RyanHoliday.net:

Yesterday I posted the books I've read in the last few months--all 40 titles, and nearly 50 reads. I feel like I should be totally transparent here, and publish the books I've bought and never managed to finish. Unfortunately, there were a few that I either couldn't comprehend, didn't enjoy, or decided weren't worth my time.

Knowledge and Decisions--Thomas Sowell
Tucker told me to pick this one up, but honestly, I'm just not smart enough for it yet. I told him about my troubles with it and he said that the first half was ridiculously dense and that I should start in the middle. Problem was, I'd already made it half-way and was just too burned out to continue. I had too much respect for the author to keep reading when I wasn't truly grasping his message. I did learn a lot--mainly the animistic fallacy--so I'll be picking it up within the next 6 months to give it a go.

The Mind of War--Grant T Hammond
I flew into a rage after picking up this piece of shit. Honestly, I'm still baffled as to even the possibility of writing a boring, dry book about John Boyd. But Hammond pulled it off--it reads like a 6th grade essay. Read the Coram book.

Unleashing the Killer App--Downes
This is an interesting one, it's just a bit dated. It has some cool concepts like the Law of Disruption. Which essentially states that societal change is incremental while technological change is exponential, so the law states that technology disrupts society--often turning the system on its head. I think I just got distracted here and that's why I didn't finish.

The Histories-Herodotus
I LOVED Thucydides, and figured I'd feel the same about Herodotus. It's a much more difficult read in that it's not as linear or focused on a single series of events. But there are some great parts, Thermopylae of course. I've probably read enough of this book to consider it "read" but I decided only to include books I'd finished, cover to cover. It's a good reference piece, so I'll continue to leaf through it.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sept. 15th marked a relatively monumental transition in my life. My 3+ year relationship left that weird breakup limbo and officially died. I entered what would be a whirlwind of depression and acquisition of knowledge. I dedicated myself fully to intellectual pursuits and swore off--with a few regretful exceptions--women entirely. Within that cycle, I was fitfully productive, reading at one point, 3 extracurricular books a week, running 25-30 miles, interning at Rudius, holding an editorship, and going to class everyday. Of course I see now, that I was doing everything I could to keep from analyzing what I'd done and why I'd gotten there. And now, in a better place, I'm finally able to look at the mistakes I've made objectively. But even as I was--literally and figuratively--running away from what ailed me, I got a lot done. And I got to know myself.

I know what I like. What I believe. Who I agree with. What's bullshit. Where to find truth. Who speaks it. Where we came from. What we are. How I want to live life. Where I want to live it. How to do it. And most importantly, the dire consequences of a life without that sort of self-awareness.

The meta-lesson though, is that I realize (again, with many a relapse) that in the big picture, I know very little. And though I have what I'd call a head start, it's worthless if I let up for even a second to breath. I must continually reaffirm the crucial answers that I found at the bottom of the hole I crawled into. I must ask myself again and again "What do I like, What do I believe, What's Bullshit, What is truth, Have I found it, How can I keep it?"

And I was able to do that through the following books. So I thought I'd share them. I'd link them through Amazon to get the affiliate links, but honestly, it's just not worth the time. Seriously though, read every single one of them. There isn't a single I wouldn't recommend--even if just to do the opposite of what the author says.

Rules for Radicals--Saul D. Alinsky
The Long Tail--Chris Anderson
The Moral Animal--Robert Wright
An Army of Davids--Glenn Reynolds
Sex on the Brain--Deborah Blum
The Discourses--Epictetus
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt--Edmund Morris
The Big Picture--Edward Jay Epstein
The Meditations--Marcus Aurelius (4 times)
Fight Club--Chuck Palahniuk (2 times)
Choke--Chuck Palahniuk
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind--Julian Jaynes
My Bondage and My Freedom--Frederick Douglass
Liar's Poker--Michael Lewis
Next--Michael Lewis
The New New Thing--Michael Lewis
The Autobiography of Malcolm X--Malcolm X, Alex Haley
History of the Peloponnesian War--Thucydides
On War--Von Clausewitz
Gates of Fire--Steven Pressfield
The Virtues of War--Steven Pressfield
The War of Art--Steven Pressfield
Sperm Wars--Robin Baker
A Man in Full--Tom Wolfe
48 Laws of Power--Robert Greene (Again)
33 Strategies of War--Robert Greene (Again)
The Tipping Point--Malcolm Gladwell
Blink--Malcolm Gladwell
The God Delusion--Richard Dawkins
The Gift of Fear--Gavin De Becker
Made to Stick--Chip and Dan Heath
East of Eden--John Steinbeck
The Origins of Virtue--Matt Ridley
Wisdom of Crowds--James Surowicki
Boyd: The Fight Pilot who Changed the Art of War--Robert Coram
The Secret--Rhonda Byrne
Caesar--Christian Meier
Don't Think of an Elephant: Know your values and frame the debate--George Lakoff
Whoever Fights Monsters--Robert K. Ressler
The Strategy Paradox--Michael E. Raynor

(And for class I read a few others that didn't totally blow. The Sweet Hereafter, The World According to Garp, The Awakening, In the Bedroom, and then some textbooks...)

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 07:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

"At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: 'I
have to go to work--as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if
I'm going to do what I was born for--the things which I was brought
into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle
under the blankets and stay warm?'

--But it's nicer here...

So you were born to feel "nice?" Instead of doing things and
experiencing them? Why aren't you running to do what your nature
demands?

--But we have to sleep sometime...

Agreed. But nature set a limit on that--as it did on eating and
drinking. And you're over the limit. But not of working. There you're
still below your quota. You don't love yourself enough. Or you'd love
your nature too and what it demands of you. People who love what they
do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash and eat."
-- Marcus Aurelius

Every morning I have that dialog with myself, and so long as I come away siding with Aurelius, I feel like I've won. It's not fun and surely it's not easy. In some cases it borders on insanity and OCD. Little, meaningless things take on monumental importance--because I cannot NOT do them because it means appeasement. And I know that it is indeed a slippery slope, that once you begin the practice of capitulation to the Resistance, it never ends. There's that Russell Banks book--The Sweet Hereafter--where the bus driver mentions that in 50/50 situations she always "errs on the side of the angels," meaning she always gives God the benefit of the doubt. That's the policy I'd like to base my life on, erring on the side of dedication, of hard work, of commitment.

And that's the crucial question that Aurelius' passage poses: You've had plenty of sleep...but have you had enough work?

....and fully aware of the irony, I'm enjoying my mini-vacation in Santa Barbara.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 03:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

-Subject to Change: Tips for Good Email Subject Lines
(Getting your email read is the most important part. Learn how to catch the eye)
-Seth Godin on how to virally market your book
(You have to give content away before it can spread via word of mouth)
-Charteo.us
(It's a cool way to track the sales of books on Amazon. But their registration process sucks. I'm not sure why.)
-Popuri.us
(Check the stats of sites, Alexa rank, technorati ran, google page rank, del.icio.us, rss, etc. Great tool. Hat tip to TechCrunch for the last two.
-Wikipedia: Ultimatum Game
(The ultimatum game is an experimental economics game in which two parties interact anonymously and only once, so reciprocation is not an issue. The first player proposes how to divide a sum of money with the second party. If the second player rejects this division, neither gets anything. If the second accepts, the first gets his demand and the second gets the rest. Proof that humans don't always act rational, and that game theory can't always be used to explain projected action)

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 04:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

There was a big thread on the Rudius board last week, and now it made the front page of Digg.

And I think the crux of the debate comes down to how you answer this question: Does the media influence culture or does culture influence media? Arguably, in the past, I think it's been more of the latter, but in the case of celebrity coverage, I think it's clearly the former. The idea that "the media only reports on this gossip is because people buy it" is a cop out. And I don't think it takes into account basic groupthink or psychology.

There is this thing called an information cascade--that essentially means people can be forced to go against their personal beliefs if a majority of their peers do the same. Or, if enough people observe the sky is red, you'll throw aside the fact that it is clearly blue. And I think honestly, that is the most plausible explanation for this fascination with worthless celebrity gossip. Don't get me wrong, people do care about the lives of famous people. It's actually biological--and all societies (civilized or uncivilized) gossip about the sex lives of their alpha-people. But there is a difference between that and a solid month of hearing about the Anna Nicole Smith overdose.The latter is the media forcing a story down the public's throat; hoping that if they do it long enough, it'll go down easy. The logic of it is proven, look at payola. Record labels by spins on radio stations because they know they can trick people into enjoying bands they wouldn't otherwise hate. The media hammers in stories so they'll always have something to fall back on. There's always a police chase, a murder, a heinous rape, a gossip piece they can use a filler--but first they have to force us to care about it. Which is what we have with ANS.

And the media covers these stories because they're lazy. It's cheaper to drag something on than it is to find something new. That's why Lindsey Lohan and Spears are still in the press, even though they haven't created new art in years. It's all about potential costs and risks. They know for sure that some people care about those celebrities, and they can't say that for certain about some unknown up-and-comer, or some investigative report on an important issue. Which is why we see the same tired stories about the same tired people.

So the whole idea of "they wouldn't report on it if people didn't buy it" is bullshit. They report on it because reporters are inherently lazy, stupid and greedy. I understand the outrage and the scorn that Jon Stewart has for the MSM. And he's exactly right, bias (liberal and conservative) is important, but the priority here, should be the sensationalism, and the greed, and the race to the bottom. And until we put the blame where it really lies--directly on the media--we can't hope for a higher level of discourse.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

-Heavy metal 'a comfort for the bright child'
(Bands like Iron Maiden appeal to gifted young people because they serve as a relief from a world designed to squash that sort of thinking. TOLD YOU.)
-Google Gooses Big Media
(Is content still king? Or did distribution--queen--commit regicide?)
-How Hollywood plays fast and hard with their finances
(A deal that would make Andy Fastow proud)
-The Hostile New Age Takeover of Yoga
(Is there a more pretentious habit than yoga?)
-The end of the Jordan era?
(A look at Marbury's business strategy compared to Jordan's)
-Wikipedia: Prospect Theory

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few weeks ago Donika blogged about Moleskines--and I went out and picked one up. Now I take it wherever I go. It's been amazing. I've been writing more, and with the exception of a few "Is that a diary?" remarks, it's been nothing but helpful. My turn.You need to go out and buy these:

They're bright, long lasting highlighters with removable sticky flags. I've been using them religiously when I read for the last 6 months. Now, down the sides of each book I have tabs that mark the important sections--like dictionaries do with the alphabet. It facilitates running back through the book's core message again; something I suggest you always do a few weeks or months after finishing it. Normally, I reserve tabs on the side for important passages or quotes, and tabs on the top for words I need to look up or concepts to investigate on Wikipedia. And if you're afraid to do this because it'll ruin the book, then you're an idiot and wasting your time.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 05:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I think we need to be careful as far as how much we buy into this Web 2.0 concept. Believe me, I was drinking the kool-aid more than anyone else just a few months ago, but after SXSW, I'm starting to think otherwise.

Think of the biggest sites on the internet: Fark, Maddox, CollegeHumor--none of these were started by tech people. Myspace was started by a musician and Facebook by a college student--not Valley entrepreneurs. The implications of the Long Tail is that audiences become more fractured and niche oriented. Ironically, the so-called arbiters of cool in the Valley are all from the same niche. They're all hipster nerds who like the same lame movies and the same lame music. Tech Crunch is just throwing spaghetti at the wall and it's pretty rare that anything sticks. How often do those companies go anywhere at all?

Twitter is the perfect example. Does anyone with a brain think that there is some latent demand to bring the inconvenient stupidity of Myspace Bulletins directly to your cellphone? The Valley is just like Hollywood--full of yes-men, idiots, and losers; absolutely the last people who ought to be influencing culture. The problem here is a matter of perception. It's so easy to lose touch. Put Rubel, Calacanis, Arrington and Kawasaki in your reader, check Digg a few times a day, and you start to forget how real people think. It begins to feel like Ubuntu and Linux and Photoshop are pressing concerns of the American public.

We had dinner with Drew Curtis of Fark.com last week, and he summed it up rather well with a single question. "Do you know anyone who plays Second Life?" Look at the so-called 'hits' the Valley has produced: Rocketboom and Lonelygirl15. I've met both of them now and they suck. No one I know watches them and they likely never will. The web can fellate them all they like, but it's never going to change the fact that mainstream America won't. Let's be honest, Zefrank's social network is going to fail. And so is Twitter and Mybloglog and 99% of any widget ever created. Second Life and WOW won't hit critical mass and they'll never tip past the people who already play them. I'm not sure if anyone is going to want to regress back to email updates either.

Sustainable companies need desperately to steer clear of this. Stay above the fray. It doesn't matter how many books they write about the Wisdom of Crowds, art has never been about majorities. H.L Mencken used to write that America's lack of an aristocratic, elitist class was directly responsible for it's lack of original, high quality art. The internet isn't about giving every single person a voice. Like a Republic, it aims to open the selectorate to a slightly larger circle of potential peoples, and not much more. It's about opening the door for Philalawyers and Ebners and Dawes, because Hollywood was too close-minded to accept them. But it's not supposed to give your average retard the same amount of traffic as the truly talented.

I think the best bet for anyone who wants to find success on the web, is to just ignore Web 2.0 entirely. It's temporal horseshit--at least most of it is. Focus on quality and on content. Build real relationships with real people. Email strangers genuine emails until your eyes bleed. The audience with money is disproportionately intelligent, I'm not sure we need to organize everything to the point where they literally need to do nothing to access content. Let's meet them halfway, and spend that energy on bringing our best when we do.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I don't know what it's like to be castrated, but I bet it's a lot like driving in LA.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Trust your impulses, they have served you well. Remember, though, how many times they told you to shut-up, and the successes that have come from that. You are young, close your mouth. Pent up that energy and that passion and pour it all into a single indulgence of the tongue. The payoff will come from a combination of scarcity and selectiveness. Do not allow momentum to induce overextension.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 09:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wanted to write a little bit more on my last entry, especially after some of the comments people left. One of the them reminded me of something I'd wrote to myself a few months ago, as I was just getting back into reading.

I learned that lesson in High School Cross Country and thought it was ridiculous. But as I've grown to see it as one of the greatest fungible truths I've ever known. When you practice restraint where it is easy to lose it and dedication where it is difficult to maintain it it, you gain instant advantage, both temporally and transcendentally. Of course, common sense seems to imply other wise--which is fine if you're looking for common results.

I constantly struggled with the impulse for self-destruction. It is all too easy to get caught in the moment, to sprint down the hill, but that's not an efficient, scalable strategy. It cannot be sustained, it's not a life foundation. In a precarious or rare situation like the one I am in at Rudius--these dangers are real and tangible.

So when I find success or innovate or breakthrough, I struggle with how to distribute credit. It doesn't matter if I was behind it, I feel more comfortable attributing credit to the writers I read, my mentors, my friends, or my girlfriend. On the shoulders of giants... I under to never understand people who thanked others when they clearly did all the work themselves. But now I see it's an attempt to stay grounded--in a sense to maintain the mindset that generate the first success.

The last thing I ever want to be accused of is acting my age--it means I've sprinted where I should have pulled back. For this I am reluctant to declare much with certainty, regardless of how monumental a step may have been. In other words, by turning inwards and focusing, you capture and store the kinetic energy--literally turning it into potential for the future.

Like Robert says, I think you become how you see yourself. And you literally are how your enemies or clients see you. You tell yourself you're strong, act strong and they see you as strong. They based their actions on that perception. Perceptions are just as important as reality. The key is to get inside their OODA Loop--assuming they'd ignore me as a timid teenager-->making myself appear an equal or even a superior-->driving them towards a course of action beneficial to myself and Rudius.

Again, this is a risky strategy in that I'm reaching into Pandora's box to grab my social mask. But when pursued with congruous moderation and restraint, I neutralize the tantalizing danger of delusion. And honestly, there really isn't much pretending going on. Rather I am compensating for various social tendencies to discount the young. In making this a conscious strategy it becomes an asset, not a source of folly.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 07:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I am awful at meeting new people. I withdraw inwardly, grow nervous and bite my tongue. Don't get me wrong, the strategy serves me well at times. It's an effective means of preventing youthful stupidity from shutting doors. But as I am quickly learning, that's not going to cut it anymore.

At SXSW this weekend, I had to network for really the first serious time in my life. The first day was a wash, I walked up to people and lost my nerve. The nerdy creator of Techmeme--Gabe Riveria, a kid barely older than me who, honestly, I would have made fun of if I'd ever met at school--talked down to me like I was a child. I'm sure a few others put my card straight in the trash. But as the week progress, I began to hit my stride.

At a party outside the event, I was talking comfortably for the first time with someone, because they weren't important to me. I ranted about Twitter--otherwise know as the cloud of dust preceding the horsemen of the internet apocalypse--when someone eavesdropping weighed in and disagreed.

Guy: "You just don't understand the benefits of Twitter, it's going to be huge."
Me: "Are you from San Francisco?"
Guy: "Yes"
Me: "Do you play Second Life?"
Guy: "Yes."
Me: "Then what the hell do you know? This is the problem with the tech community, they're so insular, they don't understand what normal people enjoy doing or how they live their lives. You are just wrong, my friend."
....

From there, I had framed the terms of our relationship. I was the outsider who had perspective, and he was the slightly ignorant nerd. And accordingly, he had to impress me or I'd move on to someone who I respected. Indeed, he ended up being an important guy--and potentially a valuable Rudius contact--one who was trying to prove himself to me, instead of the other way around. Up to that point, in every single interaction I'd had there, I had been in his position, the timid little teenager bothering the somebodies.

I found my greatest success when I told myself that I could offer them as much as they, I. Even if it isn't necessarily true, that perspective puts the two groups on equal footing. Even with Tucker, my initial pitch didn't beg for a handout. My credentials and my ideas were stated boldly and up front. But my desire to learn was equally illustrated. That's what so few of you understand--he didn't take me on as a fucking charity case, but as an understudy who made his potential as clear as his work ethic.

These are notes I wrote to myself during the conference:

I think the key point is that no one pays notice to timid, especially the young and timid. Nor does anyone respect the bombastic, especially young ones. Like Aristotle's spectrum dictates, excellence lies in the middle--in this case with confident coolness.

So as I've learned at SXSW, always appeal to a person's desire to pursue. Make yourself the steal, even as you reach for their wallet. Project success and the prophecy will fulfill itself. Manifest your intended result in your current attitude and you paint an alluring portrait. Clearly this is a rather fungible idea that can be applies to all sorts of interaction. At the same time, never lose sight of "formlessness" and the fact that the strategy is DIRECTLY rooted in moderation.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I just got an email about this. Looks like I called it--literally, down to the site to do it on. Although the credit clearly goes to Cuban for the idea...

From my entry:

From Arrington's newest post

Here's my post about it from last week.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm heading to South by Southwest with Tucker in the next few days, so posts will probably be scarce. He'll be speaking on Saturday, the 11th in the Blog to Book panel. If you're going to be there for any of the days, drop me and email and we can meet up. If you work at any of the PR, production or other firms I've talked to, again just drop me a line. I'm just there for networking. ryan.holiday @ gmail.com

And if any one has any suggestions on which panels we HAVE to go to, or if there is anyone that Rudius would be benefited by knowing, I'd like to hear from you too. Here's the list.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 05:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of the things I wanted to start doing was posting my thoughts and reactions to the books I've been reading. This isn't a new thing, I've been recording the quotes and filling the margins for a while now. But I've been getting emails from people asking me how I manage to fit in reading so much. Well the first step is to give it a purpose--tell yourself that it serves a large cause or goal. For me it's always been as preparation for life, or my job, or for school. But it's gotten past that, so I decided to make this blog a justification for doing that.

Last week I read "Caesar" by Christian Meier. I strongly recommend you read it.

Here are my notes/quotes/thoughts.

Society gives you just enough agency to be hopeful. To trick you into thoughts of something more--and then it kicks you in the teeth. The chains are long enough to give you running star, so the jerk backwards hits all the harder. Which is why the true great of history rejected the institutions as a whole. Their hopes, and value systems were derived internally, and thus not dependent on the approval or accomplishment or status. They gave up short term validation for long term reckoning.

Caesar relied heavily on this axiom--and to an outside observer he seems almost dangerously stupid. But it's not, those are the benefits of its illusions. Meier quotes Suetonius who argued that Caesar was almost timidly bold. The paradox implies the distinction between boldness and brashness (a concept Aristotle lays out in Ethics in his advocacy of moderation). Caesar planned heavily AND made huge bets.

Society stigmatizes boldness because it fears the results. It needs timidity to maintain order. It put prudence and faith in oneself on opposite sides of the spectrum when in reality, the synergy between the two is an imperative of greatness. It's the fingerspitzengefuhl that Rommel perfected.

Never underestimate the leeway and freedom that society grants to mavericks and myths. We all know the brass ring is there for the taking, we're just too afraid to reach for it. But that doesn't mean we don't want SOMEONE to reach for it. Don't be mistaken, they might resent you for it after you've got it--just look at Caesar for Christ sake--but they can never take away what happened.

The ultimate message we take from the passage is the seemingly contradictory nature of honest, diligent planning and bank-breaking bets. Only the superficial fail to see how one feeds off the other. James J. Cramer, the hedge fund runner, made his fortune off this strategy. He combined the crushing work ethic of a NASA scientist with the betting tactics of a gambling addict.

If you aren't willing to push all the chips in the middle, all your research was for naught. That's where Caesar excelled--ceaseless training and then the confidence to exercise it. And as crass as it sounds, he never lost track of his balls. Michael Lewis, in Liar's Poker, called traders with that dichotomy "big swingin' dicks." This is where startups fail. They pursue too many paths at once, refusing to bet it all on their strongest card. Consider it the emotional equivalent of the sunk cost fallacy. Or they bet it all on one they never investigated enough to realize was doomed from the beginning.

My whole life I've been training for that moment. I spare no expense at the present--time or money--for that which will help me grow and learn and prepare. Nonetheless I've amassed a small (college) fortune that would me to walk away from school and roll the dice. Or in the future to put it all in that defining venture on which to stake a life. It would be a mistake to call this a 'rainy day' fund. On the contrary its for that bright sunny day where I leave the comfort of the status-quo and pursue my personal legend. And perhaps I'll never have to use it, and that all my planning will pre-empt such a risk. This is, in and of itself, a kind of boldness--betting on at least reaching the crossroads of greatness--and I hope fortune favors it. Either way, prudence and faith are not enemies; combined they're greater than the sum of their parts. Alone, one road or the other, they're crippling.

This, I liked. Tucker prefers Genghis Khan--thinking that his motives were more pure. Caesar to some conquered for the sake of conquest. He was born to privilege and simply wanted more. I disagree. I think if you ignore their social positions from birth, you'll find their motivations to be essentially the same. They were pushed away by the system when all they wanted was to get their due. Khan was shunned just as Caesar was. Caesar never asked for civil war, he was goaded to cross the Rubicon.

So those are just some of my thoughts on the book. I thought it was fantastic and probably the best thing I've read on Caesar. Pick it up, learn from him.

If this is helpful at all, let me know.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"Just keep working hard. Talent only gets you the chance. Your success is dependent on what you do with it." -- Tucker Max

If you haven't read Gladwell's piece on The Myth of Prodigy you ought to check it out.

I was in a very similar place as Gladwell. I was a bit of a running phenom as a child; running a 6 minute mile in 5th grade. But then it started to slip away.

[Children] "will often strike a pose that is simultaneously rebellious and lackadaisical. It's a way of staying in place: trying harder brings more risk of failure, which they cannot handle, so they lower their expectations, finding nobility in slacking off and mediocrity. Losing hurts less when they embrace it." --Robert Greene

As competition grew fiercer, I capitulated instead of fighting it. I accepted my own fate as a novelty. I admitted I was a flash in the pan, that I was nothing special, that it was all a fluke. I didn't make the jump from 6 minutes to 5 minutes for almost another 7 years.

I've learned a lot since then--even as a runner. For years I wasted time reaffirming my delusions--that I hated hard work and I hated running. It was a lie, what really I hated was failure, and that's what happened when I tried. Your mind likes to treat the symptoms rather than the disease. Addressing the symptoms means correcting an anomaly, curing the disease means admitting you were wrong. I had to step back and be disappointed in myself. Admit that I had been taking a dive because it was less painful than taking a loss.

I'm trying to do it differently this time. I don't plan on wasting this. That quote I posted up at the top, I try and think of it a few times a day. I think I've broken myself of those destructive habits. I worked a little Pavlov's magic on myself on a treadmill. Everytime I wanted to stop I sped it up a little. Each goal I set--I'll stop at 3 miles--I exceeded by .1 or .2. I excised those demons (laziness) by refusing to indulge them.

But I figure that just "learning" isn't enough. I want results this time. Success that I can point to, that no one can ever take away. Is it really impressive to brag about what you almost were, what you could have almost had? Did I really deserve any of it all, if I let everyone down?

And now as I soak myself in sweat every night of the week, running mile after mile, I know what it feels like to have the candle burning at both ends. I can feel my trial period slowly running out, the novelty quickly become more of a burden than an aide. Out of the two roads, I've already chosen one, and it led to nothing but misery and self-loathing. This time I think I'll take the other. The genuine self-awareness followed by hours at the gym.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

"Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful." --Warren Buffet. This has always been my investment strategy. I remember reading a while back that the manifestation of this attitude then becomes "when people are buying stocks, buy real estate. And when people are buying real estate, buy stocks."

It's harder than it sounds though. Because for the last 3 days, every time I've logged onto to my computer, my sidebar stock widget is awash in a sea of red. Google's down, Sears Holdings took a major bath. But I'm loading back up, so we'll see where the market heads. I just can't believe that Starbucks is going to stay at 30 a share for very long--not when there are literally 3 of them within a 200 yards from my apartment.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Maybe it's just me and I missed this, but I think it's relatively new. I found it by accident today. I haven't heard any announcements from Google about it, but it seems like a great idea. Not only does it help people find what they're looking for--Google's #1 mission--but it could increase overall searches--Google's #2 mission. They seem to show up under relatively basic searches: cancer, pain, etc.

My guess is that eventually Google will use this as a way to circumvent some of the less than ethical tactics of the SEO industry. They already do this when you search for musicians or music. You'll start to see links to the Wikipedia entry, government related website, forums, news articles and so forth. Like someone recently pointed out, Google searches are quickly replacing http://www. in users browsers. Instead they're just searching 'facebook' or 'myspace' and proceeding from there. Google is pre-empting irrelevancy by providing means to induce more exploration (and in turn more ads) These refined results are the internet equivalent of "Carl's Jr. Next Exit" signs. They detour you from your intended destination, politely and pocket a few cents each time. I like it--especially as a shareholder.

What other searches are you guys finding these suggestions for? I'm curious.

Posted by Ryan Clark Holiday at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)