I don’t mean people who try to be cool or anything like that, but people who give themselves credit for accomplishments that haven’t happened yet. It’s not that they aren’t working on their book or start-up or whatever. They are. They just can’t close the deal. They aren’t in control of their own lives.

You know who doesn’t go around calling themselves “The Boss?” Bosses. Why? Because real authority is implicit, not explicit. The same goes for superlatives and occupation titles. You leave those for the people who follow you, who buy your work, who write about you, who introduce you. These meaningless words mean something to some people because it helps them definer their relationship to the world. That’s the wrong way to do it. You, the writer, don’t relate to the world as a writer—you relate to the world as you. The world relates to you and your writing. For [writer], plug in entrepreneur, expert, student, athlete or whatever. The leader is the leader because he leads.

Live a life of standards, not descriptors. Wake up each morning and live like a boss.

This isn’t just a power tactic, though it is a good one. It is a life tactic. It’s how you prevent yourself from becoming a clueless asshole (or a delusional never-been). From thinking that things that don’t matter, matter. It’s so easy on the internet to present an idealized version of yourself, and in the process, forget which is the real and which is the fake. It’s easier to cede control than have control. Don’t fake it until you make it. Shut up until you make it. And then when you make it, you’ll be so used to being that way that you still won’t feel all that inclined to talk about it.

“Good God man! do you mean to go to your death with nothing but jokes upon your lips? Do you know that this is a serious matter?

“How can I know that? I have never been dead in all my life. I have heard that death is a serious matter, but never from any of those who have experienced it.”

The general quietly listens, considers the man’s points but still finds them terrifying.

“Death is horrible!”

“It was horrible to our savage ancestors because they had not enough intelligence to dissociate the idea of consciousness from the idea of the physical forms in which it is manifested–as even a lower order of intelligence, that of the monkey, for example, may be unable to imagine a house without inhabitants and seeing a ruined hut fancies a suffering occupent.”

Just then the stormy weather outside abates, and the general orders that the sentence be imposed that night, by firing squad, rather than waiting for the gallows to be built in the morning. The solider, unprepared for this turn of events, breaks down. “But General, I beg–I implore you, I am to hang!…Spies are hanged; I have rights under military law!” It’s no use. So he struggles, grabs an unguarded knife, and mortally wounds the general before being led away.

At the end the soldier meets his death whimpering before the firing squad, begging to be spared. The general, dying a few hours later, dies solemnly, saying only “I suppose this must be death.”

I like this story because of the twist. As you read it, you mark down the wise words of the soldier–finding them perfect reminders about the smallness of life and an example for how to think about death. The words may as well have come from Cato or Socrates. Parker Adderson truly is, as the title states, a philosopher.

Only like most “philosophers” he soon let’s us down when it comes to practice. He may not have been a coward in the face of grave threats–and that’s admirable and rare–but when those threats become realities his edifice crumbled. At the same time, the General, who was honest with the solider about not wanting to die and urged him to make things right before his sentence was imposed, was, when he himself faced with the same sentence, clearheaded and calm.

Behind laconic wit lies one of two things: compensatory horseshit or profound confidence and bravery. It is important to know which. Remember, all the preparation and philosophy and clever sayings in the world are no guarantee strength under duress. In fact, it may foreshadow the opposite. Why? Because they lead us to think it will not be so hard. That armed with logic or facts, we will not be afraid and regress. And this is true for things a lot less terrifying than death. (We feel proud and smart telling kids “it get’s better,” but how do you handle bullies in your adult life? Your heart races, you get flustered, you feel like quitting your job and running away.)

It’s important to remember that the Spartans, (the Lacedaemonians who the laconic style is named after) hated philosophers. They hated how easily they could say one thing and do another. To them, quips weren’t quips. They meant something. It was the expression of years of training, tradition and obligation. They were efficient, not condescending. Words were never a substitute for action. It was never about making a rhetorical point. For every Spartan whose rejoinder was passed down through history, there were a thousand more who simply performed, making even less of a show than the general in the story.

We must keep that in mind as we do our reading and make our way. That the real show is never the words–no matter how impressive or true or clever they are–and it’s no shame to be mocked and laughed at by those who are skilled at wordplay, so long as you best them when it comes time to face your own test.

H.L Mencken & Jack London: How to Pitch Editors, Agents and Book Publishers
9 Timeless Leadership Lessons from Cyrus the Great
Why Wouldn’t Planned Parenthood Take $500,000? (this controversy was awesome and got picked up everywhere)
The Marketer’s Dirty Secret: Exploiting Perception vs Reality
What the Failed $1M Netflix Prize Says About Business Advice

It’s a different kind of writing for me but still good practice and I write there more often. The weightier material is all going to stay on this site and I’ll be posting on Forbes just the stuff that I couldn’t make work for this format. It’s also not a bad seque into my book, which is a mix of both. Stay tuned for that announcement next month.

Anyway, read them or don’t. Either way, stay tuned for regularly scheduled programming.

Think of how much patience we have for total strangers and acquaintances. But what a short fuse we have for the actual people in our life. In the course of our everyday lives, our priorities are so very backwards. We do our best to impress people we’ll never see again and take for granted people we see all the time. We’re respectful in our business lives, casual and careless in our personal. We punish closeness with criticism, reward unfamiliarity with politeness.

On some days, deep down, I think we’d rather just be an asshole to everyone. But we can’t, so on those days we take it out all the harder on the people we can. When kids are misbehaving, it’s the one within reach that the parent slaps. Just because you can call someone out (or hold them accountable) doesn’t mean you should. The fact that you can certainly shouldn’t count against the person. As though being your friend or co-worker costs them your patience.

Not that I’m saying to flip the ratio and be less tolerant to people outside your circle than those inside it. Instead, see if you can give everyone the graciousness of meeting them fresh each time. Ask yourself: how would I treat this person if we weren’t so familiar? If it’s more generously, do that. Don’t use history against people, don’t slap just because you can. Sure, be friendly to everyone but bend over backwards—because they’ve earned it—for the people who put up with your shit on a daily basis.

That is to say: calm down. We, the young and ambitious, deal almost exclusively with rich white people problems. We’re not going to starve if we make the wrong decision.* There is very little we can’t undo.

Of course, that doesn’t make life-changing decision any less intimidating or take away the fact that the adults in our lives did next to nothing in the way of preparing us. I think that’s why since I dropped out of school (and wrote about it as it was happening) people have been coming to me as though I have some special insight on making these kinds of calls. Since I did it then and have done it several times since, they think I know the secret. I don’t, but I do have some tricks.

When I get these emails I almost always ignore the specific details and respond with few simple questions. Stuff like: “What’s the absolute worst thing that could happen?” “What would you miss out on if you did it?” “Are you fighting for a piece of a shrinking dying industry or are you getting something whose value will hold up over time?” I never tell them what to do. I just pose questions.

These are no rhetorical questions, though I am sure they seem that way to someone just looking for advice. I intend for the person to answer them. Think about like a math equation for a second. It seems like a jumble of symbols and unknowns at first, but when you stop, breathe and break it down, the process basically takes care of itself. Isolate the variables, solve for them and all that is left is your answer.

Answer the questions and the right choice becomes clear.

This strategy gives you the single most important tactic when you’re trying to make life-changing decisions:

Get information, not advice. See most people—no matter how wise or successful—give horrible advice. They’ll send you astray. So don’t ask for advice. Ask them for information that you can translate into advice.

Isolate the various issues that will influence your decision and ask then people about that. By zeroing in on specifics rather than the big picture, you avoid the trap of their (distorted) picture. Simplify your decision into [If this] then [x] or [If that] then [y]. Then use the smart people in your life to help solve for the variables.

It’s the difference between asking: “What should I do?” and “Do you know anyone who ran into problems taking some time off from school?” To me, this difference was the world. I asked the latter question to someone when I was dropping out and their answer was brilliant. ‘Problems?’ he said, ‘I got really sick when I was in college and had to spend a year in the hospital. Do you think that matters at all to anyone 20 years later?’

So try it: What is the worst thing that can happen? Well, it could cost me some money. Ok, well money is replaceable so that’s a stupid reason not to do something with so much potential upside. Is this a once in a lifetime opportunity? Yes. Really, never again? I don’t know… Then you haven’t thought about this enough. And so and so on.

After that, this is what else is important:

-Think about where you want to go, back out your decisions from there. Let’s say you want to be a politician way down the line. Well, what does the biography of a politician look like? Probably some military service, success in the private sector, multiple degrees, clean private life, good connections, rich benefactors, a public profile, one or two key (untouchable) stances, sense of style, etc. Ok, now when you make decisions all you have to do is ask yourself: Does this help me check off any of those boxes? If it doesn’t, it’s probably not the right thing to do.

-Remember to consider opportunity costs.

-”Enter Action With Boldness” and sometimes, you may have “Act Before You Are Ready”

-It doesn’t matter how much other people ‘get’ you, they’ll never fully understand your aspirations so don’t go around expecting them to. It’s too hard for them to see past their own experiences. Prepare to be misunderstood, both when you ask for advice and when you finally take action.

-Scared about making the wrong choice? You won’t ever know if you did. Cognitive dissonance won’t let you.

-Strategy is a matter of options. Generally, the aim is to act in a way that leaves as many possible options open as possible (remember, opportunity costs). Keep this in mind as you make your decision. What gives me the most options? What gives me the most freedom and creates the most opportunities? Do not discount the things you do not yet know are important.

-Books. Books. Books. People have been doing [whatever it is you're deciding about] for a while now. They’ve been moving West, leaving school, investing their savings, getting dumped or filing for divorce, starting businesses, quitting their jobs, fighting, dying and fucking for thousands of years. This is all written down, often in the first person. Read it. Stop pretending you’re breaking new ground.

Finally, don’t feel guilty for asking for help. There is NOT A CHANCE that the successful people you know today didn’t rely on the successful people they knew in order to get where they are. That’s the cycle. It’s why I respond to these emails and do my best to walk people through it however I can. So if you don’t have anyone else to ask, you can also come to me as a last resort. You know where to find me.

 *When I made the decision to leave my life behind and write my book, I asked Tucker: “Is there anything I should be worried about when I’m doing this?” His answer: “Nothing about any of this should worry you. It’s all upside.”

YOU WON!

You’ve found the perfect…

[diet, productivity system, way to save money, workflow, source of inspiration, regimen]

You’ve done it. We all agree. Now what?

Remember, it’s bad strategy to go past the mark you aimed for. When we look at our health, our money, our productivity or anything else that takes our time and energy, the metric that matters is ROI. Nature has given us a wonderful guide to help with that: the law of diminishing returns. Yet, you stuck with it long past then.

You spent so many hours slaving over improvements at the margins. So many pedantic debates on the internet—because you had to be right. How much time did you spend trying to be a better person? A better father? A better friend? You know definitively whether legumes are good for you or not, but whether you are good or not remains less clear.

What should you focus on instead? Start with the things that matter: Philosophy. Empathy. Goodness. And from there, proceed to basically just about everything else. You know, stuff that matters.

So we must catch ourselves and return to it. Pick up Meditations, Seneca, Plutarch, Hadot, our notecards of quotes and reminders or, anything from the shelf of “Life” books. Stop and evaluate. Read something that challenges, instead of informs.

No matter how much learning or work or thinking we do, none of it matters unless it happens against the backstop of exhortative analysis. The kind rooted in the deep study of the mind and emotion, and demands that we hold ourselves to certain standards. We must turn to the practical, to the spiritual exercises of great men and actively use them. It’s the only way we’ll get anything out of the rest of our efforts. It’s simple: stop learning (or “working”) for a second and refine.

Put aside all the momentum and the moment. Tap the brakes. Return to philosophy.

I wish it was cool like that, but it never seems to be.

No. Contributions come from taking the time to develop a deep understanding of everything at play and more often than not, coming up with gradual improvements and suggestions. They come from the rigor and discipline of really knowing something. Half your ideas get thrown away. More than half deserve to be thrown away. Maybe there is some vaunted genius out there whose every thought is mind-blowing but that person is not you.

This bitter little pill does not change another hard reality, however: most people accepted ‘the way things have always been done’ with equal flippancy. Whatever is wrong or broken about the field you’re working in probably will be incredibly and instantly obvious. That is, you are not a genius but most people and practices are really dumb. When you can wrap your head around that paradox, you’ll have the whole package.

The key to doing it is this: trust your instincts as you survey what’s wrong, ignore them as soon as what they tell you starts to make you feel superior. Make your evaluations but shut your mouth. Why replace flippantly accepted ideas with new flippantly created ideas? Think about your idea for more than two seconds. Don’t fall in love with the image of you as the artist or the wunderkind or the hired gun or intuitive expert. These are chimeras.

What you can be is the person who gets things done, the person whose ideas are better. And changes people’s minds, slowly, over time.

The second level is harder. You think about why they act that way. He needs to be the center of attention because it was hard having parents who didn’t seem to care. Maybe she wants you to know how smart she is because nobody ever thought she was. Maybe they want status because they think it will get them what they want. Or they like control because it feels so different than how they felt at a point in their life when someone should have been looking out for them but fell down on the job. But instead of exploiting this like you did at the first level, at the second level you understand it. You begin to see them for what they really are: a human being. A human being doing the best they can as best they’ve been taught. You see them with empathy and compassion. You don’t hold any of it against them.

People hurt. People are messed up. People are stuck in patterns and don’t even know they are pattens. Most of what we do is not malicious, not stupid, not selfish or ignorant. Is is, instead, a response to events whose significance we often don’t even recall. The next time you look down on someone else’s behavior—the next time you think, Oh, here we go again or _________ always does this—try to remember that. Remember that these aren’t just little personality quirks, but real feelings masked by annoying actions. These are people in pain, like we are in pain—even if it makes them act like a dick. Don’t hate or pity or pander to them. But let it remind you that they’re human.

The first level is in your self-interest. And so is the second. Because when you can start to understand other people, accept them as they are and forgive them for what they do, you can start to do it to yourself. You can expect it for yourself.

It’s less messy to think that way, sure. And comforting. It may even briefly be lucrative. But that is not how it really works. As much as a part of me wishes I could live in that universe, I don’t and can’t. It’s not how you get things done.

“See, I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to get to really know something, how careful you have to be about checking the experiments, how easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it really means to know something. And therefore, I see how it is that they get their information and I can’t believe that they know it—they haven’t done the work necessary, they haven’t done the checks necessary, they haven’t done the care necessary. I have a great suspicion that they don’t know how this stuff is done and they are intimidating people by it.”

That is Richard Feynman. What he’s talking about is the flipness of pseudo-science and the false confidence of delusion. Everything about the internet enables those impulses. From the segmentation to the lack of accountability, we forget what it really takes to know something. How hard it is to be truly sure.

That comes from rigor and discipline. From humility and understatement.  It comes practices, checklists, from methods, and the scientific method. It comes from staying up late reading, not blogging. It comes from having deep connections with a handful of smart people who push you to be better, not networking. It comes from separating ideas from your identity—so you can pick up, discard, pick up, rearrange, discard and pick them up at whim.

To really study something almost inevitably eliminates the desire to talk about it. You don’t need to intimidate other people because you’re too busy checking your own assumptions to bother worrying about theirs. You’re not out trying to sell your theory to random people on the internet (and calling it Ryan’s Law or some indulgent shit) because you’re selling it to people who matter—people who actually pay you for your ideas.

All this takes time. That is, it can’t be done in real-time. So be patient and quiet and do the work. Check the experiments and put in the care. Then you start to know what it really means to know something.