is the only way to get more evidence.

But the stubborn approach of certainty doesn’t work either. Never being wrong almost guarantees never being right. In any interesting pursuit, you’ll almost certainly be wrong from when you start–if those beliefs never get updates, you’ll be like I would have been–struggling to make pennies on advertising dollars.

I believe the alternative to these two extremes is to practice deliberate wrongness. First–to be certain and confident, enough to take actions and pick sides. Second–to celebrate being wrong frequently. Being wrong therefore isn’t a fatal weakness but a sign that your system is working. You can’t escape being wrong, so a lack of bad ideas usually indicates you’re simply protecting your established viewpoints.

What Can a 21-Year Old Know About Life?

I’ve taken the deliberate wrongness as a stance when writing at this blog from Day 1. Where I have strong opinions, I argue them to the best of my ability.

But I’m also acutely aware that any life philosophy developed by a twentysomething will almost certainly have holes. I simply don’t have enough experience. I don’t let that prevent me from sharing my ideas–on the contrary, I think the only way to really make progress on big questions of life is to make big statements and wait for other people to disagree with you.

With each of these ideas though, I also leave myself open to being wrong, and seek out ideas that disagree with me. I try to read books from authors with whom I disagree with. I pay most attention to commenters who argue against an article I’ve written.

The Pursuit of Deliberate Wrongness

There are two parts to the pursuit of deliberate wrongness. First, celebrate whenever you’re wrong about an idea. This goes against the natural bias towards confirmation, so it isn’t an easy practice. Being happy about being wrong takes some effort in the first place.

The second part is to actively seek out the dissenting opinions. I’m not suggesting all opinions are equal and that you should consider the rambling of a deranged cult leader in the same arena as a Nobel laureate. But, if you haven’t read a book which you disagree with in the last few months, you probably aren’t trying hard enough.

Wrongness isn’t always being wrong about stated beliefs. I’d say most of our assumptions go unarticulated. My assumptions about my business model weren’t written down anywhere. They were simply underlying all the actions I took.

Overturning the unstated wrongness is a matter of exposure. If you frequently get outside your circle of influence, then you’re more likely to see those assumptions exposed. Travel allows you to temporarily escape your culture. Also, not all culture is geographical and not all travel needs to change locations.

Be Wrong on One Big Idea, Every Month

Deliberate wrongness applies to the little mistakes in reasoning we make every day, as much as big ideas. But I believe it’s the big ideas where it matters most. These are the ideas that shape the way we live and are the most stubborn to replace.

My goal is to be wrong about one big idea in my life, business or philosophy every month. I know if I’m not having big moments of wrongness at this frequency, it’s almost certainly because I’m ignoring other perspectives, not because I’m infallible.

Ask yourself whether you’ve ever changed your mind (that is, held one opinion strongly and then either had that belief overturned or seriously weakened) on any of these huge ideas of life:

• Abortion
• Vegetarianism
• Atheism
• Political party
• Whether humans have free-will
• Capital punishment

I wouldn’t expect people to change these colossal, often identity-defining, beliefs every month. However, whether you’ve ever flopped or seriously doubted yourself on one of these big beliefs is probably a thermostat for how often you find yourself wrong on smaller issues.

I used to think with enough hard work and ambition, you could achieve the things you want. I don’t believe that anymore.

Instead, I believe you can only achieve goals from pursuits you enjoy. Self-improvement works best when it maximizes who you already are–not trying to erase every flaw you see in yourself.

Over 90% of Dieters Fail–Why?

Dr. Martin Seligman writes that over 90% of dieters fail to stay thin for more than a few years, and for many diets this figure is closer to 97%. If the 80% supposed failure rate of new businesses sounded discouraging to you, this statistic is despairing.

Dr. Seligman offers a number of reasons why this might be the case: that dieting doesn’t work, that our society has a warped body image, that long-term calorie reduction is impossible. And I feel he is probably right on many of those points.

But, I think there is also a more general reason why so most dieting attempts fail. Most dieters approach their goal out of an insecurity about their perceived flaws. I believe any goal based on that insecurity is doomed to fail–whether that goal is to lose weight, become rich or find a girlfriend.

Setting Goals out of Interest or Insecurity

There are really only two reasons to set a goal:

1. You want to fix something about your life.
2. You’re interested in a pursuit and your goal is just a crystallization of that interest.

I want to argue that, as with dieters, 90% of people who set the first goal will fail. And of the 10% who do succeed, it’s either through enormous inner strife, or because they accidentally convert their goal into the second type.

I’d say a lot of the cynicism about personal development and self-help books, is because so much of it is aimed at this first group. Marketing at people who feel fat, lonely or poor, and who want to escape those feelings of insecurity.

Most of the business of self-help isn’t marketed at the opposite group: enthusiasts. People whose primary motivation for a goal isn’t because society tells them they are flawed, but because they are genuinely passionate about the pursuit itself. However, these are the people who are most likely to be successful in any personal development effort.

The business half of this blog is mostly a monthly rapid-learning tactics program I run. Of the people who’ve been successful with the program, virtually every one I could describe as a “learning enthusiast”. In other words, their primary motivation for joining was because they were incredibly interested in ways to learn more–not trying to fix a perceived flaw in their life.

Insecurity is a Terrible Motivator

The reason self-improvement efforts trying to fix flaws often fail is that insecurity is a terrible motivator. Yes, feeling lousy about yourself can give you the kick in the ass you need to get started, but it rarely allows you to finish.

For all the failed dieters–feeling fat can give you the motivation you need to get started. As Dr. Seligman cites from the research on dieting, most diets will allow you to lose weight within one or two months. The problem is that almost everyone will eventually put that weight back on.

To have the motivation to work at a goal for years, you need the opposite emotion: enthusiasm. You need to be deeply interested in the pursuit. The people I know who have excellent physiques aren’t just desperate narcissists, they’re obsessively interested in nutrition and whatever exercise they pursue.

Those who succeed as professional bloggers or internet marketers are probably as rare as successful dieters. I’ve seen no formal surveys, but a 1-2% success rate wouldn’t surprise me. What does interest me is that the people who do succeed are almost always obsessively interested in running their business. The primary motivation comes from that passion, not from hating their day job.

Insecurity can motivate, but it also eats you up inside. Eventually the damage of using insecurity as a power source outweighs any fixes it can attempt in your life.

Why This is an Extremely Hard Lesson to Learn

The lesson that insecurity is a terrible motivator and most self-improvement efforts based on it are doomed to fail doesn’t come easily.

I can still remember several years ago when I was terribly insecure about my social life. I had no girlfriend, few friends and little confidence. If any area of my life could have been describe as a gaping flaw, that was it.

My initial self-improvement efforts in that area failed miserably. It didn’t matter how much effort or work I put in, everything seemed to slide back to zero, and I was getting burnt out and frustrated by trying.

The way this finally turned around, surprisingly, wasn’t even from trying to fix it. It was from finding social activities I enjoyed and new groups of people. I joined Toastmasters, which helped me work on my speaking and confidence while allowing me to meet new people.

For a time, I still largely saw my social life as a flaw I needed to fix, but that no longer was the sole motivation for why I met new people or joined new groups. I did them because I actually enjoyed the activities.

Today I’m lucky to have a lot of friends and to have had some great relationships. But I still have insecurities. And almost always when I fall into the trap of pursuing some self-improvement goal based on those insecurities, I fall flat. It’s only when I’m driven by enthusiasm for the pursuit itself that I am successful.

Accept Your Insecurities, But Don’t Make them Your Destiny

My current advice would be to accept the insecurities you have about your life and yourself. Set your goals based on the desires you have, but within the pursuits that genuinely interest you.

But don’t make your flaws your destiny. Instead of going through cycles of insecurity and spurts of action, open yourself up to alternative possibilities. You don’t need to commit to them, simply expose yourself to enough of them. Because you might find, like I did, that some of the pursuits you really enjoy and are something you would be happy setting goals on.

If I were to go back to give my former self advice, it would be to adopt this attitude mixing acceptance and openness. I should have accepted my lousy social life fully, but at the same time left myself open to possibilities of joining new groups or taking on new activities.

If someone felt insecure about their body image, I’d probably offer similar advice. Don’t force yourself to go to gym programs you hate and take on diets that give up everything you love to eat. Otherwise, you’ll probably just be one of Dr. Seligman’s statistics in the long run with little to show for your effort.

But at the same time, open yourself up to the possibility that there might be some way to live a healthy life you could be really interested in. You might really enjoy mountain climbing or salsa dancing, but just haven’t had the chance to embrace those alternatives.

Is it Possible to Fix Your Life?

I might be going against the anything-is-possible, infinitely-malleable human nature ethos of our times, but I’d say no: it’s not possible to fix your life. At least if that’s how you phrase the question.

It’s certainly possible to live a better life and to become a better person. I wouldn’t be writing here if I didn’t believe that. But we might have to give up the notion that we can fix everything we don’t like about ourselves.

There is enormous potential to create, and our ambitions can be well-rewarded if we work hard and persist at them. But this creative potential has to be driven from an enthusiasm for the road ahead, not the doubts we all have about the place we’re standing.

Image courtesy of CarbonNYC.

I’ve asked, and been asked, this question often. And while I can’t give a decisive formula for answering it, I have made one realization: most of the standard advice is terrible.

Whether it’s multiple-choice personality quizzes that tell you to be a farmer, security guard or laboratory assistant (regardless of whether you have any interest in those things) or platitudes to “be practical” or “follow your heart”, most advice is too simplistic to be useful.

However, amongst all the oversimplifications and Myers-Briggs tests, I have been given a few gems. I’ve been lucky enough to get paid to do what I love (writing) so I thought I’d share the best advice I’ve read, been told or synthesized that helped me reach that point, in the hopes you might too.

Passions are Built, Not Discovered

Don’t expect inspiration to hit you across the face. If you want to walk the delicate balance between doing something you love and being paid well for it, you need to be remarkably good at something society cares about.

My rough formula is: Passion = Skill + Interest

Being really good at something you hate, won’t make you love it. But being really good at something you’re curious about, can. Instead of staring at your navel, trying to discover your passions, go out in the world and start creating them.

Doing What You Love is a Long-Term Project

What could you become exceptional at in the next decade? Malcolm Gladwell suggests that 10,000 hours (or about a decade of sustained practice) is what it takes to become world-class at any skill.

Viewing the search for work you’re passionate about as a painstaking quest to master a skill changes you’re approach. Suddenly the boring class you need to take before becoming a surgeon, or the failed ventures before becoming a successful entrepreneur, aren’t signs of defeat but necessary steps foward.

Get-rich-quick schemes don’t work. I’d argue that find-fulfilling-career schemes without a long-term focus don’t work either.

School Still Matters (And *Gasp* Sometimes Getting a Job Does Too)

The world still pays attention to credentials. That may dishearten the rebel geniuses or lone entrepreneurs that dislike how much say academic or corporate systems have over what they should do with their life, but it doesn’t make it untrue.

I’d argue that, for 95% of people, the way to beat the system and live a fantastic, unconventional life isn’t to reject the system. Universities may be slow an inefficient, but a degree is often a necessary first step in many fields. Getting a job may not have the same glamor as self-employment, but it can give you insights into the industry and skills needed to make your escape.

For the 5% of people who can successfully bootstrap themselves while being a jobless dropout, you’re probably already way too smart to need any of my advice. For the rest, school and jobs can be a launching pad for bigger opportunities.

Don’t Be Afraid to Create Things that Don’t Pay Well

I’ve noticed that a well-paid passion tends to be uncovered in one of two ways: either you find paid work, and become so good at it that you enjoy it and can dictate the terms of how you work; or you find unpaid work you enjoy, and become so good at it that you can get paid well.

Many people I know (including myself) used the latter route. I poured thousands of hours into writing, long before I made anything more than a little extra pocket change. Now, after almost 5 years, I’m able to make a livable income and I expect that to grow with time.

The best advice I ever received was to not be afraid to invest yourself in projects without an immediate payoff. Even if you aren’t planning to start a business–self-running a charity, designing a computer game or completing a novel builds skills you can apply to later pursuits.

Find Someone Who Makes Money Doing What they Love and Listen to Them

When I was growing up, I’d often hear from family, teachers or news reports about how unlikely it was to succeed as an entrepreneur. I didn’t know anyone who was either a professional writer or who successfully ran a business.

I hadn’t realized that I was asking the wrong people. Instead of reading failure statistics or listening to advice from people who had never ran a business in their lives, I should have started talking to people who were successful and knew how to make money in the field I was passionate about.

The biggest change in my success didn’t come from my own ideas, or even my own willpower and determination. It came from finding people who had achieved what I wanted and listening to them speak. Not just the specifics of their advice, but their entire attitude and perspective were wired differently than the people I knew who were struggling.

I believe this lesson applies beyond just people who want to start their own business. If you want to figure out how to find a job you love, you need to stop asking advice from people who hate theirs.

People who have found their passion and get paid for it think differently than people who find themselves stuck in the grind, and at least some of that is the secret to their discovery.

I want to live an abundant life. I want to live to an old age knowing that my years were full of rich experiences and that I spent them doing something that matters. I’m guessing you do too.

The question is, in order to accomplish that aim, how important is money?

Basic economic textbooks will tell you that people are utility-maximizing creatures. Although we may lack the economists’ ideal of perfect rationality, I’d say for the most part this is true. We make decisions that will try to maximize our happiness (or whatever else we desire).

Most economics textbooks then move on to claim that money is the main method for doing this. We buy things we want. We trade our time for money by working. We then use that money to buy more things that we want.

My problem with this perspective is that there are many types of experiences money simply can’t buy. To me, it seems like there are many different currencies we pay to enjoy a richer life and money just happens to be one of them. Does focusing on one relentlessly cause us to neglect the others, and in doing so becoming materially rich but poor in experiences?

The Narrow Usefulness of Money

Money is good for a lot of things. Clothes, rent, food, entertainment and almost anything necessary for survival can be bought. If you’re not able to pay for your basic necessities, then money is blood and too little of it might kill you.

However I’d wager that’s not the situation for most of the people reading this website. The question isn’t whether money is important in the absolute (of course it is), but whether marginally having more money is important.

Even more specifically, the question is whether having more money is more important than having more of some other currency in life, and whether you should invest a lot of time maximizing money at the expense of the other.

A simple example of this dilemma would be going to a nightclub with friends. Here, money can mean the difference between staying at someone’s house and going to a luxurious party. There’s probably some difference in quality there, but it’s not huge. In either case you’re going to enjoy time with friends, simply the setting has changed.

Now consider a different life currency, like social skills or investments made in building deeper relationships. If you’re poor on this metric, then you probably won’t enjoy the party a lot. You don’t know the people well and you don’t have the confidence or skill to make friends easily.

Consider the same party, same setting, but that you have better social skills, or better relationships with the people you’re spending time with. Now the party is fun. Either you’re comfortably meeting new people, or you’re enjoying the company of good friends.

In my nightclub example money isn’t that important. At most, it can shift the setting of the party. It can’t make you a great conversationalist. It can’t make you best friends with the other partygoers.

If you had to ask me in this situation which I’d rather have–a full wallet or great social skills and great friends–it wouldn’t be hard to answer.

Life Currencies Other than Money

A quick google search of “how to make money” reveals 284 million entries. As a currency in life, people clearly want to know how to make more of it.

Go to any personal finance website and you can find detailed steps to optimize your investments, raise your income, clear debt and maximize the amount of money you have. I rarely see the same intensely methodical approach aimed at increasing other currencies in life, such as social skills or your ability to learn new things.

I’ve often heard people complain that they would love to travel the world and live in different places, but they don’t have the money. They’re often surprised when I tell them that my expenses while living abroad were actually less than living at home. If there was a limitation that held these people back from their dreams, it most likely wasn’t money.

For something like world travel, there are a number of life currencies I’d rate as being more important than money:

• Ability to adapt to the unfamiliar
• Extroversion
• Travel know-how
• Fluency in other languages
• Self-confidence
• etc.

Yet I’ve rarely seen books and blogs devoted to methodically improving your ability to adapt to unfamiliar environments.

Lack of money is often blamed for many problems in life. Poor guys wish they were richer so that more women would be attracted to them. Poor homebodies wish they were richer so they could travel the world. Poor students wish they had more money to buy a better education.

But in focusing, and often blaming, money for their problems, do these people miss the point?

Being Wealthy Without Being Rich

I’m faced with this dilemma in my own life. For years, my primary goal was to make enough money to live off my business. To be in a position where profits covered my living expenses with a safe enough margin that I didn’t need to stress over it.

At this moment, things are finally at a point where I can say I’ve mostly reached that goal. Many of my peers who have also reached this point then take the next logical step. They want to go from getting paid to do what they love, to getting paid extremely well to do what they love.

There’s nothing wrong with taking that step. My feeling is that, in taking that step and focusing on it obsessively, do these people miss investing in the other currencies of life they may be lacking?

In my own life, should my priorities be to go from covering my expenses to financial abundance, or as a 21-year old should I be investing in the many other assets that I haven’t had the time on this planet to accumulate? This is an interesting question I’ve only begun to ask myself.

As this blog is about the pursuit of the ideal life, I feel a big part of that is pinpointing exactly what that is for you, and then asking what are the currencies you need to create that life. And, if they aren’t money, how do you go about earning something you can’t count and society often fails to acknowledge?

Image courtesy of zzzack.