If you’re anything like I was, you think dramatic and miraculous change can happen instantly. Overnight transformation? I’ll have one of those!

In me, this belief led to thinking the key to my change was to be found in some self-help book or a Tony Robbins seminar.  I spent years desperately searching for the holy grail, with faith that its discovery would transform me instantly. 

I was like the gambling junkie, looking for wealth in lottery tickets instead of putting in the hard graft every day that would inevitably move me toward financial freedom I sought.  

If I’d redirected all that time and energy toward actioning tried and tested methods for growth, day by day – in increments unnoticeable taken in isolation – I would have transformed. 

But I didn’t want hard work. I didn’t even really want a part in my development. I wanted that to be someone else’s responsibility. 

And the problem with self-help books is they are more than happy to tell you just what you want to hear. After all, they have sales to make and images to maintain. You want it fast, and they sell fast. You want overnight transformation and they tell you they have the key. But after years of consuming this junk, you start to realise the cheap tricks don’t work. You come to terms with the fact that you aren’t the centre of the universe, you are not destined for greatness, you aren’t owed anything, and life is a grind.

This realisation may seem bleak, but I believe the truth always brings salvation (can I get an amen!?). Once you know you have to work to get the things you want (who woulda thunk it), you can actually start doing the things necessary to have success and happiness. 

But I’ve Seen Overnight Transformation…

Now, we have all heard about the overnight transformations. How can I acknowledge that people appear to change suddenly and yet not think that is available to me? 

You see, roots come before shoots. Growth happens beneath the surface, before it visible on the surface. To use another analogy, the eruption of a volcano, to the human eye, seems to happen all at once. Yet, science tells us that these things brew for centuries at a time. Bubbling away until they can no longer be kept beneath and they break forth violently. 

Change doesn’t have to be visible to be present. 

An individual can very easily change without consciously deciding to change. And they may be as unaware of the things happening inside as the layman observer is. 

Let’s use an example here. Take an alcoholic. At first, they don’t even see their alcoholism as a problem. As they continue to indulge, their addiction starts to impact their relationships. People point out that they drink too much. They brush it away. But the wheels of change may already be in motion. 

They think they can stop whenever – if they wanted to. For now though, only the bottom of a bottle stops their drinking, and not for long. 

But they’ve started noticing the way their kids look at them – with disappointment; with embarrassment. Their wife has started batting away all sexual advances. And she doesn’t laugh anymore. There is an emptiness behind her eyes. 

This begins to eat away at our man. 

Ok, yes, there is a problem here. He thinks. I must change.

He tries. But is scared to realise he can’t. 

Passive income has become a buzz phrase in the online space, synonymous with easy living, exotic travel, enjoyably boss-less work, and freedom from obligation and stress.

As with any concept or idea that is naturally appealing to a great many people, an industry has built up around it, selling advice that is often helpful and true, but just as often false and harmful.

Is making money online difficult, or easy; as many cyber gurus claim?

Big Promises Of Easy Wins

A cursory search of Google will immediately turn up an infinity of content that espouses ‘easy’, ‘painfree’ ways of making passive income.

If you believed everything you read, heard or viewed online you would be certain that creating passive income is not difficult, but instead very easy. You would begin to feel like you must be one of the last losers alive on Earth who is not raking in tens of thousands each month from a set-and-forget passive income side-hustle.

The Myth of Easy Income

There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about this idea that making a passive income is a cinch.

First of all, it is certainly not the case that most people have a passive income. In truth, the vast majority of people earn their living in more traditional job roles. Most (even those that work predominantly online) are tied to a work location. Most people have a boss.

If it were so easy, far more people would be doing it.

Another key factor to bear in mind is the root motivations of the people who most loudly espouse the ‘passive income is easy’ notion.

The Biases of Make Money Online ‘Gurus’

The online space is still very much a Wild West of ideas and information. Everybody and anybody can have an opinion online, and often it is the loudest shouters that get the most attention.

Self-proclaimed gurus that teach how to earn passive income usually make it out to be a relatively simple and pain-free process. But this not necessarily true. And these ‘gurus’ are not necessarily to be believed.

Gurus often have conflicting interests. Many are much more interested in making their own money than in teaching people and adding real value.

It is in a gurus interest to convince his audience that if they invest in his ideas they will achieve the success they want and that it won’t require back-breaking work. It is not in their interest to give the impression that making passive income is difficult.

Passive income gurus have an agenda. They are trying to make money for themselves first and foremost. They are selling an idea, not a reality.

Making Passive Income Is Difficult!

Generating a passive income takes hard graft. Churning out multiple copywriting articles per day is tough and taxing – even if you are doing it from a beach in Thailand! Having a scatty and inconsistent income stream can be stressful,

If I could go back and change one thing to live the good life it’d be to make data collection and analysis a priority. I’m talking about analysing my life. I’m talking about habit tracking like its about to go out of fashion..

According to Pearson’s Law – when performance is measured, it improves; when performance is measured and reported, it improves exponentially.  

For 28 years, I didn’t track a single thing. The thought of collecting data about my habits and actions made me feel claustrophobic. Measurements felt like a self-imposed prison cells. I just wanted to be free and happy.

Like many things in life, often the things that bring us results are counter-intuitive. This is no different. Though habit tracking feels like it would be restrictive, it actually liberates you.

Though we think we love spontaneity and chaos, what we really love is habit and structure (you can learn more about how to make your habits stick here). If our worlds aren’t predictable, they are painful.

What Sparked My Habit Tracking?

I would have continued to track nothing if not for my job. As a growth marketer, I have to get down and dirty with the data to discover what’s really going on. I have to make breakfast in bed for that demanding data to get it to really open up. And I do this begrudgingly, as I’m not a naturally analytical guy. 

However, the insights I gained when I started measuring and analysing were profound, powerful, pertinent. The guess work was gone and all that was left were: 

Cold. 

Hard. 

Facts. 

The results chipped away at the begrudgery. The numbers were there all along and as soon as I acknowledged them, they worked with me, making everything I did more effective.   

I wondered if I could gain similar insights in my personal life by habit tracking. If I treated myself as though I were a product I was trying to hack growth for would my life get better or worse?

Only one way to find out!

To begin with, I started tracking how I spent every minute of the day. You must first collect and analyse data before you start thinking about what to change and how to change it.

Why? 

Because there are only so many hours in a day and only so much motivation in a man, there are only a small number of changes you can successfully action at any one time. Given this, it is essential to rank the possible changes in order of importance. Here is the formula I use to rank possible changes:

           (Impact+Ease+Enjoyment)/Time

With an acute awareness of your finances, what you eat, how much work you do, how much time you devote to maintaining and developing your relationships etc. you can see what changes are likely to be most impactful. 

What to Change First: Quick Wins 

I would advise starting with some quick wins. For me, a quick win was reducing phone screen time. I was averaging around 3 hours of screen time per day at the beginning of this experiment. 21 hours a week – that’s 18.75% of my time awake. This was a colossal waste of time. 

The

The news is an ancient concept. Humans have been ingesting news hungrily since time immemorial. Knowing the lay of the land would have had obvious benefits to ancient, often nomadic, hunter-gatherer humans. A thirst for gossip and drama is an evolved feature of human beings.

News In The Modern World

The news is now more widely available than ever before. And it is available in myriad different forms. The news is now a multi-billion dollar business, and news companies are locked in a feverish battle for eyeballs.

Some of the world’s sharper minds spend all their awake hours racking their brains for ways to attract eyeballs to the news outlets for which they work. Their salaries depend on their conjuring ways to attract your attention. This has resulted in a race to the bottom.

Bad News Sells

Humans have an innate compulsion to feast on gossip and gore. We feel unfortunately compelled to gorge on bad news, to slurp down delicious gossip. Bad news sells. So ‘if it bleeds it leads’ is a truism of the modern news industrial complex.

Bad news is reported far more than good news. And bad news is dressed up to be as bad (and therefore irresistible to humans) as possible. Stories are exaggerated, pantomime villains are created, narratives are controlled and curated.

The News Is Often Biased

Humans have unfortunate tendencies toward tribalism. We like to feel like we are on a team. The news activates and promotes these feelings in us by taking the role of partisan cheerleaders for one political faction (or worldview) or another. CNN for the Democrats. Fox News for Republicans. Much of the time, news organizations are not reporting facts, but instead, mere spin.

In these ways, the news is harmful. It misleads us, it makes us believe the world is more full of danger and tragedy than it actually is. It makes us believe we need to be on the right political team, and that the opposite team are ignorant or even evil.

Clickbait News Ruins Our Ability To Concentrate

The news also messes up our attention span by inundating us with clickbait stories; tiny titbits of shallow information that do not challenge our intellect in any way and rot our faculties. This sugar for the mind is addictive and it robs us of our ability to concentrate on more challenging and rewarding media such as books and long-form articles.

So far we have been talking about news outlets whose main raison d’être is getting attention (by any means possible) and making money.

Great News Sources

There are plenty of other much more noble news sources that have at their core a determination to find out the truth and report it to discerning individuals, to arm people with the facts. These news sources tend to supply long-form content that,

Paolo Nutini and Amy Winehouse have wonderful singing voices. Through their art, they touch people profoundly and stir deep emotions. Their singing connects to something deeper than words alone can.

Winehouse and Nutini deliver obviously real and honest emotion from their own souls to the souls of those listening to them. They are spontaneous and unstifled in their performance, masters of expressing their true selves freely.

By studying how these adored performers manifest their art, and speculating about the mindsets that enable their remarkable expressiveness, we can learn a lot about how to be spontaneous in our own lives.

Amy Winehouse and Paolo Nutini; Masters of Spontaneous Expression

The voices of Amy Winehouse and Paolo Nutini are both characterized by an excellent dynamic range, original tone, unique accent, and unusual pronunciation-style. The phrasing both artists use tends to be quite unorthodox. They croon in their own loose, languid, sultry fashions; both clearly responding in real time to the world around them, and the world within them.

With these masters of the spontaneous (if you’ll allow me a potential contradiction in terms), no two performances are ever the same.

Spontaneous Self-Expression is the Ultimate Goal

In the words of Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage…”. We are all performing all the time. In every area, we are trying to portray our best selves. To free our real selves.

Whether it’s on a physical stage while we perform music or act, or in our creative endeavors, social situations, at work, on a date, or during sex; being real and having the confidence and ability to be spontaneous should always be the ultimate goal.

The Opposite of Spontaneous

Most of us do not manage to achieve the fearless, confident mastery that allows us to be genuinely spontaneous. At least in not in most areas of our lives. We are all too often curtailed and crimped by fear of failure and self-consciousness.

Most of us are average, workmanlike performers in many areas. Even though we long to be able to be more spontaneous, to play and dance with life, and to represent what and who we really are.

Fear Stops Us From Being Spontaneous

Too often we are driven by fear. Fear of failure pervades our thinking. We self-monitor to the point of stiffness. We try too hard – in conversation, while dancing, while having sex, while creating art – and spontaneous expression is choked.

We are terrified of losing the attention of our ‘audience’. We are afraid of losing the approval of whoever we happen to be interacting with at a given time; socially, sexually, artistically.

This most likely comes from the fact that many of us find deep self-confidence tragically hard to come by. We believe we must TRY, and BATTLE and strive really hard, and not fuck up… in order to be liked and received well by the world.

Confidence Allows Us To Be Spontaneous

Amy Winehouse and Paolo Nutini express themselves fearlessly...

Robert Plomin is a psychologist and behavioral geneticist at King’s College London and the president of the international Behavioural Genetics Association. He is one of the world’s leading experts in how genes affect human personalities.

Plomin’s new book ‘Blueprint’ explains in fine (but admirably clear and digestible) detail the most up to date research findings in the field of behavioral genetics. Among the many fascinating concepts discussed in the book is the Nature of Nurture finding.

Genetic Differnces Cause Differences in Personality Traits

‘Blueprint’ deals with personality and explores the extent to which psychological differences between individual humans are due to genetic differences.

99% of the information contained in each human’s genome is uniform. This is the information that codes for species-wide traits such as bipedalism, front-facing eyes, and the brain’s core fight, freeze or freeze response to threatening stimuli.

The remaining 1% of each person’s genome contains the variable and always somewhat unique information that makes each of us distinct, one-off individuals.

The 99% makes us human (instead of, say, iguana or bonobo). The 1% makes you you (instead of, say, Mel Gibson, Jesus Christ or your classmate Simon).

Massive twin and adoption studies (with sample sizes reaching into the hundreds of thousands) have now conclusively demonstrated that genetic differences are the single largest systematic factor affecting personality differences between individuals.

What is ‘Heritability’?

‘Heritability’ refers to the extent to which individual differences in a trait are heritable. In other words, are inherited biologically; passed from parent to offspring in the form of genetic information. It measures how much of the differing levels of traits found between individuals can be attributed to genetic differences. Heritability is measured as a percentage of the entire detectable difference.

Heritability of psychological traits has been decisively shown to be, on average, 50%. This means that 50% of the difference in psychological traits between individuals is due to their genes. This is a massive influence! It dwarfs any other influence ever detected in psychological research. (Up until now the largest influences affecting differences in psychological traits have been able to account for between 1 and 5%, with 5% being considered very large!).

This makes genetics far and away the biggest single factor dictating differences in personality traits between individuals.

There is No ‘Gene For X’

A crucial point to understand is that there is no single gene for any trait. There is no gene for shyness, anxiety, happiness, aggression. There is no gene for baldness, weight gain, muscularity, or shoe size.

This “gene for x” canard has been used to distort the complex ...

Who Is Scott Adams?

Scott Adams is best known as the creator of the Dilbert comic. But recently he has become equally famous for other things.

His Periscope show ‘Coffee With Scott Adams’, which he puts out almost daily from his home, has become hugely popular over the last year.

Adams is a busy man. He has written a number of non-fiction books. His most famous book, How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big, contains a chapter about the value of implementing systems, not goals.

Scott Adams On Donald Trump

Adams is a staunch and erudite defender of Donald Trump’s intelligence in general, and communication and persuasion skills in particular. His adoration and sky-high praise for the president’s brains and persuasion skills have made him a derided figure in some circles, unsurprisingly. He is also (unsurprisingly) loved by Trump fans.

Scott Adams Is A Man We Can All Learn From

But whether or not you are a Trump fan, we Good Life Guys think Scott Adams is a super-smart man that you should be paying attention to.

Adams has a lot to teach. He tends to take an unconventional but highly rational approach to thinking about and understanding the issues of the day. And for this reason, his opinions and insights are usually very original.

He also has an unusually cheerful and relaxed vibe, quite similar to the vibe of the grandfather of CBT Albert Ellis. And it’s always nice to be able to pick up some of a vibe such as this through osmosis!

Implement Systems, Not Goals

The systems versus goals concept is not a particularly new idea. But for people who have never tried it, it can be truly life-changing.

Many people are toiling under the strain of their own self-imposed goals. For lots of us, having concrete and specific goals can actually be a major hindrance that prevents us from getting what we want from life.

What’s Wrong With A Goal?

A goal is a specific desired outcome. It is an exact end result. And goals are very often ill-conceived because we humans do not know ourselves as well as we tend to think we do!

Willpower Is Depressingly Finite!

Mr Money Moustache, RSD – Land of the Gurus

The internet is home to multitudes of gurus. Many are charlatans, but many are great teachers with valuable lessons to impart.

Cyberspace is a Wild West of ideas in which misinformation, exaggeration and downright bullshit mingle confusingly with smart, helpful and reasonable ideas. There is lots bad and lots good online.

This idea free-for-all can be very alluring!

Addicted To The Internet

This crazy mish-mash of content delivered and promoted by charismatic gurus is highly addictive to lots of people.

Millions of people who ingest the content of online gurus in an attempt to improve their lives, actually end up making their lives worse by becoming addicted to the internet!

Internet addiction is a huge problem in the modern world. Addiction to the internet is very harmful.

Beating Internet Addiction

One effective way to combat internet addiction is to deeply understand the extent to which it is destroying your chances of achieving success in the real world.

Many people discover online gurus when they are searching for a way to make their real-world dreams come true. But these gurus’ content often becomes a major impediment to these people achieving real success.

Information Overkill

It is crucial to realise that you do not need 95% of the information that even the best guru is offering!

Charismatic and intelligent gurus such as Mr Money Moustache (in personal finance) and Tyler RSD (in Game) make tons of content. And much of their content is excellent. So it can be easy to believe that you need to ingest and understand all of it.

But the belief that you need to know all of what your favourite guru is teaching will often lead to compulsivity, obsession and internet addiction. And it can lead to analysis paralysis and a resounding lack of real world success!

Take What Works For You, Discard The Rest

“Less talk more action!”

Do not get mired in minutiae or stuck in the weeds obsessing over small details.

Performing well in the vast majority of areas (including dating, finance, fitness, diet) requires a solid understanding of a few basic, key concepts… and then YOU putting those concepts into action in the real world.

Divergent Interests

Internet gurus such as Mr Money Moustache and Tyler RSD are first and foremost concerned with the success of their own business.

This means they want as large an audience as possible to view their online content. The success of their business depends on you coming back to view their content again and again.

On this episode of The Good Life Guys Show/Podcast, we interview ace UK-based blogger Young FI Guy on redefining success. YFG has an excellent and super-informative blog on which he writes about many diverse topics. As a “weird ex-accountant” (his own words) he tends to lean towards topics that are at least somewhat related to finance.

Since he started his blog a mere one year ago, YFG has become a big name on the UK FIRE (Financial Independence / Retire Early) scene. As a genuine fan, who has read his entire blog front to back, it was a real honour to have him on the show.

Who Is Young FI Guy?

Remarkably, Young FI Guy became financially independent (and retired!) at the young age of 26!

He had always been a keen saver. So when, in his mid-twenties, he grew frustrated with the office politics, boring administrative tasks, and corporate obligations that came with his job in the finance industry, he decided to quit and take some time as a man of leisure.

The plan was to take a finite period of time off work to do some bucket-list type things that had always tickled his fancy. But what he found, was that he was much happier not working his job.

And so, with the encouragement of his wife (and a pile of personal savings that made it possible), he decided to turn his temporary job hiatus into a permanent retirement.

Redefining Success Isn’t as Hard as it Seems

Success is an amorphous term. We all need to define what success means for us, in our own lives.

Society’s notions of what constitutes success are often vague, one-size-fits-all, hallow, and over-influenced by money-hungry marketers.

Young FI Guy is a fascinating character who defines success squarely in his own terms. A warm, thoughtful and highly intelligent man, he lives according to the dictates of his own mind and heart.

YFG has a wise head on young shoulders, and a lot to teach us all. The conversation we had was wonderfully interesting and, in numerous small ways, life-changing.

The following are the big and inspirational ideas that we discussed in the context of redefining success. After each idea, we have suggested a book that would make great further reading on the specific topic.

Be Clear About Your Personal Priorities

Being clear on your priorities is a crucial first step towards fashioning a life that is optimally enjoyable and meaningful to you.

The world cannot tell you how to live, or what to care about. If you blindly follow the herd or bow to peer pressure and ape what appear to be the priorities of the masses, you will likely lead a life of frustration and sadness. The real you will remain obscured. Your truth will go untold. Your soul will go unsatisfied.

Each of us needs to examine our minds, listen to our hearts, and unearth our true priorities.

Who Is Paul Graham?

Paul Graham is an essayist, author, computer scientist, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder of the influential startup accelerator company Y Combinator.

Back in 2009, Paul Graham wrote a short and fascinating essay called ‘Keep Your Identity Small’.

This snappy little piece of writing offers up supermarket-loads of food for thought. There are lessons a-plenty in ‘Keep Your Identity Small’. These lessons can massively improve your life if you apply them to yourself and to the people you meet as you navigate the social world.

These lessons can also offer humanity a way out of many of the potentially lethal quandaries it currently finds itself in.

Politics and Religion Often Yield Useless Discussions

Why do conversations about topics such as politics and religion so frequently descend into unproductive arguments?

Why do discussions about topics such as javascript and astrophysics rarely, if ever, descend into such arguments?

The answer is that people identify with their opinions about politics and religion. People see their political and religious opinions as a core part of their identity.

Mistaking Subjective Opinion For Truth

People feel no need to have any actual expertise in the areas of politics or religion to have deeply held, and passionately defended, opinions about them. People conflate their baseless opinions with THE TRUTH.

In topics such as javascript and astrophysics, only people who have at least some knowledge of the area will have an opinion.

But in emotive areas like politics and religion every Tom, Dick, and Harry has an opinion!

Unfortunately, what matters in conversations about politics and religion is opinion. No matter how baseless these opinions may be! And more often than not, unfortunately and tragically, facts take a backseat.

Because objective truth is very difficult to discover in areas such as religion and politics, all opinions are insisted to be equal. Very often, even patently irrational, unreasonable and ridiculous opinions are given undeserved respect in these areas.

Strong convictions and gut instincts are what people base their arguments on in the realms of politics and religion, not facts.

Defending Identity

The problem with ‘hot button’ topics such as politics and religion is that people allow their ideas in these areas to become their identity. Most people passionately identify with their political and religious ideas.

People are often viciously partisan in these areas.

Baseless (and often obviously barmy) beliefs, held close to the heart and passionately considered a core component of one’s identity… this is a recipe for disaster.

No Objective Truth = No Hurt Feelings

Because people are so identified in these areas, representing dif...