I was listening to a podcast earlier with Tim Ferriss and Neil Strauss, and it largely talked about writing. When you write, the only way you’re going to get things done is by getting started, by taking action.
Tim’s approach to this is that he has a quota of two bad pages to write per day. Generally, the goal is attainable, sometimes easily so, but it also lends itself to continuing. Neil added another example. If your goal is to floss a single tooth, you aren’t going to stop after just one. When you combine easy goals with real deadlines and serious consequences, results tend to follow. So, creating an environment where you’re expected to have things done results in things being completed.
In my personal life, I’ve also found this to be true. When I start writing for my blog, or I need to write several agendas to be out by end-of-day, the work gets done. Neil and Tim also talk about this idea of having 3 iterations (at least) of each major work of long-writing. This helps to make it less daunting. The first iteration is word vomit, (warning: I like writing vivid analogies) it’s the ideas you have puked out onto a page like spaghetti-os. All of the raw material is there, but it needs to be rearranged, those specs of broccoli need to be removed, and it needs to be cleaned up. The primary purpose of this ‘word-vomit’ iteration is to make sure you have all the ideas.
Next, you have the writing focused on the end-user, on the reader. Here is where you cut out all the fluff. If you can remove a sentence, a paragraph, or more, you do so. This is because you want your books to be impactful, to be meaningful. You want your reader to pursue every next chapter because of how captivating it is. In a sense, this iteration is like carving a sculpture. From spaghetti-os to meditation, you begin to piece together the ideas, and think systematically about what you are presenting. Is it coherent? Is it lucid, brilliant, and interesting? When you approach the writing like this, you start to ask yourself ‘why would someone else find this interesting?’ and by doing so, you make it so.
Neil describes the final iteration as being for the enemies of the piece. I see this last stage like hunting. At this point, you get into the models of people who aren’t sympathetic and you respond like hell. When someone who dislikes you reads this piece, what are they going to attack? What objections are they going to talk about? Understanding this almost makes you unbeatable. If you’ve already talked about what a critic is going to say within the piece, it immunizes you to some of the challenge, it’s something that can be pointed to. When I was a nationally competitive debater, one thing I loved to do was write out 3-4 back and forths about each specific argument to see whether my side would come out on top of an argument. Would it be helpful to cut to the end of the argument? This radically improved my thinking because it allowed me to understand where weaknesses may lie.
A final topic that was talked about in the interview is doing something you love versus something that makes you money. The idea for doing something you love is that even when you don’t make money, you still have passion, and you’d be doing it anyway. So, when you break through on something you love, it’ll be incredible. While I agree with the importance of following your passions, I want to draw attention to the fact that many people aspire to be like Neil and Tim, but don’t have the requisite intelligence, agency, or drive. That’s not to say that passion should be discounted, but it is to recognize that one’s unique blueprints may not lend themselves to exactly the same skill-set.
With the idea that not everyone is equally talented, driven, insightful, etc., out in the open, I want to address why I think that this isn’t a knockdown in favor of the ‘follow money’ line of thinking. In an important sense, chasing that dragon is less fulfilling than chasing one with love and excitement.
Loving something, anything, is a never-ending process where you realize aspects you’ve never known play into how you feel about it. Engaging more deeply and in different ways splinters you off from the universal human experience into something more unique, more deep. In My Dinner with Andre, this discussion at one point centers around marriage. Although many people get married, it’s unlikely that any relationship is the same. Instead, emotions like having a kid or sharing a room have their own psychological and emotional significance. Recognizing that you must push your own boundaries is excellent for the soul. When you dig deeper, and throw your all into something, especially for pleasure, you elevate the level of consciousness you’re able to maintain.
This is why you must chase the dragon of your own design. Recognizing what you need and want is imperative to becoming the person you’ve always been destined to become.
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