“It seems to me that utilizing the “Spartan” technique would be motivated by _not_ mastering the subject, and _not_ having enthusiasm. Otherwise why use a model so restrictive?

I think you actually mentioned somewhere in your Spartan essay that using your formula would ensure safety from the teacher marking you down for not adhering to the prompt. Is that really worth sacrificing your creative liberty? I guess it would be for some one who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and doesn’t really care.

I got this comment about the paper format and it is something that I encounter pretty often. This attitude is more than just about the paper–it’s just the wrong way to look at life. It is the scourge of people who look to make change and the refuge of people who like talking more than doing.

Of course my format has some limitations. Welcome to the real fucking world. Compromise, give and take–it’s called strategy. You figure out what you want and then your figure out the best means of getting there. Are essays a relatively stupid way of judging comprehension? Sure. But they exist and you’re 17, so deal with it (likewise to whatever you’re doing). So they key is to find the best way to accomplish what you’d like to accomplish or to say what you want to do say in a manner that doesn’t involve needless punishment or prima facie dismissal. That’s not selling out–it’s called being a man.

As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it as, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be–it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.

Alinsky, Saul D.

Rules for Radicals

There is a difference between something being restrictive and being simple. The paper format is simple. True mastery becomes simplicity–it becomes intuitive. If you can’t explain your point simply, basically and straight-forwardly then you haven’t mastered it. I was observing a conversation a few weeks ago between someone who was a supposed expert and a lay person. The expert was using all these buzzwords and complicated language and the other person asked him to explain because he was confused. And in response, the expert got even more technical and complex. To me, this was proof that the guy had absolutely no clue what he was talking about, because if you can’t be utterly simple then you don’t have a true understanding. The goal is to find the most basic, most approachable way of delivering your message and then to ram it through until it stops working. Sure, a two intro paragraph-rambling-Bob Dylan quoting paper is more artistic and creative but it just doesn’t do the job. And if it doesn’t do the job then you’re just pleasuring yourself. As Frank Luntz would say “it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.”

This in turn facilitates passion. If you cut the time you have to spend on aesthetics, then you increase the time you can spend on content–on the message. Which should always be your goal. The less effort you need to exert screaming to get people to listen is effort that can be spent doing what Cicero wanted: Mastering the subject. With a paper it’s the same, the format allows you to dedicate yourself to thinking and then the thoughts write themselves. And that’s how it should be when you try to change a system: What is your ROI? If it’s not working, try something else.

Lastly, prompts are almost always stupid. And so are the rules within any system. They have to be. The last thing a teacher wants is 40 kids writing about whatever the fuck they want. The incumbents look to minimize effort on their part. So a prompt is designed to create similar, obvious answers. So are rules, traditions and customs. The format allows you to get the grade but ACTUALLY be creative. That’s the beauty of it. When you redefine and the continually codify through the Spartan square, you get away with being creative. People hate outliers and in this case, you are disguising an outlier as rule-abider. This is always the key to my strategy: How do I get away with being innovative but still look ordinary?

A true radical has to work within the system. If it is a system worth destroying, it is a powerful one. And the way to destroy a powerful enemy is to use it’s own strength against it. I talked last week about challenging the way things are and have been, but you must do it intelligently. If wearing whatever I wanted to work prevented me from being effective, I would stop. And so should you.

There are people out there whether it be in Hollywood or Wall Street or your 8th grade classroom that have already made their bones and their money. They don’t want you to succeed. If you announce your intentions or your flagrantly flaunt a disregard for the “way of doing things” they’ll spend their time sabotaging you instead of competing. People are shocked when revolutionaries or cult figures are killed–what did you expect? Power is power is power. People disappear every fucking day. There is nothing noble about taking some ludicrous stand on something you have no possibility of coming through on.

Plenty of people, especially young people, talk about radical change but don’t have the balls to do. And real balls isn’t living a utopia where words are enough and everyone listens to your objections–it’s getting up everyday pushing the discussion where you want it to go, of trying a 100 things for every 10 successes, of protecting what’s truly important over what is just ego, and realizing how pathetic and cowardly martyrs really are. So take stands on the hills you’re willing to die on and save the rest for the immolators.

That is where the paper format finds it’s roots.

I got two emails last week from really young kids who felt they were lacking direction in their life. I told them both the same thing. That they should calm down and stop thinking about it that way. And that their email alone puts them pretty far above the competition. You shouldn’t have direction when you’re 15. How could you possibly know what you want to do? Statistically, a significant portion of your peers haven’t even gone through puberty yet. The moodiness, depression and general angst aren’t symptoms of a problem but completely natural stages of biological and mental growth.

But it applies to more than just teens. What a lot of people miss is that asking about direction is the first step. It has to start there. To have a goal can be a goal itself. I have absolutely no clue what I want to do with my life. The job probably hasn’t been invented yet. I’ll either have to make it, or be ready to catch it when it is immaculately conceived. What if you trained your whole life for a career that suddenly a computer can do? Which is why I decided to postpone school to train under leaders. (not advocating this path, it’s just the right one for me, right now) With Robert Greene–I’m doing the research and the outlining and the absorption that made him the writer that he is. At The Agency it’s seeing how the dying half of the industry works and learning how the innovators adapt and internally revolutionize it. With Tucker it’s seeing how mobility and uniqueness and honesty carve new paths in what was previously jungle. None of those are paths that ought to pursued alone, but together they create an array of options for whatever might later exist.

It used to be that a person could prepare, study and apprentice in an industry and then still look forward a career there. That is just not the case anymore. Your average college professor today was trained by the generation that came before them and thus are teaching material only incrementally different than what we before I was born. So how can you rely solely on them? That’s the fundamental problem–societal change is linear while technological is exponential. We can’t adjust fast enough and a whole deluge of people are going to get caught in the gap. The system (almost every system) is breaking apart and people are training for a mirage. So if you’re 15 and you want to do something cool, there is no way you could put you finger on it now.

What you can do, and what I did when I was that age (and now), was focus on the things that will be important regardless of the direction you end up heading. Developing cleverness–can you pick up on the thing that everyone else is missing? Can you hold you own against people older than you?–only way way to develop that skill: going head to head. Do you know about the world around you–sports, tv, movies, books, how people work, what’s stupid, cliches, girls? You don’t have to do all of the simultaneously but try them, take what you like and then move on. The rest is just loading up on the appropriate technical knowledge and preventing yourself from being loaded done with the things that make that impossible.

But look, strategic flexibility is about cultivating options that at the right strike price make the most sense. Deciding what you want to do at 15 is a bet that that is the only thing that will pay off. The safer and smarter bet is to first invest in wanting to do something. And if at 15 you’re complaining about lacking direction, you’ve probably already started to invest in those skills. So I would assert that if you think you know the exactly where you’re going and you’re a young kid, the only place you’re headed to is a dead-end.

Note: That doesn’t justify paralysis.

Very interesting tidbit tucked away in this TechCrunch article a while back (that I forgot to post about) about Google Reader:

On the stats side, the video provided some interesting insights: two thirds of all feeds only have one subscriber…

Keep that in mind if you’re starting your own blog. Just two RSS subscribers and you’re already in the “elite” minority. So when we rush to predict the death of newspapers and radio shows, realize that most of the Technorati numbers are totally worthless. Marc Andreessen called it “Tech Crunch 50,000” and now you can see what a disproportionate influence those types can have in implying influence. We can be cliche and call this the “Wild West” or a land grab or whatever, but this point is that the people in positions of “power” online now, will not be the same ones in 6 months or a year and certainly not 5 years simply because they’ve made significant relative gains but few actual gains. So all that stuff about RSS subscribers, hits, pings, trackbacks, Technorati authority, blogebrity, it doesn’t mean much. Here are the things that I think will matter:

[*]Do smart, normal people read your work?

[*]Do you get emails from a variety of people?

[*]Do you write about non-tech things?

[*]Do you have success/interest offline?

[*]Even so, are you flying under the radar of today’s pundits?

[*]When you link or recommend things, do people actually listen?

[*]If you reread you archives, are you still relevant? Are you impressed to read what you’ve written or do you squirm?

If you’re a relative nobody like me, these are all questions you should base your strategy around answering and benchmarks for who you should bet on. If you’re on top right now, and they might be signs to cash out while the money is still there.