-There will be more details on this later, and I can’t really get into it but I just signed my first client. It is a major, major online star who hopefully will be one of the rare few who are able to translate pageviews to sales and views into box office dollars. Obviously I had no idea how to close, or how the process went but the people who showed me the ropes know who they are and I really appreciate it. In this case the real hurdle was access, not negotiation. And I got it in the same way I get access to all the people I’ve dealt with: HONESTY. I was upfront with who I was–age and all–and it ended up being an area that fostered a personal connection. Too, when I messed up I admitted it and managed to turn a potentially catastrophic error into only a minor embarrassment. A whole bunch of strategies are currently in the works and you’ll hear about them soon–here and all over the web.

-You might have noticed that the page switched over from rch.rudiusmedia.com to ryanholiday.net. We are slowly in the process of migrating this over from an employee blog to one of the Rudius sites. I’m not really sure how to express my excitement over this. I first found Tucker’s site in 2004. I was a junior in high school. All my friends were into Maddox and I was happy to finally read someone who wasn’t a nerd. I couldn’t really verbalize it, but I knew that it was significant to me at the time–that it was possible to be smart and say whatever you wanted and be rewarded for it. When FesteringAss came, I decided I wanted to be a part of it and now, a solid 3 years later I am–in both senses. The design looks really fucking good. I’m not sure how long it will take to go up but I’ll post when it does. The RSS stuff will stay the same, but if you haven’t subscribed, I’d appreciate it if you did.

“You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…

And that, I think, was the handle–that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting–our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark–that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson

I read the book 3 or 4 years ago and haven’t really thought about it since. I remember it being influential in my Tucker Max column, but apart from that it had slipped into being a vague memory. Then about a week ago, the quote above slipped into consciousness and has been echoing in my head since. If you want to break the book down–find the root of the escape or the demon Thompson was chasing–this is the place. Vegas in the late 60’s was the hollow, empty hole in America. It was the Gatsby parties for a new era, the place where people pursued pleasure instead of acknowledging pain. The idealism and the vision of the time crested and crashed in the Nevada desert.

I think this is relevant now because we are in a very similar cycle. The rhetoric and the revolutionaries have never been louder. All sorts of wild promises are being thrown around–the end of newspapers, the citizen journalist, the fall of Hollywood tyranny, a brand new world. Well what if it’s all just talk? What if it doesn’t happen? TheExecutive is fond of saying that the “Studio is like the house, and the house always wins.” A lot of these predictions just have no chance of coming true. Can technology really change people? Can a new delivery system ever deincentivize laziness or the tendency to rush art? Won’t we always be susceptible to sensationalism? And aren’t many of our consumer habits based on social motivations instead of personal tastes?

One of the questions I keep coming back to is “What happens if we don’t win?” What will become of all this progress if it doesn’t crush its enemy totally? I read a cool script a while back called Terra Firma and the short plot of it was that revolutionaries began to speak in this new telepathic language to connect with each other directly–instead of through the clogged lens of corporate advertising, bias and capitalism. Well, the catch is that you find out that advertisers were the ones who created it, and now they had access directly to our thoughts.

As the Web 2.0 wave rushes through us and we buy into it, we are in essence creating a whole new game. It’s a world where the typical barriers between consumer and creator have come down, where our tastes are right out in the open, and where the costs of production fall to almost zero. The same men who ruled the last one can come back to power here–or at the very least, their tendencies can come to roost in the next generation of leaders. And what worries me is that all the idealism has left us unprepared to deal with the possibility. Not only that, but we’ve created an infrastructure designed to be taken advantage of. A massive high is almost always followed by a massive low. Have we considered this? The exuberance won’t die easy, but anything less than what we’ve demanded is going to be crushing. That’s the thing too, for the first time we’ve really asked for something–and we asked for a hell of a lot. We sat at our computers and poured our hearts out and wrote down exactly what we wanted. But what if they don’t listen? What then? There is that Xenophon saying “it’s not for the conquerors to surrender their arms.” I’ve spent a bit of time in Hollywood now and both sides think they’ve got the power. Which might just leave the world with a compromise or a long war of attrition; neither are great options. We’ve ventured way out into Persia and if we have to battle our way home, most of us won’t make it back.

I’m not saying that I’ve lost faith, but I think I am getting the Fear. But like Thompson said, that’s what happens when you get real close to the savage heart of the American Dream. It’s not as simple as playing the Reveille and watching as the world changes. We must got to the mattresses if change is to really occur. And even then, it’s still a long shot. So temper the rhetoric with a taste of history every now and then or you’ll see it happen again right before you.

Simplicity is where you find productivity. That being said, there is no reason for an introduction. Here are some productivity methods that I use and have helped me.

This is something I came across in the Moses book and really liked:

“Having a large table instead of a desk was insurance that this procedure would be followed. Since a table has no drawers, there was no place to hide papers; there was no escape from a nagging problem or a difficult to answer letter except to get rid of it one way or another. And there was another advantage: when your desk was table you could have conferences without even getting up.”

Robert Caro on Robert Moses.

-At home, I have a big glass computer desk with out any drawers at all. There, I was probably the most productive I’ve ever been. I have to go buy a new one soon for my new house and I am probably going to get a dining room table. It will be big, open and sturdy. This is what I love about my Mac. The first thing I did when I got it was wipe the harddrive and reinstall only the basics. The background is a grey screen. I extended the no drawer analog to my computer. I have maybe 10 mp3s on the entire thing. My folders are as follows: Movies, Music, Documents, Journal, Photos.

-I take all my notes for class or meetings on yellow legal pads. Every few months, I go to Wal-Mart and buy a huge pack of them. Each topic has its own pad–never mix. Then when they are full, I box them up and ship them home. All personal writings go in my Moleskine.

-I will never put a TV in my bedroom again. Chris Anderson is right. My freshman year of college, I’d watch reruns of “Just Shoot Me” instead of reading. Or I’d watch CNBC instead of writing. I’ve probably seen every episode of Law and Order at least 3 times. For me, the television contributes to my life when it is a destination instead of a foundation. That is, when I go into another room to watch it rather than it always being one.

-I always get an early night and change my bedding regularly. After reading a study, it was proven that the more hours of sleep you get each night, the better productivity you will have the following day. I put this to the test, I purchased a brand new full size mattress, changed my sheets regularly, and I have been having 7 – 9 hours sleep each night, and I have been so much more engaged and focused since.

-I have a Whiteboard in my room where everyday I write down what I need to do. It monitors the immediate present for me. Depending on the context it will be as general as “Come up with ideas” to as specific as “Read last 76 pages of ______, review notes.” For the week or month ahead, I have a desk calendar. But I think I am going to graduate to this tip from Jerry Seinfeld.

-Emails that I need to respond to are starred, so I have time to think about them instead of rushing a less than satisfactory response.

-As I said before, when I read I carry a highlighter (with tabs) and a pen. Quotes and passages are marked with flags on the right hand side. Terms to define, topics to investigate and books to buy are marked at the top. Thoughts and tie-ins are marked with the pen. If I need to define a word immediately, I use Google SMS by texting “Define ________” to 45546 or Wikipedia on my Blackberry.

-I also started drinking a lot more water–a minimum of two bottles before lunch. Besides the strange looks caused by the bathroom trips, I’ve been feeling more energetic and more alert.

As always, am looking to absorb any of the productivity knowledge the rest of you have accumulated. Post ’em if you’ve got ’em.