RyanHoliday.net

Andrew McMillen posted an email interview he did with me. You can read it here.

At 24, Ryan [pictured right] is a year older than me. I’ve viewed his blog as a kind of counsel since I first became aware of his work. His thinking and writing has, in turn, shaped my thinking and writing. It is fair to say that I wouldn’t be on the path I am now if I hadn’t been closely studying another young male on the other side of the world, fearlessly kicking down doors in search and pursuit of his goals. For a couple of years, Ryan’s ambition, persistence and confidence all directly influenced my day-to-day thoughts and actions. Which is another statement that will make Ryan blush, because it’s a pretty fucking weird thing to type, let alone think.

I am having to put a press kit together and prep for some media stuff anyway, so if anyone wants we can do an open Q&A in the comments. It’d be helpful to me and I know a lot of you have questions since you email them to me. We can talk about anything that is on your mind or anything you feel like I haven’t addressed before.

The opening sequence of the movie 50/50, shows the main character Adam, out running. He comes to a traffic light and stops. The soundtrack stops too. There are no cars anywhere nearby. Another runner blows past him through the light. Yet he waits, refusing to go until the light turns. The soundtrack cheerfully starts again. The implicit message in the movie: this guy follows all the rules, he doesn’t deserve anything bad to ever happen to him.

I have no respect for people like that. When I see someone waiting at a light when they could easily and safely cross, I think ‘what a loser’. I see it for what it really is: an excuse to not do what is obviously more logical because an arbitrary rule says otherwise. In this case, it’s a pretty convenient excuse to get a break from running too. To me, it is an excuse to not push themselves as hard as they could.

The other variation of this is the jogger who runs in place while they’re stopped. Their logic is just as self-defeating. The reality is that if you have to artificially keep your heart rate up during a 30 second stop light, you’re not running hard enough. You may as well just go for a long walk next time. But no, jogging in place makes you feel dedicated, like you’re superior to all those other people who have to rest and that is why you do it. (My philosophy, earn the opportunity to rest, so that when it arrives you don’t feel guilty taking advantage of it. Earn it by truly exerting yourself.)

There is something worse than breaking the rules—following the utterly pointless ones.

Compared to the selfishness and greed endemic to our time, people who follow the rules seem quaint, earnest. When things are bad enough, they almost start to seem like silent heroes. Especially when they stand up for rules the rest of us take for granted. But this is dangerous, because you find yourself wrongly conflating an excuse to not utilize your full potential with “doing the right thing.”

The reality is that most rules are dumb. And poorly thought out. And an impediment to action. They tell us how to dress. How to think. Make us be like everyone else. The more banal the rule, the more likely it is to have these effects—less reason for existing for smart people. These rules steal our time and our lives, cutting us off from shortcuts, secrets and creating change. Of course, we never get to ask Adam if, after finding out he has potentially terminal cancer a few days later, he regrets wasting so much time at pointless traffic signals.

Doing what you’re supposed to do does not make you a good person. There’s no one keeping track, ready to award you a special ribbon for staying inside the most lines. There is not. But you know what there is? A good chance at any moment that something could come along and render the past irrelevant and the future non-existent. And at that time, all your notions about rules and waiting and feeling superior aren’t going to matter.

You’re going to wish that you did what needed to be done. That you didn’t let restrictions restrict you.

How much would you have to be paid to be a huckster? Because that’s the thing about schemes and scams—they work.

Think of it as a kind of different take on the dress-suit bribe but with the same logic. Not how much you made running the scam, but how much it cost you to be the kind of person who could do it. Not how much you get out of being the loudest guy in the room, the big swinging dick, but what you did to yourself to be it. Or what you did to other people along the way. How much did you pay to get paid?

That’s what you should ask yourself. But, since it is unlikely that the people attracted to such things will have that self-awareness, ask it to yourself that when you catch yourself envying them. You won’t wish for what they have when you know what they paid for it. Because whatever the amount, it came out of a bank accounts that cannot be replenished. The ones labeled: dignity, self-respect, restraint, pride.

Amount in unjust tickets I have received in the last 3 months: $1,478 (bankrupt and/or corrupt governments steal from citizens because they have to and because they can)

Some explanations to take the sting out:

-How you would react if someone had actually robbed you, like a gun or knife-point? You’d simply hand over the money and be glad it didn’t end badly. You wouldn’t go around whining about the injustice of it all.

-That awesome thing you got to do for free but thought, man if I had paid for that, I totally would have gotten my money’s worth. Well, you just did.

-Some of the best stories are about times when something unfortunate happened, something you thought was unfair/scary/unbearable/ridiculous at the time. You’ll find it funny later, so skip the intermediate step and find it funny now.

-Can you afford it? Yes. Then shut up, that’s why you make lots of money—to make these inconvenient things just go away.

-If they’d increased your taxes X%, you’d have given the government the same amount of money but not noticed. You know that’s why they’re putting up speed trap cameras and selectively enforcing the laws—because they’re broke. What does it matter what form or with what bogus pretense it leaves your pocket and goes into theirs?

True, it would make anyone bitter and disaffected. But you can’t be. You have to live your life. Isn’t it bad enough that they stole from you—shook you down and abused their trust? Do you have to seethe with rage for weeks afterward too? No, see that part is your choice. They started it, they did the wrong, but you decide when that ends. You decide how far it goes, whether the unfortunate event is a forgettable blip or a black hole of anger.

[The following is a message I posted to a group of people I met at a conference a few weeks ago. Following the event we were supposed to give an update on our work. I saw the community descending into the self-gratifying, escapist and Resistance-laden tendencies that often ruin the promise of great people and great groups. I thought it was relevant to everyone here too.]

Since I was a speaker, I am not sure I am able to win this thing but I thought I would post anyway. In the last 30 days I have: finished my book, written the business plan and secured investing for a new startup, negotiated a $3M Groupon deal, driven 3,000 miles, traveled to 4 states (two I’d never been to before), ran and swam almost every day, hosted some great dinner parties with friends, attended my first crab boil and did plenty of thinking. And most proudly, I posted in this group approximately zero times. I consider this last accomplishment integral to having been able to manage the others.

I hope the following message is not misinterpreted. I’m not looking to be a troll. But it’s a worthwhile risk to warn of the dangerous turn virtual communities can take.

The internet is seductive. It allows us to be a fantasy version of ourselves without the pain of earning it. Our natural tendency to inflate, distract and rationalize are—all too kindly—confirmed, supported and inflated further still. Congratulation comes easy, problems are glossed over, everything finds an audience. It becomes so easy to talk online about what we are doing or what we plan to do that, hey, the next thing we know the day is through and we didn’t have time to actually fit in doing any of it.

Add into that an inherently and achingly supportive group such as this and even the most grounded person can start to swim in the rising waters of their own grandiosity. Think about the temptation offered by all this: we can fly all over the world to meet with people who make us feel accomplished just by association, who keep us in our bubble of self-satisfaction. Feeling down? Hint at it and a dozen comments affirming your incredible worth are there by next time you log on. The idea that our work must earn these gifts is lost. After talking enough about them, our goals become so reified in our minds that actually accomplishing them seems unnecessary.

Here is the hard truth though: none of it is real. I would argue that it is toxic and self-destructive. I have seen plans for meet ups that will occur a half a year from now. I’ve seen links to conference calls, to web chats, to email lists and a dozen other things. There must be 50,000 words of kindness and inspiration posted here. In a different context, these are good things (they are certainly better than, say, doing heroin) but they are not what people like us need. We need to WORK. And to work quietly and humbly and with discipline. The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other. I have, and again I mean this with all the respect in the world, seen a lot of chatter in this group.

It was wonderful to meet all of you. I learned more at __________ than I have at every other conference I have ever been to combined, and then some. Some of the relationships I made there I know I will continue for years and years to come. If I could offer any service in return for the value I took from the event it would be this: the next time you see the red (1) alert from this group in the corner of your Facebook account, note it as a lost opportunity. Someone’s opportunity to work, to prove themselves, to say that thing which they claim to be compelled to say to the world, to make a difference, just evaporated. And needlessly so. Instead of seizing it, they came online and talked. They succumbed to taking easy credit instead of earning it the hard way. Don’t be that person.

Reading back what I have written so far, I feel I may have gotten a little carried away. But like the Stoics say to people who complain that their philosophy is too depressing: nobody needs a reminder that pleasure feels good. Sometimes its necessary to go the other direction and point out the negative side of things so we don’t become enslaved to them. I hope my post does that.