If you follow me on Twitter, then you know where I am right now: New Zealand. For a month.

(Yep, that’s me, obnoxiously tweeting pictures of the creamy white sand and dreamy turquoise ocean. And the regrettable novelty taxidermy.)

It all sounds pretty exotic (and it is). But for me & my partner in crime (and biz), it’s a kind of normal. We travel a lot.

There have been years where we literally spent half the year abroad. At this point, it’s old hat.

This isn’t even our longest trip — no, that honor goes to a 2.5-month around-the-world “workcation,” a genuine circumnavigation of the globe including one 36-hour travel day with two back-to-back 12-hour flights, over 12 domestic and 4 international flights, 6 weeks of road tripping, 5 major cities on 2 continents, 2 conferences we worked (1 training/presenting, 1 running an exhibit), 1 major new project from scratch, and 3 seasons.

(Ahh, the trip that nearly killed us!)

So I think it’s safe to say that I’ve learned just about everything there is to know about traveling while running a business. The hard way, of course.

And it’s not what you think.

The Heartbreaking Myth of the Workcation

I do so love a good portmanteau and “workcation” is a great one. It means a “working vacation” — also known as the juicy dream of enjoying the beach while working on it, Piña Colada in hand, complete with umbrella.

Also known as “rarer than unicorn tears and twice as hard to come by.”

The problem is this: working requires great attention. So does being present on that beautiful beach.

If you’re any good at what you do — and you are, right?? — then you know what it’s like to really get shit done. You sit at the computer, and it sucks you in. You may nominally exist in your physical body, but your brain and your senses are somewhere else… in The Land Inside the Screen. Workland.

And when you’re in Workland, you can’t truly be in Beachland. You can work in Workland and commute to Beachland at night, but you can’t bi-locate. Physical impossibility and all that. Sorry.

The good news, such as it is? Working on the beach actually sucks. Even before you consider the sand-in-the-keys-underwear-and-nostrils factor.

The net result is this:

• when you’re focused on working, you might as well be in a room with no view, and
• when you’re not working (and you are enjoying that beach), there’s that little nagging thought in the back of your head that you should be working

It’s actually a subtle form of torture. Whatever joy you might have extracted from working on the beach was always, and would ever be, a fantasy.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Try it yourself, and you’ll find that that:

You’ll return from your trip feeling like you never were really, 100% there.

Or you’ll have achieved just barely a fraction of what you planned to, with all the guilt & self-recrimination that comes with.

Take your pick. Which will it be?

Take the Green Pill: the Hidden Option C

Or choose the hidden option C: dump Fantasy by the roadside for being incorporeal and utterly unreasonable… and beg Reality to come home and bitchslap you with her wisdom, the harsh but steady mistress she is.

Without further ado, here’s how to best long-term travel instead of allowing it to best you:

Travel Like a Snail: Stay Put for Several Days

Stay in a location least 3 days if you want to get solid work done. Yes, really. Three days minimum.

Constant moving around is a huge drain on your mental & physical resources. It’s also the dread enemy of routine (and routine is necessary for flow).

“But I’ve gone on vacation and slept in a different bed every night and that didn’t tire me out!” I hear you cry.

Yes, of course you did. So had I. Long, around-the-world trips aren’t just short trips plus extra days… they’re different. Long-term travel has a lot of emergent properties, and the exhaustion of constant motion is one of them.

Travel for 3+ weeks while trying to get shit done, and you’ll soon find out for yourself. You need that time to catch your breath, adjust, to create what little routine and ritual you can.

So give up whirlwind tours and adopt a more stately pace.

When you stay in a place for a while, you also get the benefit of enjoying it when you’re not trying to work. You don’t end up feeling like you missed out because you had to do some email. (And you get to develop a deeper understanding & enjoyment of it, which is the stuff long-term travel is made of.)

Segregate Work / Fun Times with an Iron Fist

You probably love your work. That’s why you started your own business in the first place, right? Me, I’m a workaholic. There’s little I’d rather think about or do. I love my work.

But even so, I love a good vacation. And so do you.

There’s a very special frisson you get from saying “fuck it, I’m on the beach!” Deactivate global roaming, forget what’s on Twitter, leave your inbox to handle itself for a few days, and get gone. “Fuck it!” is the alluring bumpersticker of freedom.

This is the irresistible urge you have to conquer if you want to have a successful work-around-the-world experience.

It’s great to let loose and take a break for a few days. But if you plan to work, and you say “fuck it, I’m on the beach!” — where will your business be?

Then again, if you never get to say “fuck it, I’m on the beach!” — what’s the point of going on a trip in the first place?

The trick is to give yourself both experiences:

Plan to work every 2nd, 3rd or 4th day. Then work all day. You know as well as I that when you work for just an hour or two, you can’t even escape the gravitational pull of Shit That Piled Up, much less Do New Stuff.

The solution is to work all day. But not every day. Otherwise, where’s the fun?

On the days you don’t plan to work… don’t work. Don’t check your email just for 5 minutes. Don’t do any “fun” internet stuff that resembles or leads to work *cough*Twitter*cough*.

You may think there are alternatives. I ask you: are you, in fact, superhuman? No? Then there really aren’t alternatives.

Here are two strategies which I’ve tried, and which I’ve seen others try. They always fail:

Myth: I’ll just do a little work in the morning and then we’ll enjoy the rest of the day!

Reality: It’s 1pm and you’re still doing email.

Myth: I ought to get that done… but it’s sunny out and the beach / markets / mountains / 4×4 adventure is calling. I’ll do it when we get back. Before/after dinner.

Reality: You have fun. You end up going to a bar or restaurant with your friends/loved ones/new acquaintances you picked up on the side of the road. You tell yourself, “I WILL get that work done later.” But when you get back to your hotel/motel/yurt, you don’t want your yay-I’m-on-vacation feelings to end. You want to bask. Or you’re exhausted in that very special, luxuriating-in-a-day’s-adventure way. Either way, shit does not get done. Then you feel guilty. Which sucks the enjoyment out of, well, your enjoyment.

You could, of course, maintain regular working hours and only “vacate” in the evenings. Like you had a job. But where’s the fun in that? You’re the boss. With great power comes a great ability to say “fuck it!” (Sorry, Peter Parker.)

Much better to keep your work/fun totally separate — since they can’t really be together, anyway — and to devote a full day to each, to wring the last drop of enjoyment, or last drop of focus, out of each and every day.

Hoard Executive Function As If Your Life Depended On It

Because it does.

Every little decision you make drains your Executive Function, that part of your brain that helps you make good choices and exert self-control. Research shows that simply walking down a city street with lots of visual stimuli cuts your self-control to pieces.

Executive Function is the thing you rely on to help you crack open your laptop when you’d much rather be dirt-biking or learning all the different ways to say “I’m drunk” in the local language. And the thing that prevents you from telling an irritating customer “fuck it, I’m on the beach!”

In short: You need spare Executive Function. Badly. And traveling is the equivalent of pouring your Executive Function out onto the street and lighting it on fire.

How many decisions to you have to make when you travel? Let’s see…

Where do we go next? When do we have to leave to get there in time? Should we trust the GPS or break out the map? Should we take the cheaper room in the nicer motel, or the less fancy more expensive room with the jacuzzi tub? Should we take the scenic route or the direct route? Which suitcase should I put this in? Where should we eat for dinner? Should I have the burger with the egg, beet root, onion rings, hash brown, and pickles, or without the pickles? Is this taxi safe? How much do I tip? What do I enter as the code in the motel room safe? Should we buy tickets just for the Liliputbahn, or the combo ticket with the beer garden museum? How many Mai Tais can I drink before walking back becomes a hazard? And where exactly are we staying, again?

Shit, just writing that paragraph made me unable to resist the urge to eat a donut. Luckily there aren’t any in arm’s reach.

Since Executive Function is so critical, and long-term travel seems designed to piss it away, you have to take action.

Save Executive Function by streamlining, simplifying, and deciding in advance.

Eat & live simply. Give up the idea that you have to eat at a different restaurant every time you go out. Rent rooms with kitchenettes, shop at the grocery store, and cook and eat at “home.” (This also saves gobs of money and is infinitely healthier.) (Plus you get to experience things ‘like a local’ which is always fun and illuminating.)

Stay in the one place for a while. (Gee, that sounds familiar.)

Book attractions and places to stay in advance — or if you prefer to live fast & loose, settle on a max 2 or 3 possibilities in most places you will visit. Front-load your Rough Guide-reading, Tripadvisor-surfing and motel-benefit-weighing to save yourself hours of thinking and sheer buckets of Executive Function on the day of.

Drive a car instead of taking trains and buses everywhere. Again with the saving buckets of Executive Function by avoiding all the repacking, shuffling, stations, tickets, time tables.

Develop a system for rolling in & out: Always pack things in the same bag, in the same place. Have separate zipper or velcro bags for things like “all electronics cables” and “all bathroom products” and “all receipts/paperwork”. Have a checklist for things you can’t stand to lose. For things you are likely to lose because they blend into the room (e.g. a pillow), choose a bright color or otherwise make them stand out. When you travel with a companion, divvy up responsibilities so there’s no “Did I pack it? I thought YOU packed it” fiascos.

Plan your next bit of work in advance, so you’re always ready to dive in. This will save you “set up and break down” time when it comes to starting work, and will help you make the most of surprise grey, nasty days when you don’t particularly want to be outside.

Pay out the nose, if necessary, for a prepaid wireless cellular modem instead of always hunting around for a cafe, restaurant, or motel with decent wifi. In some countries, this time-consuming hunt can waste days of your trip in total.

Always arrive in the city the day before your flight/train/bus/llama caravan. Even if your departure is late in the evening. This will guard you against so much last-minute panic.

Finally: Enjoy the Hell Out of Your Trip

Yes, that’s a step!

I know that right about now, the romantic in you is screaming, “But… where’s the magic?!” A lot of these fixes, habits, and tips are, well… not romantic or magical at all.

Staying in one place? Working all day? Eating at home? Cutting your decisions? Driving a car?

Are these the ingredients for a rip roaring good time??

In a very real way, yes.

I’m not giving you this advice because I’m a boring old dried up travel-hater who loves to stab dreams in the eye til they bleed rainbows and glitter. (I love travel! And hate being bled on by dreams. Glitter is so hard to wash out.)

No, I’m simply telling you what I wish someone had told me before I thoroughly botched several very expensive, could-have-been-lifechangingly-awesome trips. And futzed up my business while doing so.

The ideal case is to not work at all on a long trip. That’s more achievable than you might think, but not always possible. (And that’s another essay in the works.)

But if you have to work, my advice will help you get good work done and enjoy your trip.

Follow my prescription, and you won’t find yourself home once more, saddled with that pitiful feeling that “you were never really there.” Nor will your business fall apart while you’re gone because you can’t seem to get anything done.

And… that’s it for now. Travel well!

Want more unicorn-free advice about traveling’ around the world while running your biz? Get my future posts by email (for free!) and follow me on Twitter, cuz I’ve got more posts planned: how to prepare your biz for your trip, what to buy, sign up for, or cancel before you go, and how to deal with the whole “money” situation (traveling around the world gets expensive!). Seeya on the flip side!

Related posts:

1. Dear Startup World: Chill the Fuck Out

If AllThis targets you, they will:

• steal your photo & bio off Twitter
• slap it on an AllThis page, to make it look as if you endorse their system
• put up a big yellow “BUY” button on it
• and a teensy weensy greyed out notice, for the eagle-eyed, which admits (indirectly) that you’re not actually endorsing it… YET
• tweet about you with @allthisfeed, claiming your time is for sale
• argue with you when you tell them to stop stealing people’s stuff

They will remove you from their site if you threaten them. But no matter how many people do that, they continue to pretend to not “understand” why you are “upset”. And they keep on thieving from other people.

Clearly individual complaints are falling on deaf ears. They are not interested in coming up with a way to grow their business without misrepresentation and theft.

So, the best way to stop this is to enforce our copyrights. If they steal from you, don’t bother telling them to remove the profile.

Send a takedown notice to their DNS service and web host

Here’s who to write:

Web Host: GoGrid. Their email is abuse@gogrid.com.

DNS Service: Dyn.com. Their email is abuse@dyndns.com.

NEW: Asset Host: Amazon Cloudfront. Their email is abuse@amazonaws.com.

Here’s what you can send:

SUBJECT: Abuse Report – Copyright Infringement

I am the copyright owner of the photograph being infringed at: (insert URL here)

A screenshot of my image being infringed is included to assist with its removal from the infringing Web sites.

Moreover, this web site claims to represent me, has a prominent “BUY” button displayed next to my (stolen) photograph and bio, and is tweeting that people can “buy time” to talk with me on their site. I never signed up for an account, gave them my email address, or anything that would constitute permission or endorsement of this service. As far as I’m concerned, this comes close to fraud.

This letter is official notification under the provisions of Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) to effect removal of the above-reported infringements. I request that you immediately issue a cancellation message as specified in RFC 1036 for the specified postings and prevent the infringer, who is identified by its Web address, from posting the infringing photographs to your servers in the future. Please be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to “expeditiously remove or disable access to” the infringing photographs upon receiving this notice. Noncompliance may result in a loss of immunity for liability under the DMCA.

I have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of here is not authorized by me, the copyright holder, or the law. The information provided here is accurate to the best of my knowledge. I swear under penalty of perjury that I am the copyright holder.

Please send me at the address noted below a prompt response indicating the actions you have taken to resolve this matter.

Sincerely,

Your Name

Is this justified?

Yes, it is.

I and several others have tweeted with the @AllThis account to try to get them to change their ways, but they don’t “understand” that what they are doing is wrong. Nor will they stop doing it to other people.

More importantly, copyright infringement (and borderline fraudulent representation) like this is certainly against the acceptable use policies for both GoGrid and Dyn.com.

So, this is our last and best resort.

No related posts.

The voices in my head have reached a fever pitch. It must be launch time.

Launching is an emotional game.

It’s so easy to construct elaborate stories about how this or that detail will lead to terrible failure or runaway success. It’s constant. Fully detailed worlds erected by nothing but imagination.

I’m in the midst of launching Hiring Gold. Hiring Gold is an infoproduct that teaches founders & small business owners an 8-week system for hiring awesome people.

My official ship date is December 19th.

It feels like I’ve been working on this forever, but it’s been about four months in reality.

Self-Sabotage, the Launcher’s Lament

I’m confident that Hiring Gold is a great product. I know it works because it’s a process I’ve used a bazillion times.

And yet… I keep sabotaging my progress. It’s like I have a secret hope for failure so I can go back to my humdrum existence!

Here’s an example of a boneheaded thing I did last week. I nearly published a landing page written in the “royal we.”

You know that thing, when micro-business owners try to pretend they’re bigger by saying “we”? I almost pulled that douchebaggy move myself. “We” did this and “we” did that, so listen to “us.”

I’m embarrassed to even mention this. I don’t know what I was thinking. My business is me. It’s just a lie to make it seem like anything different.

And here’s where I have to thank Amy for pointing out the big giant unicorn in the room. This is what she wrote to me:

Little companies don’t get anywhere by pretending to be big companies. There’s little worse than deciding to go with a little guy only to be treated as if you were going with a big guy…impersonal language, posturing, etc.

Most people WANT to buy from people they can know and understand. So by shielding yourself behind fake “we” you are undermining your message.

And you know what? She’s right. I KNOW this.

I wasn’t thinking, after all. That poor decision I almost made? ALL ABOUT FEAR.

Fear of taking the full responsibility for what I’m putting out into the world. Fear of the failure or success of Hiring Gold being on my shoulders alone. Fear of letting people down. Fear of being vulnerable. Fear of playing too small.

The Lizard Brain at Work

This is why launching is such an emotional game.

It’s so easy to construct elaborate stories about how this or that detail will lead to terrible failure or runaway success. Fully detailed worlds erected by nothing but imagination.

When you’re pinning your livelihood on a product, the lizard brain rears its ugly head. The lizard brain pleads for the safer option. It tells you to forget all this launch stuff and go take a nap.

But then where would you be? Without a launch. Without a product. Without a business.

A Plea for Balance

I’m learning that the trick to keeping an even keel is keeping those conversations with myself to a murmur.

Here are three things that are keeping me sane, tips I have to repeat to myself:

1. Persevere. It sounds simple but just keep going. Don’t abandon your product. You’ll want to stop and go hide in a hole somewhere at least once a week. Be methodical about ticking off small to-dos, one at a time, and keep going even when you really really REALLY don’t want to.
2. Keep good people around. Value people who tell you the truth (like Amy). Keep them close throughout the launch process. Having people you trust who are forthcoming (even if it hurts) helps to prevent self-sabotage and will hold you accountable. As soon as you tell others your plans, it is exponentially more likely that they’ll actually get done.
3. Ignore the muck. Know that all the emotional stuff flying around your brain is just that: stuff. It’s meaningless. What matters is the doing. Getting your product out there will be different than any scenario you can imagine, good or bad, so put a cap on the dreams and get to work on your launch!

As I launch Hiring Gold, and as I get started on my next product for founders, The Underground Lab, the conversations in my head are beginning to feel less urgent. As things go on, I find it easier to resist the imaginary trip my ego is leading me on.

Does this mean I’ll have less emotional muck to contend with as I get more comfortable with the launch process?

Probably not. After all, you can’t run a meaningful business without actual meaning.

Editor’s note: This is a great cliffhanger! But from my experience, launching definitely gets easier. Thanks, Scott!

This guest post by Scott McDowell, an expert on designing organizations and a 30×500 alum (Summer 2011). His first product, Hiring Gold, is designed to help you hire awesome talent… and not have to learn the (very very) hard way.

Related posts:

1. The deal: 30×500 Launch Class, Splained
2. Tickets are now on sale!
3. The Truth about Success – Brick by Brick

[W]hen you are doing something in a recurring way to diminish risk or doing it in the same way as you have done it before, it is clear why professionalism is not enough. After all, what is required in our field, more than anything else, is continuous transgression.

Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure, and if you are professional, your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.

– Milton Glaser, 2001, at a talk given in London

When you sit down to design a piece of software, your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success.

That’s why software everywhere is plagued by the disease of sameness.

All to-do apps act the same. All calendar apps act the same. All email clients act the same — nearly identical to the first serious command-line apps from over 20 years before. Outlook and Elm don’t look that different.

Sidebars. Playlists. Table views. Folders. Threads.

Select lists which hide options instead of bulleted lists which lay them out, or live search/autocomplete fields which let the typing, keyboard-savvy user keep typing and savvying.

These are things we use without thinking, in many many places where they are inappropriate.

We need continuous transgression.

Hello, and welcome to yet another Biz Book Friday! This one’s a bit late because I’m feeling under the weather. Hope you enjoy it nonetheless. There are, of course, many more to choose from — on, admittedly, more serious, actionable topics. Today I’m feeling philosophical.

All my favorite authors are dyed-in-the-wool humanists. You get the feeling from their words that they’ve looked at all of humanity… and they’ve seen the punchline. They’re laughing, even while their hearts encompass the whole world.

Terry Pratchett certainly fits that description.

In the Discworld, witches stand for stalwartness, doing what needs to be done, thinking what needs to be thought — and seeing what’s really there.

And so, today’s Biz Book Friday, I present to you excerpts from Wee Free Men, wherein our young hero (a 9-year-old dairy maid named Tiffany Aching) finds herself to be a witch.

But really, the lessons she learns apply to everything.

On the way that the world looks at competent, successful people:

People tended to leave Tiffany alone. There was nothing particularly cruel or unpleasant about this, but the farm was big and everyone had their jobs to do, and she did hers very well and so she became, in a way, invisible.

I truly believe that one of the biggest diseases infecting smart, competent people today is the belief that being smart and competent and good at your job is good enough to get you noticed. That they are, somehow, expecting more — and succumbing to anger & bitterness when more fails to arrive.

On the magical school for witchcraft:

“Can I go there by magic? Does, like, a unicorn turn up to carry me there or something?”

“Why should it? A unicorn is nothing more than a big horse that comes to a point, anyway. Nothing to get so excited about,” said Miss Tick.

I swear this is not wear my slay-the-unicorns ideology comes from… but I wouldn’t mind if it did. (In a way, this awesome series of books is the anti-Harry Potter. I know which I’d read to any innocent, unsuspecting child in my care.)

On the way that life tests you before you’ve got any business being tested:

“The thing about witchcraft,” said Mistress Weatherwax, “is that it’s not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterward you spend years findin’ out how you passed it. It’s a bit like life in that respect.”

As in life, so in business.

On the necessity of first principles for survival:

The one thing in her bag that might have made anyone suspicious was a very small, grubby booklet entitled An Introduction to Escapology, by the Great Williamson. If one of the risks of your job is being thrown into a pond with your hands tied together, then the ability to swim thirty yards underwater, fully clothed, plus the ability to lurk under the weeds breathing air through a hollow reed, count as nothing if you aren’t also amazingly good with knots.

As in life, so in the marketplace.

On writing benefits into your marketing copy:

THE WONDERS OF PUNCTUATION AND SPELLING:

1. ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY ABOUT THE COMMA!
2. I BEFORE E COMPLETELY SORTED OUT!
3. THE MYSTERY OF THE SEMICOLON REVEALED!!!
4. SEE THE AMPERSAND! (SMALL EXTRA CHARGE)
5. FUN WITH BRACKETS!

Although, if you’re a student of mine, you know that even this enlivening take on grammar doesn’t go far enough.

On (not) giving people what they want:

Footnote on ‘misfortune telling’: Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.

The thing about business is that it is, primarily, about business. When you try to sell something people don’t want, well, you’re shit outta luck. That doesn’t mean you should, for example, go tell lies instead of true fortunes. It means that maybe you’re not cut out for the fortune telling business in general.

Til next time!

Read deep and enjoy.

Previous Biz Book Fridays:

• Startups & Risk: Petting Puppies with Peter Drucker
• Startups Are a Boy Band
• Will Low Prices Help You Sell More?
• When Customers Bitch About Your Price
• The Hazards of Cake and Icing Pricing

Related posts:

1. When Customers Bitch About Your Price (Biz Book Friday)
2. Will Low Prices Help You Sell More? (Biz Book Friday!)
3. Startups are a Boy Band (Biz Book Friday!)

I’m in my early 20s. Startups seem to be the only way out of 40 years of mediocrity in TPS-land for me, so I don’t really think I have much of a choice. It’s startups or nothing for me.

Or maybe I am being myopic? Are there more options to be had in life than mediocrity/wageslavery vs glory/startups?

— Random HNer

Startups are glorious! So raw, so close to the bone, so mettle-testing: 100-hour work weeks, sleeping under your desk, ramen, putting it all on the line, changing the world.

You know what else is glorious?

Glory.

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” is one of the most famous lines from Horace. You’ve probably heard it. It means “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s fatherland.”

Here’s another one — drawn from Plutarch, allegedly said by Spartan women to their sons, as they gave the boys their shields before battle:

“Come home with your shield or on it.”

Come home with your shield — honorable, glorious — or die, for you will be without honor, and without glory.

Ancient times were all about glory. Glory’s not so big any more, but it used to be huge.

Glory was a way for fat old statesmen and generals, who never saw battle, to tempt young men to die by proxy for politics and petty schemes.

When glory failed to tempt, it was used to taunt, disdain, and guilt.

Or, as jwz puts it, “trying to make the point that the only path to success in the software industry is to work insane hours, sleep under your desk, and give up your one and only youth, and if you don’t do that, you’re a pussy.”

It’s about fucking time we talked about the fact that the worship of glorious death, and the startup mythos, are the same damn thing.

Every fucking time you see somebody using glory to hagiographize young men & women who are doing something clearly stupid, you must ask:

What is this raft of shit, and why are they trying to get me to paddle it?

And make no mistake, bartering away your “one and only youth” (jwz again) working 100-hour weeks on a web site for the promise of a big fat carrot on the end of a stick 80 million lines long, dangled by a fat statesm–venture capitalist, who will make 3x or 10x or 100x more than you, in the vanishingly unlikely scenario that you “succeed”… is clearly stupid.

So what are the motivations of the people pushing glory — pardon me, startups?

Money. Follow the money. They want a piece of you. Investors have to have projects to invest in.

The more kids who buy into the crazy dream, the more racehorses the venture capitalists can bet on, the more little soldiers the VCs can set on the board. The harder those kids work, the more theoretical chances the VC has that of one of his many investments making it big.

The harder those kids work, the less they question.

Post-hoc justification kicks in the more pain you inflict on yourself — because obviously, if you’re so terrible to the person closest to you, you’ve got a good reason, right?

It must be worth it, right?

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

— General William Tecumseh Sherman

Remember, if you question it, you’re a pussy. Startups are hard. So work more, cry less, and quit all the whining.

You’ve got no fucking shield so you might as well lay down and die.

Who are these crazy fuckers who say these things? What the hell do they get out of it?

But wait! Questioning a speaker’s motivations is an Ad Hominem Fallacy! Paul Graham says so in How to Disagree.

Oh, he did, did he? I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but isn’t that nice and pat?

As someone who has certainly studied rhetoric more than Paul Graham the Instant Expert, let me assure you:

Questioning a speaker’s motives is not only not a fallacy, it is a sign of healthy debate.

Otherwise you’re a wide-eyed sucker just waiting to be taken.

It’s especially critical to question the motives of the speaker whenever he urges you to glory, by tempting or guilting — and whenever he tries to sell you his religion.

You must be sharp, questioning, alert. You must be on your guard.

Inevitably — without fail! — those who sell glory, who sell religion, who sell noble wars, will not be in the trenches with you.

And that, my friend, that is all you really need to know.

There is no Mojito Island. There is no pot of gold at the end of this evil rainbow of suffering. There is no Asgard. There are no 70 virgins.

When you die, however sweet and fitting, you are dead. As the Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martial wrote, “Glory paid to our ashes comes too late.” Glory paid to the ashes of your days, burnt and gone, comes too late.

Fuck glory.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.

How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country:
Death pursues the man who flees,
spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs
Of battle-shy youths.

Hi, I’m Amy. Like this? You’ll like the rest of what I’ve got to offer: philosophy, tough talk AND practical information on what to do about it. Follow me on Twitter or Subscribe so you don’t miss anything important.

Related posts:

1. Dear Startup World: Chill the Fuck Out
2. Startups are a Boy Band (Biz Book Friday!)
3. Startups & Risk: Petting Puppies with Peter Drucker

It’s that time again! No, not turkey-stuffing-cranberry-yam-and-marshmallow sandwich time. No, not pepper-spray-your-fellow-Black-Friday-shoppers time. No, silly… it’s Biz Book Friday! Today, a little change of pace: Peter Drucker. And puppies.

Who wants to start a business? You do!

Who wants to pet a puppy?

You do!

Well, that depends, I suppose.

Exactly how attached are you to that hand?

Towards a Philosophy of Puppy Stroking

Say you are an indiscriminate puppy pat-er. You see four legs and a tail and you just can’t keep your hands to yourself.

So you walk by the junkyard one day and LOOK! A PUPPY! Your tic kicks in. You slip your fingers through the chain link fence so that you can get your puppy fix. From the 150-pound, slavering, red-eyed menace. Here, boy!

One day, I expect, you will find yourself to be a very excellent one-handed typist.

But what if you practice safe pets?

What if you limit your doggy-stroking adventures to the fluffy pom used for animal therapy visits at the local preschool?

The chances are extremely good that you will die of old age and be buried with a full complement of 10 wiggly little digits.

Puppies are Serious Business™… and risk is a lie

We’re talking about puppies, but we’re really talking about your business. Get it? Whether you call it a “startup” or “small business,” a “lifestyle business” or a “baconbiz” or “my little side gig,” the facts are the facts:

Risk is not risk.

We talk about it like it’s a real, concrete, immutable thing.

But risk is like puppy-petting: it involves choices. You can choose to be smart, and snuggly, or dumb, and finger-less.

I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with a high-risk venture. But it’s far from the only choice… and what’s more, even things you’d assume are high-risk don’t have to be.

Risk is not absolute. It depends on your choices. Yes, that’s right: you get to choose how much risk to expose yourself to. Amazing!

Old school biz peeps know this — startups don’t

Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing. They lack the methodology. They violate elementary and well-known rules. This is particularly true of high-tech entrepreneurs.

Ahhh, the bitchslap of reality. From the past.

That passage hails from Peter Drucker’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship, published in 1985. Yes, over 26 years ago.

Still true. True-r, even.

Peter Drucker’s got a drum — a true-r drum — and he’s gonna beat it, giving us all a good what-for:

Those entrepreneurs who start out with the idea that they’ll make it big—and in a hurry—can be guaranteed failure. They are almost bound to do the wrong things.

Oh, really, Peter Drucker? Tell us more!

The entrepreneur is therefore well advised to forgo innovations based on bright ideas, however enticing the success stories. After all, somebody wins a jackpot on the Las Vegas slot machines every week, yet the best any one slot-machine player can do is try not lose more than he or she can afford.

We need to systematize, he tells us. (Sound familiar?) We need to base our entrepreneurship off research and analysis and understanding, rather than woo-woo hand-waving and hagiography and awed, prideful worship of the “bright idea.”

And, he says, people get really confused about what high-tech entrepreneurship looks like.

Junkyard Dog Alert: trying to be Fustest with the Mostest?

Drucker describes 4 basic entrepreneurial strategies. One of them is “Fustest with the Mostest,” a humorous dialect misquotation of Confederate Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s strategy of arriving first to battle with the most men and firepower:

In this strategy the entrepreneur aims at leadership, if not at dominance of a new market or a new industry…

That does sound awfully familiar, doesn’t it? It sounds like what everybody and their finger-crunching dog say about how to do a startup:

1. Shoot for the moon
2. Get there first
3. Dominate
4. Grow big

Being “Fustest with the Mostest” is the approach that many people consider the entrepreneurial strategy par excellence.

This is true.

Indeed, if one were to go by the popular books on entrepreneurs, one would conclude that being “Fustest with the Mostest” is the only entrepreneurial strategy — and a good many entrepreneurs, especially the high-tech ones, seem to be of the same opinion.

Right you are, Mr. Drucker!

They are wrong, however… *monocle tweak*

What’s that you say? WHAT??

“Fustest with the Mostest” is not even the dominant entrepreneurial strategy, let alone the one with the lowest risk or the highest success ratio. *monocle polish* On the contrary, of all entrepreneurial strategies it is the greatest gamble.

Oh no! The greatest gamble? I don’t believe it! But it must be true… you have a monocle!

Do go on.

And it is unforgiving, making no allowances for mistakes and permitting no second chance.

Argghghg, why?

“Fustest with the Mostest” is very much like a moon shot: a deviation of a fraction of a minute of the arc and the missile disappears into outer space.

BUT… isn’t that good?

The entrepreneur of so much of the popular literature or of Hollywood movies, the person who suddenly has a “brilliant idea” and rushes off to put it into effect, is not going to succeed with it.

In fact, for this strategy to succeed at all, the innovation must be based on a careful and deliberate attempt to exploit one of the major opportunities for innovation that were discussed in Chapters 3 to 9.

AWWW, NOOOOO, EVERYTHING I KNOW IS WRONG. TELL ME WHAT TO DO, PETER DRUCKER. Just give it to me straight. I can take it. *cringe*

["Fustest with the Mostest"] will fail because the will is lacking. It will fail because efforts are inadequate. It will fail because, despite successful innovation, not enough resources are deployed, are available, or are being put to work to exploit success, and so on.

While the strategy is indeed highly rewarding when successful, it is much too risky and much too difficult to be used for anything but major innovations, for creating a new political order… or a new approach…

It requires profound analysis and a genuine understanding of the sources of innovation and of their dynamics. It requires an extreme concentration of effort and substantial resources.

In most cases alternative strategies are available and preferable — not primarily because they carry less risk, but because for most innovations the opportunity is not great enough to justify the cost, the effort, and the investment of resources required for the “Fustest with the Mostest” strategy.

NOOOOOOOOOOoooooOooooOoookay.

In conclusion: Peter Fucking Drucker says,

Back away from that junkyard dog

…unless you’ve got a mesh body suit with anti-flammable padding, a cage, a taser, pepper spray, a whip, a lion tamer sidekick, a djinn, and also ovaries of pure tungsten carbide*.

Your entrepreneurial mission, should you choose to accept it: find and snuggle a friendly pom. Mind the top hat.

And: Buy and read Innovation and Entrepreneurship. You’ll have to read it with the eyes of a soloist or tiny team in the 2010s, and interpret what he says to help you with your situation… and you’ll learn a shitload.

Happy petting.

* Tungsten carbide: the hardest metal that isn’t, in fact a diamond. Psh. Everybody knows diamonds aren’t metal.

Related posts:

1. Startups are a Boy Band (Biz Book Friday!)
2. Fuck Glory – Startups are One Long Con
3. Terry Pratchett’s Witches Mean Business — *Your* Business (Biz Book Friday)

I originally intended to avoid a Thanksgiving post. Why? Everybody does it. It gets spammy. It’s a little rude and a lot cliché.

But then I realized something important:

If I had to choose between pissing people off, and NOT getting this message out, I’ll pick the message all the damn day long.

My friend Amit Gupta desperately needs your help.

If you don’t know who Amit is, he’s the founder of Jelly (casual coworking), PhotoJoJo, many other movements & parties & things… Amit has touched SO MANY of us in the tech community, even if we don’t realize it.

He’s also one of those rare people who’s always up for helping a stranger. He’s a friend to everyone, and manages to make you feel special and listened to, no matter who you are.

And he was recently diagnosed with acute leukemia.

Did you know that, to survive leukemia, you need a marrow donation? Probably, right? I knew that. Leukemia seems like it’s a cancer we can cure.

Well, Amit is South Asian.

Did you know that the chance for a perfect match for a person of South Asian heritage is a whopping 1 in 20,000?

ONE in TWENTY THOUSAND

That sounds like a death sentence.

But you can help Amit beat the crap out of those odds.

If YOU or SOMEONE YOU KNOW is of Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan etc. descent…

YOU can help save Amit (and others!).

All you have to do is spit into a little tube, or show up at a donation drive and rub a lollipop stick in your cheek.

IF you ARE a match for Amit, there are people ready to help you pay for travel to donate.

Thanks to medical advancement, donation is pretty much just like giving blood (it just takes longer).

If you’re thankful for anything…

If you’re thankful for anything this Thanksgiving, PLEASE consider helping save my friend Amit. Because he’s got so much more awesome in him to give to this world.

PLEASE swab, if you’re of South Asian heritage.

PLEASE forward this to any friends or acquaintances you know who may be.

PLEASE forward to this to any cultural centers or communities with Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, etc., ties.

Click here to tweet.

Click here to email this to your friends.

Click below to like this on FB and share with your friends:

If you or they register as a marrow donor, you will be helping NOT ONLY Amit, but so many other innocent, wonderful boys & girls, men & women who might otherwise NEVER have a chance at a match.

Remember: 1 in 20,000. You can help beat those odds.

Please Hurry — Here’s How

To be in time to help Amit, the marrow registry needs your swab very soon — by about November 30th.

Here’s how to get it there:

• SWAB AT A DONATION DRIVE – FASTEST & EASIEST WAY!
• ORDER a home testing kit

ATTEND A DRIVE

There are drives coming up in:

• Bangalore
• Chicago
• West Michigan
• NYC
• Maryland
• North Cali
• Cambridge
• Bay Area
• Boston
• San Francisco

Click here for the full list & details.

AND for more information on how you can help, even if you cannot donate marrow for medical reasons.

SWAB AT HOME

Here’s the information for swabbing if you are…

• in the US
• in India
• elsewhere

Thank you for reading.

Please don’t just leave this in a tab. Please don’t just fave the tweet and move on.

Please take action now.

Thank you.

No related posts.

Lost time is never found again.
– Benjamin Franklin

It’s no coincidence that “email” has 75% of the same letters as “time.” Or maybe it is. Hell, I dunno.

Isn’t it about time you fight back?

The Unsubscribe Bomb

Drop a bomb on your inbox… clear that #!@$ out. Here’s how:

1. Open up your email client (5 seconds)
2. Search for “unsubscribe” (2 seconds)
3. Open each email, Cmd+F for “unsubscribe” in each one, click the links (2 minutes)

Then, presto! Way less mail.

Rule #1: Do it now

Don’t fave the tweet that sent you here. Don’t click “Read Later.” Don’t go “Hmm, I’ll do that tomorrow” and close this page.

You know you won’t come back to it.

Do it now. It takes 3 minutes, max.

Rule #2: Be brutal

Resist the urge to be a digital hoarder.

If you really love the newsletter, keep it.

But don’t keep it around because you might miss out on a great deal! or because you read it… sometimes… when trapped by snowpocalypse in a remote woodland cabin, surrounded by zombies. Because, let’s face it, that only happens once a year. Twice, maybe.

Unless you devour the newsletter just about every time, you won’t miss it, and you’ll feel better when it’s out of your life.

When in doubt, unsubscribe.

If you really think you’ll miss that particular newsletter, set a little reminder about it on your calendar for a month later. If you still miss it then, you have my permission to re-subscribe.

A penny saved is a penny earned… until you blow it on Groupon.
– Benjamin Franklin

Rule #3: Enjoy the blessed silence

Cuz I am. It’s glorious.

How do you carve out time for your projects?

Share your tips! Especially if they’re related to email!

Related posts:

1. A Simple Rule for Pricing Newbs Who Got The Fear
2. Writing the Charm Sales Letter: Backwards Time Lapse Video
3. 3 Parts, 1 Simple Plan for Building an Empire

Whoooo! After those 3 straight weeks of pricing, I thought we could ALL do with a little change of pace.

And so this week on Biz Book Friday, we’ve got… well… a book that’s not a biz book at all, and instead an excellent novel: Lost in a Good Book: A Thursday Next Story.

Everything’s a Boy Band

“Remember, Thursday, that scientific thought, indeed, any mode of thought whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else, is just like the fashions that we wear—only much longer-lived. It’s a little like a boy band.”

“Scientific thought a boy band? How do you figure that?”

“Well, every now and then a boy band comes along. We like it, buy the records, posters, parade them on TV, idolize them right up until—”

“—the next boy band?” I suggested.

“Precisely. Aristotle was a boy band. A very good one, but only number six or seven. He was the best boy band until Isaac Newton, but even Newton was transplanted by an even newer boy band. Same haircuts—but different moves.”

“Einstein, right?”

“Right. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“That the way we think is nothing more than a passing fad?”

“Exactly. Hard to visualize a new way of thinking? Try this. Go thirty or forty boy bands past Einstein. Where we would regard Einstein as someone who glimpsed a truth, played one good chord in seven forgettable albums.”

Some things are eternal. Just about everything else changes in cycles.

Some of those cycles are pendulums, swinging back and forth between two extremes. Examples: ornamentation and minimalism in design, or religion and reason. The thing about these cycles is that one actively leads to the other, because it’s a rebellion! Then that rebellion becomes commonplace and then people have to rebel against that.

Others are linear, fad giving away to fad, like in physics. (Can’t imagine us returning to pre-Einsteinian physics, can you?)

Boy Band Denial

If you’ve ever read a history book (or watched The Hitler Channel), you know this is true.

But even so… we never prairedog out of our little holes and go “Gee, this is just a cycle.” Nope. We say, “Aha! This is how things should have been all along. The way they will be. And rightly so!”

And… yet… we know that all those long-dead people in the history books thought exactly the same thing. About everything.

Boy Bands: They’re Everywhere!

In software development and design, we have Agile, scrum, pairing, test-first, test-never, lean, customer development, BDD, tooling, personas, no personas, action theory, beauty is function, ornament is a crime, user experience, user centered, undesign.

In business, we have Taylorism, Fordism, TQM, Six Sigma, follow your passion, dig in the muck for the brass, offshoring, outsourcing, home sourcing, human resources, team building exercises, incentives, no incentives, the customer is always right, the employee is always right, hug your customers, work is play, work is work and if you don’t like it there’s more where you came from, collective bargaining, every man for himself.

And then we have startups. Whether they’re funded big, or funded small, angel, VC, seed, institutional backers, pitch contests, startup weekends, liquidity events, go big or go home, “build stuff people want,” “build software that’ll get college students laid,” analytics for pirates or lead from your heart, Maslow, Mojito Island, founder as hustler, founder as hacker, founder as hagiographical hero, lifestyle business, 4-hour-work-week, sixteen-hour-work-day, IPO track, private sale, and of course, invent-your-own-accounting-standard.

These are all boy bands. All of them. Especially startups.

It’s boy bands all the way down.

History shows us that management theory, software development theory, design theory, and most importantly, startup ideology are all extremely faddish. But we treat each new boy band like they’re handed down On High.*

And things get bloody dangerous when we confuse the boy bands of today with Mozart.

* We all know the only boy bands handed down on high were The Beatles and The Dead. Maybe The Scorpions. Nuff said.

Oh yeah. You want more. You wanna subscribe. Doooo ittttt. And follow me on Twitter while you’re at it.

Related posts:

1. Terry Pratchett’s Witches Mean Business — *Your* Business (Biz Book Friday)
2. When Customers Bitch About Your Price (Biz Book Friday)
3. Biz Book Friday: The Hazards of Cake and Icing Pricing