A long time ago, I sent a thick packet of information to Yale, explaining in considerable detail how awesome I was and why they should accept the honor of my giving them tens of thousands of dollars a year.

They sent me back a short, polite letter, saying that while they were happy to accept my initial contribution of $75, they had plenty of other applicants, even more qualified and more awesome than me, all willing to pony up the tens of thousands of dollars for the next few years.

Regretfully, I was informed, the $75 was all I’d be able to pay them. “We wish you well in your future endeavors” was how they ended their brief reply, and they didn’t even follow me on any online social networks.

Every year, a large number of young people go through the same ritual—hours upon hours spent explaining why they deserve the privilege of becoming indebted to a system that probably won’t train them for a job. For many (not all, but many), the main benefit of graduate school, or even college or university in general, is a form of life avoidance: I’m not sure this is what I want, but at least I won’t have to think about it for a while.

When my first book came out, I finally made it to New Haven. I wandered the campus before speaking that night, drinking coffee at a student hangout and remembering all the time, money, and stress I had invested in the unsuccessful application. A couple days after New Haven I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts and saw signs advertising my appearance at the Harvard Coop. Back in the day, Harvard had also sent me a polite letter saying I wasn’t good enough for them.

Thinking about it on the road, I enjoyed the irony: I never made it to their graduate programs, but now I was speaking at their bookstores and campuses, my name on posters around the city.

***

It took me a long time to get away from validating my life according to something that didn’t relate to my true hopes and goals. At the time, I really did want to devote years of my life doing things that no one would notice, in hopes of obtaining letters behind my name that no one would care about. As ridiculous as I knew it was, I still wanted it! It was hard to let go of… until I finally did.

Part of it was the attachment to something of questionable value (a degree, useless letters), but I was also attracted to the linear nature of academia. I wanted to do something interesting and meaningful, and I saw a clear, if not entirely sensible path. Never mind that the end was muddled; at least I had a certain next step. Pay a certain amount of money, write a certain number and type of essays, complete such-and-such requirements, meet with various advisors, and so on. All fairly straightforward.

But when you venture out on your own, the next step is often unclear. You don’t necessarily know what to do at any given time, which is why having a specific direction is a superpower. There is no degree or graduation waiting for you at the end, and you have to determine your own milestones.

Graduates sometimes experience anxiety and uncertainty. What happens now? they wonder, confronted with the loss of routine and clear deliverables. On a path of independence, you get all these feelings in the beginning, with no one assigning you papers to write or exams to sit.

Having to be responsible, to make decisions about your life, to find something that fulfills you and matters to the world can be a scary thing. It certainly was for me, which is why I felt comforted by the thought of turning my decisions over to someone else.

Fortunately, I didn’t get what I thought I wanted. I paid the application fees, wrote the applications, and pestered people for recommendation letters all to learn that I would probably be better-suited somewhere outside towers of ivory.

Years later, I write these notes while sitting in a hotel lobby in Tajikistan, a place I had never heard of back then. I fly around the world and work on projects I find meaningful. I have no qualifications to do much of anything, yet for the most part I do whatever I want.

I realize now it wasn’t so much the acceptance or rejection of academia, an institution that may very well serve other people’s needs more than mine. It was the rejection of defining myself according to exterior standards, a system that was rigged to reward conformity by design.

Yep, I’m glad I didn’t get what I thought I wanted back then.

###

Image: MC

Many thanks to everyone who has been reading or supporting the launch of The Tower, my new manifesto. If you missed it on Tuesday, you can pick up your free copy in a range of formats.

I also want to thank my long-time friend and colleague Reese Spykerman, specialist in branding and magic, for her great work on the design. Reese truly raised her game on this one as we worked on telling a story through words and images.

I’m now writing from Dubai, en route to Nairobi and eventually Somaliland if all goes well. Over the next ten days, I’ll be in the region and visiting some hard-to-get-to countries.

***

The Tower is all about the subjects of urgency and legacy, written through the analogy of an iPad game I played on another trip to Africa several months ago. The goal is to encourage readers to think about crafting a life oriented around creative work that helps others.

Here’s a selection from the last portion:

There is a cemetery in my neighborhood that I often pass through while running. It’s been there for a long time, with gravestones marking the deaths of people who died as early as 1846. The cemetery is multicultural and interfaith, with inscriptions in many languages and numerous forms of honoring the dead.

As I run through this resting place and toward the waterfront that flows through the center of my city, I often think about these people, loved by others but unknown to me except through the epitaphs on their tombstones. Did they live the life they wanted? Their lives mattered regardless of the choices they made, but did they fulfill their potential? Did they die with any unresolved regrets?

Someone who died a hundred or more years ago may have lived a meaningful life, but the choices that were available to them were dramatically different than the ones available to us today. They couldn’t take one million photos, visit every country in the world, or talk to thousands of interlinked people from all walks of life through the online social web.

The same may be said about us in another 150 years, but that is not our concern. Whether the era that we live in is more special than others or not, a single fact remains: this is our time. This is our chance.

I wrote the manifesto, and this section in particular, because I believe it’s important to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities around us. That is the overall message I hope to communicate with AONC in general: life is short, so let’s pick up the pace and make our time count for something.

Next year I’ll be making some changes in how I publish this blog and the overall focus of related work. My goal is to continue getting more specific about how we can live intentionally and pursue a big dream, while serving others and crafting a legacy. (I’ll explain more about this during the forthcoming Annual Review.)

I’m grateful to have a platform with so many amazing people who read and contribute from around the world. You inspire me.

Oh, and if you haven’t read The Tower yet, check it out! It’s best read on an iPad or other tablet, but you can also read via simple PDF, Kindle, or just plain text.

You can also share your own ideas about legacy projects in the original comment thread.

Wishing you well from DXB-NBO,

###

Image: Mavis

Everyone hates making decisions, especially ones that are important and determine the course of their future.

Thankfully, there’s often no need to make such decisions.

Instead, you can simply put them off, often indefinitely. By shifting your life to autopilot, you’ll be in good company, since many people prefer to let things come their way instead of making things happen.

To join this large and nebulous group, here are a few strategies that will help you defer making any real decisions.

Apply for something. Whether a grant or scholarship application, some form of higher education, or some kind of competition, applying for anything is a great option for putting off real decisions. First, it takes care of the immediate problem of how to spend your free time and energy, and then it provides you with an extended time of waiting around to learn the results of your application.

Applications usually require a lot of time and paperwork, with letters to beg for, various records to hunt down, and essays to carefully draft that will later be quickly skimmed by an assistant. You’ll feel a sense of accomplishment from having submitted your application, even though nothing has actually been completed or decided.

Enter or re-enter formal education. Best combined with “apply for something,” the choice to enter or re-enter formal education is great at slicing away years of your life, often at a time when you’re best prepared to put them to good use. Professional schools or advanced degrees are especially useful options, since you’ll have plenty of peers who are also delaying their decisions about life, and society in general will respect you for wasting your time in a scholarly manner. If you do it right, you can hide away in formal education for at least two years, sometimes longer.

Adopt fatalism. Accept these phrases of the fatalist: “If it’s meant to be, it will happen” and “Good things come to those who wait.” Above all, do not believe that you can influence the reason why something happens, and do not believe that good things come to those who hustle.

Pursue side projects. There’s nothing like a good side project to keep you from what you should really be working on. In fact, an entire life can be composed of a series of side projects. Side projects are especially helpful at giving you a false sense of security and focus, thus obviating the need to think about what really matters. Go ahead, say yes to that thing that will distract you from your purpose. You can always return to reality later.

Embrace ignorance. This choice is especially easy and common. When encountering a crossroads, determine that you don’t care about the outcome and don’t want to know which destination is best. Base all of your analysis of the situation on your existing beliefs without gathering more data. Ignore warning signs that you might be wrong, and accept that if you’re scared of something, you shouldn’t do it. (Note: this strategy will also help you in your beliefs about politics, religion, and people who think differently than you.)

Ask everyone for advice. No need to think for yourself; ask everyone else to do it for you. For best results, signal your hesitation about the decision to the people of whom you ask advice. This way, they’ll tell you what you want to hear: take your time, there’s no hurry. You’ll be happiest if you receive conflicting advice from your advisors, because you’ll then feel more comfortable about waiting it out.

Compare yourself to others. Instead of thinking about how everyone’s situation is contextual and unique, look at people who are more successful than you and fall into despair over why you haven’t achieved as much as them. Alternatively, look at people who are less successful than you, and console yourself that at least you’re further along than them. As a bonus, choose to apply other people’s definitions of success instead of thinking about your own.

Decide to settle. Perhaps the most common strategy for life avoidance, “settling for what you have” is the best way to defer your potential, your possibility, and your dreams. Thinking ahead to a vague, undefined future is especially helpful: “I’ll have more time for the things I want to do later.”

Opportunities to rationalize settling are both unique and limitless. You’ve done a lot already… why bother challenging yourself anymore? Stop and take it easy—you deserve it, champ.

***

All of these strategies will serve you well in your quest for passivity, for they all represent external factors that will make your decisions for you. This will then set you free from the burden of making them yourself. Never take matters into your own hands!

Always remember: there’s plenty of time. No one ever dies young or unprepared. Ignore the 1,440 minutes available to you today, the changing of the seasons, the nagging sense that you could have done something more if you had made the effort. Don’t worry about the days flying by that you’ll never see again.

If you mess it up, you can always do it all over. No pressure, no urgency. Right?

###

NYC meetup! I’ll be in the center of the universe on November 15th at 7pm. Tickets are free while they last, but they won’t last long. If you’re nearby, I’d love to see you.

Image: Mike

What, exactly, are the rules?

Why do these rules exist?

By whose authority are these rules upheld?

What’s more important—the spirit or letter of these rules?

Has anyone ever found or been granted an exception to these rules?

Could these rules be bent, modified, overlooked, or otherwise changed?

Will someone be penalized for excelling under the rules?

What are the consequences for breaking the rules?

What are the people who made these rules really afraid of?

###

Feel free to add to this list if you’d like. I’m traveling this week and will post as many comments as I can from the road.

Image: TVD

Three months ago, we brought together 500 people from a dozen countries for our inaugural World Domination Summit. You can see what it looked like in this brand-new video recap:

(You can also see thousands of photos from the weekend over here. A few of them are below, in case you missed the earlier recaps.)

Opening party at the Portland Art Museum

Pam Slim’s Keynote Address

Chillaxin’ in the Hammock Lounge

Attendee art from Mark Silver’s session

Travel hackers meet on the lawn

Jonathan Fields unveils his greatest work ever

***

Today I’m proud to announce that #WDS2012 will be held in Portland from July 6-8.

This time, world domination can no longer be contained to a single art museum. Instead, we’re moving to the famed Newmark Theatre for our main stage events, and a number of additional venues for (expanded) workshops, breakout sessions, and meetups.

We have bands coming in from faraway lands. Our Bollywood DJ will return for an encore performance. The world’s finest hammocks will be hung throughout the lobbies. We’ll have yoga in the park, a 200-person photo walk through the Pearl District, a mass book signing with 20 authors, and an attempt to set some sort of Guinness world record.

It will be big… but not TOO big. A mobile site will allow attendees to connect with each other based on shared interests and location, ensuring that plenty of small-group gatherings can take place. A “highly-sensitive person” lounge will welcome the introverts among us.

Perhaps most importantly, the event will remain non-commercial and non-profit. I don’t think sponsors are evil, but I don’t want them for WDS.

But wait, I’m getting ahead of things…

The Registration Process

We’ll have plenty of interest, and I know tickets will go quickly. Last year we sold out five months in advance, even without a real plan. (Thanks to those who trusted us to come through.)

By the time the actual weekend rolled around, tickets were being scalped on eBay for a $300 markup. An unknown number of people without tickets came to Portland just to hang out. More than 60% of first-year attendees pre-registered to return next year.

In an attempt to keep things less manic, we’ll do registration in two phases this time: Wave I starts this Thursday, and Wave II will be in January 2012. (We’ll give first choice of workshop registration to Wave I and first-year pre-registered attendees.)

I’m thrilled to produce this weekend adventure, and look forward to welcoming many friends to our fair city again next year. Our newly-expanded action team is already meeting monthly at World Domination HQ to ensure we rock this out.

If you’d like to be part of an epic adventure and you want to meet like-minded people while learning in a fun environment, you should come to WDS. (And if it isn’t for you, no problem.)

Those who are interested can visit WorldDominationSummit.com this Thursday, September 8th… and don’t be late. We’ll release tickets first to year-one attendees and the waiting list, and if any are left over for Wave 1, they’ll go out to the public around 11am PST.

In short, all that’s missing is you. Will you save the date?

###

All of my relationships have failed, but here’s what you should do about yours.

I’ve never written a book, but here’s a list of everything that’s wrong with yours.

My business failed, but here’s how you should run yours.

My blog has five readers, but here’s some free advice on how to attract attention.

I have almost no experience in doing anything that matters, but you should hire me to manage your social media campaign.

Picasso didn’t know how to draw, and Van Gogh was a fraud. I know this because I took an art history class in college.

I traveled to Mexico once; let me tell you all about the world.

My unfinished novel is brilliant, but the editors in traditional publishing don’t recognize quality.

People just can’t acknowledge my talent. Nobody understands my genius. It’s all a scam.

Here’s my subjective experience, which I will now objectify for you as universal truth. My definition of success is the only one that matters, even though it has shifted over time in accordance with my unique journey through life.

I have no space in my brain to accommodate the fact that your experience might be completely different than mine.

Sorry.

###

[Feel free to add to the list.]

Image: H4

Because when you leave behind the familiar, you can’t help but be changed by the foreign.

Because comfort zones become constricting zones over time.

Because the world was meant to be experienced, not imagined.

Because you’ll meet people who are different than you. (Are we all the same? Not really, but that’s OK.)

Because it will frustrate and annoy you at times, and you’ll be better because of it.

Because you are afraid, and it’s always good to make peace with your fears.

Where to?

That’s up to you—it’s a big world out there. The choice of destinations is far less important than the choice to depart.

When you return you’ll look back on your journey and think, Did that really happen? Was I really in the land of _____?

And then you’ll go through reentry and reverse culture shock, and then you’ll face a choice. Option 1: to reminisce, to think about those days when you were brave, and that time when dreaming was something you did wide awake.

Option 2: to take another look at the map, and start planning the next adventure.

Which will it be?

###

Kyoto Cemetery: Stuck In Customs

I’ve spent much of the past four months interviewing unconventional entrepreneurs for my next book, and throughout the process I learned what kind of questions solicit the best answers.

For example, I often asked people whether their venture was “worth it,” which might sound simplistic. Of course it’s worth it! I’ve learned, though, that this question often leads to a good story, so that’s why I ask.

I also learned to ask if there was a specific moment when they knew for sure they would make it. These “moment they knew” stories can be fun and inspiring.

Here are three of them, from different parts of the world.

****

Even with our excellent credit history, 2010 was a bad time in banking to ask for money. We didn’t need much, but we couldn’t swing it completely on our own—my husband Jon and I needed a small credit line to lease the building where we planed to house our interior design and framing business. Unfortunately, the bank said no.

Later that day, Jon was on the phone with the landlord of the building telling him that we just weren’t going to be able to make it work, and that he could release the building to the other interested party. As I heard him saying those words on the phone, I had an incredible surge of hope and I remember shouting, “Jon, no! We have to give it another shot! Tell him we just need a few more days to try again. We’ll just go back in to the bank and make them hear us out. If they’ll just sit down and listen, they will believe in us.”

It totally worked! The bank did hear our plea, and we eventually got what we needed to get going. But we almost just accepted the fact that “it wasn’t meant to be” and carried on with our lives. I am so glad we put it more effort; it meant everything to us to give it one more passionate plea.

Karen Starr
Hazel Tree Interiors
Akron, Ohio

***

My husband and I were traveling around Europe after I had been hit by a car. We were going to travel and then go back to Chile to shoot weddings until the bookings stopped coming in and then go back to having “normal” jobs. We had been Couchsurfing to try and save money, but after a month and a half on the road I was sick of it. So we decided to splurge in Italy. We checked into an amazing room at the Meridien, and I decided to pay an ungodly amount to use the internet for ten minutes. And that was when I saw the email. It would be our second U.S. wedding and our first U.S. wedding where I had quoted more than simply travel costs. The bride had decided to hire us and she was going with our biggest package, over $5,000.

I freaked out. I called my mom and then I called my dad screaming—stupidly using the hotel phone, which ended up costing another hundred bucks. I should’ve paid for another ten minutes of the internet and used Skype. I wasn’t freaking out because of the money, though. It was more that for a bride to pay that amount of money to photographers that don’t even live in your country is a huge leap of faith. And that was when I realized—if there was one bride willing to hire us and fly us in, there were probably more. And I started to think that if we could work both in Chile and outside of Chile, we could make this work.

So we did.

Kyle Hepp
Independent Photographer
Santiago, Chile

***

The big day for us was August 20th, 2008—also known as the day when we realized our dream of moving back to my partner’s native Spain. When we set up the company in England in 2005, it was with the aim of eventually being able to move back to Spain and run the business remotely, although we weren’t sure of how long this would take. We had set up a perfect infrastructure, with cloud-based business management software, VoIP telephones, and so on, but the logistics outsourcing was the proving the biggest hurdle. We couldn’t find a company that could deal with the complexity of 250 different products, most of which were labelled in Spanish.

When we finally managed to set up the contracted out logistics operation, and drove away from the warehouse knowing that we no longer had to do the picking and packing ourselves and that the following day we were getting on a boat to Spain, I knew we had achieved what we set out to do.

Jonathan Pincas
The Tapas Lunch Company
Spain and United Kingdom

***

The stories are powerful because they provide a keystone moment when someone goes from doubt to confidence. When you have these moments, hold on to them. Remember them the next time you encounter a big challenge.

How about you—when did you have an experience where you knew your project would be successful?

###

Image: Chicago Man

When you begin to share your important work with the world, a funny thing happens: some of the people closest to you don’t understand it.

They damn you with faint praise, or they point out something trivial that could be improved. Sometimes they never say anything at all, which of course is the worst thing.

When the time comes to show off your great project, you’re all, “Hey! Check out this thing that I did!”

And they’re all, “Oh. That’s nice.”

Nice?

You feel crushed because you desperately wanted their approval, even though you knew this was probably an unhealthy desire. (Just because you know something to be true doesn’t mean you always abide by it.)

You wanted—and expected—them to say, “This is great! I always knew you could do this. How can I help make it better? How can we tell the world about it?”

But no, you don’t get that at all. You just get the the faint praise, the brush-off, the indifference.

Then you realize… maybe this thing just wasn’t that important to them. Or maybe you didn’t know them as well as you thought you did. How sad.

But then! Another interesting thing happens.

All kinds of other people suddenly appear. Your fan club. Your support crew. A small army of remarkable people.

These people are all, “WOW. THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS. Here’s how my life is different because of the risk you took and the courage you displayed.”

You feel surprised. Refreshed. Energized. And most of all, you feel responsible to keep going, because you see it was good that you went ahead with your project even if you weren’t universally loved.

Some of the people you expect to be your biggest supporters will disappoint you—and some of the people you rarely thought about, or didn’t even know existed, will turn out to be your true friends.

This is how it works when you begin to share yourself with the world.

It’s a funny thing.

###

Image: Jeff

I talked with someone who was in the process of calling fifteen people to get their opinions on a project.

Why was any one of our opinions worth so much effort? I’m not sure, but someone had told her she should seek out as many opinions as possible before deciding what to do.

The standard line is: Listen to what other people have done and avoid making the same mistakes.

But maybe instead of just hearing about them, you need to make these mistakes yourself. Or maybe you won’t actually make the mistakes in the first place—just because someone else screwed up doesn’t mean you will.

Other people think because they are older than you, or because they paid a lot of money for a piece of paper you don’t have, you are then obligated to listen to them. Guess what? You’re not obligated.

Thankfully, there’s an alternative. The alternative is: instead of going out and asking people, skip that whole process and just do what feels best to you.

I like Derek’s hell-yeah test for deciding between competing opportunities. The basic idea is that when you think about the idea, if it’s not a “hell yeah,” don’t do it. I’ve modified this a bit in my own life to be: if it’s a “hell yeah,” why not go for it?

Hell yeah, why wouldn’t we invite everyone to Portland for a big adventure? Hell yeah, why not go to every country in the world? Nate is walking across America by himself—hell yeah!

***

When seeking advice, the first question you should ask yourself is: How is this person qualified to advise me?

For example: is this “business coach” someone who has never owned a real business, besides telling other people how to run theirs? (There are a surprising number of “business coaches” who operate in this realm.)

Does this “life coach” really have it all figured out for themselves, or is the whole thing a circular operation, built on creating more life coaches for imaginary clients?

Whoever it is, what is this person’s bias? Do they want you to make a certain decision that benefits them? Are they concerned about being right or looking good?

The answers to these questions matter—which is why you can skip the whole thing by not asking in the first place.

Confessional

There are very few times I have ever asked for advice on a big change or transition. Almost none.

I often ask about the details of the change: “How should I do this?” But I never ask about the vision: “Where am I going?” I already know where I’m going. It’s my life; it’s my plan.

I know that some people will think this is arrogant. But forget about me and just step back to look at your own life. You know yourself better than anyone else ever will. Who else could possibly be qualified to advise you on the business of you? It’s your life and your plan.

So go ahead, get advice on the specifics. But leave the big picture to yourself. You are never obligated to solicit or receive feedback from anyone.

###

Image: LVC