Love Your Work

Do you ever feel like you don't have the time and energy to learn about everything you want to know? Is it hard to stay focused on reading one book, when there's ten others you want to read? You need curiosity management.

Curiosity management is the management of your thirst to know things. In a world with unlimited access to information, and finite time and energy, it's impossible to read every book, watch every documentary, or take every online course.

Unmanaged curiosity leads to "curiosity pressure"

This leads to a feeling of "curiosity pressure." Curiosity pressure is the feeling you'll never learn all the things you want to learn.

When you're under time pressure – curiosity pressure's close cousin – and feel you don't have enough time to do everything, your anxiety makes it hard to do one thing. When you're under curiosity pressure and feel you can't learn everything, your anxiety makes it hard to learn one thing.

A good curiosity-management system matches your level of curiosity with an appropriate level of engagement with the topic, given your available time and energy.

The downward spiral of poor retention, & feelings of inadequacy

A day in the life of a curious mind looks like this:

• Think of thing you want to learn about, such as the chemical processes behind making soap.
• Instantly go to Wikipedia.
• Follow every link and every footnote.
• Regain consciousness four hours later, with one-hundred tabs open, and no recollection of what you've consumed. Inexplicably, one of the tabs is about the Lorena Bobbitt scandal.
• Feel bad that you got nothing done, and didn't learn much either.

Surplus curiosity

When you don't satisfy your curiosity, despite doing the activities of investigation – such as reading or watching videos – you're overcome with "surplus curiosity." Surplus curiosity is a feeling you should always be investigating more topics.

The anxiety and inadequacy you feel from not satisfying your curiosity cause you to be curious about even more things. This drives a downward spiral: You feel bad for not knowing all you want to know, you want to know more things, but poorly managing your curiosity makes it impossible to satisfy your natural curiosities, much less your surplus curiosities.

The goal of curiosity management: Learn just enough, and remember it

You're not going to stop being curious. Your curiosity is a good thing. But if you can manage your curiosity, you can remember more of what you consume and reduce curiosity pressure. If you successfully reduce curiosity pressure, you'll reduce the anxiety and feelings of inadequacy that actually drive some surplus curiosity.

The fundamental error: All-or-nothing curiosity

The fundamental error most curious minds make is they want to learn everything about a topic the moment they become curious about it. Instead of spending five minutes perusing the Wikipedia page, they watch the four-hour documentary. Instead of reading the book summary, they try to read the whole book.

This drives the downward cycle: At some point, the media they're engaged with calls for more time and energy than their actual curiosity for the topic merits. This causes fatigue and frustration. Yet there are still so many things they want to learn about, and feelings of anxiety and inadequacy flare up. The most immediate solution seems to be to read more, watch more, consume more – surplus curiosity. Yet little of it is absorbed, and the original curiosity that began the cycle is only vaguely satisfied.

The right engagement for the level of curiosity

To engage appropriately with what you're curious about, first assess the level of curiosity. There are three:

• Compulsory curiosity is a feeling that you should know about this. Like, "What is this TikTok thing about?"
• Cursory curiosity is a feeling you'd like to know something about this topic. Like, "What is Marie Curie's story?"
• Compulsive curiosity is a driving obsession to learn everything you can about a topic. If you need an example, you don't need curiosity management.

Of course, as you learn about topics, your level of curiosity may progress. You try TikTok a few minutes and are intrigued. You read the Marie Curie Wikipedia page, and want to learn much more. Your compulsive curiosity may be more intense for one topic than another, or change from day to day.

Three basic components of curiosity management

The main mechanism behind curiosity management is categorizing topics about which you're curious according to the level of curiosity, and engaging with those topics only to the point that your curiosity is either satisfied, or further aroused (with some exceptions).

I propose four components to a good modern curiosity-management system:

1. A rule: Never consume information upon first encountering it: (With one exception, coming up.) Take only a quick glance to assess your level of curiosity about the information, and the informations' potential for satisfying that curiosity. Then put it in the appropriate place, for later processing.
2. Keep a "crumb-time" list: Your crumb-time list has things about which you have either compulsory or cursory curiosity, with a simple action that will satisfy that level of curiosity. Use your crumb-time list during "crumb-time" – those little pockets of time of indefinite shape and size with which you normally do unproductive activities such as check social media or play Wordle. An example list item would be: "Watch a YouTube video on the chemical processes behind making soap."
3. Deep curiosity time blocks: Have regular time blocks for deep investigation about things that have reached the level of compulsive curiosity. Give yourself time to read books, and watch documentaries.
4. "Cheat" pockets: Freewheeling engagement with your curiosity is fun. If you never allow yourself to open a hundred tabs on your browser again, you'll do it anyway and drive the downward spiral. Much like some diets allow a "cheat day," a good curiosity-management system has pockets of time during which you allow yourself to be at the whim of your curiosity. It might be Friday afternoons, or fifteen minutes after lunch – so long as you're actually able to prevent yourself from slipping into internet-induced comas.

Using your curiosity-management system

That's the basic structure of a curiosity-management system, now, some examples of how to use it.

• A topic comes to mind that you'd like to learn about, such as Soviet dekulakization. Don't stop what you're doing or suppress your curiosity. Put it on your crumb-time list to look at later.
• You have a few minutes while waiting for an appointment to start – aka "crumb-time." Open your crumb-time list on your phone, and find a topic that fits the time and energy you have available, and your level of interest. Do a quick search, or visit a link you've already saved. If your curiosity is satisfied, move it to a "done" section of your crumb-time list. If you've become more curious, move it to a "second-level" section, to investigate more, later. If you're intensely curious and have time available within your deep-curiosity blocks, you may graduate to buying a book.
• You see a link you want to investigate, while investigating something else on your crumb-time list. Open it in another tab and give it a quick glance. If you're interested in learning more, put it on your crumb-time list. Close the tab, then get back to the original article.

Note-taking supports curiosity management

You'll better satisfy your curiosity if you don't forget what you've just learned. So, a note-taking system, such as a zettelkasten, supports a curiosity-management system.

Take notes even on items for which you have merely compulsory or cursory curiosity. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You don't even have to take perfect notes. You've just invested time and energy in learning about this topic, so you'll never remember more than you do right now. Jot down a few of the things you remember. It could be as simple and informal as "saponification uses a strong base to break apart fat molecules and make soap."

Start managing your curiosity

Those are my initial thoughts on curiosity management – why it matters, what it consists of, and how to construct a system for managing your curiosity. There are of course many details and inner workings I didn't include, or that would vary from one person to another. Do you find this idea useful? Say hello on Twitter, or email me.

Image: Red Waistcoat by Paul Klee

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• YouTube
• RSS
• Email

Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/curiosity-management/

Five years ago, I wrote about how - after ten years as a self-employed independent creator - I hoped to "make it." I now realize, I never will.

Five years ago, I sat at my keyboard to have a serious conversation with myself. It had been ten years since I had woken up to a day with nothing scheduled, and wondered how I was going to fill it with something that both made life worth living, and also paid the bills.

In this conversation, I asked myself, How did you end up here? Have you made a big mistake? I had spent a good chunk of my retirement savings, left Silicon Valley in the midst of a boom, and now found myself barely getting by in South America.

About a thousand words in, I stopped and cracked into tears, not only because I was scared out of my mind, but because still – despite not seeing a clear path to making this work - I couldn't see myself giving up. I concluded:

Take it from me, a ten-year veteran self-employed creator: If you are looking for security or reassurance, I do not recommend this line of work. However, if you are burning with curiosity – if your heart and intuition lead you to do things that don't make sense – well, then you don't really have a choice in the matter, do you?

When I was done with that conversation, I had a massive vulnerability hangover. I felt embarrassed to publish it, but since I had resolved to be writer, I felt I had to. However, I didn't do anything I normally did to promote a post: no Medium publication, no email blast, no podcast episode, not even a tweet. I just quietly pressed "Publish" and got on with my day.

It slowly, then quickly, became the most popular thing I had ever written.

Now, five years later, I've been a full-time creator for fifteen years. (It wasn't called that when I started. I was just a weird guy who wouldn't get a job.) Not long after publishing my personal conversation, I started publicly reporting my income on my blog. While more famous bloggers were excitedly reporting six- and seven-figure months, I was reporting one three-thousand-dollar month after another. One month I even lost money.

However, about a year ago, my numbers started to climb. I recently reported a six-figure-year for the first time. I had made six-figures before the reports, but most of that was from an uninspiring blog I had written under a pseudonym. This was the first time I could look at every dollar I had made and say to myself, "I made this money doing exactly what I want to be doing. I am officially me for a living."

I looked in the mirror later that day at the gray hairs that have come to dominate my beard and the stray ones sprouting from my temples. I thought back to when I was twenty-five and I'd stare in the mirror, looking at the young man I felt was full of potential, but who had no idea how to get out of Nebraska. Every cell of skin and hair on my body had regenerated since then, but I figured I still had the same eyes. So I looked into them and said, "You did it, kid. You made it."

Not the next day, nor the day after that, but soon after, I felt a deeper emptiness than I had before. I thought back to my twenty-five year old self hearing for the hundredth time the CAD technician with hair as tall as the man was wide yell out, as he waddled through the break room, "Kadavy, with another Banquet meal!" Those microwaveable meals had been frequently on sale at Hy-Vee, ten for eight dollars, and the best strategy I could come up with in 2004 had been to save up and buy Apple and Google stock. As I had rolled my eyes and sighed at the Office-Space-like monotony of my existence, I would have gladly traded places with my current life.

I had struggled for so long, so hard, and had passed up so many other opportunities a normal person would have taken. I risked failure, and hadn't failed. Why did I feel a lack of inspiration, a malaise?

Around that time, I read and resonated deeply with an essay by Joan Didion, where she marvels at how a six-month stay in New York crept into eight years, "with the deceptive ease of a film dissolve." Young, foolish, and non-committal, she felt she "could stay up all night and make mistakes, and none of it would count." It wasn't until it was over she had realized, "it had counted after all."

The dozenth friend said to me recently, "If you can sell 25,000 copies of a book, do you have any idea how much you could make on a course, consulting, or coaching!?" I politely explained I had heard the same many times before and I had tried courses, consulting, and coaching, and didn't enjoy them. Basically, what I wrote five years ago:

I want to make a living creating. I don't want creating to be merely a marketing strategy for other things. Is that completely insane?

This friend, like seemingly all I had at the beginning of this fifteen-journey, is now a millionaire. Did I feel this emptiness because it had taken so long to get here? Because there are many more definitions of "making it," financially, beyond a six-figure income – that everyone else seems to reach so easily? I know every time I hear an outrageously popular twenty-something creator on a podcast say, "I wrote online for a long time before I had success. Like eight months," I scoff and wonder, Just how fucking bad at this am I?

Maybe this six-figure milestone so close to my fifteen-year anniversary was just a reminder that it had all counted. Maybe it brings to the surface memories of the times I almost had a big break: Like the time I paid my own way to fly from Colombia to San Francisco to be interviewed on a massive podcast, only for them to can it. Or the time a big chest-thumping entrepreneur podcast didn't run my interview because I openly told them how little money I made (given my public income reports, I wonder why they bothered inviting me).

Or, maybe I had failed at what I had actually wanted, but had invented a false goal ex post-facto, so what counted wouldn't feel as if it had gone to waste.

I dug into the paper trail I've left throughout this journey. The stack of journals I've collected confirmed that this, indeed, was something I had wanted all along. In 2007, just before getting fired, I wrote, "I have lots of projects in mind, but the main one is making 'being David Kadavy' my full-time job." There it was, plain as day.

As I continued my investigation into potential revisionist history, I re-read my conversation to myself after ten years as a creator, and saw a graph:

On New Year's Eve, as 2008 turned to 2009, I stayed home by myself and schemed on my mission to make it as a creator. I knelt on the hardwood next to my portable radiator and drew this graph on an eleven-dollar piece of tileboard from The Home Depot. The plan was for "Active" income to give way to "Passive" income, to give way to "Speculative" income. In other words, I would freelance just enough to get by, build passive income on the side, and as that passive income built, I would follow my curiosity and see what I could find.

I had done exactly that: I had freelanced ten hours a week, made $150,000 on a passive income stream, and through the exploration I had done on the side, gotten my first book deal, then built this career as an author. I had followed my plan perfectly.

When a successful author friend had warned me not to write my first book – that there were better ways to make a living – I had reasoned I was just starting, maybe after ten years I'd be really good. In the back of my mind, I thought I could do it faster. Suffice to say, this has taken way longer than I had imagined.

Didion's essay resonated with me because some part of me didn't expect these years to count. At forty-three, with one parent gone, having narrowly-missed losing the other, and with my own body declining, I feel as if I'm in the final levels of a video game. I've gained power-ups and magic swords hidden along the way and in many ways feel more capable than ever. But that meter at the bottom of the screen marked "life" is lower, and I'm increasingly paranoid I'll be devoured by a dragon before I storm the castle.

I ultimately realized, this emptiness wasn't unfamiliar. I had felt it in some small way at every major milestone in this journey. With every goal I had achieved, there had been emptiness that followed the absence of that goal. That emptiness was soon replaced by the pursuit of the next. But, this was the top of the mountain. There was no next goal on the horizon.

Maybe I should feel bad for how long this has taken. Maybe I'm putting up blinders I won't see around until it's too late, and I'll later be overcome by crippling regret. More likely, the journey is the destination. The beginning of each creative project is characterized by an emptiness, a void that must be filled through the act of creation. It's a great feeling to go from spinning your wheels to getting traction, but ultimately, you want to go back to the starting line and do it again. To once more see if you can storm the castle.

You could argue I feel this way because this struggle is all I know. I've been at it so long, like Red and Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption, I've become "institutionalized." But one got busy living and the other got busy dying, and as Victor Frankl has said, "What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task."

So, after fifteen years, I've "made it" as a creator, financially-speaking, in a relatively minor way, for now. But maybe the best part of making it is realizing you now have the privilege of feeling you haven't. So you can freely struggle to reach your destination, only to do it again.

Take it from me, a fifteen-year veteran self-employed creator: You're burning with curiosity. Your heart and intuition lead you to do things that don't make sense. You feel you have no choice but to take this path. But be forewarned: Once you get to where you so deeply ache to arrive, your journey won't be over. You can "make it" in one way or another, but to be happy with this life, you must always find a way to feel you still haven't.

Photo by Ryan Halvorsen

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• YouTube
• RSS
• Email

Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/fifteen-years/

I recently advertised my book on a billboard in Times Square. It was cheaper than you think, and was up for less time than you might expect. But it's still paying dividends.

Times Square is a big deal (duh)

Times Square is the epitome of mainstream success. The biggest brands have locations there, and any big brand you can name advertises there. 350,000 people walk through Times Square on a typical day.

It's also one of the most-photographed places on Earth, with many of those photos and videos being shared on television shows such as Good Morning America, and on TikTok or Instagram.

A lowly self-published book advertised next to the biggest brands

When my friend, Robbie Abed, told me you can advertise in Times Square for cheap, I knew I had to run an ad for Mind Management, Not Time Management. A book about a new approach to time management, in a city obsessed with time management, in a place with "time" right in the name? It was a match made in heaven!

The very thought of my lowly self-published book advertised on the front of Forever 21, above a Sunglass Hut, across from the Disney store, next to McDonald's, in Times Square made me laugh the maniacal laughter of an evil villain plotting to take over the world – in some Disney movie, of course.

Will a billboard sell books?

Before I explain how I advertised in Times Square for cheap, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Will advertising on a billboard sell books?"

You're right to think that since people are walking or driving through Times Square, even if they noticed my billboard in this place that is nearly all billboards, they're not going to stop what they're doing, take out their phones, and order my book on Amazon.

The making of a pseudo-event

But that's not the point. By advertising my book in Times Square, I was creating a "pseudo-event". I talked about pseudo-events in my summary of Daniel J. Boorstin's The Image on episode 257.

A pseudo-event is a reality constructed just so it can be covered in media. By being covered in media, the constructed reality becomes reality.

Pseudo-events can be funny, or horrifying. They can be based upon truth, or lies. But our media is full of them. Most "leaks" you see, every talk-show interview, and every planned event are pseudo-events. Instagram is one pseudo-event after another. Reality is constructed for media, and media constructs our reality.

My book really was advertised in Times Square. My lowly self-published book really is a "big deal."

How much does a Times Square ad cost?

People want to know, how much does it cost to advertise your book in Times Square? Some people guess five-thousand dollars. Some guess twenty-.

I advertised my book on a Times Square billboard with Blip Billboards. Blip is a platform that lets you buy short displays of an ad on electronic billboards across the U.S. Each "blip" lasts fifteen seconds. I paid about nine cents per blip in tests I ran in Chicago, and had a blip run in Times Square for as little as twenty dollars.

"As little as" twenty dollars? I'll get into my exact costs in a bit. But first, was my pseudo-event worth it? Here are some of my wins from this fifteen-second ad so far.

Win #1: A retweet from Tim Ferriss

My first big win from my Times Square billboard was a retweet from Tim Ferriss.

Tim Ferriss asks his podcast guests what message they would advertise to the world. I've always thought if I were asked that question, my answer would be the title of my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management.

So, I made sure one of my billboards was as plain as possible. It just said, "Mind Management, Not Time Management."

Then, I shared a video of the billboard on Twitter, making sure to tag Tim (whom I've never met nor talked to).

It was a long shot, but it worked. Tim retweeted it.

Tim has 1.8 million followers. I did see a decent spike in sales. Hard to know if this was the cause, but I didn't have competing promotions.

Win #2: Speaking for the New York Public Library

My second win was speaking for the New York Public Library.

When I emailed my readers to let them know my book was advertised in Times Square, it turned out one reader organizes events for the New York Public Library. This reader was excited to hear about my book being advertised in Times Square, and this prompted them to invite me to speak over Zoom to the library's audience.

They promoted the event to their email list of one million subscribers, and the day before the event, my new friend there informed me that:

• The NYPL stocked all of my books, in paper, ebook, and audiobook formats.
• My event was featured on NYPL's home page
• My book was selected as the NYPL Business Center's "book of the month."

The video of my speaking event is now listed on the library's CEO series page, along with talks by Marie Forleo, Seth Godin, and A.J. Jacobs. I also got a couple links to my website from nypl.org, high-authority links which boost my site in search rankings.

Win #3: Advertising that paid for itself

My third win is that some of my advertising paid for itself. And I don't mean through book sales.

If you sign up for Blip, you'll get $25 free advertising credit. Some people have already used that link, and apparently spent enough for me to also earn a couple $50 credits, which reduced the price of my ads!

Win #4: ?

My Times Square ad came and went in a flash, but it continues to pay dividends I can't predict. For example, in May I was telling someone at a conference in Phoenix about advertising in Times Square, and it turned out they had already seen one of my posts about it.

There's no telling who is reading this article, and what effect it will have on them. Like I talked about on episode 280, hidden complexity makes simple actions very powerful. Fun pseudo-events like this breed positive Black Swans.

A pseudo-event lasts a moment, but lives on forever. A Times Square ad lasts a moment, but the photo, video, and story lasts forever.

What did this cost?

I advertised on a Times Square billboard for as little as $20, but what did this all cost in the end? Here's the breakdown:

• Chicago test campaign: $65.58 (I ran some test campaigns in Chicago, to get familiar with the system.)
• Times Square campaign: $290 (I ran a small test, got impressions for as little as $20, but then increased my bids and budget to be sure the ad would run during a given time block.)
• Photographer: $200 (I got referred to a photographer from my friend, Robbie Abed, who had found them on Craigslist. I hired them for the one hour my ads were scheduled to run.)
• Blip referral credits: -$100 (A couple people must have used my referral link, and spent enough for me to get $50 in credits each.)
• Total cost: $455.58

This was a really fun campaign, and though the ROI isn't as clear as the Amazon ads I talk about in my income reports, I think it's safe to say it has been paying off, and still is.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• YouTube
• RSS
• Email

Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/book-times-square-billboard/

In fifteen years as a self-employed creator, I've learned how to finish what matters. I follow a nine-step process that makes an easy-to-remember acronym, that also describes what this process does: E.R.A.S.E. F.E.A.R.

Fear is Resistance

Fear is at the root of most struggles to finish creative projects. Even when you think you're merely getting interested in another project, that's often fear masquerading as curiosity. Steven Pressfield calls it Resistance. It can cause the dreaded shiny object syndrome.

But if you can break down most of the sources of fear, you can clear the way for decisive action. You can erase fear.

The E.R.A.S.E. F.E.A.R process

First, what does "erase fear" stand for?

1. Envision the outcome
2. Rehearse the process
3. Ask questions
4. Search for answers
5. Enjoy the process
6. Face the obstacles
7. End perfectionism
8. Assess the outcome
9. Record the process

A little more about each of those.

1. Envision the outcome. If you have a clear picture of the outcome you want, you can reverse-engineer your way to making it happen.

Executing visions is a skill to work on, because we usually have a vision that outpaces our current abilities and resources. To get better at envisioning, work on your vision muscle. Practice having a vision, then carrying it out. You do this every time you cook a recipe or plan a party.

Write down the outcome you'd like to see. Use the methodology I described on episode 245, about the avocado challenge, to rate your odds of success.

2. Rehearse the process. Once you have a vision, mentally rehearse the steps. Do you have any idea what steps to follow to make this vision a reality?

I want "Goldilocks" fear in my projects. If you know exactly what to do, it won't be fun. If you don't know where to begin, you'll be paralyzed. You want just the right amount of fear, to keep it interesting.

If you're too familiar with the process, ask yourself, How can you scale up your vision? If you're too unfamiliar, ask yourself, How can you scale it down?

3. Ask questions about the gaps in your knowledge.

Now you have a vision that challenges you just the right amount. There are parts of the process you don't understand. These unknowns can be sources of fear: They could turn out to be way more complicated than you expected, which would put in jeopardy your ability to follow through.

Write down the questions you have about the process.

4. Search for answers. Look at your questions about the process. Set aside time and energy to answer them.

You can make a surprising amount of progress just guessing. Before you ask anyone else, ask yourself, How would I do this? You might find a new way of doing things.

If too much is unknown, you may have to scale back your vision once again. If it's all too easy, you may need to scale it up. But don't get frustrated if you don't find all the answers. You'll learn them in the next step.

5. Enjoy the process. You've planned and worked to pick the right project. But you can't go into it without some unknowns. Otherwise, by definition, it wouldn't be a creative project. You'll find the rest of the answers to your questions in the act of doing.

This is where you need to do a little mental wrestling. Whatever fear you have, flip it over and slam it on its back. Turn that fear into excitement about discovery.

If you've done the first four steps well, picking the right-sized project with the right amount of uncertainty, you'll be able to pull this off.

6. Face the obstacles. As hard as you try to take on a project you can handle, you're going to run into obstacles.

Fear often manifests itself as convenient excuses. The most dangerous excuses are the true ones. Yes, your project hasn't gone as planned or a bomb went off in your personal life, but that doesn't mean this is impossible.

Slaughter your scapegoats and move forward. Anything worth doing requires some grit.

7. End perfectionism. You're nearing the end of your project. In fact, you could ship it right now. That is, if it weren't for perfectionism.

Perfectionism can turn the final five percent of a project into a hundred-five percent. Just when you put on one "final touch", you notice another that needs to be improved.

Part of this is due to the Finisher's Paradox, which I talked about on episode 267: You learn in the process of a project, so by the end, you can already do better.

Another part of it is fear. Fear makes you anxious. When you're anxious, you notice imperfections. Some of those imperfections are figments of your imagination.

You've done all you can up to this point to erase fear, but there's still going to be some in the final stretch. Know perfectionism is there, and push through to ship. Like I talked about on episode 265, shipping is a skill.

8. Assess the outcome. Even though we're done with the project, we're not done erasing fear. Now that your project is out in the world, ask yourself, How did it turn out?

Look back on the vision you wrote down, and your predictions about success. Does it fit that vision, and if not, why? What did you not foresee? What would you do differently next time? Write it down.

9. Record the process. Reflect on the actual process you followed. Write it down, and brainstorm how you might do it better next time.

You now have a process you can follow, even if it's just a Sloppy Operating Procedure, like I talked about on episode 224.

Preparation is the antidote to fear. The next time you do a project like this, you can do it a little bigger, so you add a few unknowns to the new process that keep it interesting.

Go forth and erase fear

This process is exactly how I erase fear in my projects, whether it's in the three books I've written, or more than 280 podcast episodes. I hope it works for you, too.

Image: Broadway Boogie Woogie, by Piet Mondrian

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• YouTube
• RSS
• Email

Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/erase-fear/

When Facebook was first expanding, they used a timeless military strategy to win their most-crucial first users. You can use this strategy to attack your toughest projects, by leveraging hidden complexity to lend devastating power to simple actions.

Facebook faced tough competitors

When Facebook was starting, in the mid-aughts, it was only available at colleges. It wasn't easy to win new users on campuses that had their own social networks. Who wants to join the network nobody is on? That's not where you find the big parties. That's not how you spy on your crush.

There was no point in promoting to students who already had better alternatives. Facebook would waste their limited resources, driving themselves out of business. There were plenty of competitors they needed to outlast.

An established network at a college was a barrier to winning over any user at that college – a "defense," if you will. Facebook needed to break through those barriers.

The surround strategy: Attack from the flanks

So they used what they called a "surround strategy". Instead of directly trying to get users on a given campus, they got them indirectly.

The strategy that decimated the Roman army 1800 years ago

Facebook's surround strategy was borrowed from the "pincer" military strategy. When you're up against an opponent with strong defenses, it's often not the best use of your resources to attack them head-on. It's better to focus on the flanks.

Hannibal used a pincer strategy in one of the greatest military upsets in history, at the Battle of Cannae, in 216 B.C., sending the Roman empire into a panic. As the Romans attacked from a concentrated center, the center of Hannibal's forces fell back, creating a "crescent" shape that helped them attack the flanks. Eventually, Hannibal had the Romans surrounded.

The Romans lost so many men that day, they had to lower the draft age to replenish their forces, and they reverted to using human sacrifices to try to please the gods.

How Facebook won key users indirectly

Facebook used this pincer strategy to indirectly win users at Baylor University, in Texas, which already had its own social network. Instead of promoting Facebook to users at Baylor, they focused on campuses near Baylor

There weren't already competing social networks at UT Arlington, a one and a half-hour drive to the north; Southwestern University, a one-hour drive to the southwest; and Texas A&M, a one and a half-hour drive to the southeast.

To get the dirt on their exes, they needed to be on Facebook

While Facebook wasn't wasting resources trying to get Baylor students to switch social networks, those students started to hear about Facebook, anyway. The students in these surrounding colleges were former high-school classmates of the Baylor students. They were driving to one another's campuses to bong beers and eat jello shots. They were hearing rumors their high-school sweethearts were getting naked with half the campus. They were laughing maniacally upon hearing the former bully was found passed out, naked with an armadillo.

To get the dirt, to creep on one another's profiles, or, sometimes to just stay in touch, they too needed Facebook accounts. So, without any promotion at Baylor, Facebook started winning users at Baylor.

The birthday problem reveals the hidden complexity that make the surround strategy work

This surround strategy works better than people expect it to. To understand why, think about the birthday problem, which I talked about on episode 237. How many people have to be in a room for a fifty-percent chance two of them have the same birthday? Most people guess 180 or 150, but the real answer: only twenty-three.

The odds of shared birthdays climb rapidly as you add the first few dozen people to the room. Network effects between each person's potential birthdates quickly add potential matches. Adding one person to a room of twenty people doesn't add just one potential match, it adds twenty.

Network effects...outside the network

Facebook's surround strategy leveraged these network effects. The colleges they focused on didn't have social networks, so Facebook quickly became very appealing, as they added users.

Meanwhile, Facebook also became more appealing to the students at Baylor. Who wants to use a social network that only has students from your college?!

With each new user Facebook added in a neighboring campus, they added multiple contacts to potential new users at Baylor. After someone heard about Facebook enough times, they had to sign up.

As Hannibal's men surrounded Rome's, there were more angles from which each soldier on Hannibal's front could attack soldiers on Rome's front, but not vice-versa. A complementary strategy to the pincer is also the "pocket," or isolating small portions of a battalion to conquer them bit by bit.

Surround & conquer your dreams

Now, how can you use this surround strategy on some of your biggest and most-intimidating visions? When you want to accomplish something that's too big to attack head-on, use the surround strategy to break down the project's defenses.

Here's how to surround, and conquer, your toughest projects:

1. Make a list of all the things you'd need to know or have to accomplish your goal.
2. Brainstorm ways you could learn those skills or gain those resources with smaller projects.
3. Take on the smaller projects that are most interesting to you, or that use your existing resources.

As you take on these smaller projects related to your target project, network effects take over. The skills and resources you gain will make the larger project seem easier than it would otherwise, and you get some successes to build your confidence along the way, and learn the skill of shipping, like I talked about on episode 265.

Surround & conquer Shakespeare

Here's a very simple example: Let's say you want to read a Shakespeare play, but you can't keep track of what everyone is saying in that language that doth make one scratch one's head. Do this:

• Watch the movie.
• Read the Wikipedia page.
• Listen to the podcast.
• Finally, read the play.

By staking out the easier-to-conquer territory in your mind, it's easier to conquer the more-fortified territory, and run back for supplies – or a reminder of what the heck is going on, based upon the other ways you've heard the story.

How creators surround & conquer

Other creators use the surround strategy, whether they say so, or not.

• Before the Steves Jobs and Wozniak built their first Mac, they worked on "blue boxes" they used to tap into phone networks and make prank calls. It was just a fun and mischievous and illegal project, but it helped build their collaborative relationship on something smaller and less complex.
• Henry Ford got a job working on steam engines, while running experiments in his garage to perfect the internal combustion engine. He made a living gaining the background he needed, and making connections with potential investors, while on nights and weekends he tinkered on the finer details.
• Michelangelo didn't paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling from scratch. He had libraries of plaster-casted drapery and terra cotta body parts he mixed and matched to draw compelling figures in his scenes.

How I use the surround strategy

I, personally, use the surround strategy whenever I can. For example, I want to write fiction, though I'm not a huge fiction reader myself. But, I do like movies.

So, I've been reading screenplays of my favorite movies and reading the novels those movies are based upon, while dabbling in short stories under a pen name, and working on my storytelling skills in my non-fiction writing whenever possible. I'm learning to love fiction, while working on my fiction-writing skills.

In fact, all my work is a surround strategy for conquering new books. Each of my tweets, my weekly Love Mondays newsletters, my podcast episodes and articles and notes in my Zettelkasten, are experiments with progressively larger ideas, the best of which build into a book every few years or so.

Go forth and conquer

The next time you're dreaming about something that seems impossible, surround it with projects that are possible. Then, your bigger dreams will be easier to conquer.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• YouTube
• RSS
• Email

Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/surround-conquer/

Industrial Society and Its Future, is otherwise known as "The Unabomber Manifesto," written by Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynsnki is a terrorist who killed three people, and injured twenty-three others, by sending bombs through the mail, between 1978 and 1995. He used his terror campaign to exploit the negativity bias of media and pressure the Washington Post and New York Times into publishing his 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto.

Obviously, what Kaczynski did was horrible, but his manifesto is a thought-provoking, albeit extreme, perspective on technology. And so here is my summary of Industrial Society and Its Future.

Leftism creeps towards totalitarianism

The manifesto begins with a seemingly out-of-place rant about leftism creeping toward totalitarianism: According to Kaczynski, leftists have low self-esteem, are defeatist, and hate themselves. They hate success, and feel the groups they try to protect are inferior. They are overburdened by guilt over their natural drives, and so want to turn into issues of morality things that don't have anything to do with morality, such as policing the use of words to which they themselves have applied negative connotations.

Anti-left is not far-right

When people hear anti-leftism, they tend to assume the person with those views is far-right. But it's worth noting that's not Kaczynski's view. A quote, for example:

[Leftists] want to preserve African American culture. But in what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a black- style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects most leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle-class ideals.

In sum, Kaczynski is anti-left, because ultimately leftists still work to preserve the industrial system.

This appears to come out of "left-field," but the meat of the manifesto is more coherent, and later we'll better understand why he brought up his views on leftism.

Industrial society robs us of the "Power Process"

As industrial society progresses, Kaczynski says, people lose more and more freedom. This makes them miserable, because it robs them of what he calls the "power process."

The power process consists of four main elements:

1. A goal
2. Effort put forth toward that goal
3. The attainment of that goal
4. Autonomy in pursuit of that goal

To be happy, a person needs goals that require effort, a reasonable rate of success in achieving those goals, and personal control throughout that process.

We replace the power process with "surrogate activities"

You might think we, in industrial society, have many goals we pursue and attain through effort, but Kaczynski says we merely pursue what he calls "surrogate activities." Surrogate activities are artificial goals, because they aren't for the purposes of meeting our basic biological needs, and so aren't totally fulfilling.

He says we merely think surrogate activities, such as our jobs, are fulfilling, because we have to do very little in industrial society to meet our basic biological needs – such as eating, or having shelter. So, we've never felt true fulfillment.

All we do is either easy or impossible

He says there are three kinds of drives we experience in the pursuit of goals: 1) minimal effort, 2) serious effort and 3) impossible. The power process, he says, is more about group two, or serious effort.

Our surrogate activities require minimal effort. But at the same time, many other things are impossible in industrial society, because we don't have control over them. For example, our security depends upon decisions made by others, such as safety standards at a nuclear power plant, how much pesticide is in our foods, and how much pollution is in our air. Somebody else makes these decisions for us, and in many cases we can't even know if what we're being told is true.

As technology grants freedoms, it takes them away

He points out that technology seems to grant us freedoms, but it really takes them away. As each advance in technology is collectively accepted, we lose control in some new area.

Cars have become so ubiquitous you can't walk in many places. So you need to get further integrated into the industrial system by getting a drivers' license, insurance, and registration. Or, you can take the bus and have even less freedom.

As we're increasingly able to alter our genes, it will become harder to enforce a code of ethics. First, genetic engineering will be used to treat genetic diseases, then further alterations will be seen as "good." The upper class will decide what's good or not, until we have a genetically-engineered upper class, and a distantly-lower class taking genetic rolls of the dice. (This is already happening, as gene splicing is being used to treat diseases such as sickle-cell anemia, meanwhile a scientist in China crossed the agreed-upon ethics line and genetically-engineered children.)

We'll outsource decisions to computers, until we no longer understand ourselves the decisions the computers are making. So we'll keep them running to keep the system afloat. At that point, the machines will be in control.

Kaczynski thinks mood-altering drugs are over-prescribed, often just to deal with the psychological stress of living in industrial society. If more people need, say, antidepressants to tolerate living in a depressing world, that world is then allowed to get even more depressing, until the drugs are a requirement. (This reminds me of the soma everyone in modern society takes in the dystopian science-fiction book, Brave New World. That book has also been made into a series.)

My thoughts: Coronavirus and the power process

I couldn't help but think about this loss of control Kaczynski describes as I watched people's behavior during the coronavirus pandemic. While I personally chose to follow protocols and get a vaccine, it was an interesting moment when industrial society clashed with individual autonomy.

To sustain industrial society – which is so ubiquitous it's impossible to "opt-out" – institutions deemed it necessary to make blanket decisions on the behalf of individuals. Some people weren't cool with that. Whether their reasoning made logical sense was irrelevant – the emotional roots of their reactions were understandable.

Industrial society and the gig economy

One thought-provoking quote from the manifesto sounds like a prediction of the gig economy.

It has been suggested, for example, that a great development of the service industries might provide work for human beings. Thus people would spent [sic] their time shining each other's shoes, driving each other around in taxicabs, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other's tables, etc. This seems to [me] a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up, and [I] doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives in such pointless busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets (drugs, crime, "cults," hate groups) unless they were biologically or psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.

Industrial society makes us fear mortality

Your immediate reaction might be that industrial society is worth the lack of control. It increases average lifespan, and prevents early deaths from infant mortality, disease, or relatively easy fixes, such as an appendicitis.

Kaczynski says our obsession with longevity and staying youthful is a symptom of our lack of fulfillment, due to the disruption of the power process. If we lived lives full of autonomous struggle toward goals that directly met our biological needs, we would be more at peace with aging and death. A quote:

It is not the primitive man, who has used his body daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man, who has never had a practical use for his body beyond walking from his car to his house.

Activism is a surrogate activity

He then ties the disruption of the power process back to his criticism of leftism. He says leftists' surrogate activity is activism, or joining social movements. They have a goal, and struggle toward achieving that goal, but they'll never be satisfied. This, he says, is how leftism creeps toward totalitarianism. Once one goal is achieved, another will be invented.

The proposed plan: let the system destroy itself

His entire manifesto is written from the perspective of "we." He poses as a group of people called "FC," standing for "Freedom Club," and presents a strategy for his goal of destroying industrial society, and replacing it with primitive society.

Kaczynski points out that modernity separates us from our local communities. We break ties to family and move, so we can work a job, in the name of efficiency. He advocates for living in small groups, and growing his anti-technology movement by having as many children as possible.

The conflict line: masses vs. power-holding elites

Interestingly, he says to draw the conflict line in this movement between the masses and the power-holding elites, and cautions specifically against turning it into a conflict between those who are revolutionaries and those who are not.

This is some impressive strategic thinking, as it was also mentioned in the book, Blueprint for Revolution. I interviewed the author, Srdja Popovic, on episode 179. Popovic pointed out, for example, that Occupy Wall Street was a poorly-branded movement, because it drew a conflict line between those who could participate by camping out in the financial district, and those who could not. Calling it "the 99%" would have drawn a more effective conflict line.

Don't strive for political power

Counterintuitively, Kaczynski advises to not try to gain political power. He says that if the "green" party were to get voted into office, it would cause massive unemployment, they would get voted out of office, and it would turn people off to the party. He supported free trade agreements such as NAFTA, because he felt it would further integrate the industrial system, making it more likely it would collapse, and causing such a collapse to be more widespread.

He says to be anti-left – and this is where we start to see the motives behind his seemingly-out-of-place opening rant. He doesn't want to see leftists take over his movement, because he thinks they would replace the goal of eliminating modern technology with their own goals. He says leftists will never give up technology because ultimately they crave power.

Basically, he doesn't want to work within any existing structures of industrial society. He instead wants to see living in industrial society get so bad that the hardships can only be blamed on the system.

Small-scale technology is more robust than large-scale

He says small-scale technology is robust to shocks – local things such as planting crops, raising livestock, or making clothes. He points out that when the Roman Empire fell, people in villages could still make a water wheel or steel. But the aqueducts were never rebuilt, their road-construction techniques were lost, and urban sanitation was forgotten.

Media manipulation, aka, why the Unabomber killed people

Many people these days are surprised to find out that the Unabomber Manifesto contains intelligent and coherent ideas. They merely think of Ted Kaczynski as a mentally-ill murderer. If he's so intelligent, why did he kill people?

In the manifesto itself, Kaczynski explains that he felt this was the only way to get his message out. He reasons that if he had merely submitted his writings to a publisher, they would have been rejected. If they had been published, they wouldn't have attracted readers, because everyone is too distracted by entertainment. So, he says, "In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we've had to kill people."

Our obsession with violence caused violence

As explained in my Trust Me, I'm Lying summary, humans have a negativity bias, and so media has a negativity bias. Ironically, this is a case where our paranoia about negative events apparently caused negative events. Newspapers and news shows covered Kaczynski's terror campaign for more than fifteen years, until he sent his manuscript, typed on a typewriter, to several newspapers, essentially saying: Publish this, and I'll stop killing people.

What Kaczynski did to get coverage makes the tactics Ryan Holiday confessed to look like actions of a saint. His bombings were "pseudo-events" with very real consequences.

Assuming this was truly Kaczynski's strategy – and not a backwards-rationalization he came up with after doing what he simply wanted to do – was it an effective strategy? His reputation precedes him, such that people resist taking his manifesto seriously, given what he did. While he got his words published, even nearly thirty years after his last bombing, it's hard to see his words through the dark cloud of his crimes.

The manifesto helped catch the Unabomber

Publishing the manifesto was an effective strategy for law enforcement in catching Kaczynski. Attorney General Janet Reno gave the okay for the Post and Times to publish the manifesto. This put it in front of enough people the FBI was finally able to identify the anonymous killer. Kaczynski's brother's wife recognized him from what he said in the manifesto.

Was this the explosion before the implosion?

Reading Kaczynski, I can't help but wonder, If he could have held off a little longer or been born in a different time, might he might have been able to tolerate society?

Kaczynski's terror campaign spanned a peak in what Marshall McLuhan calls "mechanical technology." As his campaign was ending, in 1995, the internet was proliferating – an "electric technology."

This was a world where having a job meant commuting to an office, following a dress code, and working within a hierarchical organization. Once you were home, your only contact with others besides your family or people you called on the phone was media fed to you through your television or radio, or through objects that had to be transported, such as paper books, magazines, records, or VHS tapes.

The internet has de-mechanized our world

But the internet has further de-mechanized our world. More creators, such as myself, work with near-complete autonomy, outside of traditional hierarchies. People connect with one another around interests. We communicate without borders.

As Marshall McLuhan described in Understanding Media (which I summarized on episode 248), mechanical technology "explodes" our world – an unfortunate but apt metaphor in this context. Mechanical technology compromises our individuality to turn us into cogs that fit together, while electric technology "implodes," allowing our individuality to once again blossom.

In 1998, the Washington Post reported that Kaczynski nearly confessed to a psychologist, in the late 60s, that he fantasized about being a woman. He didn't confess, and later cited that as the moment he decided to become violent. Maybe if his gender dysphoria had been more acceptable, his path may have been different?

Today's society may not be the small-scale society Kaczynski envisioned, and this electric implosion certainly has its problems, especially as it conflicts with the structures in place from the mechanical world. But, maybe it would be just a little less pressure, so as to prevent trying to blow up the place.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• YouTube
• RSS
• Email

Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/industrial-society-and-its-future-summary/

There are some invisible structures in language, and using them can be the difference between your message being forgotten or living through the ages. These are The Elements of Eloquence, which is the title of Mark Forsyth's book. I first picked this up a couple years ago, and have read it several times since then. I think it's one of the best writing books, and has dramatically improved my writing. Here is my summary of The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase.

How powerful could this stuff be?

Can hidden patterns in language really be the difference between being remembered and forgotten? The technical term for the study of these patterns is "rhetoric," and yes, it can make a big difference.

Misremembered phrases

While it's hard to find data on what has been forgotten – see 99.9% of everything ever said or written – there are examples of things that have been misremembered.

• You've heard the expression, "blood, sweat, and tears." That comes from a Winston Churchill speech. He actually said he had "nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."
• Remember when, in The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West said, "Fly, my pretties, fly!"? Well, it never happened. She actually merely exclaimed "Fly!" four times in a row.
• The line remembered as "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned", was actually "Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned."

I'll get into some theories about why these phrases were misremembered in a bit.

Non-sensical expressions

You can also see evidence of the power of rhetoric in expressions that have spread through culture. Sometimes they don't make literal sense, but have appealing patterns.

• It "takes two to tango," but why not "it takes two to waltz"?
• People go "whole hog," but why not "whole pig"?
• Why "cool as a cucumber"?
• Why "dead as a doornail"?

Alliteration

You may have noticed these phrases all have alliteration, which is the simplest of rhetorical forms. You're probably already familiar with it. All you have to do to use alliteration is start a couple words in a phrase with the same letter.

I've noticed some evidence of the power of alliteration looking at expressions across English and Spanish. For example, if you directly translated "the tables have turned," which is said often, nobody would know what you were talking about. But they would understand if you directly translated "the things have changed," which nobody says. In Spanish, that's "las cosas han cambiado." See? Alliteration.

Tricolon

So, why was Winston Churchill's quote misremembered as "blood, sweat, and tears." Forsyth thinks it was probably because the tricolon is more appealing than the tetracolon.

A tricolon is when three things are listed, a tetracolon, four. Famous tricolons include, "Eat, drink, and be merry," and "It's a bird! It's a plane! It's superman." Barack Obama's short victory speech in 2008 had twenty-one tricolons.

Forsyth points out that tricolons seem to be more memorable if the first two things are short and closely-related, and the final thing is longer and a little more abstract. Like, "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Isocolon

Tricolon is three things, tetracolon is four, so is isocolon just one? In a way. An isocolon is not one thing, but one structure, repeated two times. For example, "Roses are red. Violets are blue."

Epizeuxis

When you do repeat one thing, that's called epizeuxis. So, when the Wicked Witch of the West said, "Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!," that was epizeuxis, but it didn't turn out to be memorable.

Diacope

People think the Wicked Witch of the West said "Fly, my pretties, fly!" That structure is called a diacope, which is essentially a verbal sandwich. It's one word or phrase, then another word or phrase, then that same word or phrase once again.

So "Burn, baby burn," from the song "Disco Inferno" was diacope, and so was one of the most famous lines in film, "Bond. James Bond."

Why do people think the Wicked Witch of the West said, "Fly, my pretties, fly!"? Probably not only because diacope is a more memorable form than epizeuxis, but also because there's other diacope in the film, such as "Run, Toto. Run!"

Zeugma

So, why did the phrase "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," live on? I notice there's some alliteration in the phrase ("Hell hath..."), but Forsyth doesn't attribute any rhetorical structures to the phrase. However – besides the sweeping generalization about women that can't help but tickle the tribal human mind – the actual, original phrase came in the form of zeugma.

Zeugma is using one verb to apply action to multiple clauses. So if you write "Tom likes whisky, Dick vodka, Harry crack cocaine," you're using the verb "likes" one time for all three clauses, instead of repeating it.

So the original phrase was from a seventeenth-century play called The Mourning Bride, and, once again, went "Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned." The having is attributed to both heaven and hell, which makes it a zeugma.

Ironically, Forsyth points out, there's a few phrases using zeugma that aren't remembered as such. So zeugma is memorable, but it's not.

My personal theory is zeugmas take more attention to process. They make you stop and read it again. That extra attention helps us remember, but our memories are simplistic. This is something I get to see firsthand when people tell me they've read one of my books. You'd be amazed the different variations the human mind puts on simple titles such as The Heart to Start or Mind Management, Not Time Management.

Chiasmus

We've established that alliteration is pretty powerful for creating memorable phrases, and we've talked about why some short phrases are misremembered. But what about longer pieces of prose?

The most powerful rhetorical form for a full sentence has to be the chiasmus. The word chiasmus comes from the Greek letter, "chi," which is shaped like an X. So, chiasmus is when language crosses over.

For example, when the three musketeers said, "One for all, and all for one," that was chiasmus. The structure is ABBA, which happens to also be the name of a band that didn't do too poorly.

Politicians use chiasmus a lot. Hillary Clinton said, in her bid for president, "The true test is not the speeches a president delivers, it's whether the president delivers on the speeches."

Forsyth points out that JFK's inauguration speech was "chiasmus crazy." Having watched it on YouTube, I have to agree, there's enough chiasmus to make you dizzy. But at least one of those phrases lived on: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

One chiasmus I've noticed – on a more granular level – is in the title of The Four Hour Work Week. It's a chiasmus of assonance – assonance being the repetition of vowel sounds. It goes, E-O-O-O-E: The Four Hour Work Week. Mix that in with a little alliteration ("Work Week"), and a promise you can't ignore (working four hours a week), and you've got a book title with a chance to be a hit.

Anadiplosis, Epistrophe, Anaphora

A few more rhetorical forms that have to do with the order of words within clauses: anadiplosis, epistrophe, and anaphora.

Anadiplosis is repeating the last word or phrase of a clause as the first word or phrase of the next. Yoda used anadiplosis when he said, "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

Malcolm X used anadiplosis of phrases when he said, "Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude."

That's also anaphora, which is starting each sentence or clause with the same words. Anaphora was also used in the Bible: "A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted," which just sounds wrong if you're more used to the adaptation of this in the song, "Turn! Turn! Turn!", by The Byrds.

Now, if you end each clause, sentence, or paragraph with the same word or phrase, that's something different. That's called epistrophe. Dean Martin used epistrophe, singing, "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, That's amore. When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine, That's amore."

Honorable mention

There's of course much more to The Elements of Eloquence. The terms for these rhetorical forms are intimidating and hard to remember, but Mark Forsyth weaves together his descriptions with incredible, well, eloquence.

Some other forms that deserve honorable mention:

• Syllepsis: using a word one time, but in two different ways. "Make love not war," is a subtle syllepsis.
• Polyptoton: using a word twice, as both a noun and an adjective. "Please please me" was a polyptoton.
• Hendiadys: using an adjective as a noun, such as if you were to say, "I'm going to the noise and the city."
• Merism: referring to the parts, rather than the whole, such as when you say, "ladies and gentlemen."
• Metonymy: using a thing or place to represent something that thing or place is connected to, such as if you were to say, "Downing street was left red-faced last night at news that the White House was planning to attack the British Crown with the support of Wall Street."

There's your Elements of Eloquence summary

There's my summary of The Elements of Eloquence. There's a lot more in the book about bringing eloquence to longer passages of text, such as through rhythmical structures like iambic pentameter.

Will using these structures automatically make your writing great? No, in fact if you practice these structures, your writing will probably be a little strange at first. But you're probably already using some of these concepts, and with some knowledge and practice, you can use them more adeptly.

The Elements of Eloquence is a fantastic writing book. I read it over and over. I highly recommend it.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• YouTube
• RSS
• Email

Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/elements-of-eloquence-summary/

In Trust Me, I'm Lying, Ryan Holiday reveals the media manipulation tactics he used as Marketing Director of American Apparel, and for his PR clients. Meanwhile, he exposes the inner workings of a modern media machine in which incentives make it impossible for the version of reality depicted in the media to come close to resembling the truth. I think it's Holiday's best book, and one of the best media studies books.

So, here, in my own words, is my Trust Me, I'm Lying summary.

Yes, this book is about lying

Before Ryan Holiday became known as an author of modern stoicism books, he dropped out of college at nineteen to apprentice under 48 Laws of Power author, Robert Green. He later was the marketing director for American Apparel, and now has a PR agency, Brass Check, where he advises corporate clients and authors.

As the title of the book suggests, the tactics Holiday confesses to might make your skin crawl. They involve deliberate provocation, bribery, impersonation, and – since it's called Trust Me, I'm Lying – making stuff up.

But everyone should read it

This may turn people off to the book, but if you're an author, marketer, entrepreneur, musician, filmmaker, or comedian, you're in the business of trying to get your message into the world. So, ignore this book at your own peril. The people with whom you compete for attention are using these tactics. Understanding these tactics is a good way to understand the mechanics of media. You can use this knowledge to get your message out in less nefarious ways (more on that later).

And, if you're someone who thinks it's your duty to read the news, to "stay informed," you owe it to yourself to read this book. But be prepared to have that belief challenged, and your conception of reality altered.

Media is a "racket"

Holiday describes the modern media system as a "racket," the word which Major General Smedley D. Butler once used to describe war. He defined it as something "where only a small group of insiders know what's really going on and they operate for the benefit of a few and at the expense of basically everyone else."

Journalists are poor, busy, and desperate for a story

The main insider in the modern media system is the journalist, more generally, a "blogger," who might be someone writing articles for a small blog, or even a major media outlet such as the Huffington Post. Holiday uses "blogger" and "journalist," interchangeably, and I will, too.

Journalists are poor

To help you understand the motivations of many of these journalists, Holiday points out this: They might have gone to an expensive grad school, and now live in a big, expensive city, such as NYC, San Francisco, or Washington D.C. They've been close enough to taste a $200,000-a-year journalism job.

But now they're churning out articles at a breakneck pace, without even getting health insurance. Meanwhile, the people they cover are rich and successful, and may include talentless reality TV stars. New York magazine called the result "the rage of the creative underclass."

Journalists are busy

These bloggers have to write a face-melting amount of content. When journalist Bekah Grant left VentureBeat, she wrote a post saying she averaged five posts a day – more than 1,700 articles in twenty months.

Henry Blodget, founder of Business Insider, said his bloggers need to generate three times their salary, benefits, and overhead costs to be worth hiring. So, an employee making sixty-thousand dollars a year needs to produce 1.8 million page views a month, every month. (1.8 million page views is a lot. At my current traffic, it takes me about a decade to generate that much on my blog, and I make more than sixty-thousand dollars a year.)

Journalists are desperate for a story

Most sites that journalists write for make their money from ads, and the way to make money from ads is to generate page views. As such, many journalists are paid by the page view. I've personally heard this from a friend who worked for a newspaper with a good reputation, covering news for a major city.

So, journalists are desperate for a story that will generate page views. So, if you give them a juicy story that will generate page views, they will generally publish it. They're too busy to fact check it, and since they're compensated by the page view, they aren't motivated to care whether or not it's true.

Readers want to be entertained, and don't care what's true

So you've got poor, busy, and desperate journalists paid by the page view, and the people they're writing for want to be entertained.

Negativity attracts attention

In 2010, Jonah Berger analyzed 7,000 articles from the New York Times' most-emailed list. He found that the best predictor of virality was: how much anger does the article evoke? Increasing the anger rating of an article had two-and-a-half times the impact of increasing its positivity rating.

The human mind is irresistibly attracted to negativity. When subjects of a study were shown footage of war, airplane crashes, and natural disasters, they paid more attention and remembered more than non-negative footage.

Corrections don't work

Negativity attracts page views, so journalists want juicy stories, and don't care if they're true – and neither do readers, it seems.

One study found that when people were shown a fake article with a correction at the bottom, they were more likely to believe it than those who saw an article without a correction. (Note from me: this finding hasn't been consistent across other studies. (Is that a correction you believe?) In any case, people's beliefs are still resistant to contrary facts.)

Despite this, online news outlets are financially motivated to publish stories, whether they're true or not. A Gawker reporter once said, "Gawker believes that publicly airing rumors out is usually the quickest way to get to the truth," going on to say, "Let's acknowledge that we can't vouch for the veracity or truth of the rumors we'll be sharing here."

Journalists are motivated to publish false stories, and, as Holiday points out, "While the internet allows content to be written iteratively, the audience does not read or consume it iteratively." In other words, they see the story, not the correction.

Media manipulation strategy: Trading up the chain

Holiday shares nine media manipulation tactics in the book, but they all essentially serve the strategy that Holiday calls, "trading up the chain." And trading up the chain is something you can do, even without lying.

The chain

Here's how it works: Get coverage on smaller outlets. Those stories then get covered on mid-level outlets. Finally, major outlets pick up stories from the mid-level outlets.

• Smaller outlets can be individual blogs, social media, or local websites that cover a neighborhood or scene.
• Mid-level outlets are blogs of newspapers or local television stations. They can also be "sister sites" of bigger outlets, so they might be affiliated with Newsweek, or CBS.
• Major outlets are the big ones, like the New York Times, CNN, or The Today Show.

It's easy to get coverage on the small outlets

It's easy to get coverage on smaller outlets, Holiday says. If there's a bigger outlet on which you want coverage, review stories for patterns. What are the stories about? Is there a smaller outlet where stories consistently show up before stories on the bigger outlet?

The smaller the outlet, the less they fact-check

Holiday says the smaller an outlet is, the less they fact check. This is where the lying comes in. Holiday confesses to creating fake email accounts to send tips to bloggers, leaking fake internal memos, and having his assistant pose as him over email and even over the phone.

You don't even have to start with the small outlets. Holiday says he successfully "conned" reporters from Reuter's, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, The Today Show, and the New York Times. Using HARO, or "Help a Reporter Out" – which is an email list reporters use to find story sources – he found journalists who were looking for experts on various subjects.

Holiday isn't an expert on, say, vinyl record collecting, but these reporters were presumably on deadlines, and so not inclined to fact check. Holiday says he did it as a stunt to prove how ridiculous he thinks HARO is, and points out that even after he publicly embarrassed these outlets, they continue to use the service.

Subprime truth

One of my favorite observations from the book is that the fuzziness of truth in the media is like the subprime mortgage crisis. During the subprime mortgage crisis, banks sold loans to other banks, who sold those to other banks. These loans were rated by ratings agencies that were overwhelmed, and driven by conflicts of interest.

One example of false information in the media Holiday seized upon was when a journalist misinterpreted the Wikipedia page of Holiday's client, Tucker Max. Holiday had written Max's page to show that his book had been on the New York Times best-seller list for some period of time in each of three consecutive years. The journalist apparently read that, then wrote a story saying Max's book had been on the best-seller list for three years. That was wrong, but Holiday ran with it, updating the Wikipedia page to say Max's book had, indeed, been on the list for three years, citing the incorrect article as proof. (The Wikipedia page has since been corrected.)

Like the subprime mortgage crisis, in the news media, overwhelmed and conflicted reporters write stories, which are then picked up by other overwhelmed and conflicted reporters. In Balaji Srinivasan's second appearance on the Tim Ferriss show, which I summarized on episode 274, he describes how a different kind of chain could ensure verifiable truth gets traded up the chain – in this case, a blockchain.

Pseudo-events

By getting a story into one outlet, then "trading up the chain" to get it covered in another, you're creating a "pseudo-event." If you remember my summary of The Image on episode 257, author Daniel J. Boorstin describes pseudo-events as fake events that are deliberately placed in the news, so that they become real.

Holiday created a lot of pseudo-events for Max when his movie based upon his book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, was debuting. He bought ads in newspapers around the country, then sent anonymous complaints to the newspapers, leaking those complaints to blogs, to get coverage. He notified college LGBT and women's rights groups of screenings, so they would protest at theaters and the nightly news would cover it. He bought a billboard, defaced it, and reported it to journalists to get news coverage.

It seems almost certain that the Russian Internet Research Agency read Holiday's book. They spent many years – and probably still are – hacking public opinion in the U.S. and in other countries, creating Facebook pages for various causes, "astroturfing" those pages with activity from fake profiles, then using that influence make real-life events happen. For example, in 2016 they organized opposing protests – one through the Facebook group, "Heart of Texas," the other for "United Muslims of America" – at the same time, on the same day, across the street from each other.

Trading sensationalism up the chain for free advertising

Holiday says his "leveraged advertising strategy" of running sensational ads for American Apparel just to get news coverage was responsible for 50% growth in online sales in three years with "a miniscule ad budget."

He says he deliberately designed ads that would inspire outrage: dressing up kids like adults, putting clothes on dogs, or writing ad copy that didn't make sense.

When he couldn't use some promotional Halloween costume photos, because of copyright concerns, he had one of his employees leak them to Gawker and Jezebel, where they were covered in an article that got ninety-thousand views.

He ran ads on small websites, featuring porn actress Sasha Grey, completely nude. The ads were covered by Nerve, Buzzfeed, Fast Company, Jezebel, and more. All this coverage for just $1,200 in ads (though it's not clear how much he paid Grey).

He says, "my strategy has always been: If I want to be written about, I do things they have to write about." This is how, according to Holiday, Donald Trump got $4.6 billion of free publicity during his presidential campaign.

Pseudo-events for reputational damage control

Because of the way the media works, Holiday says if a client of his is in trouble, the best strategy is to create what's essentially a pseudo-event.

A major newspaper wrote a hit piece on a client of Holiday's. The journalist who wrote the hit piece was also running a hate blog about the client's company on the side.

The client complained to the journalist's editor, but they didn't seem to care. So, Holiday advised his client to write an internal memo to his company, then forward that memo to a competing outlet, which published an article with the memo. The memo was apparently quite damning, because the original newspaper had no choice but to respond.

Because bloggers aren't incentivized to care about the truth, and readers are attracted to drama, Holiday says there's no point in trying to correct something that's been said about you in the media. If you want to try, he says, "be prepared to have to be an obsequious douche. You've got to flatter bloggers into thinking that somehow the mistake wasn't their fault."

Ways of using these tactics that are less...gross

I personally can't judge Holiday for using these tactics. The medium is the message; as one of Holiday's chapters proclaims, "everyone else is doing it"; and there's no denying that Holiday is good at getting coverage for himself and his clients. But, I'm probably not the only one uncomfortable with impersonating others and lying to get coverage. You can still learn a lot from Trust Me, I'm Lying.

Trade up the chain

Trading up the chain is a completely legitimate tactic. If you want coverage somewhere, pay attention to where they get their story ideas, and what stories they like to cover.

This applies to influencers, too. I no longer interview people on this podcast, but I get so many pitches that are totally irrelevant. You have a better chance of, say, getting interviewed on a podcast, if you tailor your pitch to the target show. And if you get coverage from a micro-influencer that influences a bigger influencer, you might move up the chain.

Be remarkable

While anger gets a lot of attention, you don't have to be negative in your marketing. You can instead be remarkable – what Seth Godin calls a Purple Cow.

I love the ridiculous book titles of author Chuck Tingle. Are you ready for this? How could you not laugh when you hear the title, Domald Tromp Pounded in the Butt By the Handsome Russian T-Rex Who Also Peed On His Butt And Then Blackmailed Him With the Videos Of His Butt Getting Peed On. Even if you don't buy one of his books, his titles are attention-grabbing and spread.

Bread Face Blog makes a living smashing bread with her face. It's so absurd, it has to attract attention. The Instagram algorithm sees that attention, and gets her videos in front of more people. The New York Times had to write about her – how could they not?

Create a message for the medium

If the medium is the message, create a message for the medium. Whatever you're creating, think about how it spreads through media, whether that's social media, traditional media, or word-of-mouth.

Lately, I've been seeing how people on Instagram share highlights of quotes in books. It makes sense to have larger pull quotes in my next book, so they have something pretty to take a picture of.

Have you been to a restaurant or event where there's a decorated nook specifically for taking photos and sharing them on social media? Not an accident.

While researching Times Square ad space for my own publicity stunt I'm working on, I saw one fact sheet point out that Times Square was "the third-most Instagrammed location in the world." Point being if you put up an ad there, lots of people bragging to their friends about their trips to New York will spread your ad for you.

When I write a title of a book, I ask myself if it passes the "cocktail party test." How would it feel to tell someone at a cocktail party you're reading a book by this title? Proud and strong? Good. Embarrassed or weak? Bad.

Mind Management, Not Time Management is what I call a "turnkey title." The title alone makes a statement you can use, without reading the book. It helps make it memorable, so it spreads.

Create pseudo-events

Today's media is increasingly participatory. People are not just consumers of media, but also makers of media. By creating pseudo-events, you can get more out of the media you create.

I recently saw a cool video on TikTok, showing the process of making a video that showed the process of making a pizza. I know, meta, right?

It's a pseudo-event. The video of them making pizza was made for the media. The video of them making the video making pizza made me think they're really good cinematographers. Of course, they teased the original video at the end of the cinematography video, and I had to go watch it.

Many readers of the books I write also write books. So, my KDP income reports are essentially pseudo-events. One reason they exist is, I have a business writing books for people who write books, and they show that I know how to run a business writing books. They attract the attention of people who will like my books.

Be careful

Trust Me, I'm Lying is a must-read for anyone doing anything with media. But be careful what you do with these tactics. I know I've heard Tucker Max lament the reputation he's gained as a result of the tactics in the book. I've also heard Max say the same for Holiday – that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to write a book that says he's a liar right in the title. As Holiday warns, "if you chase the kind of attention I chased, and use the tactics I've used, there will be blowback."

There's your Trust Me, I'm Lying book summary

Not all of the book is tactics. Much of it is more media commentary, with some media history sprinkled in, and some airing of grievances Holiday has with various journalists and media outlets.

Despite the damage Holiday may have done to his reputation by writing Trust Me, I'm Lying, I really appreciate the book, and it took guts to confess to the things he did in the book. It's on my list of best media books.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• YouTube
• RSS
• Email

Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/trust-me-im-lying-summary/

In 2018, Matthew Walker was on a media blitz, promoting his book, Why We Sleep. I was one of the many people who picked up the book. It slowly ruined my sleep. But recently, I fixed it.

No, this is not a takedown

Before I go further, this is not a "takedown" of Why We Sleep, like the one that's been floating around. I've read that takedown, and I didn't find it convincing. I trust that Why We Sleep is mostly full of accurate information.

I say "mostly," because I understand Walker has been on a mission to elevate the importance of sleep. Sometimes you have to say something like "the shorter you sleep the shorter your life span," for a sleep-deprived public to get the point, when, technically, research shows people who sleep longer than the recommended 7–9 hours live shorter lives. It's called rhetoric. When FDR said "we have nothing to fear but fear itself," thankfully there weren't blogs to write pedantic takedowns of his logic.

My complaints about Why We Sleep don't involve ill intentions. I'm sure Walker wants people to get more sleep. But I don't think the book has the effect he expected.

Why Why We Sleep will scare the sleep out of you

In Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker, PhD says if you don't sleep enough, you are at risk of the following:

• Obesity
• Cancer
• Dementia
• Alzheimer's
• Heart disease
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Diabetes
• Car crashes
• Lower income
• Low sperm count
• Deformed sperm
• Female infertility
• Not being able to jump as high
• Longer workout recovery
• Vulnerability to colds and flus (today, that also means COVID)
• Low testosterone
• Smaller testicles

So, yeah, Walker makes not getting enough sleep sound extremely scary. If that's not enough to keep you awake at night, Walker also points out there's also a rare sleep disorder that develops in mid-life, where a person cannot sleep, and eventually dies.

Again, I get that society is full of a lot of ignorant or toxic beliefs about sleep, such as "I'll sleep when I'm dead". I may be in the minority in that I had the luxury of being able to take Walker's recommendation of 7–9 hours sleep to an extreme that actually harmed my ability to get enough sleep.

I was doing everything right

After reading Why We Sleep, I, like many people, decided I was going to take sleep more seriously. But, as a creative with an interest in the neuroscience of creativity, I had already been taking sleep pretty seriously.

I already slept with earplugs and a mask. I already avoided screens before bedtime, and had for years worn blue-light-blocking goggles before bed. I already didn't read or watch TV in bed, and didn't allow electronics in my bedroom. I already didn't consume caffeine and rarely drank alcohol. I already lived a low-stress lifestyle with plenty of exercise and friends. I didn't and don't have kids that wake me up in the middle of the night. I already had a bedtime, and a nighttime routine, like I talked about on episode 259.

I tried to do it right-er

I was doing everything right. Where I went wrong was trying to follow Walker's recommendation of 7–9 hours of sleep per night. The way I went about that: Stay in bed until I got eight hours of sleep.

At first, it wasn't a big deal. I would occasionally wake up much earlier than I had intended. But I brought to mind a graph from the book, which showed that sleep cycles come in ninety-minute increments.

Now, this wasn't a recommendation from Dr. Walker, and was my big mistake: I figured that since sleep cycles came in ninety-minute increments, if I happened to wake up too early, all I had to do was stay in bed until I could fall asleep again – which could take as long as ninety minutes.

Yes, I understand I'm incredibly privileged to have the luxury of being able to stay in bed an extra ninety minutes just to fall asleep again. But, as an author, my ability to be productive is more a matter of mind management than it is of time management. It doesn't matter, to some extent, how long it takes me to get enough sleep, but I need that sleep to get in the right state of mind to do my work.

At first, this technique worked. When I woke up too early to get eight hours of sleep, I stayed in bed until I fell asleep again, and got my eight hours. Eventually, I settled on a rule: Most people use an alarm clock so they can get out of bed early. I, instead, set a time until which I had to stay in bed.

For me, that was 8 a.m. If I slept past 8 a.m., that was fine, but if I woke up before 8 a.m., I stayed in bed until then. So, I was going to bed around 11 p.m., and staying in bed for nine, sometimes ten hours. If I was sleepy, I'd go to bed earlier, but I'd still stay in bed until 8 a.m.

This went fine, until early-morning insomnia kicked in.

It's 3 a.m. I must be lonely (and awake)

There are many kinds of insomnia, but they mostly consist of either sleep-onset insomnia or early-morning insomnia. I didn't and still don't have much trouble falling asleep (thanks to my nighttime routine). My problem was, waking up way too early. Not 5 a.m., but 3 a.m., and I was awake. My thoughts were racing, my heart was pounding, and I could not get back to sleep.

I shared this problem with a number of friends. It turns out a lot of people have this problem. But multiple friends told me, "Matthew Walker's book ruined my sleep." Then, they all happened to recommend the same book to me, which had fixed their sleep.

Enter Say Goodnight to Insomnia

Why We Sleep takes the approach of telling you sleep is so important, if you don't do it you'll die. The book, Say Goodnight to Insomnia takes the opposite perspective. It essentially tells you, not to worry about sleep. Here's some things it actually tells you:

• You can function fine without enough sleep.
• As long as you're, in the long run, getting at least 5.5 hours of sleep a night, you're fine.
• If you feel bad after a night of poor sleep, you're probably blaming the effects on poor sleep, when they might be caused by something else – such as stress, nutrition, or normal variations.
• Insomniacs generally get only a couple hours less sleep than normal people, and don't perform any less well.
• Your body compensates for a poor night of sleep by sleeping better the following night.
• People often mistake light, Stage 2 sleep, as wakefulness. So even when you think you're not sleeping, you might be!

The book was published in 2009, so I don't know how true all of this still is, but to some extent, it doesn't matter. That's because Say Goodnight to Insomnia is essentially a self-administered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy program for insomnia, developed at Harvard Medical School. It's all about restructuring your thoughts about sleep, so you can settle into a routine where you're getting as much sleep as you need, not causing undue stress about all the things that will go wrong if you don't get an arbitrarily-recommended amount of sleep.

Hours-sleep recommendations are arbitrary

Did I just say Matthew Walker's sleep recommendations are arbitrary? Well, they kind of are. Here's why: For one, there's a difference between self-reported sleep, and actual sleep (in fairness, this is in the takedown I mentioned earlier). People who say they slept six hours tend to have actually slept five. People who say they've slept seven and a half hours, tend to have actually slept seven. Self-reported versus actual sleep duration is all over the board, and the discrepancy varies according to a bunch of factors.

We can't study sleep interventions across populations

This is hard enough to deal with when trying to figure out how much you've slept, but when you're trying to study the effects of sleep, over long periods of time, across entire populations, it's simply impossible. Researchers have to use self-reports, which are unreliable. And it's not practical to randomly split up the population into two groups and say, "You people, sleep a ton!," and "You people, don't sleep more than five hours a night. Oh, and both of you, do this for life!"

So we can't know how much sleep you need

So while studies show people who get little sleep are at a higher risk of Alzheimer's Disease, and we can piece together studies to form an explanation of how a lack of sleep might cause Alzheimer's, we can't really know if it's being caused by a voluntary lack of sleep, or if the same thing that causes Alzheimer's also causes a lack of sleep.

Even if we did know, for sure, how much sleep exactly do you need in order to prevent Alzheimer's? Epidemiological studies covering large populations are self-reported, so we don't know how much sleep these subjects are actually getting.

Yes, that is changing as more people are using personal sleep-tracking devices. But we still can't force random sections of the population to get more or less sleep, and people who wear these devices are a self-selected group of people. I don't have one, and don't want one.

Turn negative into positive sleep thoughts

When you worry about not getting enough sleep, you're having what Say Goodnight to Insomnia author, Gregg D. Jacobs, PhD, calls "Negative Sleep Thoughts," or NSTs for short.

What do you tell yourself when you can't sleep? Things like, "I won't be able to function tomorrow," "I feel terrible because I didn't sleep well last night," and "Everyone else has an easy time sleeping." If you've read Matthew Walker's book, you can add to that, "If I don't get enough sleep, I'll get diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer's, and won't be able to jump as high."

Say Goodnight to Insomnia program summary

Here's the gist of how the Say Goodnight to Insomnia program works. Each chapter ends with a sleep journal. For the first week, you record your baseline patterns: What time did you go to bed, and to sleep? How many times did you wake up, and for how long? How do you rate the quality of your sleep?

Each week of the program, Jacobs introduces a new way to assess your sleep, and turn poor sleep habits into better sleep habits.

In week one, he introduces you to "cognitive restructuring." Every time you have a Negative Sleep Thought, you turn it around into a Positive Sleep Thought. So if you think, "I'm sleeping terribly tonight," you remind yourself that you're probably sleeping more than you think, and that you'll sleep better tomorrow if you don't sleep well today.

In week two, he introduces you to the concept of "sleep efficiency," or the percentage of time that you're in bed, during which you're actually sleeping.

Sleep restriction therapy

This is also when Jacobs introduces you to "sleep restriction," which is the main component of the treatment program, and has been found to be incredibly effective for insomnia.

Jacobs instructs you to take your baseline average amount of sleep, and add one hour to it. That's how long you're allowed to be in bed.

For me, I was averaging about six hours of sleep, so, adding an hour to that, I could stay in bed for seven hours. My desired wake-up time was 7 a.m., so that meant I had to stay out of bed until midnight.

Midnight has historically been my latest target bedtime, but I was only sleeping six hours a night, so staying up until midnight was crazy hard. It felt impossible. Some nights, I could hardly keep my eyes open at 10:30 p.m. I was reading the same sentence over and over, as I nearly lost my ability to hold my Kindle. I had to get up and pace around, or practice putting, on my hallway rug.

Don't condition yourself to be awake in bed

As you can imagine, by the time I was allowed to go to bed, I didn't have much trouble falling asleep. I still sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, and so I followed Dr. Jacobs' advice: If you're wide awake, don't toss and turn and frustratingly struggle to sleep. Ideally, you should get out of your bed, and read until you feel tired again. But if you're tired enough that getting out of bed seems impossible, Dr. Jacobs says it's okay to sit up in bed while you read, so long as you don't do so for longer than an hour.

So, if I were to boil down the Say Goodnight to Insomnia program into three principles, they would be the following:

1. Restructure your thoughts around sleep. So, don't tell yourself horror stories about not being able to sleep. Trust that, with healthy sleep hygiene, your body is capable of letting you know when it needs sleep.
2. Keep your sleep efficiency up. Dr. Jacobs recommends that you restrict sleep until you have 85% sleep efficiency for at least two weeks. In other words, 85% of the time you're in bed, you're asleep. Only after two weeks at that level can you add fifteen minutes to your time in bed.
3. Condition yourself to sleep while in bed. My mistake was that by spending a lot of time in bed, in an effort to get enough sleep, I was spending a lot of time in bed when I was not sleeping. This is extra-harmful if that time you spend not sleeping is spent worrying about how you're not sleeping enough. Your bed is for only two things, and most of what you should do in bed is sleep.

After following Dr. Jacobs' program for a few weeks, and diligently recording my sleep in the sleep journal at the end of each chapter – which I copied onto a paper with my typewriter – I was convinced it had done nothing for me.

My results with Say Goodnight to Insomnia

But, in fact, upon reviewing my journal, I realized it was working. After a few weeks, the Say Goodnight to Insomnia program had me waking up in the middle of the night less often, and for shorter periods, and my self-rated sleep quality had increased. By the end of the six week program, my sleep had improved on about every dimension, including sleep quality, sleep efficiency, and average amount of sleep.

I will say that naps were a saving grace during this program. During the first couple weeks of sleep restriction, there were some nights where I got less than five hours of sleep. Like the book said, I was still able to function, but mercifully, Dr. Jacobs said it was okay to nap no longer than forty-five minutes, no later than 4 p.m.

Say Goodnight to the damage done by Why We Sleep

The intention of Matthew Walker's book, Why We Sleep is correct – sleep is vitally important. But, how much sleep do you need? Unless you have a sleep disorder – which you should absolutely check for with your doctor – if you're keeping good sleep hygiene, such as a nighttime routine, and are making sure you sleep efficiently and think positively about your relationship with sleep, as recommended by Dr. Jacobs – what more can you do?

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• YouTube
• RSS
• Email

Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/why-we-sleep-say-goodnight-to-insomnia-summary/

One thing I hear from a lot from readers of The Heart to Start, is that many people have no problem starting new projects. They instead struggle with finishing them. I can relate.

Like many creative people, I once struggled to finish projects. I always had new ideas, I left books half-read, projects half-finished. I had done lots of creative work, and had little to show for it.

Now I still always have new ideas, and I still leave books half-read and projects half-finished. But now, I have lots of finished projects to show for all the work I've done.

What's changed? I've learned to finish what matters, and forget the rest.

Embrace your inner Perceiver

A turning point in my own creative journey came when I learned to embrace my inner Perceiver. As much flak as the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator gets for being pseudoscience, it's still a useful lens for understanding your own tendencies. The concepts of Introversion and Extroversion have wide scientific support, but also useful I think are the concepts of "Perceiving" and "Judging."

If you watch in awe as one friend after another executes on ideas and achieves success, while you flounder, working on one idea after another, but never truly following through, your friends are probably "Js", and you might be a "P."

This is the position I was in, until a friend at a party explained this dichotomy to me. Why was this other friend of ours so great at follow-through, while we both struggled to find our paths? This friend was a J. We were Ps.

Another way of thinking about being a Perceiver is you're someone who sees Possibilities. You can't move forward with one idea, because you keep having other, better ideas. Meanwhile, your "Judging" friends find an idea, make the judgement to stick with it, and see it through.

Shiny objects aren't shameful

Perceiving Possibilities is a necessary part of being creative. For DNA to be discovered, the researchers had to entertain the Possibility that they should pursue something other than the original intent of their grant application – which was to study cancer treatments. For Alexander Fleming to discover antibiotics, he had to see Possibilities in experimental petri dishes that were contaminated.

If you want a treasure trove of Perceivers, look no further than nearly every person Walter Isaacson has written a biography on.

For Leonardo Da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa, he applied his knowledge of optics to his sfumato technique, which allowed him to model the painting with no hard lines. He applied his knowledge of anatomy to crafting the Mona Lisa's mysterious smirk. He had dissected humans and animals, studying exactly which muscles were recruited to express various emotions.

In episode 272, I talked about how Steve Jobs and the engineers and executives at Apple had to consider the Possibility that while a trackwheel served as a useful interface for an iPod, it might not be such for the iPhone.

Isaacson himself has said, "People who love all fields of knowledge are the ones who can best spot the patterns across nature."

So if you're someone who beats themself up over Shiny Object Syndrome, consider the Possibility that it's a necessary component of creative thinking.

Creative success happens in Extremistan

On the rare occasion that someone with shiny object syndrome does finish a project, it might not be successful, and that can make matters worse. Why bother following through with anything, you might think, when you aren't assured of success?

But, creative work calls for a different approach to success. As I talked about in episode 253, creative work happens in Extremistan.

Nobody knows anything

It's impossible to predict which creative projects will be successful. If record companies knew hits, that's all they'd release. If movie studios knew blockbusters, that's all they'd produce. If publishers knew bestsellers, that's all they'd launch. If Venture Capitalists knew unicorns, that's all they'd fund. And they wouldn't be called "Venture" Capitalists – they'd just be Capitalists.

As two-time Academy-Award-winning screenwriter William Goldman said, "Nobody knows anything."

The sky is the limit

Even when a creative project is released into Extremistan, there is a huge range of potential outcomes. When Art De Vany analyzed the box-office proceeds of various movies, he found that the top 1% of movies accounted for 20% of sales.

My latest book, Mind Management, Not Time Management is a success. Book-marketing expert Tucker Max calls a self-published book that sells 2,500 copies in its first year a "home run". Mind Management, Not Time Management sold 10,000. But, Mark Manson's Subtle Art has sold more than ten million.

This podcast episode will get more downloads than about 97% of other podcasts, but it's not unusual for an episode of Joe Rogan's podcast to get 1,000 times the downloads of this one.

It's a long night to overnight success

When you follow through and put a creative project into the world, you may have mild success, or you may have wild success. But there's no telling how long wild success can take.

The Queen's Gambit took thirty-seven years to become a New York Times bestseller. Jane Austen's books went out of print after her death. There's no telling when a box-office bust will become a cult classic, or just a straight-up classic. People forget that The Shawshank Redemption was a box-office bomb, now considered by many to be the best movie of all time.

Like I talked about on episode 251, you can't call out Suvivorship Bias so easily in creative work, because you often don't know if a project is truly dead.

We're raised in Mediocristan

Creative success happens in Extremistan, not Mediocristan, and this is at the heart of why many people feel ashamed of their shiny object syndrome. We're raised in Mediocristan, so we evaluate success and our ability to follow through based upon how things get done in Mediocristan.

The whole point of civilization – with its steady paychecks, fixed-rate mortgages, and insurance policies – is to smooth out the shocks of the natural world. Mediocristan is built upon predictability, and to succeed by Mediocristan's standards, you need to yourself be predictable. If you can follow the curriculum, do the reading, and fill out the bubbles on a standardized test with your standardized #2 pencil, you can get a good grade, that adds up to a good GPA, which lets you graduate and get your degree to put the right keywords in your resume so a computer can read it and find you. You can get a job, a steady paycheck, a fixed-rate mortgage, and an insurance policy.

But for any of these niceties of Mediocristan to exist, someone has to invent something. Before Henry Ford could double the going rate for a factory worker, introduce the five-dollar day, and have 10,000 people banging on his gates, he had to create those jobs.

You are a Maker/Capitalist

Even if you wanted to work in a factory in Mediocristan – besides the fact that few humans could handle the monotony of working on Ford's assembly-line – these kinds of jobs are becoming more scarce. More of our drudgery is being handled by automation.

This is reducing the barriers to entry for putting ideas into the world. You can build a no-code app with Adalo or Webflow, you can print and ship artwork and memorabilia with Printful, you can – like me – sell thousands of print-on-demand books in dozens of countries around the world, and not touch a single one.

It used to require capital and labor to produce a good or service. Now, less labor is needed, and almost no capital. It used to require management to organize all that labor. Now management is the arrangement of automation – but "management" isn't the right word for it, and neither is labor. The word "creator" embodies the trifecta of coming up with ideas, doing the work, and distributing the goods.

More and more of us can be creator/capitalists. We require little capital to fund our making, but we have to be adept at using what little capital we have wisely. Balaji Srinivasan would call us "capital allocators."

Finish what matters, and forget the rest

If creative success is random, and happens upon a long timeline, how do you stay the course to embrace your shiny object syndrome and still ship projects?

Start by building your shipping skills, like I talked about on episode 265. Treat even the smallest projects in your life as opportunities to have a vision, form a plan, and carry out that plan. You can do this by cooking a recipe, planning a party or trip, and build into shipping small creative projects.

Learn to navigate uncertainty. Get used to making percentage-confidence predictions about the future, then evaluating those predictions down the road. You can learn with the Avocado Challenge I talked about on episode 245.

Remember that for Henry Ford to build the Model T, he had to iterate on Models A through S. Like a construction project that seems to make no progress, until suddenly a twenty-story building appears, you need to let the Foundation Effect happen, like I talked about on episode 266.

Remember the Iceberg Principle, like I talked about on episode 263. The same way ninety-percent of an iceberg is underwater, what you present to the world in your masterpiece will be just a small fraction of the knowledge and experimentation you put in. You have to embrace creative waste, like I talked about on episode 264.

As a creator/capitalist, you need to use your resources wisely. Use the Barbell Strategy that I talked about on episode 244. Put most of your resources toward "sure bets" that keep you in the game. But set aside time and energy to play wildcards – crazy ideas with little downside, but unlimited potential upside. Creative work is the business of breeding Black Swans.

Through this process, you won't finish every project, and you won't always be able to tell which projects matter. But with enough practice, over enough time, you'll become adept at finishing what matters, and forgetting the rest.

Image: Characters In Yellow, Paul Klee

Mind Management is a Kindle Deal!

Amazon has hand-selected Mind Management, Not Time Management for a promotional discount. It's only $2.49 on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. Offer ends March 31st, so grab it now!

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• YouTube
• RSS
• Email

Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/finish-what-matters/