I’ve said it before. I doubt it sometimes (like everyone) it but I’m in a constant battle to prove to myself that it’s true.

Last week, Robert handed me three books and asked if I’d read them for as research for 50 and pick out all the important parts. That coincided nicely with the fact that I’d already read, tabbed and written about them on my own. Now I was going to get a check for it.

Fridays, now, are study days. I redid my schedule, basing it around something I’ve wanted for a long time: A day spent totally on learning. I drive back to college and spend most of the day in the library. I go to a few classes, but mainly it’s just a day for learning. I take books, my laptop and an iPod and spend the entire day working. I read Academic Journals and archived articles from Lexis Nexis. It’s what I wanted and what I worked for. I not only found a person who was understand enough to see that I needed it but great enough to see that it’d help with everything else I did.

I get paid for all kinds of stuff that I didn’t even know it was possible to make money doing. Stuff I used to do with my friends in college, sites I’d read anyway for fun, what I do to relax, things I can’t even talk about publicly – it’s all interwoven into the niche I’m setting up for myself. And slowly, it’s being filtered through a schedule that keeps me sane and excited. It was hard, sure, but it wasn’t impossible. I just listened to people who cut their own path before me.

I’ve always known that I was a bit different – that I had something that most people don’t have. But instead of feeling confident, like that was an asset, I doubted myself. I knew that I wouldn’t be doing what everyone else was doing but I didn’t know that I’d be doing something better – I thought I’d be rejected instead of doing the rejecting. (Or something close to that. Needless to say, it wasn’t a positive state of mind) That’s how it works, the system is aimed at breaking people who can disrupt it. The superficial incentives all point to mediocrity and sameness. But when you leave that state of mind, everything changes.

It’s scary sure. It’s not somewhere devoid of work or effort or inconvenience. Still, it is a space where your priorities are the things that matter to you – not other people – and you don’t waste time on things that mean nothing. Since that makes you massively, massively more efficient, you start lapping people. And then you learn about a wonderful thing called cumulative advantage.

Here’s my thinking: You can do whatever you want for as long as you continue to believe that it’s true and it will be. When you start resigning yourself to “this is what I have to do” or “this is what I have to be” that’s when you’re done. So don’t. It’s pretty simple. Find out what matters to you, decide what you want and ask for it.

(And if you want evidence of how shitty it feels to be broken and bitter and full of cognitive dissonance, just wait and read the comments)

This article is a really good example of how Hollywood thinks. It’s filled with all sorts of completely ridiculous guesses about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to online video. Every person quoted in the article as an ‘authority’ is currently the head of their own uniquely incredible failure, from SuperDeluxe to Prom Queen to 60 Frames. And yet they’ve all got advice on ‘the way it has to be done.’

Hollywood is searching for the magic ratio that will allow them to transfer their old infrastructure right on over to the new – like Ford shifting from making cars to tanks during WWII. Because really that would be the ideal situation for the entrenched – they’re totally fine with cutting off some fat, but they can’t get rid of everything, that would destroy what they worked so hard to build.

It’s really difficult to explain how people in Hollywood think, but if I could cut open the insides and show them to you, it probably wouldn’t get much better than this piece. They have, as Umair says, a massive DNA problem. Deeply infused in the model is a sense of superiority, of obligation and an insistence on structure. That’s why they want to know the “formula” for online video – is it 3 minutes, 9 minutes or twenty two? Pre-roll or post-roll ads? Who’s name should go above the title?

The reality is that there is no ‘way’ to do digital because there are no constraints. The model of Hollywood at its very core is of commoditizing the production of popular art – creating a replicable process to amortize costs. That’s why everything turns out exactly the same. But on the internet, a daily discussion of economics and a series about a kid who might be retarded are both equally viable forms of expression. It doesn’t matter whether the peg is square or round because there is no hole.

That is a very different way of thinking about things – it runs counter to almost all of human history. For some of us, that comes very natural and it’s why we never really fit in at places where it doesn’t. Now is our time. And fortunately, the opposite is what used to attract people to the big city lights of Los Angeles. As executives they could finally prove that artists don’t know anything about business and the first thing to do to prove it would be to shit all over them.

So today, in a world where there are no rules, where the middlemen have little control, where ‘quality’ and ‘do people like it or not’ are the main contributors to success, Hollywood’s way of thinking is utterly outdated. That’s why Quarterlife failed, and FunnyorDie is tanking, and record sales hit new lows every single week. The first step for people my age, I think, is to wipe that slate clean and to start thinking about what art is in a totally new way.

Tucker was talking to me about Robert Greene last week and as usual, he gave me some perspective. He said something about the direction in which the books are going – that the apex of the series would be [redacted]. Which is a really subtle but utterly distinct way of thinking about things. I always thought that those were Robert’s books and in each one he’d said everything that he’d had to say and that was it. But Tucker is right. You’ll notice how different Power is from War, and the 50th Law will be another step. And if you look at as Robert struggling to synthesize and make sense of everything he’s learned in his life – getting a little closer each time – everything changes.

Even one of the best in the world is still changing, growing – trying to do justice to their own thoughts. If that can’t teach us humbleness and dedication, then what hope do we have?