Four weeks ago, we launched Adventure Capital to a small group of beta members.

We’re now gearing up to launch it more widely… next week! Wednesday, May 29 is the day when our initial group will be available to refer new members, and a few special partners will be writing about it as well.

But first! In the spirit of adventure, we’re giving away two full scholarships to the entire year-long program.

Win a Full Scholarship (Short Version)

It’s very basic. Adventure Capital is all about helping new business owners increase income by taking deliberate action over the course of a year. To enter, simply comment in this post about what kind of business you’d like to start, improve, or grow.

We’ll choose two winners on Sunday night at 6pm PST.

–>Enter the contest here

Win a Full Scholarship (Longer Version)

The two winners will receive the entire 12-month series of course modules, along with all the case studies and additional resources that everyone else receives. We may have a live event for A/C members at some point. If so, the scholarship winners will also be invited.

If entering the contest, you must commit to work on the course regularly! A/C is all about taking regular action over time to create your own freedom and independence through entrepreneurship. This has to be a core part of your life over the next year.

Hint: It doesn’t actually take that much time to grow a business step-by-step—but the time you spend has to be devoted to the right things. This is a key component to all of the lessons and action plans we’re creating with our members.

You must be willing to share the results of your progress with everyone else in the group. A/C isn’t a forum—the focus is on taking action, not on telling people about it—but we’re rolling out a new series of case studies for our members starting next week. If chosen for a scholarship, you’ll need to agree to being a case study, sharing lessons and results with other members.

You don’t need to write a long essay to enter the contest. A few concise sentences saying why this opportunity will help you will be fine.

Oh, it’s probably a good idea read the introductory material so you understand what we’re doing in the course and why it matters.

There are no other requirements. Our biased judges will select two winners based on their own bizarre and twisted logic.

Over to you! Enter here.

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When you were a kid and wanted to do something your parents or teachers didn’t like, you may have heard the question, “If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?”

The idea is that it’s not good to do something stupid, even if everyone else does it. The logic is think for yourself instead of following the crowd.

It’s not bad advice, even if it’s sometimes used to exert control more than to support independent thinking.

Then, you grow up and suddenly the tables are turned. People start expecting you to behave exactly as they do. If you don’t conform to their expectations, some of them get confused or even irritated.

It’s almost as if they are asking: “Hey, everyone else is jumping off the bridge. Why aren’t you?”

The irony of this is lost on everyone who is busy lining up to take the leap. The logic shifts from independent thinking to groupthink. If everyone else is doing it, it must be right.

I began this site five years ago to help bring the childhood message up to adulthood application. Ignore those people jumping off the bridge. Make your own decisions. Live your own life.

Asking why? to everything like a three-year-old is helpful in making sure you don’t jump off the bridge. Whenever confronted by a request or obligation, ask the question:

“Why should I do that?”

When the answer comes back, “Just because,” or “Because that’s what everyone does,” you know you’re looking over the bridge again. In any given day, you’ll confront this issue at least once. This fact is somewhat unavoidable. Whether you jump or not, however, is up to you.

The counsel you received at a young age was correct, even if the people giving it to you weren’t that great at following it themselves.

Why jump off the bridge just because other people do?

***

I told this story in 63 cities on my first book tour long ago. The message still holds: think for yourself! Live for your own choices.

You can do good things for yourself and for others too—it’s not a false choice.

Comments here.

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Image: Troy

I’ve said before that writing a book isn’t difficult when you break it down into 1,000 words a day. In fact, if you write 1,000 words a day fairly consistently, you can write more than one book a year.

A few smart readers have pointed out that the writing is the easiest part. Truly crafting something worthwhile requires much more work in the editing or revision phase. It’s one thing to get 50,000 words on the page, and it’s another to turn them into something that other people want to read.

I still maintain that it’s more important for most of us to focus on forward motion, on making choices that allow for consistent, daily effort. Most people remain stuck at the beginning, unable to envision a reality of themselves actually writing a book or creating another big project.

Nevertheless, the comments that revision is more difficult and more important are true. First you create, then you revise. The essence of the process is revision.

49,000 Words and Miles to Go

I’ve been working on my new book for much of the past several months. The other day I was surprised to see that my draft is now more than 49,000 words. The target is approximately 70,000 words in the final manuscript. All’s well, right?

Well, I’m on track, but I have far to go. This first draft is really just a first draft. I expect to rewrite much of the entire manuscript at least once over the next two months, and then I expect to revise much of that version over the following month. Much work remains and many miles to go.

Meanwhile, we’ve been working with our beta members in the new Adventure Capital project. This course launched in beta (finally!) a month ago, and we’ve been gearing up for a bigger relaunch to the public over the past few weeks.

I had originally thought it could be ready as early as a week ago, but we still have a few more tweaks to make before going live. Our new target date for a public launch is Wednesday, May 29.

Both of these big projects have reminded me of an essential truth: revising is harder, but ultimately more worthwhile, than the initial act of making something.

From a recent New Yorker essay by John McPhee:

The way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once. For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something—anything—out in front of me… Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and eye. Edit it again—top to bottom. The chances are that about now you’ll be seeing something that you are sort of eager for others to see. And all of that takes time.

All of that takes time, so that’s what I’ll be doing, day in and day out for the next six weeks.

How about you? Are you creating or revising? How do you do it?

Feel free to share in the comments.

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Image: DKrebs

Most productivity advice doesn’t help me. I work on a lot of projects at once. I read and reply to email throughout the day. I say yes more than I say no.

But I’ve found a new habit that is helping a lot. The habit is changing my default behavior.

Those of us who do knowledge work for much of the day have no shortage of choices. As I’ve written before, for me the ultimate superpower is to always know what to do next.

I’ve noticed that my default behavior, whenever I’m not sure what to do next, is to consume. I read the news online or check out social media. When I’m done with one news site or one social media platform, I look at another.

I don’t think this is bad, but I don’t need to do it all the time.

I’ve now started doing something else. Whenever I come to the end of a task and wonder, “OK, what’s next?” I try to answer it with something active, not passive.

The story I tell myself is that the default behavior is to create—not to consume.

I can now default to working on my manuscript, writing blog posts, developing the case studies for our new Adventure Capital course, and preparing for WDS.

I save the news reading for the morning and late afternoons, or whenever I make a conscious choice to take a break.

What helps you in your work?

Feel free to share in the comments.

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Image: Lanier

When I’m not roaming the world, I live in Portland, Oregon, land of strong coffee and tall bikes.

Portland is a fun little place, and it also happens to be one of the most progressive cities in America. You can buy marijuana at a food cart beginning at approximately age twelve.

When George Bush (the first one) visited Portland, so many people turned out to protest that he dubbed the city “Little Beirut.”

Walking down the street on any given day, you’ll be accosted by people who want you to save the rain forest or support homeless anarchists.

For the most part, it feels like home.

A couple years ago, after moving from Seattle, I went to the dentist for a cleaning. The hygienist and the dentist both mentioned that I’d need to supplement brushing and flossing with my own fluoride source, since it’s not included in the water supply in Portland.

What? No fluoride in the water? That seemed strange, but what do I know about fluoride… obviously not much.

So then I do some reading and see that Portland is the only major metropolitan area in the entire U.S. that does not fluoridate its water. Really? The only one?

Because of the lack of fluoride, kids in Portland have twice the number of cavities as kids in Seattle.

Finally, the City Council voted last year to bring our city into the 20th century by approving fluoridation—and then all hell broke loose, with all sorts of people lining up to protest what seems to be a fairly normal thing elsewhere.

One of our newsweeklies, the Willamette Week, reported yesterday on the campaign to “stop putting drugs in the water” and the upcoming public referendum.

Much of this campaign is funded by out-of-state conservative groups, including the Koch brothers and the John Birch Society. All of these groups are lined up against virtually the entire medical community, with a tiny number of exceptions.

Yet here in the capital of hipsterdom, where Barack Obama is considered far too moderate for many Portlanders, it seems that a lot of people are buying into the idea that fluoride is a harmful intrusion into their civil liberties.

My favorite quote from the article described the strange coalition that has lined up to oppose health and hygiene:

“It’s as if an Occupy protest, a talk on artisanal cheesemaking, and a Tea Party rally were all accidentally booked at the same hotel ballroom.”

It all brings up a good question: it’s fine to oppose conventional wisdom, but what do you do if the conventional wisdom is right… and the unconventional opinion is wrong?

In this case, the hybrid campaign of Occupy + Tea Party + yoga moms against fluoridation is certainly unconventional. They’re challenging the entire medical establishment, including the CDC, which says that fluoridation is one of the top 10 health achievements of the last century.

Part of me respects their devotion to a cause they truly believe in, but I also think if it’s good enough for the CDC and every dentist in the land, it’s good enough for me.

Maybe I’m too judgmental, though. Maybe there’s a good reason all of these people are so upset.

Either way, what do you do when the unconventional opinion seems to be … wrong?

Feel free to share your comments, whether you’re from Portland or not.

***

Update: Thanks for all the comments! As you can see, a range of opinions was shared by our great community. We’re now moving on to other things next week.

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I’m partnering with @quarterly to send fun things in the mail 4x/year. Sign up to receive the first #CGQ01 shipment.

Image: Kurt Armstrong, Willamette Week

Last weekend I had the honor of speaking to 600 people at Frequent Traveler University, a conference devoted to the world of points and miles.

A longtime friend, Gary Leff, asked me to share a few lessons from the 11-year journey to every country that just wrapped up a few weeks ago in Norway. What have I learned?

Good question. I thought about it for a while and here are some of the highlights I came up with.

***

Lesson #1: Miles are for spending! (Life, too.)

I’ve been all over the world for free or almost free thanks to Frequent Flyer Miles, but they don’t do anyone any good if they are left unused.

Miles are a depreciating currency. A block of miles or points acts as a tool that allows you to experience things that would otherwise be difficult, expensive, or unobtainable—but miles and points have no value on their own.

If you have miles, or money, or the most valuable asset of all—time—put it to good use. Spend it!

(I wrote about this lesson previously in Life Is for Spending.)

Lesson #2. If you can figure out all of the costs of a goal, it becomes much easier.

Having a structure helped me as the quest became more difficult over time. Knowing how many countries existed in what regions and what the visa laws were for each country and what the likely obstacles would be and so on… all of these things were benefits that made the whole project much easier.

Going from 50 to 100 countries cost me approximately $30,000. Once I realized that it wouldn’t be terribly expensive, at least when spread out over a number of years, I was eager to commit to the goal.

Far from feeling restrictive, the more I created structure around the process of continuous travel, the more feasible the goal became.

(I wrote about this lesson previously in The Tower manifesto.)

LESSON #3: With experience comes confidence.

I didn’t just say “I’m going to visit every country” before I had been anywhere at all. I first lived overseas for four years, and then I traveled for a long time just because I loved travel.

After I had been to 50 countries, I thought, maybe I can get to 100. And then as I grew closer to that goal, that’s when I thought, well, 100 isn’t good enough. Why not go everywhere?

Sometimes I hear from people who haven’t traveled much, and they write in to ask questions about visiting Europe, Asia, or North America for the first time. They always feel like they have to apologize or produce some kind of disclaimer: “I know this is no big deal compared to what you do all the time…”

I always say: “No, it’s great that you’re doing that!” When you begin to travel for the first time, it IS a big deal. And then, the more you travel, the more comfortable you’ll feel traveling.

I recently wrote down a list of all my travel mistakes and realized I had actually made more mistakes toward the end of the journey than in the beginning. As I grew confident, I stopped double-checking everything. I often confused the dates of travel and on one particular challenging occasion in the Seychelles, the departure time of an international flight.

Yet by then I had learned that even when something went wrong, it was probably going to be OK in the end.

(I wrote about part of this lesson previously in Kind of a Big Deal.)

LESSON #4: There is almost always more than one way to accomplish something.

Gary recently wrote a post called Hang Up, Call Again. His premise is that whenever you don’t like the answer you receive from an airline rep, you should simply hang up the phone, call again, and ask someone else.

This is great advice! And it’s not only good for dealing with airlines. When you don’t like the answer you receive in life, you should hang up and call again.

I skipped two years of college with this rule.

I went to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia without a visa (and Eritrea too, although that one was admittedly more problematic).

I’ve rerouted and changed many tickets that are supposedly non-changeable. One time in Bangkok I skipped the immigration line and self-immigrated, saving two hours and then sorting it out on my way to the next destination.

I’m not recommending you skip immigration or crash-land in interesting places around the world, but the point is that there’s usually more than one way to accomplish something.

LESSON #5: Use the $10 Rule to avoid insanity.

I’m a very frugal person by nature. Part of what drew me to the world of miles and points was because it allowed me to experience things I wouldn’t otherwise pay for.

Frugality is a good value if you’re trying to get out of debt, but if you find yourself walking up and down the same street for an hour with your bags in the rain because you don’t want to spend $8 for a taxi, perhaps you should rethink your priorities.

If you decide not to eat in airports because the sandwich is too expensive, and then you’re tired and lethargic for the rest of the day, you have no one to blame but yourself.

After too many experiences walking in the rain or going hungry from not buying the sandwich, I made a rule that while traveling I would always pay $10 or less for something that improved my life, without thinking much about the decision. It made my traveling life much better.

LESSON #6: You should decide for yourself what you like.

I’m not an argumentative person and I don’t like to debate. There’s one thing that annoys me, though—people who say that “you’re doing it wrong.” When it comes to travel, you’re not doing it wrong just because it’s not their way!

You can spend as much or as little time as you like in any particular place. You can stay at a hotel instead of a hostel if you want. Should you even decide to change your mind about something at some point, feel free.

For years I carried a camera and took photos because I thought it was supposed to do as opposed to something I enjoyed. I wasn’t good at taking pictures. Plenty of other people have that department covered—see Thomas, Tera, Stephanie, and many AONC readers—but it’s not my thing.

For me, when I stopped taking pictures, I enjoyed myself much more.

LESSON #7: People are NOT the same all over the world.

Sometimes you hear an observation that people everywhere are all the same, and I think this is a very superficial comment. People aren’t the same, and that’s good!

The differences are what is interesting about the world and about travel.

Different cultures have different values and different ways of thinking about life. Before I went to Jordan, I had never spent much time in a country where Islam was the most common religion. I went away with much more respect and understanding than I had before.

The same was true for me all over the world. In Bhutan I learned about Buddhism from the source, in India I talked with Hindus and Sikhs, and these are just a few examples.

Around the world, most people are good. But that doesn’t mean they’re all the same, and that’s OK.

LESSON #8: In some ways, the world is rapidly changing… but in others it’s not.

I like to tell the story of a friend who visited Afghanistan. In his rural guesthouse, there was no running water, but the WiFi and cell phone service was great. He took a bucket shower while uploading photos to his website.

Elsewhere, there are still plenty of people who live on less than $2 a day, and sometimes even less than $1 a day. Approximately 40% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa lacks clean water. Basic healthcare and primary education remain out of reach for most of the people in rural parts of the world.

Therefore, it’s important for those of us who do have not only clean water but also tremendous opportunities to ask what they can do to contribute.

How can you make the world a better place? What can you offer?

LESSON #9: If you have an idea to do something crazy, pay attention!

Once in a while, someone asks if I have any regrets about traveling for so long. The simple answer is no. I don’t regret anything about the journey. If I wasn’t in a particular place for a long time, I can always go back to see places I appreciated and wanted to learn more about.

That’s what I did last week with Istanbul—after the Frequent Traveler University event last weekend, I hopped over to Turkey for a few days of revisiting a culture I wanted to learn more about.

There is just one thing I think of when I think about regrets. Years ago, when I first had the idea to “go everywhere,” it stuck with me. I wasn’t necessarily committed to it right from the beginning, but as soon as I had the idea, I knew I would regret it if I didn’t try.

Years later, I can say with confidence: this was a great idea! I’m so glad I followed through!

My advice to you, if you care about such a thing, it to think carefully about things you’d like to do.

While writing of The $100 Startup, I heard over and over that people who started a small business were primarily motivated by freedom. They said things like:

“I wanted more ownership of my life, more independence. I wanted to make my own choices.”

After they took action on an idea and started their project, they said things like:

“I’m so glad I pursued this idea. I’m so glad I didn’t just think about it and then decide not to.”

It’s great that there is so much possibility in the world. All of us have remarkable opportunities that are somewhat new—the ability to see the world, sometimes over and over, the ability to determine the course of our own future.

Let’s use it well. Let’s not waste these opportunities. Let’s live actively and seek to engage wherever we can.

***

I had a fun time in Virginia with Gary and his merry crew of travel hackers.

If you’re interested in Frequent Traveler University, they’re doing another event later this year in Tampa. Don’t hesitate to check it out!

What about you—what have you learned from travel?

Feel free to share with others in the comments.

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Image: Cath

I came into Abu Dhabi on the 13 hour flight from Washington, DC. It’s a new service and they’re advertising it everywhere around town. In the airport they have a real lounge, not just the contracted one they use in JFK.

I touched down at 8pm and caught up quickly at baggage claim, sitting down and hammering out email replies and seeing what changed in the world overnight while I was eating Indian food and sleeping on my lie-flat Etihad bed.

Outside I took a car to the Aloft hotel, which I had booked for the night—or technically, the next 9 hours. In the early morning I’d be back out again, having failed at my attempt to change the ticket to allow for a day’s stopover before hitting up Istanbul.

No matter. There’s always time to sleep, but not always time to live.

Thirty minutes later I rolled up to the Aloft hotel and checked in. One more hour of real work in the room before heading up to the rooftop bar—the hottest place in town on Thursday nights, I was told.

Fortunately or not, this was Tuesday. It wasn’t empty but it wasn’t packed. I ordered a drink and looked out at the world. Abu Dhabi! Here it is.

I remember coming to the United Arab Emirates for the first time way back in 2007. At the time I was just beginning the quest to go everywhere, and UAE was an initial training ground. I rented a car and drove to every emirate—six or seven, I believe.

This time the only driving is in the taxi to and from the airport.

I was drained from DC, worn out from “extrovert mode” after speaking to 600 people. This is how it always is. It’s always worth it but it’s often hard to recover.

So I escape. I leave for a few days to get back to the work I’ve committed. And here I am, back in a place that is simultaneously strange and familiar.

***

I finally go to bed at 1am and wake up at 4. I lie in bed for a while, resting but unable to sleep. I hear the call to prayer. Sometime between 5:30 and 6 the sun rises in an instant. There is no preamble, just darkness, a brief moment of haze, then sunlight. Good morning, Abu Dhabi.

An hour later I’m in a taxi heading back to the airport and on to Istanbul. There are no new countries for me anymore, but there are always new adventures. Welcome to a new day.

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Image: YaserQ8

I received a copy of the new book Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath, two brothers and co-authors responsible for the previous bestsellers Switch and Made to Stick.

I’ve always enjoyed Chip and Dan’s work, so when our mutual publisher asked me to share an excerpt of their new book, I was happy to do so.

Check out the excerpt below, or pick up the book for full reading.

***

Using a Tripwire to Make Decisions
by Chip and Dan Heath

Chances are you know someone who has been stuck on autopilot too long. Sometimes autopilot causes people to neglect opportunities; maybe you have a friend who has talked about writing a novel for years but never seems to make any progress. Other times, autopilot leads people to persist at efforts that seem doomed, like a couple whose relationship makes them both miserable, or a relative with a naive dream of making a living as a landscape painter, or an executive who refuses to recognize that her pet project has failed. At some point, the virtue of being persistent turns into the vice of denying reality. When that transformation happens, how can you snap someone out of it?

One option is to set a deadline, the most familiar form of a tripwire. Some deadlines are natural, such as the deadline for filing stories at a daily newspaper—the printing press has to roll at a certain time, whether the story is ready or not. But it’s easy to forget that most of the deadlines we encounter in life are simply made up. They are artificially created tripwires to force an action or a decision.

Some deadlines are backed by the force of law, such as the IRS’s April 15 deadline for submitting taxes, and it’s no shock that these deadlines are effective. What’s stranger is the effectiveness of made-up deadlines in getting us to do what would have been good for us anyway.

The psychologists Amos Tversky and Eldar Shafir offered college students a five-dollar reward for filling out a survey. When given a five-day deadline, 66% of the students completed the survey and claimed their rewards. When given no deadline, only 25% of students ever collected their money.

The same phenomenon has been noted with substantially higher stakes. In Great Britain, the Economic and Social Research Council, which gives grants to university researchers in areas such as global economics, security, and education, decided to eliminate submission deadlines and accept proposals on a rolling basis. Research professors should have been relieved. Instead of having to submit proposals on a couple of fixed dates, usually smack dab in the midst of teaching commitments, they were now being given the flexibility to submit a proposal whenever they had time to do so.

Proposal submissions promptly declined by 15% to 20%.

This is not rational behavior: If students like the idea of getting five dollars for a survey, and if researchers need grant money, then they shouldn’t need a deadline to follow through. Yet while irrational, this behavior probably makes sense to all of us. Deadlines focus our mental spotlight on a choice. They grab us by the collar and say, If you’re gonna do this, you have to do it now.

In this light, consider the tradition of the annual performance review for employees. People (including us) have poked fun at the idea of giving feedback to employees only once a year. (What parents would swallow their feedback day after day, storing it up for one December day when they’d sit their kids down and let it rip?)

While once-a-year feedback is inadequate, though, it’s superior to never-a-year feedback. Absent the deadline, that would probably be the norm. The annual review, then, is really a kind of desperate tripwire, ensuring that something critical happens at least once a year.

If you have a relative or colleague who is pursuing a bad path on autopilot, or if you think they’re being overconfident about their chances of success, work with them to set up tripwires—and hold them accountable to what they predicted. “Six months ago, you thought you’d have a recording contract by now.”

These will not be easy conversations to have. No one likes to be reminded of failure. Nor is there any certainty that they will change course; overconfidence is a powerful force. The optimistic entrepreneur will always believe that sales will skyrocket next year, and the aspiring singer will feel that she could be “discovered” at any moment. But certainly you have a better chance of reining in foolish decisions when those decisions are considered than when they are left unexamined.

***

Another strategy, beyond and measurements, is to use a “partition” as a tripwire. Imagine that you’re eating lunch in a sub shop, and you’ve bought a small bag of chips to go with your meal. When you finish the bag, you might still crave more chips, but to get them you’d have to make an active decision: to walk up to the counter and buy another bag. Almost certainly, you wouldn’t do that. However, what if the sub shop had provided chips in a refillable bowl, like a Mexican restaurant that brings out tortilla chips? It’s easy to imagine that you might have eaten two or three small bags’ worth of chips in one sitting.

In the terminology of the researchers Dilip Soman and Amar Cheema, the small bag acts as a “partition.” It breaks up a resource (chips) by dividing it into discrete portions. Soman and Cheema have found that partitioning is an effective way to make us more thoughtful about what we consume, because it forces us to make a conscious decision about whether to continue.

In one study, participants volunteered to help with a “cookie tasting study.” (Tough gig.) Every participant received 2 cookies in a box that was easily resealable to keep the cookies fresh. But inside half the boxes was a minor difference: Each cookie was individually wrapped in foil. That minor difference had a major effect. The people who got the unwrapped cookies finished them, on average, in 6 days. Meanwhile, those who got the individually wrapped cookies took 24 days! The foil wrapper was acting as a partition, forcing people to contemplate whether they wanted to keep going. (Which suggests that we might be able to help casino-addicted retirees by wrapping slot machines in foil.)

Actually, that slot-machine comment isn’t entirely a joke. In another study, participants gambled less when their funds were spread across 10 envelopes, rather than crammed into a single envelope. Soman also found that day laborers, paid in cash, dramatically increased their savings rates when they divided their wages across several envelopes. This kind of partition effect probably explains why credit cards encourage excessive spending—they permit us to spend without partitions, like eating from a bag of chips the size of your couch.

Some venture-capital investors use a variety of this partitioning logic. Rather than investing a huge chunk of money up front, the investors might choose to dole it out over time, across a series of rounds. Each round would initiate a new conversation: Do we have the right plan? Are customers happy with what we are producing? The partitions compel the entrepreneurs to be intentional about their behavior.*Note that partitioning is better suited to self-control-type issues, like saving money or resisting cookies. When you start thinking about how to implement the principle in an office environment, it can get a little weird. For example, imagine that you wanted your coworkers to be more thoughtful about their use of the color printer, so you created a “partition” that required them to click a button after every 10 pages printed. That kind of thing could lead to bloodshed very quickly.

What we’re seeing with these partitioning examples is an additional advantage of tripwires. Initially, we highlighted the useful way that trip- wires can snap us out of autopilot. But partitions are doing something different: They’re setting boundaries.

Boundaries are necessary because of people’s tendency to escalate their commitment to their choices. For a simple example, think of a kid playing an arcade game. She’s been on a zombie-killing mission, but she made a mistake and her character died, and now she must burn a few more credits to keep playing. It feels so hard to walk away at that point. She might have invested several dollars and 20 minutes to get where she was. If she walks away, she “loses” everything. Isn’t it worth a few more credits to keep going?

This is a conscious decision, not an “auto-pilot” choice. But there’s still a trap involved, because if she doesn’t interrupt the cycle at some point, she’ll burn through all her arcade money having never played another game. (And that is not a recipe for happiness.)

Imagine, instead, if that same girl had walked into the arcade with three different swipe cards (or piles of quarters, if you have an old-school arcade), and she men ally allocated one swipe card to the zombie game. That’s a tripwire. Its role is to disrupt the cycle of steady escalation. Once she burns through the first swipe card, she’ll feel some self-generated pressure to quit. And if she decides to break into the second card, it will “hurt” a bit, because she’ll know that she’s blowing through her mental budget.

This same budgeting dynamic is present in much more important decisions, of course. Think of romantic relationships or business investments. (We’ve committed so much already; isn’t it worth just a little more?) If you’re dating someone who has commitment issues, could you set a three-month tripwire to see whether you’re making any progress? Or if a project at work has stalled out, could you set a $50,000 budget limit on the funds you’ll use to jump-start it?

With the right tripwire, we can ensure that we don’t throw good money (or time) after bad.

###

Reprinted from DECISIVE: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Published by Crown Business, a division of Random House.

Image: Memphis

After producing a new project, I try to circle back and share a few of the lessons learned. Last week we had a small beta launch for Adventure Capital, a new business course, so it’s time for another breakdown.

It’s been a long time since I’ve released a paid product of any kind, and there’s nothing for sale in this post. If you’re creating offers of your own, or if you’re just curious how things went with the beta launch last week, I hope the lessons are helpful.

Let’s kick off the debrief!

1. Pricing is always relative. I’ve learned this lesson over and over from almost everything I’ve ever offered for sale. Back when I was selling $20 ebooks that helped people save $500 on international plane tickets, some people (those who didn’t buy it) would complain that it was “too expensive.”

Last week I received a range of comments on the introductory monthly pricing for the new course, which we started at $150. As usual, some found it too expensive while others said it was underpriced. That’s no surprise, but I found it amusing when these two emails arrived back-to-back in the same two minutes:

Email #1:

This price is outrageous! How could you possibly expect people on a budget to pay this much money for marketing lessons?

Email #2:

I was worried this was going to be much more expensive! This is a steal. I signed up right away and have already told my friends.

First lesson: no matter your price, some people will always say it costs too much, and others will say it should cost more. You can’t be swayed by either group! You should be swayed by data and actual customer response.

Perceived value is determined by the customer, not by the critics—and sometimes, not even by you.

2. Having things in order greatly reduces stress. I mentioned in another post that we planned to launch the course two weeks earlier, but made the last-minute decision to defer. This decision sprung from my genius developer’s advice to continue to tweak prior to release:

Part of me thinks this might be a great opportunity to experience a new type of launch where everything is finished more than 24 hours before people flood in.

The truth is that we’ve been working on this for so long, another couple weeks seems like a small trade-off compared to what we’d learn from the feeling of a less stressful launch.

We adopted this mantra—the “new kind of launch where everything is ready”—and were much better off for it. Launch day itself was somewhat relaxing. As usual, I sat in a chair and didn’t move for the better part of seven hours, replying to support questions and monitoring the launch—but remarkably, nothing major broke down. Success!

3. Good partners make all the difference. Speaking of my genius developer, that would be Nicky Hajal. On this project I also worked with Tsilli Pines, a fabulous designer who is also an entrepreneur (profiled here on AONC a long time ago, and also in The $100 Startup).

Both Nicky and Tsilli are on our WDS action team, with Tsilli leading a complete brand redesign this year and Nicky in charge of everything for our mobile app that connects attendees, as well as the backend systems.

Nicky, Tsilli, and I used an online interface called Checkvist to keep track of tasks. What a concept!

Working with Nicky and Tsilli helped me raise my own game. I had the feeling that if I didn’t complete something on time, I would be letting them down. This might sound negative, but for me it was actually highly positive. I wanted to get this project out, and I had great people working on it. We all had to deliver.

4. Everyone wants mobile! I was surprised by this, and when I said on Twitter that I was surprised, some people said they were surprised that I was surprised. (Whoa. So meta.) What I meant was that I didn’t expect so many people to access the sales site and the member site using smartphones.

By far the biggest feedback we received is that mobile versions of websites (any website, no exceptions) are now expected by users. It’s no longer optional to have mobile come second, and I’m now planning to go back to older versions of projects to see if we can make them more accessible too.

Lesson: no matter what you’re making, make it mobile-friendly.

5. Go small… sometimes. In the past we’ve taken in several thousand new signups in a short period of time, but always for projects that are much lower-cost. For our beta last week we took less than 200 members, and this was a good decision.

The whole point of this new course is to serve a higher-level need. With a relatively higher price point, we’re able to serve a smaller group of people and still produce a sustainable project.

Going forward, we’ll grow the project from within, not by making a big splash for lots of people who probably aren’t the best fit for it.

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Wrap-Up

It’s been fun to get this off the ground!

For those interested in Adventure Capital, the beta offer is longer available while we focus on serving our initial group. You can, however, join the waiting list and be the first to know when it will be open again.

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Image: Steven

Have you ever wanted to set a world record?

Go down in history with a gold star next to your name?

Do something crazy and fun that you’ll remember forever… or at least until your next world record?

This summer, you have a chance to do exactly that.

We have 3,000 people coming to town in July for the third-annual World Domination Summit. It’s our biggest group ever, and WDS is all about doing big things.

Last year we learned of an attempt to set a world record of the longest floating human chain. This record is currently held by a group of Italians, who achieved the record with more than 500 people in 2008.

Last year’s attempt to break the record was valiant (see the photos!), but alas—it fell short of the required numbers. That’s where we come in.

Most events at WDS aren’t open to anyone who doesn’t have a ticket, simply because there’s no space. This year we’ll be in the biggest theater in Portland and there’s still no space, with every seat sold out six months in advance.

But The World Float will be open to all! If you’re attending WDS 2013, or if you’ll be near Portland this July, you’re invited to join us on the Willamette river for The World Float!

Wondering how it works? Conveniently, we have answers.

On the morning of July 5, at least 600 of us will gather on the Eastbank Esplanade near the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland—about half a mile from downtown.

This is a non-profit event with a minimal cost ($20) for materials. All participants will receive a FREE commemorative inner tube (what you’ll be floating in) and life jacket (to save your life if you fall off!).

There are a few simple requirements, which you can read about on the signup page. If you don’t know how to swim or aren’t comfortable with being on the open water, for safety reasons we’ll need you to sit this one out.

Otherwise, this is open to all WDS 2013 attendees as well as anyone who will be in Portland this summer. If you’re planning a road trip around the 4th of July holiday, feel free to join us for this massive undertaking!

Big thanks to Tyler for coordinating this from our team, and to Will for organizing much of the local side of things.

We need at least 600 people to break the record on July 5th. Will you be one of them?

–>Sign up to make history!

We can’t do it without you.

Comments here.

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Images: Oregonian