Once as Pericles shoved off 150 ships in the Peloponnesian War, the sun was eclipsed and his men were thrown into fear. To prevent their paralyzation, he walked up to a lead steersman, removed his cloak and held it up around the man’s face. He asked if he felt particularly afraid of this and of course the response was no. So what does he matter, he said, when the cause of the darkness differs?

You read this and you smile. The Greeks were so clever. Or, like Von Clausewitz, you dismiss it as self-serving translation – a way to use history to say something obvious. But that very much belies the incredible implications of the idea. Beneath the quaint leadership-in-action anecdote is the fundamental notion that girds not just Stoic philosophy but cognitive psychology. It’s the idea that if you can break apart something, it loses its power over you. In cog psych, only when you’re aware of a bias or conditioned response can you circumvent it.

Fear is debilitating, distracting, tiring and often irrational. Pericles, understood this completely, and he was able to use the power of analogy to defeat it.

I was talking to a friend who wanted to try making it as a musician after graduating from college. He was afraid, he said. Having been there and wrecked with that same consuming anxiety, we looked at it. Have you ever, ever heard of someone starving to death in California? Or dying of exposure? Or some college graduate remarking 60 years later that their entire life was ruined by the year they took off, intending to get serious after? When he moved out of his college apartment and headed home to drop some of his stuff off, how long was he planning to hang out and relax before he got serious about a job? A month? Two, or three? So what’s 10 more? People get sick or distracted or go on benders for that long.

The point is that with blurred vision and a black light, the straw man looks imposing and overwhelming. At a closer glance and a few questions it collapses and falls upon itself. As a man – as someone different – that is your job. You’re to break down, piece by piece, the things that have control of you.

Ultimately, the difference between recklessness and controlling your disposition comes down to whether the person has systematically dismantled the cognitive processes or just ignored them. In my opinion, there’s not admirable about a fearlessness or calm that comes from being oblivious or negligent. It’s simply a more productive mental illness than anxiety and overthinking. The repercussions surface inevitably. It’s dangerous and stupid.

The real Freedom from Perturbation comes from collapsing fear upon itself. From examining its causes and looking at them individually rather than collectively. What the Greek understood was that we often choose the ominous explanation over the simple one, to our detriment. The task, as Pericles showed, is not to ignore fear but to explain it away. Take what you’re afraid of – when fear strikes you – and break it apart.

Joan of Arc: Her Story by Régine Pernoud

Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them by Peter Shankman (good premise, the guy comes off as a bit of a tool)

The Beauty of the Beasts: Tales of Hollywood’s Wild Animal Stars by Ralph Helfer (continuing my disturbing obsession)

The Voyage Memoirs of Sir Francis Drake by Sir Francis Drake (not as cool as I hoped)

Grand Strategies in War and Peace by Paul Kennedy

The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives by Plutarch (I liked Demosthenes a lot)

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception by Scott McClellan (this book is a really good memoir of how culture and DNA ultimately dictate the choices of an organization. always have respect for someone who is able to disavow the past and say ‘i don’t want to be a part of this anymore’)

Also, I don’t care how much money these kids are making, all but like two of their sites suck. There’s nothing admirable about running scammy search arbitrage sites that we’d be skeeved out if an adult was doing and then bragging about how young you are.

When I first got a job as an assistant in Hollywood, someone told me that the best thing I could do as an assistant was to make other people look good. It ended up being pretty decent advice but it was nowhere near the right wording. I certainly wouldn’t have moved upwards as quickly as I have if I’d just sat there and worked on the way people thought about my boss.

What he should have said was this:

Find canvases for other people to paint on.

If you’re around my age, chances are you don’t know what you’re talking about. Most of the people that email me end up being creepy or wildly uninformed, or both. There’s one fabulous way to work that out of your system: giving an extra push to people who are already good and then learning from them as they get to work.

Or maybe you’re not that and you’re a bit of a prodigy. Unfortunately there is a small psychological bias known as value attribution and what is basically means is that we let context command our subjective judgments about people’s value. So you’re still fucked. You’re either appreciated as a token ‘young person’ (see: Brazen Careerist writers) or you’re ignored entirely because you don’t have ‘perspective’. The solution for that is the the same as above – pretend that you’re humble while you amass an arsenal.

That brings us back to the strategy: Find and make canvases for other people to paint on.

The Roman’s had a loose word for the concept: anteambulo and it meant a person who cleared the path in front of their patron. If you can do that successfully, you secure a quick and educational power position.

It’s a different mindset than making other people look good, an approach that tends to imply a lot of ass kissing and ceding credit. Instead it’s finding the direction someone already intended to head and help them pack, freeing them up to focus on their strengths. The canvas strategy involves actively finding outlets for other people – in fact, actually making them better rather than simply looking so.

3 Keys:

1) Find new trains of thought to hand over for them to explore. Track down angles and contradictions and analogies that they can use. Ex: I was reading the biography of ______, I think you should look at it because there may be something you can do with the imagery.

2) Find outlets, people, associations, and connections. Cross wires to create new sparks. Ex: I know _________, and I think you two should talk. Have you thought about meeting ____?

3) Find inefficiencies and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas. Ex: You don’t need to do ___________ anymore, I have an idea for improving the process, let me try it so you can worry about something else.

In other words, discover opportunities to promote their creativity, find outlets and people for collaboration, and eliminate distractions that hinder their progress and focus. It is a rewarding and infinitely scalable power strategy. From what I can tell, it’s one of the few that age does not limit. It’s one you can do now – before you have a job, before you’re hired and while you’re doing something else. Maybe, like I have, you’ll find that there’s no reason to ever stop doing it, even once you’ve graduated to heading your own projects.

You don’t need email me, or Tucker or Ben or anyone else you want to work for anymore to ask how you can help. The Canvas Strategy is there. If you take it, you’ll realize what most people’s egos prevent them from appreciating: the person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas dictates the painting.