Full book

2Title Page

3What Readers are Saying

4About

5UPSTREAM EFFECTS

6Upstream Effects #1: Upstream Effects -

7Upstream Effects #2: Entrainment -

8Upstream Effects #3: Chemica -

9Upstream Effects #4: Firebreaks and Rapid Repairs -

10Upstream Effects #5: Yesterday -

11Upstream Effects #6: Avoidance -

12Upstream Effects #7: Trajectory -

13Upstream Effects #8: Currencies -

14Upstream Effects #9: Adherence and Mastery -

15TOUGHNESS

16Toughness #1: Mission Orientation -

17Toughness #2: Mental Toughness -

18Toughness #3: Physical Toughness -

19Toughness #4: Religio -

20Toughness #5: Integration -

21Toughness #6: Historical Sense -

22Toughness #7: Adversity -

23UNCOMMON VIRTUES

24Uncommon Virtues #1: Mere Competence -

25Uncommon Virtues #2: Aristotelian Friendship -

26Uncommon Virtues #3: Higher-Order Thinking -

27Uncommon Virtues #4: Causal / Empirical -

28Uncommon Virtues #5: Counterintuition -

29Uncommon Virtues #6: Romantic/Aesthetic -

30Uncommon Virtues #7: Loyalty -

31Uncommon Virtues #8: Generational Focus -

32Uncommon Virtues #9: The Great and the Sublime -

33Stay in touch -

1PROGRESSION

2by Sebastian Marshall

2“I loved the chapters about Toughness. No doubt, the series on Uncommon Virtues are the best of all. Life changing, really. Wittgenstein's Greatness? Wow. Carlyle, Longinus, incredibly ​insightful on an existential level. That’s what I meant. Upstream Effects is very pragmatic, but Toughness and Uncommon Virtues are satisfying in a much deeper level. You, somehow, have shifted the way I look at life.”

3— Pablo Matilla, Pharmaceuticals Project Manager and Historian

4***

5“Every time I finish one of these, I feel like I've been sparring with someone better than me — out of breath and not quite knowing what just happened. 

6Then I reread it.

7Thank you for putting this together. It really pulls everything that I have started noticing together into a grand unified theory. Invaluable.”

8— Ben Shearon, Entrepreneur and Advisor on Education to the Japanese Government

9***

10“In a word - Bravo! Anyone who can blend Moltke, Togukawa Japan, and Nate Fick into a thought piece on mission intent as a wellspring to toughness deserves considerable respect.”

11— Gregg Jones, Georgetown Professor, Crisis Management Expert, retired U.S. Army Officer

12***

13“Man.

15Truly stellar.

16This resonates so deeply.“

17— Ted Gonder, Executive Director of Moneythink, an award-winning financial literacy nonprofit out of Chicago, honored at the White House by President Obama and

18***

19“It is extremely well written. This is not a one-off event. Read anything Marshall has written and you will see the same care and intentionality. It contains simple suggestions that you can understand and actually, y'know, do. These things can you make your life better. Highly recommended. ”

20— Philip D.W. Hodgen, International Tax Lawyer, Principal of HodgenLaw PC

3It’s 3:39AM here in Tallinn. Lately, I’ve been waking up between 2AM and 4AM. I’ve been training my physical health and tuned my diet precisely, and I nap mid-day, so my sleep needs have fallen.

4This lets me sit and think deeply of the world, synthesize operations and recent lessons, and — of course — write.

5Before anyone wakes up.

6Kai Zau, my business partner at Ultraworking and long-time friend, will wake around 7AM and we’ll do some physical fitness together. But by the time he wakes, I’ll have already gotten more work done than the typical office worker does in an entire day.

7 Progression — the book you’re reading — is being released tomorrow, 16 June 2016. I’m trying to resist the urge to fuss with it; it’s ready for release. I’m ticking off final details.

8But you know, it wasn’t always like this.

9 Progression contains the edited and tighten-up versions of the weekly essays published in The Strategic Review , which comes out for free every Thursday to readers around the world.

10I originally started The Strategic Review back in 2013, and people loved the pieces on how Meyer Rothschild founded the Rothschild Banking Dynasty, how “Staying Power” was the key to George Washington’s successes across his life, and the precise and actionable points about how Sam Walton built his little variety store into the largest company in the world.

11But back then, I didn’t have the operations, bandwidth, self-discipline, and systems to ensure I could produce writing of that caliber regularly.

12I committed to getting TSR going again in mid-2015, and it took me a number of months to write and edit eight entire issues (two months) of backlog before releasing the first one — Upstream Effects #1 — right before Christmas 2015.

13When I started TSR again, I still wasn’t tight : a good issue took an unpredictable amount of time. It was often 15-30 hours to write, but sometimes 50 hours.

14It took a lot of work and focus to get those hours down while keeping quality up.

15Over time, through tightening down my writing process, taking better notes and studying history during leisure time, and regularly doing short bursts of outlining and capturing ideas, I’ve gotten the time-per-issue down to 5-15 hours… and I think the quality has dramatically increased too.

16This book opens strong, and then there are great pieces blended in the various series… but it maximally hits its stride in Section III, Uncommon Virtues.

17The pieces on Aristotelian Friendship, Higher-Order Thinking, Romantic and Aesthetic Sense, Loyalty, and Generational Focus all got astounding responses from the readership. If you’re in a hurry, or if you start a lot of books and don’t finish them, I’d recommend you start by opening up to Section III and begin reading “Mere Competence” which is the first issue of Uncommon Virtues.

18Of course, that section is more philosophical and wide-ranging. If you’re looking for immediate productivity gains, start with Upstream Effects #1 to #4. Those four are rather tight and give you a new way to see the world. The basic idea is that the current moment was created in the past , by you upstream , and flowed down into the current month, week, day, and minute.

19You change your life, not with a desperate struggle in the moment, but by setting things up now so that they flow into a more pleasant and thriving downstream from you.

20Most writers represent all of their work as equally good and valuable; I won’t do so. Some of the chapters here are better than others.

21The pieces that got the largest amount of “wow oh my god” type response — not necessarily the most praised or popular, but the ones that led to the most epiphanies, were —

22Upstream Effects #2: Entrainment

23Upstream Effects #6: Avoidance

24Toughness #4: Religio

25Toughness #6: Historical Sense

26Uncommon Virtues #2: Aristotelian Friendship

27Uncommon Virtues #3: Higher-Order Thinking

28Uncommon Virtues #6: Romantic & Aesthetic

29Uncommon Virtues #8: Generational Focus

30My personal favorite is Generational Focus, the second-to-last chapter of the book.

31This journey has been immensely pleasurable for me. It’s a joy to get reader feedback every week from people doing hard and important things around the world. We’ve gotten public praise from some people in very high positions, and I’ve got nice personal letters from an incredibly diver range of people: elite soldiers — both enlisted and officers, medical doctors, attorneys, accountants, startup founders, senior managers and division chiefs, and all manner of people doing creative and innovative work.

32I’d very much welcome your feedback. You can write to me at editor@thestrategicreview.net — I read every message, and reply to 99% of them or so.

33If you don’t already have a free weekly subscription to TSR, you can get yours for free — we publish once per week, a single deep issue every Thursday.

34That’s yours for free at:

35http://www.thestrategicreview.net

36Beyond that, the birds are chirping here in Estonia and the slow pre-dawn of Northern European summer is emerging. The skyline over the city is a beautiful spread of blue, purple, and pink, lighting up Tallinn’s mix of ancient and hyper-modern buildings.

37Life is glorious, is it not?

38Thank you for joining me, wherever and whenever you’re reading this — whether it be tomorrow when Progression is released, or decades into the future.

39Across time and space, wherever and whenever you are, you have my respect and salutations.

40Yours,

41Sebastian Marshall

42Editor, TheStrategicReview.net

1I

2Upstream Effects

1 U PSTREAM E FFECTS #1: U PSTREAM E FFECTS

3Simo Hayha exhales, his breath showing in the cold air. He shifts his posture, placing as much of his weight as he can against the hard tissue of his body. The small muscles twitch; bone does not twitch.

4He looks through the iron sights of his Model 28-30 rifle, closes his left eye, and then re-opens it for depth perception. The Soviet officer is perfectly in the rifle’s trajectory.

5The marksmanship instructors always said that the best shot is the one that surprises you. You must pull the trigger so slowly it’s almost a surprise when the gun flares to life. Simo applies gentle pressure, unnoticeably tensing the pad of index finger on the trigger, touching it as if he were carefully applying medicine to a young child’s gums, a child that had been crying from new teeth coming in.

6The loud crack of the rifle flaring to life shocks Simo, he’s surprised and flinches, but the flinch doesn’t matter – the lead slug has had its gunpowder activated and has already left the rifled barrel.

7The bullet’s trajectory is pinpoint-perfect. In milli-seconds, it will strike the invading officer in his breast, near his heart, severing flesh and tendon. The young Russian will crumple sideways into the snow, immediately enter shock, and be on the brink of death before his comrades reach him.

8But, wait!

9The bullet has not yet struck the Soviet; freeze this landscape in your mind. Simo Hayha is mid-flinch at the surprise of the rifle roaring to life; the young officer is milling about on the cold land, obvious to the fact that his life is nearing conclusion; the bullet hangs in mid-air, its trajectory set; this scene has almost entirely played out, but not yet ; it’s not over yet, we’re at a moment frozen in time.

10***

12Mere minutes hence, our young Russian officer will be dead and Simo will retreat to safe ground. The Soviets will call in artillery and patrols, trying to catch this specter of death that preys upon them.

13But never mind the Russians and the Finns, never mind the geopolitics; never mind the Nazis to the South; never mind Red Army’s mass mobilization; never mind Josef Stalin in the Kremlin drawing up his warplans; never mind the Finnish resistance to Soviet domination; never mind all of that.

14Think instead of our young Russian, standing there, oblivious to this piece of metal mid-air towards his breast.

15Here is a question for you. In milli-seconds, this young Russian officer will be struck. Almost immediately, he will crumble to the ground. In minutes, he will die on the frozen Finnish snow.

16Here is the question: is there anything this young Russian can do now, at this moment frozen in time, to avert this catastrophe about to befall him?

17What could our young Russian do?

18***

20Let us lower the stakes; let us step back from the life and death, good and evil, struggle and conflict. Let’s take a scene that is much more common and much less leveraged.

21Let us transport ourselves, mentally, from the harrowing cold of the Winter War to a pleasant warm late-summer’s eve on an American college campus.

22This is a scene that has played out, ad infinitum, everywhere that alcohol is plentiful.

23There is a young college man, unaccustomed to drinking much, who is drinking much.

24As he drinks with his newfound collegiate companions, he grows lighter and more pleasant, then more blustery. “Yeah man, let’s slam those brews! Yeah bro!” Something along those lines; you know this scene well enough, even if you’ve never witnessed it directly.

25The young man, an incoming Freshman in his first year of college, has never drank this hard. Of course, he doesn’t know his limits – how would he?

26He is now over a dozen drinks in a short period of time; they are drinking the cheapest and worst of the drinks, low-grade beers and hard liquors. He pounds a can of nasty cheap stuff – “Yeah bro!” – does a shot – “Yeah bro!” – pounds another can – “Yeah bro!” – you get the idea.

27Then, all of a sudden, the revelry reels and spins, the room turns over and over.

28He tries to say, “What’s happening? I don’t feel so –“ but the words come out as a gurgling splutter, no bravado, no clarity.

29Never fear; this young man will be fine in no time flat. He is young and healthy, and won’t have much memory of this night. His head and guts will ache in the morning, but he’ll be fine and go on to have a fine career. He is having his brush with exceeding his limits in revelry, but no harm will be done.

30Where were we? Oh, yes, he’s gurgling away. “I don’t feel so –“ the words don’t come out, rather a stream of vomit ejects from his lips forwards.

31“Whoa!” one of the slightly older young men says, jumping aside, and laughing.

32The incoming Freshman tries to bend over, but half-collapses to his knees, retching forth the last few brews and shots into an oddly colorful pool on the concrete basement floor of the fraternity house.

33He retches and the pool grows, little chunks of a past meal mixing with the still-undigested liquor.

34One of the more astute brothers tries to drag him into a bathroom to stop the mess from spreading. Bent mostly over the toilet, but wobbling incoherently in a few different directions, at least half the puke winds up in the toilet bowl.

35And then, the young Freshman barely gets his hands up in time to avert cracking his head on the porcelain as he crumples into darkness on the bathroom floor.

36Another question, then: after pounding that 15th drink of the night, the one that almost immediately failed to go down and instead triggered this cacophony – was there anything our young American friend could have done, after the last drink was drank, to not throw up and black out?

37***

39Let’s step back, away from histories and hypotheticals, into the present day.

40What are we doing here?

41I’m writing; you’re reading; we’re joined together, however briefly, for a meeting of the minds across time and space. I’m writing from Beijing, passing through en route to Shanghai with that ever-so noble companion of mine, Greg Nance, who I’m so honored to work so closely with.

42You’re reading, no doubt, sometime in the future; I’m doing something else, while you’re processing these letters on the page into thoughts, crystallizing them into concepts, accepting or rejecting them based on if they make sense to you or not, and accordingly, perhaps having your perception of the world change.

43What are we doing here?

44Our first section is on UPSTREAM EFFECTS; I believe it is perhaps the most key factor in how much agency and control you have over the world.

45The writing is for disciplined, proactive, achievement-oriented, analytical, service-minded people. It won’t be for everyone. Probably most of the readers who join us will either rank INTJ or ENTJ on the Myers-Briggs scale.

46Unlike most hyper-logical and hyper-analytical writing, though, I want to try to capture and really elevate beyond that – I want to capture that poetic tone, that haunting of the mind, visions and visages of greatness and tragedy laid bare. That Paradise Lost, the depths of misery and heights of loftiness that makes us human; that which sprang forth from the mind of Dante in his Divine Comedy; that Eiji Yoshikawa; that “once more into the breach, dear friends!”; that “…and on the pedestal, these words appeared…”, that “the spirit of god lives in us!” – not mere intellect, no, pure intellect, yes, but no, more than that – that which animates our soul, burns metaphors and virtues deep into us; that Cicero, Cato, Thucydides, Xenophon… and so the die is cast…

47… something both special and actionable. Something you can do something with, waypoints amidst our building and expansion. The path to achievement is often lonely; and yet, it’s been walked by so many before us. Can we not invoke their memories, and have them walk alongside us in thought?

48***

50“Time is like a river that will take you forward into encounters with reality that will require you to make decisions. You can’t stop the movement down this river, and you can’t avoid the encounters. You can only approach these encounters in the best way possible.” – Ray Dalio,  Principles

51Are you American? I’m American; I was born in 1985 in Massachusetts.

52In case you’re not American, let’s try to explain being American in this era.

53There is still a “can-do,” “mind over matter,” “anything is possible” type feel that pervades and animates most of the young people in the American Republic. Sure, some fatalism is kicking in; we have no real rival to true superpower status around the world; it’s perhaps making us lazy and maybe we’re losing our edge a bit; and yet, most young Americans these days believe they can make themselves into whatever they want.

54This is an immensely powerful viewpoint; it means young people in the American Republic constantly try to turn the world upside down. Sometimes they fail, often they fail, but often enough they succeed. The result is a string of invention, innovation, re-invention, and changing things.

55I’m an amateur historian; I try to understand other times and places. This American view is a brilliant one and a rare one. If you’re not American; if you’re from somewhere that thinks very differently, you might have different views on things.

56For most of history, people believed to some extent that their destinies were set by their birth.

57Americans, by and large, do not believe this.

58***

60Were you American in this era, you’d likely believe that you could constantly re-invent and re-imagine yourself, using your willpower and dynamism to do whatever you wanted.

61This is great – this is fantastic – this is powerful – and yet, from time to time, it’s a little dangerous.

62This can be seen by freezing time in a moment.

63After the crack of Simo Hayha’s gunshot during the Winter War, did our young Russian officer have any chance to live?

64Here is my answer: no, he is already dead. He doesn’t know the shot has been fired; even if he did, he is not fast enough to dodge a bullet. Simo Hayha aimed true; the young officer’s life was set to expire – but he didn’t know it.

65Likewise, is any “mind over matter” possible once your body’s homeostatic processes violently kick-in?

66The right answer is, probably, no . After that 15th drink limit was hit, our young hypothetical Freshman was set to vomit and pass out. There was not much else he could have done, at that point.

67***

69I think constantly about “agency” – how much choice and control do we have our lives?

70The answer is “a lot,” certainly it’s a lot – but on what timeframe?

71If a lead bullet is mid-air towards striking your breast, can anything be done?

72At this point, perhaps not! Too late. The game is over.

73After the 15th drink, your ability to stand up – to even remain conscious – might have been entirely forfeited.

74At this point, your agency is close to zero – circumstances are now acting upon you; you’re not acting upon them.

75***

77In early 2010, I began a series of small experiments and attempts to improve my life via tracking and paying attention to how much work I did, how I spent my money, how I spent my time, and so on.

78Gradually, this grew into some repeatable systems and templates for gathering more control of my day, week, month, year, and life.

79Eventually, I realized that the day-by-day control I had over my life is much smaller than I thought it was.

80To a great extent, whatever success I had on a given day would be a result of the preceding days and weeks.

81I now track the following questions on a little spreadsheet every morning –

82“Did I adhere to set wake-time?”
“Did I wake 3+ hours before first appointments?”
“Is today clear/known?”
“Is health high, moderate, low?”

83And then, in the evening, I track whether I took the following actions –

84“Review Day”
“Plan Tomorrow”
“Set Wake Time”
“Sleep Well”

85I noticed, after tracking these for many weeks, that if I slept poorly 3+ nights in a row, I would start to make progressively worse decisions and do much worse work.

86It didn’t matter how much I wanted to do great work, or how I motivated I was, chronically-underslept-me was much less effective.

87Likewise, if I didn’t plan the next day the night before, I meandered and wasted the day – often doing things of middling value instead of important things.

88Finally, and I only realized this somewhat recently, if I didn’t wake up at least 3 hours before my first appointment, I had a lot less likelihood of doing any deep and significant work. Needing to scurry around right away – to get on a call, to leave the house to go to an appointment, to head to the airport to fly, or whatever else – all of these made me far less likely to be productive.

89***

91I fought this phenomenon repeatedly. I didn’t like it. I said, “I should be able to willpower myself to success. So what if I’m tired and I start the day scattered? I should gather myself and work hard and work well anyways.”

92And yet – there it was, the results undeniable. Applying this “mind over matter” philosophy helped , sure, and yet I still did better and more work, and was happier in the process, when I planned the next day, slept well, and could start the morning slowly and do good work without having to rush.

93Saying “forget the external factors, I’ll make it work anyways” didn’t make much of a difference. When I applied force of will to push for great work even when compromised, I did more great work – but remember, I also could apply force of will when fully awake, well-planned, and not scattered. Obviously, on those days, I averaged more production.

94***

96My logs on production told a clear story – upstream effects, by and large, ruled my life.

97This seems to hold true in business, as well. I’ve often consulted for organizations looking to grow their sales. If they start implementing best practices now, this week, their sales will start to improve… but largely, they’ll start to improve next week, the week after, and so on.

98If you’re in a business with a complex sales cycle that takes multiple weeks to close a deal, perfect play this week means more sales in subsequent weeks – but not necessarily right away.

99And yet, I’ve seen so many otherwise very talented executives fail to see how a large amount of deals and revenue coming in now were attributable to last month’s campaigns, who are trying to whip their people into getting more sales this week – despite a lack of a sales pipeline, qualified leads, appropriately generating referrals immediately after successful delivery, and all those sorts of best practices.

100I’ve seen many very talented and creative people who fail to observe what makes them perform at their best – and so they simply seem to “wind up stuck” at times; they haven’t consciously worked to put themselves in the positions where they consistently succeed.

101They haven’t investigated what works for them and what doesn’t work for them; and haven’t sought to create the conditions that lead to production. They wait for inspiration – which, unsurprisingly, often comes when the conditions are correct.

102***

104We’ll be covering –

105-- Sleep, Mood, Athletics, Biochemistry
-- Habits, Entrainment, Muscle Memory, Defaults
-- Firebreaks, Rapid Repairs, Reflective Control
-- Macro and Micro Upstream
-- Adherence Rate, Training, Patience
-- Replicating Your Own Successes and Failures
-- Operationalization and Consistency

106***

108We started with two stark examples of upstream effects – an invading Soviet officer who is already dead, but doesn’t know it; and a kid drinking too heavily who has already crossed his limit, and will now be sick with no choice in the matter.

109It’s true that negative items filter into our lives, both through our own actions and through random chance.

110But likewise, it’s possible to seed the future with amazing gains coming down the river towards you. Training yourself, making connections with great people, discovering the key principles of the universe – these things mean that life’s river starts flowing more opportunities to you, and that you’re more prepared as they surface in your life.

111I’ve already mentioned briefly one set of small actions I take to make upstream effects work for me – review every day at the end of it, plan the next day the night before, sleep well, and wake 3+ hours before my first appointment.

112There’s nearly an infinite number of things we can do with our time, and I know that if I’m exhausted or scattered, I’m unlikely to make great choices. So I try to stack the deck every evening to have a great next morning. This is a small example – I attribute much of tomorrow’s production to having a good evening the night before.

113We’ll get much more tactical and operational in the coming chapters, looking at this from all sorts of angles and ways to improve, but maybe this is a small way to start improving? Here is a good set of brief questions to ask in the evening to give yourself a fantastic chance for tomorrow –

114What went right today?
What would I do differently?
What environmental things affected me?
What should I start working on immediately tomorrow morning?
Tomorrow’s wake time:

115***

117On the technical side of the equation, there are two apps to consider if using a Mac.

118Freedom blocks the internet entirely.

119Self-Control blocks a specific blacklist of websites.

120I’ve found I often habitually do something online that’s unhelpful to me. If I’ve been spending a lot of time on Hacker News, I might start reflectively typing in ‘news.ycom …” to start the day. How many people type “fac” into their browser and hit enter, having it autocomplete to Facebook?

121If you’re impulsive online to start the day – and there’s really no shame to that, as we’ll talk about in our future entry on habits and entrainment  -- then blocking the internet entirely with Freedom or blocking a specific website with Self-Control.

122Self-Control is free at:
https://selfcontrolapp.com/

123Freedom costs $10 at:
https://macfreedom.com/

124Both are highly recommended.

125***

127The first and largest takeaway I'd like you to get:

128You have a lot less moment-by-moment control than you'd want, and than most people believe. You win greater levels of control by taking action and setting up your life now  so that your life runs better in the future. 

129Just realizing this can help overcome bad feelings or helplessness: in the moment, you can only do so much. If you're on your 14th drink, or if you're an invading Russian with an elite Finnish sniper's gun trained on you, there's not much more to be done in that moment: your agency is near zero.

130But you gain that agency by doing things right now, upstream, so that things run better downstream.

1 U PSTREAM E FFECTS #2: E NTRAINMENT

3We were seated together on a flight from Dublin to Dubai.

4“Oh, it was a disaster. I love the Spanish, but how did they ever manage to build an empire?”

5She laughed. “I know, eh? When I was in the Madrid branch, they needed to approve everything  before it went out — not just final reports, but even an email to a single client.”

6“Everything?” I asked.

7“Yeah. So it’s my second week, I go to my boss, it’s Wednesday,” the accountant continues, “and I say — I’ve got this basic outline for the client, can you approve it to send it out?”

8She pauses a moment, continues in a different voice imitating her boss in a Madrid accent: “Oh, umm, how about next Tuesday?”

9The Irishwoman raises an eyebrow. “And I say, umm… well… and she says, ‘It’s so busy lately!'”

10You can she her recalling the memory, and she chuckles before continuing: “So lunchtime comes around, and my manager says — want to go out to lunch? I say yes, I figure she wants to talk about the report. We go out, we chat a bit about everything — food, parties, men — and the report doesn’t come up. In our three hour lunch.”

11“Huh? How’d you get by there?”

12“I eventually just gave up. I like to work, but how can you? Everyone says ‘I’m so busy, I’m so busy’ and everything is 'Mañana, mañana, mañana’ — you ask them to do something, it’s ‘I’m so busy, mañana’ — I think they actually believe they’re busy and are stressed about it. It’s like, things get written on their to-do list at the bottom, but the stuff at the top never gets done. It just gets longer and longer.”

13She twirls her hand in a whimsical gesture in the air. “Mañana!”

14***

16The Petty Officer has been awake nearly 28 hours straight, snatching only a few moments of vigilant half-sleep aboard the transport going in both directions.

17Aware and in-tune with his body, adrenalin and cortisol rising didn’t make him nervous and jerky; he harnessed it; he functioned most strongly on the border of Condition Yellow and Red, heart beating 115 beats per minute; that spot where fine motor control does not give way, yet reflexes move lightning fast. Controlling his breathing is second nature, adjusting his level of arousal and periodically re-centering to the zone to suit the mission.

18The biochemical feedback loops could get out of control, tear one’s body apart — not so, in this man’s case. The training had seen to that. Now, there was no excess thinking; the training became execution. The mission, the team, was all and everything.

19It would be a gross exaggeration to say he wasn’t feeling the aftereffects of the stress hormones, intense exertion on the body, and the fatigue.

20But that’s what they trained for.

21Once back at his quarters, the mission was still not over. Stay in Condition Yellow. He spreads his gear over his work bench, breaking things down into the meticulous patterns, losing sight of nothing. He dissembles his rifle and sidearm, stows the remaining ammunition, inspects and cleans every piece, before delicately polishing the rifle’s scope. The weapons cleaned and maintained, he re-packs them.

22He examines his go-bag — no damage, but a bit of dirt on one corner — and takes an old t-shirt now turned into a rag, wets it with a dash of soap, and scrubs the corner thoroughly before running the wet rag over the rest of the bag.

23He checks the bag, the straps on it — nothing frayed.

24The exhaustion and effects of adrenalin withdrawal were there, but irrelevant.

25He removed the used batteries from all the electronics and threw them in the trash, and packed new batteries into his go-bag. His knife hadn’t been drawn this mission; nevertheless, he drew it, inspected it, re-sheathed it, and packed it.

26He inventories, counts, and re-counts his gear, and then places his go-bag in its customary place on the shelf, ready to be grabbed on the way out the door.

27He checks every one of his pockets before stripping off his fatigues, and walks to the washing machine in his underwear. Standing over the washing machine, he checks the pockets again — he knows they’re empty, but checks again — before putting them in the washing machine.

28He pours in detergent, strips off his underwear last, throws it in, and presses the button to start the washing machine.

29Walking into the bathroom, he turns the shower on to maximally hot, and only when the water hit his skin does he allow his mind to truly succumb to the waves of fatigue that had been lurking in the background.

30Before fully giving way to the withdrawal and exhaustion, he feels along the lines of his ankles, elbows, wrists — no damage — and checks his fingernails and toenails. Then, transforming from ultra-warrior to exhausted man, he lets the water run over his face and temples, thinking one last thought before his mind mercifully switches off — “Mission accomplished.”

31***

33What accounts for the difference between how the lazy manager at the Spanish accounting firm does things, and how the Navy SEAL does things?

34Both are real people. Scenes like that played out sometime in the last week somewhere in the world.

35You can read about the discipline of the SEAL Teams in memoirs and guides written by their veterans. And you can find stories of half-assed managing all over the world, even at the most elite firms (of which the Irishwoman worked at, in the Spanish branch).

36Maybe it’s silly on the surface to compare an elite soldier and an accounting manager, but then again, maybe not. Professional soldiering is a set of training and discrete tasks; if accounting isn’t also a series of training and discrete tasks, then what is?

37Richard Machowicz was a sniper for the U.S. Navy SEAL Teams. In his excellent book “Unleash the Warrior Within,” he writes —

39***

41Here is a question for you —

42The Spanish accounting manager made two very simple choices — to procrastinate approving a report for six days because she was “too busy," and then to take a long lunch with her direct report without even pretending to be busy. This resulted in someone on her team being demoralized, work backing up, the manager being the bottleneck, the client waiting a week unnecessarily and getting worse service, and — eventually — the work of that branch drastically slowing down.

43Here’s the question —

44Did she have a choice in the matter?

45***

47Here’s my answer, maybe it’ll be controversial —

49And that’s not meaning to pardon or condone negligence.

50But I don’t think she had a choice.

51“Can you look at this?” “Next week” — the reply was automatic. Reflex. There was no decision there, no real thinking, no real reflection.

52She probably wouldn’t have even thought through the matter explicitly; this was simply “the way things are done around here."

53***

55The word “habit” has, unfortunately, become very popular in recent years.

56It’s thus morphed, expanded, contracted, gotten confused. The word is useful still, I think of the habits I’m running, but most people associate habits with seeming “additions” to life, things like “flossing” or “going to the gym three times per week.”

57We should talk about a different type of habitual behavior — entrainment .

58Entrainment is a not-actively-conscious, nearly automatic response to a stimulus.

59A member of SEAL Team goes through the motions of checking, re-checking, cleaning, maintaining, and storing their gear post-mission repeatedly. When a mission ends, that entrainment takes over — check, re-check, clean, maintain, store — and the work gets done.

60At this particular accounting firm, the entrained behavior is “mañana, mañana, mañana” — when asked to do something, immediately reply that you’re busy and you’ll get to it… later.

61This has nothing to good with good or bad, good or evil, moral or immoral. I would even go a step further and say that it’s not about being lazy or diligent.

62It’s about entrainment.

63***

65In my social circle, we regularly have ‘salons’ — gatherings of smart people who discuss high-concept stuff. We actively fight against smalltalk and frivolity, and try to uncover the various secrets of the universe.

66Typical salon format is hosting it with one other person, and each of the two hosts will invite half the guest list. We’ll hold it at a cool cafe, low-key restaurant, someone's home, or a park. We first make sure we’ve got a core group such that we’d be happy if none of the might-make-it people show up. Then we invite the likely-to-come people to build the group out. Finally, we might invite a few people we don’t know and want to get to know — authors we like, local luminaries, distant acquaintances, friends-of-friends we admire.

67Over the last couple years, one repeatedly fruitful conversation at salon has been: “How much time are people actually thinking and making decisions?”

68Not once has an elite person suggested a number higher than 10% of the time.

6910% of the time is the highest number I’ve heard. I’ve heard as low as “close to zero percent of the time."

70What’s happening the rest of the time?

71Entrainment. Running automatic patterns.

72You eat today whatever you’ve been eating recently.

73You start the morning today however you’ve been starting the morning recently.

74If you’ve been reading as a default leisure activity lately, you keep reading. If you haven’t been, you don’t read.

75Your reply to a request for something is the same reply you’ve given lately.

76***

78Let’s look at part of Machowicz’s quote again —

80I think, if someone wanted to rip part of this quote and put it on Twitter, they’d likely put down —

81“A professional doesn’t quit until every task is complete.”

82I think that’s a misguided excerpt.

83A better one would be —

84“My training drilled into me the fact that a professional doesn’t quit until every task is complete."

85Trying to apply heroic willpower, make the right decisions in the moment… this can be useful for brief periods of time, and it’s necessary to fight and struggle with if you’re trying to establish new or different ways of doing things.

86But you can’t fight your life as a series of moment-by-moment struggles. If you do, sometimes you’ll clean your gear and put it away, and sometimes you’ll lose that struggle and take the lazy way out.

87No, willpower alone is no answer.

88Training is key.

89Entrainment is key.

90If you’re not so lucky as to work for a world-class organization with elite training, you’ll need to set up your own training protocols.

91***

93It’s stupidly easy to start doing entrainment for yourself.

94You pick a single type of action, behavior, or situation.

95You carefully think through what the ideal response is.

96You train that response into yourself so it becomes automatic.

97***

99Greg Nance is the CEO of ChaseFuture, a venture-funded company changing the EdTech landscape in Shanghai. Prior to that, he’s has a thriving and winning life — playing high-level sports in high school, winning the State of Washington Debate Championship his senior year, going to UChicago and founding the nonprofit Moneythink there which has been honored by President Obama for helping change financial education for young Americans, getting his masters at Cambridge as a Gates Scholar, and doing a variety of ultra-endurance runs, mountaineering, and other elite athletics.

100As you can imagine, he gets asked for lots of things — introductions, reports, book recommendations, files, collateral, etc. Besides working with his terrific staff, he’s got a network across three continents doing exceptional things.

101He’d always prided himself on reliability, but one day in Shanghai, he realized things were starting to drop. He’d say he’d get something to someone, and then the delivery would be haphazard.

102Common enough, right? All the time, I have people saying they’ll send me a book recommendation, music recommendation, article, thoughts on a topic, whatever — and then not do it.

103This is normal, right? We’re all busy.

104It’s understandable, right? It’s hard being a busy startup CEO.

105It’s acceptable, right?

106No.

107Not for Nance. He thought about this problem, and eventually his solution was to create a “Commitments” file in the app Evernote.

108Everything he committed to do, he immediately wrote there.

109This wasn’t about him being great, noble, or lofty — he just simply started doing it every time. Every single thing he said he’d do went in the Commitments file.

110Soon, it was second nature.

111Entrainment.

112Then he’d sweep through his Commitments file, usually daily, but at least weekly. Everything started getting done.

113It spread through our network — Stepan Parunashvili, the brilliant Scientific Technologist and most likely youngest programmer at Facebook, took this up from Nance.

114From Nance-via-Stepan, I picked this behavior up too. Whenever I say I’m going to do something, I either note it in my Commitments file immediately, or I write it down on my iPhone’s notes or email it to myself, both of which get swept into the Commitments file soon after.

115Just like that, a whole class of behavior — promising to do something for someone — went from being shaky and haphazard to being nearly automatic.

116Entrainment.

117***

118There’s hundreds of little behaviors like this. Successful people adopt them frequently and often.

119Planning the next day the night before, every single night, is one of them. If you do it enough times, it becomes automatic.

120But wait, what if you’re not going to be at your computer and not going to have paper when the night ends? This happened to me numerous times; on those days, I would forget to plan the next day and suffer for it.

121In those cases, instead of trying to be heroic, you just analyze the behavior and make adjustments. For me, I was used to planning the next day right before I slept. But now, I know there’s certain types of days — a red-eye flight, for instance — where I won’t do it. On those days, I’ll plan the next day in the mid-afternoon before boarding the flight, or whatever else.

122The key shift here is going from trying to remember or choose the right thing, to trying to design your future behavior and response to stimuli.

123Your entire morning routine works this way — always drink water upon waking, always check calendar and commitments on waking, block the internet with the Freedom app or block specific websites with the SelfControl app to start the day — these are all easy to entrain.

124Doing a weekly review every single Sunday, and making that the first thing you do on Sunday — entrainment.

125Default replies to “Can you help me with this?” and “Can you mentor me on this?” are critical. Saying yes blindly to things can be fatal if you’re busy. What’s your default reply? “Can you send me a half-page document that explains my role and what you want?” goes a long way.

126What’s your default suggested length of time for a meeting or call? Is one hour is too long for most situations?

127On the meetings topic, whenever someone suggests one, immediately counter-suggest, “Can you send me an agenda for it of what we want to get done?”

128If a meeting is starting and there’s no agenda, say, “Hey, before we start, do we want to draw up an agenda of what we want to accomplish?”

129***

131The above are brief examples — the key is to gradually go to work on all your default entrained patterns of how you act.

132The Spanish manager says, “Ehh, I’m busy” automatically — without thinking. It’s entrained at this point.

133America's elite soldiers have been trained to always clean and maintain their gear after a mission, and stay vigilant until that’s complete.

134Two pieces of advice —

1351. If you’re unused to this pattern of acting, start gradually. Far better to have one or two things you actually install than a few dozen that you don’t.

1362. Counterintuitively, I recommend you start doing entrainment on areas you’re already good at and already succeed at. Entraining behavior can become second-nature eventually, but it’s a different way of doing things at first. (The “heroic” or “willpower” or “I’ll get it right when the time comes” approaches tend to be what most people do.) So stack the deck in your favor by doing this in an area where it’ll be easy for you. Attack problematic areas after you’ve gotten practice in areas you’re already broadly successful.

137***

139Willpower is great to get things moving, and terrible for keeping things moving.

140We tend to do things automatically, reflexively.

141For the things that are important to you, you can design training protocols so that you automatically do the right things.

142There's a few simple ideas here, but it's less about particular tactics and more about a way of thinking about the world.

143If you always take out a physical piece of paper or notebook and write the top 5 things you have to do before you open your computer, you'll spend less time aimlessly online.

144Start thinking about what type of behaviors you'd benefit from training into yourself. Again, counterintuitively, I recommend you start on areas you're already good at. Build the general skill of training/entrainment in areas you don't have any resistance or blocks before moving on to applying to areas you've struggled in the past. It's a master skill, start developing it.

1 U PSTREAM E FFECTS #3: C HEMICA

4— John Walker, “Hacker’s Diet”

5***

7Call me crazy if you want, but I’m grateful for the occasional times that I get significantly ill.

8The nagging common cold? No, that I don’t appreciate. It’s just a little drag and hassle to deal with.

9But full-on fever, totally incapacitated, the room is spinning?

10I got a sort of paradoxical appreciation for that.

11When your mind is in the throes of a deep fever, when you’re burning to pieces, it becomes obvious that the direct control we have our thoughts and performance in those moments is… somewhat low.

12Tossing and turning frantically, kicking off sheets and blankets in a fit of madness, then grasping around in the dark room to pull any covers on top of oneself to stop the backlash of shivering and cold?

13In an odd way, I live for those moments.

14***

16But let us step back for a minute.

18This isn’t an idle question.

19Actually, it’s perhaps of the most importance.

20If you're in the throes of a fever — you're not in good health. That’s obvious. Check. Got it.

21Lying on the street in a pool of one’s own blood after motorcycle crash — not healthy! Easy. Got it.

22But how about an elite athlete who is rehabilitating from a significant leg injury? Is that athlete healthier or less healthy than the average person?

23This question is deceptively important, I think.

24It can be tiresome to go the dictionary as part of an exploration, but let’s do so anyways.

25Apple’s built-in dictionary defines “health” thus —

261. “the state of being free from illness or injury” [he was restored to health]

272. "a person’s mental or physical condition” [bad health forced him to retire]

28Under that #1 definition of health, the injured athlete is less healthy than the average semi-sedentary office worker, what with the significant injury.

29Under the second definition, the injured elite athlete likely comes out ahead with a great overall physical condition, with the exception of the particular injury.

30***

31"Word games," you say! "This is all semantics! What’s the point?”

32Thank you for asking; I respect that immense practicality.

33That’s why we’re here, after all — to make our lives better in practical ways. To think, but not just to think — to turn that thinking into results.

34The basic idea of “Upstream Effects” is that we have a lot less in-this-minute control of our lives than we’d want.

35To gain more control over our lives, we have to make things better for the future. In the present moment, we’re heavily under the influence of choices we made in the short-term and mid-term past.

37When you’re delusional with fever, you can’t do good work or really thrive.

38But, when the fever breaks, inevitably I think something —

39“I’m able to think clearly now that the fever has passed… but what if there’s levels of thinking and health so far above my normal life that are as big as the difference between a delusional fever and normal life?”

40***

42I’ll say it more explicitly.

43The gap between an extremely sick person in the spin of fever, and the normal average-health American office worker?

44I’m convinced there’s another gap, just as large, between that office worker and someone approaching peak health.

46***

48Why do I think so?

49I was always curious and tried to make little improvements since I was a teenager, but I started doing slightly more rigorous self-experiments and collecting data around time, productivity, health, action, and similar topics, six years ago, in early 2010.

50Occasionally, some small operational change made a huge difference both in my subjective perception of healthiness, wellness, and well-being — but also practically, in terms of doing far more work and producing far more output of the work I wanted to do.

51Every morning, I do a “Morning Routine” — a little checklist that ensures I do everything I should to start the day.

52Adding “Drink Water” to it — and ensuring faithfully I do it — had an outsized effect on performance.

53For about 81 weeks as of this writing, I’ve tracked my daily habits on a “Lights Spreadsheet”; it’s got entries like —

71I mark those with a simple green “Y” if I do them, a yellow “Half” if I partially did them, a red “N” if I don’t do them.

72***

74Over time, I started to see correlations — the one that surprised me the most was that, after about three bad nights of sleep in a row, everything in my life started to disintegrate.

75My rates of eating right, working in the morning, following good habits — all of these fell apart after about three nights in a row of bad sleep.

76I found recharging with music, health and athletics, and napping all super-correlated with success. The time it took to do these things literally paid for themselves — I’d have more energy in the evenings which would otherwise have been useless, I’d be more focused and on-point with less boredom and less anxiety during the day; I’d work more, and have a better time in the process.

77***

79One of the reason for the silly dogmatic arguments (“low fat! no, low carb! no, low fat!”) is because we all have slightly different genetic profiles, lifestyles, and body types.

80This is very obvious when someone is allergic to a certain type of food or medicine, but only recently has the mainstream narrative caught up to the basic truth — different things work differently for different people.

81It’s obvious, right? You probably know someone who can drink alcohol like a fish and be relatively unaffected, and you probably know someone who is flushed red and losing their balance after a single drink.

82Likewise, there’s different abilities of the body to metabolize lactose — milk and milk-based proteins — some people can break them down and use them as a nice energy source without any negative consequences, others get more indigestion and milk doesn’t work well with them.

84Relentlessly test what you put into your body, and how you interact with the world. Our sensitivities to caffeine and other stimulants, alcohol and other depressants, different types of foods and medicines, different amounts of sleeps and rhythms of work and rest — different patterns work for different people.

85The payoff to improving yours, even slightly, is immense.

86***

88Here are three long-term commitments I recommend, that’ll make your life better and lead to far higher production —

891. Take very seriously your personal biochemistry, nutrition, consumption, rest, work, athletics, and environment. Experiment gradually to find out what works for you, and implement it.

90This is so obviously of paramount importance; it’s shocking how many people leave this to chance or don’t think about it. You live your whole life in your body. Being illiterate as to what your body responds to? What a disaster, what wasted potential. Make a long-term commitment to think about this stuff and experiment. Not once, but a little bit, all the time, as an ongoing thing. It more than pays for itself.

912. Study what performance-oriented people do.

92Reading abstract science is good, but too often a lab scientist trying to make a name for themselves takes two completely true results like “eating XYZ food decreases ZYX-type cholesterol” and “ZYX-type cholesterol correlates with heart attacks” — and then makes a completely dangerous jump to saying, “Everyone should eat XYZ food.”

93These guidelines are very often wrong; the human body is very complicated and everything happening in it effects many different things.

94I’m very interested in what performance-oriented people do over long periods of time. I strongly recommend you read about various types of athletics — endurance athletes, lifters, martial artists, tennis players, sprinters, etc — as well as soldiers, and any other profession that requires regular usage of the body.

95You shouldn’t take an athlete’s guidelines as gospel, but if you start reading books and memoirs like “Open” by champion tennis player Andre Agassi (who reclaimed the #1 spot late in life, when most tennis players have already faded, and who actively managed his biochemistry with his coach), Finding Ultra and Ultramarathon Man by Rich Roll and Dean Karnazes, Easy Strength by Dan John and Pavel Tsatsouline. Read memoirs and guides by elite American, British, Russian, and Israeli soldiers on how they train, rest, and eat.

96Because these people are optimizing for different things, the guidelines will be different. A powerlifter is training for different things than an endurance athlete. But all of these books will give you ideas on experiments to run for yourself, adopting practices that people who push their bodies to the limits adopt to stay healthy and recharge.

973. Study the mechanics of action and biochemistry. This need not be painful.

98This isn’t so hard to start learning, and the payoffs are huge. It’s shocking to me how people drink coffee and don’t understand caffeine’s mechanism of action.

99(Briefly, one reason you get sleepy is because your body produces “adenosine,” a hormone that makes you start feeling sleepy. Caffeine molecules are shaped like adenosine, which blocks the receptors that adenosine normally binds to — thus, you’re still needing the rest, but you don’t feel it. Of course, the body is pretty smart, so it starts producing more adenosine if you regularly take caffeine — that’s what “tolerance building” is, and why you need more caffeine over time to produce a similar result.)

100Read short pieces that teach you about biochemistry like "The Calculus of Caffeine Consumption" by Arvind Narayanan, and the Examine.com's Summary of the Science of Caffeine.

101Start learning this stuff.

102Examine.com is a masterfully good source for learning about all type of substances.

103Gwern.net is run by a wonderful and thorough amateur scientist who cites his work highly.

104Look favorably on science-oriented practitioners like Martin Berkhan of Leangains.com — even if his guidelines aren’t perfect for you, he’s science-oriented and talks about how food is processed in your body, how muscle is built, and various aspects of training and adaption.

105It’s intimidating at first, but it doesn’t need to be. Start researching how caffeine works. How your body processes waster. How food is digested.

106It’s your body , after all. What could be more important to learn?

107***

109Once you commit to learning more about this stuff, here are four easy types of experiments to run.

1101. Track and Correlate: The easiest type of experiment to run for your own life doesn’t require you to do anything different. Instead, simply do this — start tracking or writing down one type of performance that matters to you, and one area of your life you’re curious about.

111If you’re a writer, you could track how many words you write per day. If you’re an administrator, you could track how much work you get done. If you regularly do any routine type of work (writing reports, doing safety inspections, building a type of repeatable construction, whatever) — track how long it takes you to get it done. Basically, whatever matters in your work, track that work.

112At the same time, pick and track some variable related to your body — sleep time, wake time, hours slept, napped yes/no, what foods you ate, timing of the foods… anything. Don’t get overwhelmed, just start jotting the stuff down. Many apps these days make it easy to track a lot of things like this.

113If you do this for just a few weeks, you’ll likely start noticing correlations — you’ll start seeing, “hey, when I eat oatmeal for breakfast, I do more work in the morning…”

114I really can’t recommend this type of tracking highly enough. It’s easy to do if you set a couple reminders, only taking a couple small minutes per day. The gains are life-changing if you realize that one type of thing pays off huge for you, or something is really holding you back.

1152. Blacklisting: “I won’t do X” or “I won’t eat X.” In 2006, among other things, I quit drinking sugared soda entirely — and never looked back. I tried it for a while, and frankly, I never felt good when I had a Coke or Pepsi. Try blacklisting a food or activity for a short duration — a couple weeks, or a month. If you don’t already notice a change, then add it back in and pay attention to the results — I found that deep-fried food was a disaster for my body. I know people that can eat it without adverse effects, but I’m not one of them. I was also surprised to find that my body runs much better without protein powders or protein bars; yes, they’re convenient, but I’m overall healthier and feel better when I don’t have the stuff. Meanwhile, to get calories up if doing sports, I’ll slather foods with butter or olive oil — my body takes pretty well to more fat, surprisingly. Chicken with higher amounts of olive oil or butter performs better for me than a theoretically better macronutrient mix using powders and bars. Go figure.

1163. Whitelists: The real game-changer, though it’s hard to implement, is doing whitelist experiments. I never felt healthier than when I cut down to exclusively eating from the following list of eight things: all fruits, all vegetables, oats, fish, poultry, eggs, cheese, good fats and oils. I literally wouldn’t eat anything else. The initial list was arbitrary, but that’s kind of the point — you can then experiment and slowly add or remove things. Cheese works fine for me, but is bad for others. It was very hard to switch onto this diet at first — I had strong cravings — but once it equalized, I felt much better overall. You can whitelist activities, too — picking a limited set of things you do for leisure. This doesn’t need to be permanent — just do a 3-week or 1-month experiment with a whitelist and see how your life changes. With a whitelist experiment, you only eat or do what's on the whitelist for a period of time. The list has to be chosen carefully, but if done well, it's very powerful.

1174. Timing experiments: Finally, there’s plenty of things that are fine, but bad if you do them at the wrong time. Try doing some experiments with “no Internet for the first 3 hours of the day,” “only watching TV or movies between 11AM and 5PM,” (not too early in the day, to not throw off the day; not too late, to not keep you up), experiment with not eating after 3PM or try intermittent fasting. Many of the smartest, most productive people I know have strict rules around when they take caffeine and never do it after a certain time. If your work and lifestyle allows, consider experimenting with not showering immediately on waking and instead wait for the first lull of the day to shower and groom yourself — that was game-changing for me… I find I'm rather sharp when I first wake up, and showering when that sharp is a waste — instead, I try to make showering and grooming the first break I take during the take once I’ve gotten a little fatigued from working.

118***

1201. Patience and Timescales: Too many people want to see revolutionary changes in the next 10 seconds from anything they try. Look, life is long, you’re going to be in your body for a long time. Most of these types of experiments don’t do anything immediately on the day they’re run; some of them (scaling back dramatically on caffeine or sugar) actually will hurt your performance for a little while before leading to dramatic improvement.

121You don’t need to brute-force any experiment to immense results; it’s more like, you tinker with this stuff upstream, and wait a few weeks and see what happens. Your timescales on this type of experiment are weeks.

122Likewise, don’t think of this as something you want to “get over with ASAP” — instead, look at it as a way of life of constantly improving as a human. There’s no hurry. There’s plenty of time. Run a couple little experiments at a time, when it occurs to you. It gets addictive and more than pays for itself. Patience is the way here; the gains add up immensely over time.

1232. Pragmatism Around Adherence Rate: Adherence rate is how often you actually do what you’re going to try to do. We’ll cover this thoroughly later, but for now, the basic guideline is this — strongly consider adherence rate when you design an experiment.

124For instance, I used to regularly start lifting weights, aiming for 3 times or 4 times per week, but then I’d fall off from the practice of it when I got ill or busy or whatever. Then, during a particularly busy period of my life, I said: “You know what, I’m going to keep lifting, but only once per calendar week at a minimum.” That was it. “Once per calendar week” also meant that sometimes I’d go two weeks between lifting weights — if I lifted one week on a Monday, and then another week not until Friday, it was nearly two weeks — but it still counted.

125Since I adopted that practice, I’ve been lifting weights every calendar week without fail for many months now. If I have the opportunity and access to a good gym, I’ll scale up to three times per week or lift more. But if not, I keep going once per calendar week.

126Likewise, it might make more sense to blacklist some foods you don’t even like all that much, rather than your favorite foods, to start. I used to have a problem adhering to very strict diets; on the whitelist I mentioned above (chicken, fish, eggs, cheese, oats, all fruit, all vegetables, oils/butters), there’s actually a few types of “junk food” I can indulge in — potatoes or sweet potatoes doused in butter or olive oil, and the more sugary fruits like pineapple. And I love cheese. Some of these foods are, in theory, probably not the best things to eat, but I can actually stick with this and adhere to it.

127Adherence is key. Keep it in mind when designing experiments; design experiments you can adhere to.

1283. Almost Always Use Limited Duration Trials: There’s many things I’ve permanently quit in my life and never gone back to, but these days, I recommend everyone starts with a limited duration trial — 3 weeks or a month, typically. If it’s December 5th, it's not so hard to quit candy for the rest of December. You can say, “Ok, once New Year’s hits, I can eat candy all I want.” If someone really tries to push candy on you at Christmas, you can say: “Well, I’m not doing candy all December. Experiment. Come January, sure, but for December — no way, 100% not.” It’s a lot easier psychologically to commit to do something of limited time duration. Also, just as importantly, often some experiment’s payoff actually won’t be as good as expected — then you can just adopt the behavior again, no problem, nothing lost.

129***

131We're all adults here, right?

132So much advice and guidance out in the mass market world assumes that much of the audience will be children, unable to size up risks and downsides and tradeoffs.

133I imagine the typical reader of this is many cuts above the average, which is why I'm comfortable reviewing nicotine gum.

134Nicotine, though? Isn't that dangerous? Won't it kill you?

135Well, in short, no —

137— "Chew On This: Sticking With Nicotine Gum for the Long Haul", Wall Street Journal

138After doing an intense amount of research, I started using nicotine for its saliencing effect.

139What's that mean?

140From my reading and research on the topic, it seems to me that nicotine itself is nowhere near as addictive as commonly imagined.

141It's indeed a powerful stimulant — almost as powerful as caffeine — but it seems like it's less addictive on traditional parameters (withdrawal, tolerance building) than most others.

142Rather, nicotine seems to lead to habit formation when it's done. In other words, it's not that nicotine itself is so addictive, but rather, it makes whatever you do simultaneously with it become far more likely to be habitual.

143It seems to me that that's a big part of why cigarettes are addictive: there's the stimulant component, but also, the tactile/feel component of smoking. The act of taking a cigarette from a pack, putting it in your mouth unlit, lighting it, inhaling a drag as the thing flares to life — this is a very physical pattern that's pleasurable for many people to do. If cigarettes were healthy and good for you, that pattern would be almost meditative, wouldn't it?

144Now, let me make myself explicitly clear: tobacco is extremely bad news, and anyone considering nicotine gum or patches must do immense research and make extremely sure they never become a tobacco user.

145But, assuming one can manage that, I was very interested in if I could use nicotine to form new habits and, generally, live a better life.

146Thus, I set up my nicotine rules:

1471. There's only three contexts I'll chew nicotine gum.

1482. These are extremely controlled and planned.

1493. I will never take nicotine in a form factor that even remotely resembles tobacco (no vaporizers, no inhaling, nothing like that).

1504. I don't do it every day.

1515. I never use outside of the three contexts for any reason. I especially don't use it for a calming effect, when stressed, or for any reason besides the three contexts.

152The three contexts?

153(1) Working on my biggest project in detailed work reps,

154(2) doing administrative work,

155(3) while lacing up my running shoes after already having decided on the day's running plan.

156But, used in these contexts, nicotine gum seems to work very well for me.

157Again, I spent a lot of time designing the contexts I'll use it in. In the two working contexts, I'll only do it with a notebook open besides me and the things I want to do written down. Then I'll do the work in order.

158I won't use it for any work: only the largest project I'm working on, or a certain type of admin work that I was historically bad at (getting through all paperwork, details, etc).

159The mild anticipation of nicotine, which is indeed pleasurable, might or might not have led to doing more project work. But it's almost certainly led to getting more admin complete promptly.

160I don't have any strong opinion about brand: I've used generic nicotine gum from CVS Pharmacy, I've used the major brand Nicorette, and I've chewed a Korean brand I picked up in Seoul.

161The only other major decision to make is if you want stuff that tastes okay or tastes poorly/medicinal. I think I actually prefer brands that taste worse, to remind me that I'm using it in a medicinal/pharmacological context, not for pleasure or euphoria.

162I find Gwern's article on nicotine to be a good place to start researching if you're thinking of it:

163http://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

164I also want to make a final recommendation: if you're in any danger of becoming a tobacco user (you quit cigarettes/nicotine cold turkey recently, or you occasionally smoke with a drink or at a party) — then absolutely stay away from nicotine. A small chance of becoming a tobacco user isn't worth it. It's an expensive habit in every way; it's very bad for your health even if you never get cancer.

165But nicotine gum? Well, I did a couple years of research before I started doing it, and I'm glad to work it into my routine. Caveat emptor and do your own research, go slowly if you're considering it, but it's worked well for me.

166***

168Nicotine is good for me, sure, but biochemistry is far more about self-study, experimentation, and setting good rules than it is about any tricks.

169Try any of the four types of experiments -- Tracking/Correlation Experiments, Blacklisting Experiments, Whitelisting Experiments, and Timing Experiments.

170They're game-changing, life-changing even: it can make a world of difference if you're currently timing your life poorly, eating something that you're even mildly allergic to, not sleeping or hydrating, or otherwise out of sync with your body.

171If you do design more rules in this area for yourself, remember the three guidelines: Use patience and let timescales work for you, be pragmatic about adherence rate, and start any experiments with limited duration trials.

172It really actually doesn't take much time to run small experiments, and the payoff is greater levels of energy and more thriving across your entire life. Take this area seriously, and periodically run a small experiment. When you discover ways to get immensely more energy, clarity, and health, it leads to a positive multiplier across all of your life.

1 U PSTREAM E FFECTS #4: F IREBREAKS AND R APID R EPAIRS

3“Stay focused,” he commanded himself.

4But it was hard. All the lights, the photography… the veterans had on a cool facade, but not him.

5His first contest.

6He didn’t want to over-do the oil: how much was he supposed to use?

7So he did it slower than the other guys, pouring a tiny bit into his palm, about as much as a large coin, and then worked the oil over his body until his muscles started to glisten and reflect the light.

8As he rubbed oil along the cut lines of his abdominals, memories flooded back of all the pain, all the reps, day-in and day-out… force-feeding himself green vegetables and plain chicken breasts until he was sick post-workout, and back at it again.

9He implored himself again — “Stay focused.”

10He’s read Arnold’s books, he’d watched Pumping Iron . He knew the other guys here might try to psyche him out. He wanted to stay focused, stay in his zone, remember his poses… play his own game and he’d be in his own league. It was only a regional, the biggest players wouldn’t be here; he wondered if he had a shot to win it all.

11“But that’s not the thing to think about. Stay focused.” He was trying to stay loose, he didn’t want to go on stage stiff. The oil was almost done now, he thought — or should he use more? It was awkward stuff.

12***

13He pulled his stomach in as hard as he could, flexed the big muscles in his legs as he pushed them forth, feeling as if Doctor Frankenstein had tried to make a ballerina.

14The crowd was going nuts, cheering… the lights were blinding, he could barely see anything, the noise was intense.

15He turned away into a half lunge, came down with his fists like he was getting ready to raise a sledgehammer, and then — BAM — flexed all of the muscles in his legs, back, and arms into one rippling motion.

16The crowd exploded with noise and cheers.

17***

18"But that was three weeks ago,” he said to himself, looking at the little trophy on his desk next to his computer for a moment with satisfaction, but then looking downwards at the container of Ben-and-Jerry’s ice cream half-eaten on his lap.

19... and the second empty ice cream container on the floor.

20“Maybe I should throw away the ice cream in the freezer… I don’t want to eat any more after this one.”

21He munched away on the ice cream, but was frowning all the while.

22“Why am I still eating this crap? I took a little break — it’s been three weeks . I should get back at it.”

23The ice cream was gone now.

24“I won’t eat another one.”

25But then there was another ice cream in his lap.

26“Why am I eating this one too? What the hell is wrong with me?”

27***

28“Maybe I should call back and cancel the pizzas.”

29He looked down at the slowly-growing, smooth, rounded chub below his pecs and above his hips.

30The lines that had present 10 weeks ago, when he won his first regional bodybuilding competition, were long gone.

31He picked up the phone.

32Started to click to call history.

33“Ah, screw it. What the hell.”

34He put the phone down, went to the freezer, and grabbed a pint of ice cream.

35His pizzas would be here soon, he knew he’d tell himself that he’ll leave one of them for tomorrow, but deep-down he knew he’d break that and eat them all, going to bed with an engorged stomach, a headache, a stomachache, and a feeling of disgust with himself.

36***

37He picks up the trophy and throws it at the wall.

38The trophy flumps onto the carpet, leaving a small dent in the plaster but otherwise not breaking.

39He picks up the half-eaten, still-mostly-frozen pint of ice cream and throws that, too, at the wall.

40Nothing much happens, it also flumps to the floor harmlessly.

41He flumps off the couch onto the carpet himself, sprawls out, and starts to cry.

42***

44I know a very few rare individuals who have such incredible composure, balance, and discipline that they do not ever backslide on new habits or patterns of action. Once they decide something — poof, it’s done.

45Lucky them.

46Now, my life and work has brought me to dozens of countries. I’ve met all sorts of top performers. I estimate I’ve got over 2000 acquaintances around the world (my definition of an acquaintance is someone who, if I’m in their city for only one day, will meet me for lunch even if it’s a very busy day for them). Many of those people are doing something at a very high level.

47And yet, I only know a handful of these never-backslide people.

48If it’s you, and you never backslide — well, marvelous, carry on. For the rest of us, we’ll have to learn the skills, mindsets, and approaches to let us deal with the issues our young binge-eating post-championship bodybuilder deals with.

49***

51I reckon there’s four big factors working against you when you’re trying to install new and better ways of doing things —

521. Entrainment: We already had a whole issue about this. Your natural tendency will be to do whatever you’ve been doing lately. Your default response to a stimulus will be whatever your past responses have been. Etc.

532. Homeostasis: Your body self-regulates through a variety of processes. If whatever you’re doing is changing your biochemistry, your body is very likely to react poorly — even if the change is long-term for the better. Running a caloric deficit for an extended period of time, like the bodybuilder above cutting for his competition, can get the body to start triggering all sorts of reactions and processes that generate physical and mental pressure to make you want to eat. If you’ve been a habitual caffeine user, your body has up-regulated the amount of the sleepiness-producing adenosine that caffeine blocks out — if you quit the caffeine cold turkey, you way tired and irritable for a while. There’s a whole lot of things like this.

543. The Neurons Thing: I’m not so hip to the exact science behind it, but apparently, any pattern of actions you do for a while gets encoded in your brain to make it more efficient at triggering in the future. Perhaps it’s like that board game Chutes and Ladders — you land on a chute, and you go all the way down to the end of the pattern of action you’re used to doing if nothing interrupts it. Like when a hard alcoholic completely quits, but then the single drink sends them back into a spiral of how they used to do it? All these neural paths of going to the bar, ordering whatever drinks they order, having one after another… even the familiar motion of a swirling a drink in their hand… all the neurons to do a past behavior are still there, dormant, if unused. You go back to them, you start doing it just like the good ol’ days (or bad ol’ days, as it were). “It’s like riding a bike — you never forget.”

554. “Ambitious Person Syndrome”: Is this already a thing? I just made up the term. But I’ll tell you, from observation, a lot of ambitious people are driven by some sort of neurotic drive to be the best, to show people up, to drown out some past hardship or humiliation, or whatever else. Nobody really talks about it, but I often see top people at what they do have a sort of obsessiveness about them, where they’re trying to out-run, or out-work, or out-drink their demons. When neurotic hyper-focus is turned to art or work or fitness, it can lead to amazing masterpieces. When it’s turned to some escapism, distraction, or self-destruction, it can be pretty ugly. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, congrats. If you do, ehh, you know how it goes.

56So that’s what we’re up against — you’ll tend to automatically do what you’ve done in the past as a default (entrainment), your body starts throwing all sorts of alarms and bad feelings at you if you try to change how you’re doing things (homeostasis), memories and encoded past patterns of action never really go away (the neuron thing), and if you’re ambitious and driven, that same force that gives you superpowers during high times becomes a huge liability at other times.

57Ok, that’s what we’re up against. How do we deal with it?

58***

60I believe — and you might disagree with me, and that’s fine — but I believe that sometimes a battle is more-or-less unwinnable on a particular day if you’ve also got other obligations or commitments. If you only want to change one  thing, you can very likely get it done. But as soon as you want to fix that one thing and keep the rest of your life and duties going, it just might not be possible.

61I don’t say that to be demoralizing, but because I think it’s just a fact of nature and worth acknowledging.

62The flip side of this, though, is I think it’s really almost automatic to conquer anything given enough time and enough resources mobilized.

63I think realizing this is a key part of maturity.

64I see young people, more than older people, going into that self-hate spiral as described after the bodybuilding championship. (Which was based on a composite of three real stories — one from a bodybuilder I know, and two I’ve read that were written about in intimate detail.)

65For me, at least, realizing that I can’t necessarily fix everything today  was liberating. Likewise, I knew I could fix, change, or improve whatever I wanted, if given enough time and appropriate resources.

66I also think the mix of breaking one’s word to oneself repeatedly through half-assed efforts to stop a pattern of bad behavior are unhelpful and lead to the self-hate spiral described above. I know, I’ve been there, it’s awful. I know many friends and colleagues who have been there. The more reflective, honest, mature, and self-aware people eventually get out of that pattern entirely.

67I still fail plenty, and backslide sometimes, but I don’t go through long bouts of repeated half-assed efforts to pull myself out without succeeding and all the misery, guilt, and loathing that entails.

68So again — I recommend an upstream approach.  If you want to fix something, start putting the forces in motion that’ll really get it fixed over time.

69***

71Despite having amazing modern technology — we can drop chemical foam from airplanes to try to put out fires — one of the most reliable technologies for fighting fires is about a bazillion years old.

72You dig up and kill off a small line through the forest encircling the fire. When the fire creeps to that area, there's no more fuel in its path and it burns out.

73Bad habits like binge eating, self-indulging in being busy/distracted/unhappy and not doing your highest work, and all other manner of failing type behavior require ongoing "fuel" to get there.

74Around 150 years ago, Emerson wrote: "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”

75It’s a good prescription.

76How do you put things behind you?

77You put dedicated spots on the calendar to break out of the cycle you’re in.

78I like to use as many time-based firebreaks as I can.

79I do a Weekly Review almost every Sunday. This habit, by the way, took me three years of sometimes-doing-it, sometimes-not-doing-it before I got it down. But since getting it, it’s a godsend. I write down what I did last week, just jotting down quickly what was going on in general and anything noteworthy. Here’s the start of November 2015 —

801: Flew Dublin via Madrid.
2: Arrived Dublin. Met Nance.
3: Dublin WebSummit/Nance + sick.
4: Dublin WebSummit/Nance, biz dinner, sick.
5: Dublin WebSummit last day, flew at night.
6: Transit day all day, arrived Beijing.
7: Beijing — no internet day — massive action on PRO Marshlist + getting back in swing of things.

81That whole week sucked. Constant travel. A bunch of sick people on the flight to Dublin, I came down with a cold once I got there. Five or six of my really precious habits got broken — fitness and endurance, hitting true inbox zero, working on my most important project in the morning, and a few others.

82But just writing it down and realizing, “Oh, hey, that was a crazy week. Let’s put it behind me” — just that simple action goes a long way.

83I do fancy weekly reviews sometimes where I analyze a bunch of things, but the simplest version of one is looking at what happened the past seven days (as above), and then asking myself three questions —

84"What’s really going on?”

85"So what do I do about it?”

86“What matters, what doesn’t?”

87That’s the simplest version of a Weekly Review for me, and works as a great firebreak.

88I’ll basically use any possible thing as an excuse for a firebreak — I use New Year’s day, I use my birthday, I use any upcoming travel/vacation, I use any days where I know I’ll be offline entirely.

89I’ll also manufacture firebreaks if I’m in really bad shape.

90Young ambitious people try to do things by themselves too often. If I’ve been being a lazy bastard recently, or eating like garbage, I’ll ask one of my very productive or very healthy friends if I can go stay at their house/couch/air-mattress/whatever for a while. Guys like Kai Zau, Zach Obront, and Josef Wasinski eat super healthy. I can just say, “Hey, I’ve been eating like garbage. If I come swing through and see you in Vegas/Austin/London/wherever, can we make sure to cook everything and eat super clean?” People are really happy to oblige. Note you don't need to travel long distances to do this; getting anyone onboard with you and breaking your routine together is the combination.

91I’ll book long train rides, ferry rides, or book passage on a ship (more on rail, ferry, and ship travel in a moment) if I’ve been distracted and overwhelmed, in order to clear some space to get back on track — firebreaks.

92Often, if I know I have a firebreak coming up, I’ll say — “Hey, ok, I’ve been eating like crap… fine, I’ll keep that up until [my birthday] [I go stay in Kai’s guest room] [whatever]” — and I’ll really enjoy my last hurrah of junk food until then. But I’ll make sure I’ve got ALL the resources lined up to switch back to whatever diet I want once I hit the firebreak. All junk thrown out, a clear and sustainable diet plan written that I know I can adhere to, perhaps even Amazon Prime ordering some basic healthy staples to whoever’s house before I arrive.

93Note last two can be good tips as well — letting go of the guilt and really enjoying the last few days eating junk before the firebreak is very good; so is making it easy to sustain behavior by having good food waiting. It’s odd and weird, at first, to order a bunch of health food to someone’s house if you’re coming as a guest, or to a hotel if you’re staying there, or your parent’s place if you’re going for a visit, or whatever. But once you start doing it, you find it’s no big deal.

94***

96This is as much a mentality as any particular behavior.

97These days, I anticipate all sorts of nonsense will happen.

98I *will* get sick again someday, I *will* get injured, I *will* get overwhelmed, I *will* have some really bad news hit, I *will* have some project I put a ton of hours into fail through no fault of own…

99It still sucks when it happens, but I’m ready for it. Instead of hoping and praying I won’t fail, I try to be ready for the inevitable minor failures.

100Missing a single workout, eating a single off-diet piece of junk, spending a day on some past escapist media that you used to be addicted to — these really don’t matter all that much, if you dust yourself off and keep back at it.

101It’s when you start to feel miserable that you went off-diet, so you eat two more pizzas.. and then start the next day by eating two more pizzas… and then follow up with three pints of ice cream and six candy bars…

102… that’s the self-hate cycle going, and the opposite of Rapid Repairs.

103“I’m such a loser — munch munch munch, Snickers Butterfinger Big Mac — why am I such a loser? munch munch ice cream french fries shake — why does this always happen? munch munch munch…”

104That’s what kills you.

105And really, this is where the mindset shift comes in. “Ok, I’m off-track. What do I do about? And I gotta be realistic, how and when do I address this, so I know it’ll get fixed?”

106In mid-2015, I adopted a “Water Only” policy as an experiment. I noticed I was spending an asinine amount of money on coffee and tea — it was my highest discretionary expense — and so I started experimenting with only drinking water. Caffeine pills for the caffeine, on regulated doses. Then — nothin’ else. No juice, no milk, no tea, no coffee.

107The policy broke down multiple times. The first was when I ran out of caffeine pills in Shanghai, and couldn’t find a single pharmacy that sold them. (You can buy caffeine pills over the counter anywhere in the USA. I tried over a dozen pharmacies in Shanghai with no dice.)

108Not wanting to go off caffeine cold turkey in the midst of a busy work cycle, I said — “Well, ok, this is happening. I’m going to drink tea and coffee until I get back to the States. In the last couple days before I’m back in the U.S., I’ll really go crazy and enjoy myself with some wonderful high-end coffees and teas.” I did, it was nice, I got back on Water Only in the U.S. and stuck with it no problem. (I did ask my friend Kai to help police me for the first two weeks, when we were working on a project together at UChicago. “You have my permission to slap the hell out of me if you see me drinking a coffee; in fact, I’d consider it a huge favor. So slap the hell out of me if I do, ok?” “Ok, Sebastian, sure thing.” I didn’t drink any coffee on that program, and re-installed Water Only... though once when I was strongly thinking about it on a particularly stressful day, I mentioned it to Kai, and he said he didn’t think it was a good idea, and I didn’t do it.)

109The second time? November 4th, I was really ill, when Nance and I had dinner with potential partners at a publicly listed industry-leading company that we’re in partnership discussions with. I got out of bed and pounded coffee to get through the dinner sociably, and it got me off my policy — which I then started debating which day to re-install it on. I settled on Sunday November 15th, a firebreak date of a weekly review.

110I dare say the mentality here matters about as much as the mechanics.

111“Things break, and I fix them when they do” is just about infinitely more effective than “I hate myself, why is this happening?”

112I know that sounds obvious, but a lot of people get this wrong.

113Start thinking Rapid Repairs, not perfection. Empirically, trying to bank on perfection often makes people disintegrate.

114***

116Firstly, Firebreaks and Rapid Repairs are more important than the next strategy, by far.

117If you start learning how to use Firebreaks to your advantage, and start learning and employing a Rapid Repairs mentality/skillset, that’ll get you there.

118Damage mitigation isn’t as important, in my experience. But it does help.

119There’s different types of damage mitigation. Here’s a few that I’ve found work well —

120A. Cut off the damage source.

121If you’re compulsively web surfing, use Freedom or SelfControl to block the internet, unplug your router entirely, take the sim card out of your phone if you need to. Throw the junk food out. Etc.

122
B. “Hold the line!” and other mantras

123A “mantra” is a short phrase you say to yourself to prompt behavior.

124“Hold the line!” is one that’s worked for me. That’s, on a day I’ve done something stupid, resolving not to do it again.

125C. Fail elegantly.

126This is a cautionary note, in opposition to “cut off damage source” and “hold the line!” points.

127This requires self-awareness and practice. Sometimes, I know I’m kind of screwed on some behavior.

128In those cases, I’ll sometimes decide that a policy is revoked, instead of constantly trying to stop in a half-assed way and repeatedly breaking my word to myself.

129I’ve seen research in the past that behavior that we feel ashamed or guilty of actually becomes more addictive. And I know that setting a resolution (“ok, I’m really  done eating ice cream”) and then breaking it (“oh god, I just ate another three pints of ice cream”) — I know this is hugely destructive to morale.

130So… sometimes things have changed. Ok, I came down both ill and injured at the same time. So if I was running a strict no carb diet, I might say, instead of feeling miserable and binging, I’m going to revoke the policy and re-think it at a weekly review or other future firebreak date. Now, given the policy’s off, I don’t need to go crazy. I can drink orange juice and eat whatever normal carbohydrate foods without going off the deep end and making myself really sick.

131D. Mix in something useful.

132If you’re cutting — dieting to lose weight — and you just binge ate, might as well go get in an intense full-body weightlifting to put some of those calories to good use.

133If you’re trying to not web surf, but just broke down, might as well at least go Wiki-walking on something that’s useful to learn.

134E. “Fine, but first…”

135And finally, if you’ve been eating like crap, tell yourself you’re allowed to eat whatever junk you want, just so long as you eat a salad first, or some lean protein, or sweet potatoes, or whatever. You’re allowed to go crazy on energy drinks, but first have to drink a half-liter of water. You’re allowed to vegetate in front of the TV, but first you need to put your running shoes on and walk outside — you can walk back in without running if you don’t want to, but at least suit up to go running and walk outside. You’re allowed to surf the net, but first you’ll write just a single sentence  for your writing project.

136Sometimes the good behavior takes hold and puts an end to the undesirable behavior, but even if not, you’re getting a slight dose of goodness before doing the bad thing. This starts conditioning yourself to take the right action before the wrong one, making it hopefully easier to crowd it out in the future.

137***

139When I see people fail, I see them focusing myopically on just one thing.

140“Oh god, if I could just ________” (lose weight, make more cold calls, procrastinate less, study more, eat better, get fit, whatever)

141Instead, I recommend you take a long-term approach to learning these skills. Look, you’re going to be you for many decades.

142You’ve got plenty of time to figure this stuff out.

143The people that myopically focus on one thing, and keep failing and feeling miserable, they get into a bad loop and sometimes make no progress for months.

144I’m re-assessing on a weekly basis. I have bad weeks fairly often, occasionally I have bad months. But I basically don’t bad quarters and never have bad years any more.

145Again, the whole point of this Upstream Effects is that I believe our moment-by-moment agency and control over our lives is a lot lower than commonly thought, even among the most driven and excellence-oriented people.

146The next time something goes wrong — and something will go wrong sooner or later, eh? — you can use is as an opportunity to practice navigating the flow of your life.

147Firebreaks and Rapid Repairs have been some of the most useful things for me in the long-term journey.

148You can lose any particular short-term battle of will, but if you give yourself dozens, hundreds, thousands of opportunities to improve with a stacked-deck and best practices in place, you’ll be able to wear down and achieve just about any goal. Then, you’ll find yourself with all those factors — entrainment, homeostasis, the patterns encoded into your neurons, and a general drive and intensity about life — these will all be working for you to continue the pattern of ascent.

149***

151In terms of firebreaks, one of my favorite ways to get them is to book travel where I'll have no internet, no phone, and no distractions. I'll bring a book, a notebook and pens, sometimes a computer — and just think .

152How often do we get to think with nothing comes at us all day, or for two days in a row, or longer?

153Rarely.

154Not often enough.

155I almost always get gains out of these long, slow travels.

156So here's a recommendation: instead of flying, try taking a train or ship next time you're traveling.

157You can find train timetables and costs along with ferry schedules at  seat61.com

158I love the site. I take trains on all sorts of routes other people don't. Going San Francisco to Denver (or all the way to Chicago), or going Seattle to San Francisco, Austin to SF, Boston to Miami... these are great routes in the USA.

159You can go from Beijing or Shanghai to Taipei without flying, you take the train to Xiamen and the ferry across the Straits.

160Saigon to Hanoi is a great two-day train run.

161The trains in Europe are excellent; the ferries are good too. Amsterdam to London is two trains and one ferry (Amsterdam -> train to Hoek van Holland -> night ferry to Harwich -> short train ride to London).

162Most parts of the world have much stronger train and ferry coverage than you'd think. It's slow, but that's the whole point. It's amazing.

163I also like to take ships when I can. I've gone Florida to London twice on a cheap cruise, with all expenses included. There's a gym on the boat and all you can eat reasonably healthy food. I eat tons of chicken breasts, cheese, guacamole.

164My friend Tynan runs  cruisesheet.com  which is a search engine for cheap cruises. You can put in any sets of location and see if you can get to your destination by ship cheaply. I love to be on a boat for a week or two if I want to do deep thinking, to write or edit a book, or just to get clarity.

165Whenever time allows, I use Seat61 and Cruisesheet to get to where I'm going without flying. Try them the next time you want some time and space to get clarity and work on your habits, your goals, and your life.

166***

168So, there's a bunch of little guidelines in this chapter you can implement. Go back and pick some out.

169Biggest piece of advice: schedule some date in the future you can use as a natural firebreak. Instead of being upset if your life isn't perfect right now, pick a date with enough time, space, and bandwidth that you can reassess everything and put new policies in place.

170It's a game-changer. When things inevitably go wrong, Firebreaks and Rapid Repairs are how you stay sane and on your game.

1 U PSTREAM E FFECTS #5: Y ESTERDAY

2Upstream Effects #5: Micro-Upstream

4How many philosophers, productivity experts, and Zen masters have reflected that you only get to live in the present?

5Many; so many.

6The first time you hear it, it’s so novel and interesting. Yes, yes indeed — you can’t live in the future. You can’t live in the past. There’s just the present moment with which to get things done.

7If you only hear that type of thought infrequently, it’s enlightening every time you hear it. Make now work for you, instead of dreaming of far-off times, or ruminating and reminiscing over the past.

8But here is a thought I hear less frequently — how did you get to this moment as you ?

9Certainly, there’s all the work of your ancestors and past societies. The people who hammered out the alphabet in Phoenicia, the Romans who adopted it and spread it through the world. Gutenberg with his printing press, Mendeleev with his periodic table, Fleming with his penicillin, and ten million other inventions that let you be alive to thrive.

10Then there’s the long chain of your ancestors, stretching back to time immemorial, scrapping and scraping and struggling brutally to get by, and to let their children survive to bring up the next generations. All those grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents of yours whose DNA and culture, care, and nurturing came down to make you.

11Yes, there’s all of that — and it’s truly wondrous to think on and connect to a sense of history and the trajectory of mankind — but let’s focus in on the more mundane how-we-got-here-from-there.

12***

14We’re talking Upstream Effects — realizing that the right now  you’ve got is almost entirely the result of what you did upstream .

15Your decisions yesterday, and last week, and last year, and the year before — this effects what’s in your bank account, how strong or weak your muscles are, who your friends and associates are — and how trustworthy and reliable and excellent they are, your reputation, your self-conception, your skills, etc.

16Were we writing for a general audience, we'd now be forced to remark on the obvious and trivial reply that who your parents are effect all these things. So we’d say yes, of course, but you can’t change that, and you can start changing right now how you work, who you associate with, what you eat and how you train, how you order and organize your life. The things you start changing now will improve downstream — you’ll arrive “there” with more resources, more ability to thrive, and so on.

17But we’re not writing for a general audience, so I doubt we’ll hear such concerns raised. We don’t have perfect agency in the world — not by any stretch of imagination — but the people who focus on what they don’t have, and constantly want to remind others of their disadvantages — well, they don’t get so far. And they’re not the people who are reading this.

18The majority of the good and bad things in your life right now are such as a result of what you did upstream — in the past. For a child, yes, their parentage effects these things more than their own actions. The further you get from childhood, the less true this is and the more you can navigate your own trajectory and build your own life.

19So, what to do about it?

20***

22Your energy levels will oscillate today based on a certain set of natural patterns — on your circadian and ultradian rhythms, on the timing of your meals and the digestion of food, on how long you’ve been awake and how “sleep pressure” builds, on when stressful moments come up and how that affects your psychology and biochemistry.

23Likewise, the time you fell asleep yesterday has a gigantic effect on how well or poorly today runs.

24How well you slept last night has a gigantic effect on how well or poorly today runs.

25We could call these the “micro-upstream” — areas that, with a small amount of different effort this evening, tomorrow morning will run better; areas that, by tuning tomorrow’s wakeup a little better, the first half of the day will run better; areas that, by tuning the first half of tomorrow better, the second half of tomorrow will run more smoothly, and so on.

26***

28My good friend and oft-collaborator Kai Zau, when asked about time management, will frequently say this:

30I’ve heard Kai answer this question many times during a Q&A session after a talk at a university.

31Kai’s life runs extraordinarily well, and he is thriving with all sorts of wonderful people, wonderful adventures, great health and fitness, a constant upward trajectory in his career and assets, and a lot of culture and service and interesting things mixed in with all those fundamentals.

32“Not all hours are created equal.”

33It was something I could never put my finger on, but there it was.

34When elaborating, Kai would explain that he weighted a morning hour — the first 4-6 hours of the day — as around 4x more valuable than a late afternoon or evening hour.

35From my own study and tracking, it seems about right. It’s consistently harder to do high-concept work, planning, or deep thinking 8-10 hours into the day than it is in the first few hours of the day after waking.

36If you believe and agree with Kai’s assessment, this suggests a whole lot of actions to take.

37The first is one that I’ve been surprised to see many top performers independently arrive at: wake up at least 3+ hours before your first appointment or obligation.

38All of us sometimes wake up “on the wrong side of the bed”; on those mornings, it might take an hour or two of taking a shower, getting a coffee, reading or doing small things to let the mind center itself before being able to do great work.

39Three hours before your first appointment gives you a fighting chance.

40What do most people do, though? They wake up 30 to 60 minutes before they have to do something, take a quick shower, and are either on their first call or out the door to work. Then they get caught up in the flood of life and swept away, without necessarily doing anything very fantastic to move their life along.

41If you agree with Kai’s assessment about morning hours being worth so much, you’d want to do whatever you can in the evening to save yourself time in the morning, to make the morning run smoother, to think it through.

42Things like laying out your clothes and pre-deciding what you want to wear (and doing laundry if you’re lacking clean clothes), ensuring you’ve bought the things you need for the morning and breakfast so you don’t need to hit a restaurant or shop with those precious morning hours, perhaps pre-completing some mindless tasks that would otherwise need to be done in the morning.

43***

45If you wake up hung-over, frantically busy, dehydrated, stuff some junk in your food as you rush off to drive through traffic to do work that’s not well-defined and not particularly impactful, obviously, that’s not going to lead you to going up in life at the pace you could be.

46Fixing these in-your-face problems goes a long way towards doing better.

47We’ve already talked about resolving a morning time crunch — it’s almost required to have enough time and clarity in the morning to move your life forwards — and we spent an entire chapter talking about biochemistry.

48That brings us to clarity.

49One of the most destructive things, on a micro-level, is sitting paralyzed by too many options and not knowing what to do.

50It’s imperative, at least monthly and ideally weekly, to know what’s the most important thing for you to be working on.

51Then, if you haven’t moved forwards on that thing, you do that first.

52This is supported by planning tomorrow this evening — again, the top of your list should be whatever the #1 thing is. Ideally the #1 thing is an entire project or impact area, so you can keep making accumulating progress in a single area.

53Waking up and not knowing what to do, getting pulled in every direction, that’s a disaster.

54So why don’t people get clarity?

55Well, of course, some people never learned the skills of untangling their mind, or it never occurred to them to do this.

56Fine.

57But many more people know they should  focus their efforts somewhat to make real gains, and yet, keep flitting around from thing to thing, without much to show for it.

58Why?

59My best guess:

61Once you start measuring your time and paying attention to how long it takes to really complete things, you start to realize you can’t have everything.

62Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of Bridgewater, the most successful hedge fund of all time, wrote this in his  Principles  document —

68"Put another way,  to achieve your goals you have to prioritize, and that includes rejecting good alternatives  (so that you have the time and resources to pursue even better ones—time being probably your greatest limiting factor, though, through leverage, you can substantially reduce time’s constraints)."

69***

71Again, to the extent that you’re waking up in a frantic mess, you should fix that first. Plan the morning. Get hydrated, get your health going, get planning.

72Put those Firebreaks and Rapid Repairs in place as we discussed last chapter. None of the best practices for having a great start of the day are particularly difficult  or require any extraordinary gifts, but they do take time, persistence, and a certain bullheadedness to repeatedly come back to until the behaviors become automatically entrained.

73Then — and maybe this will sound odd — I’m not such a big fan of the afternoon, evening, or night.

74We all have slightly different rhythms, so if you’re really thriving in those times, good on you.

75But have you ever noticed that most of the bad decisions you make, you make in the later afternoon, evening, or night?

76It’s true for almost all of us. Judgment decays throughout the day.

77The majority of us, we’re apt to act stupider later in the day.

78Just realizing this goes a long way to correcting it.

79If that’s you, the right way to play the evening might be just trying to get to bed as early as you can when you start to fade, and trying to limit any damage or backsliding to other production or habits you’ve formed.

80Certainly, I’ve had some amazing night-time production, sometimes pulling all-nighters when inspired. Yet, these days, I’d much rather try to wake up when it’s still dark out — 4AM or even earlier — if I want to capture that nighttime stillness… and then I get to watch a sunrise in the morning, fresh and alert.

81It’s a really wonderful feeling knowing you’ve completed all the work you have to do in a day, before most people even woke up.

82***

84What's the big idea here?

86Your reflexes will be faster or slower tomorrow. You'll have more or less clarity. You'll be healthier or less healthy. Food choices, water choices, sleep choices, planning in advance... even what you think about as you fall asleep.

87So ask yourself, "What can I do now to make myself wake up and be the person I want to be tomorrow?" Handle the micro-upstream, stack the deck in your favor to hit the ground running tomorrow.

1 U PSTREAM E FFECTS #6: A VOIDANCE

3Sometimes fiction turns the best mirror on reality.

4Take that grand work of historical fiction,  Musashi  by Eiji Yoshikawa. It follows the real-life and duels of one of the greatest real swordsmen in Japanese history, Miyamoto Musashi. It fills in the blanks of his life with plausible other events that are period accurate. It’s a masterful study in character.

5I don’t want to spoil too much of it for you — go read it — but I want to take you through a scene about halfway through the book.

6Musashi, now a famed swordsman, runs into an old friend he’d been separated with who had made bad decisions with his life.

7***

9Here’s Yoshikawa’s work, from Book IV, Chapter “A Drink of Milk” —

24***

26In the book, they go on to talk for a while longer, and Musashi admonishes his old friend to do something better. Eventually, Matahachi relents —

30***

32Does Matahachi turn his life around? Well… Musashi promises to meet his old friend on Seta Bridge, to help him turn his life around.

33As Matahachi goes to gather his belongings to meet Musashi and get his life together, something intervenes. Here’s Yoshikawa again —
 
As suddenly as it had begun, the rain ceased. The black clouds parted, the sunshine streamed through, and before long the street had returned to normal. Somewhere in the distance Matahachi could hear the plinking of shamisen. As he started to move on, a woman dressed like a geisha crossed the street and walked directly up to him.

40***

42… with predictable results, once he’s dragged into the brothel.

43Yoshikawa, the author, is truly a master. Musashi is one of the finest works of fiction ever written.

44Let’s look at a few of Matahachi’s issues —

49Matahachi realizes he doesn’t have any skills, and thus can’t be employed doing any sort of noble samurai work under a daimyo (samurai lord).

50Musashi asks the logical question — well, what are you doing then? Loafing?

51Matahachi can’t handle it — “Stop it. Saying things like that brings back all sorts of unpleasant memories.”

52Umm, hello, Matahachi — they’re not memories, that’s your life . He runs from the pain.

57He could, of course, alter his fate — in fact, fate just gave him a rare and wonderful chance to fall in with a fantastic opportunity, an elite excellent-charactered potential mentor and ally who will help him set himself up in the capital of Edo (Edo, rustic at the time, evolved to be modern Tokyo.)

58He says he can’t alter his fate, but an opportunity to do so is right in front of him! Why can’t he see it?

63The past is dead and gone — in front of Matahachi is an opportunity to do much better, but he just focuses with regret on the past.

67We all have moments of awakening — but on large-timescale projects, like becoming a scholar or adjusting one’s character and social circle, there needs to be a cold determination of walking a long path.

68It’s perhaps counterintuitive, but I’ve found that people who get fired up — “I’ll do it! I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” — don’t actually do it.

69You need cold determination, not hot determination, to work on long timescales.

75Matahachi recognized his problems — he falls in with the wrong people, like the virtueless Oko (a petty criminal and former prostitute), and when he finally has the opportunity to reboot his life, he’s given a critical test immediately — he’s summoned to a brothel, while his genuine friend and ally is waiting for him at Seta bridge.

76What’s in the brothel for him? Nothing that alters his destiny, of course. No true friend of his, of course.

77Does he run from the place as fast as possible?

78No.

80How many of us, in life, get stuck in dreary life-draining places while waiting for our clothes to metaphorically dry?

81***

83We’re discussing Upstream Effects — how the past moments of your life are what flowed into this moment, and how you can alter your life this moment, this day, this week, this month, so that the Downstream from here is more thriving, healthy, productive, engaged, good.

84Last issue we discussed the Micro-Upstream — those things you can control and adjust relatively quickly. You can normalize a sleep schedule, get better hydrated, clean up a little mess around you, plan tomorrow and next week better — all these can happen quickly.

85But now we turn to the Macro — those arcs of your life that take years to improve.

86***

88Take Matahachi. Poor bastard. But he brings it all on himself.

89He’s so focused on blame and past errors — trying to cheer himself up and avoid pain — that he can’t confront the patterns of his own behavior that have brought him to this moment in the stream of his life.

90The steps to improving one’s life in Macro — building skills, building habits and patterns of solid operations and management of your own life, establishing a reputation as someone very effective and dependable, surrounding yourself with high-caliber people who are supporting and positive, connecting with and being accepted into solid organizations and institutions, gradually stripping away and correcting your own liabilities and character flaws, building a base of resources and assets and opportunities —  these are actually not very difficult to do .

91There’s seven billion people on the planet. We’ve got high-quality books of histories, biographies, philosophy, and skill going back around 3000 years. Many, many, many people have figured out how to build solid macro-life foundations.

92It takes a while, but not that long.

93The biggest enemy to doing so, you can see all of that in what Matahachi does:

941. Failure to Face Reality
2. Lack of Agency and Blaming Others
3. Non-Introspective Rumination and Focusing on Losses
4. Too Much Hot Fiery Emotion, Not Enough Cold Determination
5. Rationalizing Being Drawn Off the Path

95***

97You see in Yoshikawa’s book, as well, that people who try to behave expediently get into trouble.

98Such is life.

99We’ll discuss Trajectory  next so that you can manage all the resources and opportunities you need to succeed.

100For now, burn this into your mind:

102Think about it: bad people to associate with — people who make excuses, do wrong, people for whom failure seems to follow in their midst — they’re constantly seeking new people to leech blood from. People don’t want to do repeat business or collaborations with them.

103Meanwhile, people that engage in really fantastic partnerships, collaborations, and friendships — their life gets full of great people, and they do repeat business and engage repeatedly with the same people.

104They don’t need to be in a hurry to “gamble” with life. They don’t need to constantly persuade other people to throw in with them.

105I almost work on more projects with my oft-collaborator and good friend Kai Zau than everyone else in my life combined.

106The top 10 or so people in my life account for 80-90% of the projects I do in collaboration.

107As such, I’m not particularly in a hurry to throw in with anyone in particular.

108And I find that’s true with most successful people I meet. They’ve met, gotten to know, and vetted a lot of people to find a few that they really fantastically collaborate with.

109***

111The biggest piece of advice on this topic, the topic of getting to know great people, is take on Project Partners .

112It’s not a business partner; it’s someone you work on something short and of limited scope and duration.

113It can be as small as planning a dinner or small get-together.

114If you don’t have a really fantastic cadre of great people you can collaborate with, the best way to start establishing that is to do small scope things and see who you click with. Even planning a small party or dinner with someone tells you a lot about their punctuality, their character under stress, how much they like to discuss ideas vs jump into action, how they handle disagreement and compromise, etc.

115If you’re not in the middle of an excellent upswing of great action, there’s no reason you can’t do at least one small project a month with someone you don’t know that well yet. Do that for a year and you get to work with at least a dozen people. One or two of them will likely click well with you, and this builds a foundation.

116Breakout success comes later — Kai and I wrote more about this in  Gateless , which we co-authored together and which has terrific reviews — the key here is regular small action, over many months, which aggregates to having a fantastic set of people you can go to work on projects with.

117***

119The following is one of those pieces of advice that is correct, or incorrect, depending on where you’re at.

120If you’ve been caught in some lethargy or idleness, you might want to take the “jump into action!!!!” advice when you get inspired. Tony Robbins says something along the lines of, “Never leave the scene of a goal without taking a massive action.”

121I agree with that — if you’ve been stuck.

122If, however, things are going broadly well for you but you often fall off the long-term initiatives you plan, I’d recommend considering the opposite.

123When you have a new major initiative you want to do, maybe do that first frenzied burst of work and inspiration — buy the running shoes on a whim and go for that first run, outline that novel, whatever — but for people who are already doing a lot but are somewhat scattered, I’ve found doing the opposite can have a lot of value.

124Schedule some clear time for yourself to plan out how you’ll see that next goal or project to conclusion  — and then, rather than getting pumped up about it, get very critical and actually look at all that’s required, the downsides, the places you could fall off.

125If you can look at the cold, hard logic of doing something, and commit to it — not in a burst of hot-blooded raw enthusiasm, but with grim determination — success becomes far more likely.

126***

128There's times in my life that I would have flinched when I realized the errors Matahachi was making — because I made them too, and it hurts  when you realize you're making them.

129But that's why people remain stuck. They see the truth of the matter, it hurts, and they flinch from the pain.

130Right now, the opportunities you have, the reputation you have, the people around you... these are a result of what you've done in the past months and years of your life.

131You can change these areas drastically for the better, if you're willing to work at it.

132Start doing small projects with people you meet who seem like good people. It can be as small as a dinner party. Start proposing or joining very small things; it doesn't need to be grand and gigantic. Project Partners are one of the fastest ways to vet people and find really good friends and allies to be in harmony with.

133And then, start cultivating cold determination. Next time you have a major project, yes, accept the initial burst and frenzies of work... but then sit down and ensure the project will get completed. It's easy to stay motivated and inspired for a short time, but things always happen. It rains outside. If you can lock down excellent planning and cultivate cold determination to succeed on your projects, it leads to success and building all those factors that give you opportunities for a marvelous life.

134Remember that life doesn’t change when swearing a hot-blooded promise like Matahachi. And it doesn’t change when blaming others or ruminating.

135When great opportunities come, they need to be met with steadfast and great determination. The concerns of the moment — a wet overcoat — don’t matter, in the grand arcs of time, whereas following one’s path day-in and day-out leads to a tremendous life.

1 U PSTREAM E FFECTS #7: T RAJECTORY

3His long years of horsemanship and powerfully built thighs usually made riding no trouble.

4But as he re-mounted his horse for the seventh jaunt of the day, his thighs creaked, his back creaked, everything creaked. His teeth were bothering him, there was the sharpness as he inhaled the wet and cold air.

5But then, his back straightened perfectly and head arched upwards just so; his legs did not fail him in presenting a stately visage as he dismounted, placing his riding boots and spurs into the snow.

6The boys — they really were just boys, many of them — gathered around the fire to hear the General speak.

7He unbuttoned the top buttons of his long coat, took his spectacles slowly out from a pocket underneath its layers, placed them on his nose slowly — not in a hurry, externally, despite internally feeling blown in so many directions by the winds of fate.

8“Paine published a new pamphlet, boys, about what is it to be a Continental. Shall I read some from it?”

9Ascents all around. These men, so wet and cold and miserable, many barefoot and wearing little more than rags, so dispirited before the appearance of the General, now themselves more invigorated than any pint of lager and Christmas cake could have made them.

10Washington unfolds his little copy of The Crisis , and reads:

11“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country…”

12***

13Those last weeks of the year are feeling very different to the commanding officers of the Redcoats.

14Ensconced comfortably in friendly well-provisioned taverns and inns in their conquered headquarters of Manhattan, it was now a waiting game.

15The revolution was dying stillborn — no gunpowder, no money, no allies, no more credit, not even enough shoes … 1776 had seen more lofty rhetoric than real armed might from the colonials — Paine’s Common Sense  and the newly published The Crisis , along with The Declaration of Independence  kept stirring and inspiring the revolutionary spirit, but the record on the battlefield was another matter entirely.

16Washington’s volunteer army signed up each year for a one year term. With minimal money, minimal provisions, not enough clothing or ammunition, and shattered morale from the repeated defeats with no progress — there would be minimal reenlistment.

17With no army, it would be a matter of arresting the radicals and hanging them.

18This whole Independence foolishness would be over.

19The set about making the preparations for their Christmas feast.

20***

21Benajmain Rush had come to say hello and congratulate Washington on the speech and presentation of Paine’s work. “These are the times that try men’s souls…” — what a mix of the lofty poetic, but grounded in a farmer’s simple virtue.

22Washington was cordial with his old friend, as always, but he was obviously consumed with something, carefully writing on small slips of paper.

23These would be the codewords that were changed periodically, and Dr. Rush, though entirely in Washington’s trust, found it would be rude to peer over his desk.

24As he went to leave the headquarters, a wind rustled the paper up, and a slip landed at his shoes. Picking it up to place on Washington’s desk reflexively, he saw the pass-phrase.

25Written on the little slip were three words:

27***

28On Christmas morning, Johann Gottleib Rall awoke in Trenton to the sound of muskets going off.

29“Achtung, what are those fools doing?”

30He gets up, takes off his night-gown, begins putting on his uniform, Colonel of Hesse.

31Once the canon fire started exploding in the main streets of the city, Rall realized this was no Christmas celebration.

32Hastily dressing, he runs to the stable for his horse while shouting orders to form up for a counterattack.

33Waving his saber in the air and shouting in Hessian-accented German, he sees too late the Americans emerging from the tree line — the highest and most glorious target around, musket fire tears into Rall. His blood begins staining the snow before some of his soldiers drag him into a nearby church.

34Pursuit isn’t far behind — Rall tells his young attendant to surrender the church.

35Washington is by his side in a moment, holding his hand as the Hessian Colonel is bleeding to death.

36They discuss the surrender and Washington promises to treat the German prisoners fairly and honorably.

37“And — how?” Rall asks.

38“We crossed the river by night. We’d hidden boats. Converged on Trenton from two directions.”

39Rall nodded. “Ach ja, boats. We... didn’t think you’d march or shoot so well."

40Colonel Rall died as the American soldiers outside were celebrating their Christmas victory — half-starved and under-equipped, the men took from the storehouses new boots, muskets, tore into the Hessian Christmas feast, and imbibed deeply on rum and victory.

41Re-enlistments were high.

42***

44I seriously and sincerely doubt that Einstein ever said, "The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest”… it just sounds too much like the sort of fake-quote nonsense people make up and parrot around to sound profound.

45Yet, there’s something there.

46Things that grow faster as a result of growing larger are, indeed, very powerful.

47***

49"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and six pence — result happiness. ... Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six pence — result misery.” — Charles Dickens

50Let’s do some math.

51Not hard math.

52Easy math. Math you ain’t allowed to whine or cry that you don’t like math about.

53We begin –

54
You spend one more dollar than you bring in every single day.

55How many dollars are you down in a year?

56365?

57Wait, you tapping savings or going into debt?

58Debt? Then there’s probably interest, right?

59Let’s say 10% interest. Let’s just compound it once per year to keep the math easy.

60So that’s… $36.50 in interest.

61So… at the end of a year, you’re down $365 + $36.50 = $401.50

62***

64Sorry, just checking. When I wrote  Roguelike  (mathematical and behavior models from difficult video games), around half of the feedback about was that the math part was too easy and obvious, and half of it was that it was too difficult and frustrating.

65You can’t win. Well, we’re making our lives better. Bear with me.

66(We’ll join General Washington ambushing and destroying some Hessian mercenaries in a second — Victory or Death, Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war stuff — just with the math for a moment, regardless of if it’s easy or hard or both.)

67After one year of spending $1 more per day than you bring in, and taking a 10% interest hit from the debt, you’re in the hole $401.50

68Still awake?

69Let’s say, next year, you’re again spending that single buck more per day than you bring in.

70Another $365.

71How much you in the hole?

72$365 + $401.50 = $766.50

73Right?

74Wait, we forgot the interest again.

7510% is… $76.65 this time.

76$766.50 + $76.65 = (drum roll please) = $843.15

77***

79For most people, that’s a bit higher than expected.

80Seriously, ask people to just guess — “hey, you’re spending a dollar more per day than you’re bringing in, you do that for two years, how much money do you owe?”

81I’m going to guess most of them say — $365.

82Yeah, no joke, people think, “uhh, that’s like a year, so maybe 365 dollars.”

83(I know it makes no sense, but most of the time people don’t like to think about painful stuff. We talked about the Matahachi Problem last chapter; this is that.)

84But ok, hey buddy, it’s been TWO years. 365 x2 = $730.

85So why are we at $843.15 in the hole? Only spending a buck more a day than you bring in, two years later, 843 dollars and 15 cents in the hole.

86Interest? Yeah, interest.

87***

89$365 more (just a buck a day!)

90$365 + $843.15 = $1,208.15

91Wait, we forgot the interest.

92That’s another $120.81

93So… $1,328.96 in the hole. Three years.

94Just a frigging lousy dollar per day spent more than brought in, and now you’re over a grand in the hole after 3 years.

95What did that dollar buy? A Pepsi? Hmm.

96***

98Here’s the odd thing about the math of everyday life.

99If you take a small loss, repeat it forever… the number actually goes to infinity.

100This is two things: first, it’s perfectly logical. Second, it’s counterintuitive and doesn’t occur to most people.

101Again, say you’ve got a $10 loss regularly, and then you get hit with 10% interest on top of it. How’s it go?

102-$10 (expense), -$11 (interest), -$21, -$23.10, -$33.10, -$36.41 …

103It keeps getting bigger and bigger. Of course, it goes to infinity if nothing stops or changes.

104That doesn’t occur to most people. If they’re currently having more money go out than come in, they don’t realize that, barring reversal of that pattern, the number is heading to infinity; it’s getting worse and harder to fix all the time.

105Modernizing Charles Dickens a bit,

106“Annual income of $20,000 and expenses of $19,900 — result happiness. Annual income of $20,000 and expenses of $20,100 — result misery.”

107Of course that’s true — because that tiny shortfall is going to become a huge problem in not-very-long.

108***

110A small surplus, grown regularly, also heads towards infinity.

111This isn’t just money: this is people in your life, this is opportunities for really cool and fantastic projects, this is new customers/clients for your business, and so on.

112In reality, nothing ever gets to infinity — you either hit what’s called the “carrying capacity” of what you’re doing, or diminishing returns kicks in and you stop growing that particular impact area.

113But never mind the infinity piece — here’s the basic idea.

115***

117The first and most important thing is knowing whether you’re winning or losing.

118In other words, knowing your trajectory.

119This might seem incredibly obvious of a statement, but in the real world, very often people have no idea.

120Is their money going up or down on a long-term basis? They don’t know.

121Are they effectively developing the relationships that are going to be key to the upcoming phases of their life, and indeed, the very purpose of their life?

122They don’t know.

123In career development, how often are people surprised by an annual review? Do they know the next steps they need to do to get promoted rapidly and get the type of authority, duties, and portfolio that they want from their work? They don’t know.

124Most surprisingly, are entrepreneurs running companies aware of their burn rate in cash, the trajectory of their sales and development, the rate of improvement of their core products/services for their users? … too often, they don’t know!

125You need to know.

126***

128A piece of inspiration:

129" News Flash, Your Debt Is An Emergency "

130Read it regardless if you're in debt; the author is a master and the mental model is very powerful.

131I’m not for motivation of making big mighty vows or whatever. Anyone can do that. The cold hard determination is more important.

132But sooner or later, it’s imperative to realize that these things can’t be left to chance.

133The more good people in your life, the more good people come into your life.

134The more savings you have, the more opportunities you have to grow your income and make good long-term decisions.

135The more credible you are, the more opportunities you get to extend your work and become even more credible.

136The more happy customers you have, the easier it is to spread word of mouth and get more happy customers.

137The more you put up all-star performance repeatedly, the easier it is to get promotions, resources, special projects, and authority to allow you to make even greater contributions.

138This is a really big deal. It’s shocking how many people don’t know and aren’t intentional. That’s Stage One — realizing it’s important.

139***

141Once you’ve resolved to start improving an area of your life, it can be tricky to know where to start. Let's use money again as our example.

142Where do you start?

143I typically recommend starting by mere observation.

144If you don’t know what to do, start observing and keeping logs and journals of where your money is going.

145Track your spending, inflows, outflows.

146If you wanted to change your body composition and lose fat, simply note down in a journal everything you eat and how often you move.

147For people, a simple note on a weekly basis of who you spent the most time with that week.

148Insist on getting clear project scopes with target completion dates, and relentlessly pay attention on a weekly basis to how much progress is happening towards getting those projects complete before those deadlines.

149You don’t even need to do anything far differently to start. If nothing else, start tracking.

150Do broad strokes of tracking — don’t let the little details stop you from starting.

151If you want to do simple spending tracking of cash, just round everything from 50 cents to 99 cents up to the next dollar, and 0 cents to 49 cents down to the lower dollar. It works out close enough to get a broad idea of what’s going on.

152So if an expense was "$2.43", just record it as $2. If it was "$13.70", just record "$14." The precision isn't as important early on as just starting, and using whole dollars makes it easier.

153A simple question on a weekly review of, “Who did I spend time with this week?” might be a good start to figuring out where your relationships are at.

154Keep it simple and start doing a simple tracking of what's going on.

155***

157General Washington’s assessment in December 1776 was that the war was almost over.

158At that stage, on the brink of disaster, he planned a series of aggressive maneuvers to capture supplies, deliver critically needed morale-building victories, and increase enlistments.

159Daring raids can’t carry a war alone — the professionalization of the American forces under French and German support, and the diplomatic breakthroughs that had France enter on the American side with land and sea reinforcements were critical to winning.

160But Washington knew he needed a victory desperately. As such, he did a massive cycle of daring raids and dramatic action.

161The rest of the war wasn’t like that. It was often a waiting game. But he needed dramatic action to keep the American forces on trajectory.

162Likewise, if you’re over your target weight, you need a sustainable plan you can live with. If you’re underwater with debt, eventually you need to get to spend/earn cycle that’s sustainable and fits in with all your life goals.

163But if it’s an emergency with disaster on the brink, or if you’ve been badly stagnating, it might be time for dramatic action.

164If you’re starting from scratch, you might need to meet 500 to 1000 decent people and have good conversations and followup with them to find 5-10 really steadfastly excellent, elite, high-character friends.

165A “chip away at it” philosophy of meeting one new person per week might not get you escape velocity from where you’re currently at. So you might aggressively start going to meet ups, conferences, events. You might block out 20 hours per week for getting-to-know-you Skype calls and coffee meetings.

166Carlos Miceli , an Argentinian entrepreneur, did just that to break out of his local environment. His English at the time was serviceable but not great, so for around a year, he aggressively sent invitations to people who he liked their work or blogging online to get on a call. Not famous people (yet), just anyone who he saw doing something cool. People are reasonably friendly, and in this way, Carlos quickly built a base of people he met who would go on to become acquaintances, friends, colleagues, partners, employers, and clients all throughout Latin America and the Western world.

167In the long run, you probably don’t want to spend 20 hours per week meeting and talking with strangers. But if you need to break out, that’s a way to do it.

168What if there’s no reason why someone would want to meet you and take your calls? Then maybe it’s time to set a series of short-term learning and short projects, very intensely. It might be time to dive into a particular craft or trade skill, a particular hobby that’s good at connecting with people through, a professional skill, a foreign language or culture. Again, the amount of mastery you can build in an intense focused sprint of a few months is immense.

169Likewise, you can kickstart weight loss by setting an aggressive diet for a short period of time (perhaps, one month) and then be very careful to not max relapse and binge at the end of it. A single month of no processed food, or only cooking your own meals, or running a 30% caloric deficit per day, followed by a return to relative normalcy at a slightly improved baseline can make for permanent lessons and gains.

170Stripping spending down to bare essentials is a fantastic way to eliminate debt. Most people are odd about trying to keep up appearances while being barely underwater. Can you slum it for a month or two, spend nothing, while aggressively eliminating debt? Next time your apartment is up, can you move in with your parents (or spouse’s parents), or live in your car, or take some on-site project where there’s corporate housing, to eliminate that rent expense and deploy all that to eliminating debt? Not forever, just for a couple months. If you have kids, is there someone in your family who would take them for the summer while you and the spouse make it a max-frugal suffer-for-a-short-term-to-break-free cycle?

171If you’re on Western wages or salary, you can rapidly eliminate reasonably small amounts of consumer debt if you make it an overwhelming priority.

172It’s true, you probably can’t do all  of these at the same time — strip down to bare bones on expenses, do new projects rapidly to build credibility, meet tons of people, and get started in regulating your health and weight — but you can do whichever one is most important right now, lock down permanent gains in that area, and then move on to the next one.

173Sprints of massive focus are magical. There’s no United States without Washington leading those daring winter raids. What’s your key area to make massive improvement in?

174***

176"Years ago when I first started out as a consultant, I had to learn how to tell a well-managed industrial plant from a poorly managed one—without any pretense to production knowledge. A well-managed plant, I soon learned, is a quiet place. A factory that is “dramatic,” a factory in which the “epic of industry” is unfolded before the visitor’s eyes, is poorly managed. A well-managed factory is boring. Nothing exciting happens in it because the crises have been anticipated and have been converted into routine.” — Peter Drucker,  The Effective Executive

177Our first stage, Stage One, is where emotion and epiphany and getting fired up matters. “Yes, I will take initiative and take control of my life.” Good.

178Stage Two is boring again. If you don’t know what to do and don’t know where you’re at, just start tracking. This usually results in some automatic changes as you realize how your life is actually going and come to higher awareness. But it’s a good, easy, basically-can’t-fail-if-you-do-it step.

179If you’re stuck, Stage Three is dramatic — you put a massive amount of attention into kickstarting massive progress. This is good for getting momentum for clearing a crisis, dramatically altering trajectory, shedding stagnation and getting moving.

180But you don’t want to live crisis-to-crisis; the goal is to architect a life where your trajectory just goes up in a boring, peaceful, pleasant, sustainable way.

181This Stage varies mightily depending on what you’re working on, and takes a while to fine-tune. It’s not to be rushed; the drama is passing and we’re looking to settle into pleasant routines that make us happy, healthy, wealthy, thriving, surrounded by good people, all the time, without the need for dramatic action.

182To use the example of spending and earning, there’s a variety of little tiny skills, mental models, and technology you want to learn.

183Here’s a few examples:

184*Per-Use cost: You can calculate the real cost of an item by dividing its number of times used by the cost of the item. Boots are a great example — better-made boots from a good company will last you 10 years if you take care of them, and cost you around $300. From 2008 to 2012, I had a single pair of high-quality leather boots that I wore basically every day, that originally cost around $400. That’s around 1,200 days worn on those boots for $300, or about 25 cents per day. In 2013, 2014, and 2015 I went through many  periods of cheap boots and shoes in the $50 to $120 range. I don’t even want to think about how much money I wasted wearing lower-quality stuff that kept wearing out, and wasn’t constructed well enough to be re-soled or maintained. I bought a pair of  Frye Engineer's Boots  in mid-2015 for around $300 after doing careful research that should, if I take good care of them, last me 5 to 10 more years. Thus, even though Frye boots have a greater outlay for cost, they’re much more efficient on a per-use cost than, say, the Zara leather boots I bought for $120 that didn’t last me a whole year (maybe 250 wears total, or double the per-use cost of nicer boots — and remember, they were wearing out and miserable to wear for the back half of that time).

185[Note that if you’re trying to eliminate debt, it makes sense to manage cashflow and go with cheaper stuff for a while — if you’re paying interest on new purchases, you’re eliminating the value of per-use costing… this comes after getting out of debt.]

186*Buying the Depreciation: New Ikea furniture has to be about the worst purchase ever — why? Because you can almost always buy someone else’s used furniture when they move for 90% off. Ever re-sold cheap furniture? Yeah, it sucks, you get maybe 10% of what you paid for it. It hurts. Once you’re well-established in a place you won’t move for a long time, you can buy nice furniture that will gradually appreciate in value. Until then, buy it used — let some other sucker sit at the new chair that goes from being worth $60 down to being worth $6 in re-sale value a year later. New cars / used cars is the same thing.

187*Calculate the substituting cost and do it: Coffee and tea used to be, strangely, my largest discretionary expense. Making coffee at home, of better quality, should cost you around 10 to 20 cents a drink instead of a couple dollars. Caffeine pills, in cheaper countries, cost 2 cents to 5 cents per 100mg of caffeine (about the same as in a cup of coffee). This requires some thinking and planning of your day and how your spending usually happens, but gradually you can swap out what you want (either the tactile feel of coffee you made yourself, or merely the caffeine which is what I aim for) at much lower cost. Alcohol is similar: I don’t drink, but the drinkers in the  MMM  and  Early Retirement Extreme  communities often carry a flask with them when they go, going from 4 drinks at the bar down to maybe 1 plus their flask-sips. Apparently this has a fun clandestine feel to it, too.

188*Various problem-solving instead of excuse-making mindsets: Pre-cooking a week of chicken on Sunday is trivially easy to do. Put them in Tupperware or Ziplock bags. This is trivial to do. No matter how busy you are, it’s really very possible to operationalize eating at least two meals a day that you made, at about one-tenth the cost of what you’d pay out.

189Do you need to do all of this? No, of course no. But as you gradually implement it, you can either bank and invest the gains, redeploy the spending to accomplishing other key priorities you’ve got, or reduce your working accordingly and have more time to spend on creative projects, civic/community/nonprofit projects, education, training, or whatever else. It’s nice to have your fingers on the levers of spending.

190The exact particulars vary by domain, but the same applies for eating healthy, meeting and staying in touch with people, doing better project planning to ensure your projects get done promptly, harvesting the various intangible gains from projects in terms of credibility and future opportunities, getting referrals and repeat purchases from happy customers/clients — all of this can be operationalized, so it happens automatically without you putting much effort into it going forwards.

191***

193Dramatic action can come later, and you don't need anything fancy to start.

194The simple question of, "Is my money going up or down? How much?"

195Are the people you’re spending more time with higher caliber than you spent with last year (either because the same people are growing and evolving, or because you’re associating with higher caliber people)?

196Are you getting better at your core work?

197Are you becoming more credible and trusted?

198Is your health improving or declining?

199Take these things seriously. If you’re not sure where you’re at, just start making observations and writing them down for a while to track. Take dramatic action if you’re in a bad place or just stagnant. Then operationalize it, so your trajectory is upwards without needing conscious action on your part.

200***

202What area would make the biggest improvement for you?

2031. Realize it's important. If you don't know if you're improving or not, it's probably not going well. Wake up and pay attention, it's your life after all.

2042. Start doing simple, very-easy-to-sustain tracking of that area. A few minutes a day or a single review on the weekend might be enough. Don't make it complicated!

2053. Take short-term dramatic action if necessary. Dramatic action doesn't necessarily work over the long term, but almost all of us can sustain 1-3 months of intensity if we know that it ends and we get back to regular life.

2064. Operationalize success: make it consistent and boring, so you're just succeeding without getting at it.

207What areas are you tackling?

1 U PSTREAM E FFECTS #8: C URRENCIES

3We’d met in the afternoon on the rooftop cafe, surrounded by elegant plants and decor, and watched the lights of one of Taipei's night markets slowly come on as the sun slinked down below the horizon.

4Now those lights were dimming and blotting out, giving the night back its darkness.

5But we had filled, between the two of us, a whole one-third of a large notebook with sketches, concepts, diagrams.

6***

7The conversation had started the previous year at my office in Beijing. Most of our friends were the type of people who tried to decipher the secrets of the universe — what works? What doesn’t? Why?

8Kai had brought a novel theory he’d been musing over, as he passed through Beijing after seeing his relatives.

9“Four Currencies”

10There’s an old management dictum that “what gets measured, gets managed” — the corollary being that unmeasured stuff often fails to get managed.

11Kai had been searching out how to measure the development of various tangible and intangible resources.

12Tangible resources are easy enough — how much cash is in your checking account? Easy.

13Intangible resources are harder — what’s the value of having another case study in your portfolio? If you get offered the opportunity to work on a high-prestige project at a low rate of pay, or a high-pay low-prestige project, which one serves you better in the short-term and long-term?

14These questions aren’t academic. It was clear the ground underneath the collective feet of the Western world had started to shift: unlike our grandparents, we were not going to work at one job at one company all our lives. In fact, the very concept of “job” seemed to be shifting and blurring; people like Kai and I usually weren’t working for salaried wages, but were often piecing together project portfolios and looking at tradeoffs between higher cash for doing routine work we’d proven our skills at, venturing off into unexplored areas with unknown payoffs, doing more speculative engagements that could lead to — what, exactly?

15It was all very hard to get one’s mind around.

16***

17Kai’s always insightful to be around, and I turned over his Four Currencies model in my mind from the short meeting in Beijing. He went on to the highest-paid engagement of his life, did exceptional work there, but — mystifying just about everyone he knew — he walked away from his $15k/month contracting gig after delivering a nice set of deliverables, and struck off into the unknown again. They wanted him to do more for them, so everyone was surprised when he didn't stay.

18Everyone expected him to keep milking the cash cow for a while, but no. If Kai hadn’t repeatedly surprised people — and been proven right repeatedly — we’d have all thought he was mad.

19There’s not a very long list of people I admire very greatly, so I didn’t hesitate to tell Kai to please stop by Taipei en route to Shanghai next time he went to see his family when I heard of his departure from this high-paying work.

20So there we sat, the hours melting away faster than if we’d been at an engrossing blockbuster movie, diagramming and deciphering and trying to make sense of the tradeoffs between the various resources available.

21***

22Well-pleased with our pile of notes, we determined that day to write a book about it, and budgeted ourselves a two-week intense sprint in the Shanghai French Concession to do it; I flew out there after he’d seen his relatives, we holed up and began to write.

23We were, of course, a bit naive — the book finished many months later, barely sort of on-time, after extensive writing and editing sessions on a ship across the Atlantic with no internet, and after blocking out long sessions in Marrakech (it was cheap, we thought) and Istanbul (much more suitable to productivity, despite being more expensive).

24***

26Gateless , I’m pleased to say, was highly reviewed and extremely well-received. Here is what the model of 4+1 Currencies became —

27Capacity : Your generalized ability to get results and make things happen.

28Network : The sum of your friendships, collaborations, and mutual regard with others.

29Signal : How you appear to the outside world.

30Assets : Your tangible resources; the mix of financial assets and tools you employ.

31Those were the evolved versions of the Four Currencies model that Kai pioneered. We added one final one, Meaning , that all the resource-gathering supports and resolves to.

32***

34The 4+1 Currencies model was hugely helpful for Kai and I in measuring and ensuring we’re developing well on all those areas that are more loose and hazy.

35Thankfully, has been reported as hugely helpful for colleagues and readers of ours.

36If you find this concept useful and intriguing, I’d highly recommend you go get a copy of  Gateless  — I’m biased, since I co-authored it, but we’ve got literally perfect five-star reviews throughout for it. Being able to put one’s intangible development into a framework and getting it on rails is incredibly valuable.

37Now, I’ll walk you through the basics of it.

38And of course, with a focus on Upstream Effects — it’s always a little humbling when I realize that the options and power I have available to me today are directly descended from what I did in past months and years.

39A good decision, made two years ago, to really cultivate a connection with someone admirable and hard-working, will often pay surprising dividends in opportunities, friendship, and great action years later.

40Sometimes I get a little shiver up my spine when I think about how some seemingly small action I took affected the future — the future, of course, now being the present moment. And I realize, what I do now will affect how I’m living and what my options are in the coming weeks, months, years, decades — it’s both marvelous and terrifying, isn’t it?

41Here’s that framework —

42***

44You’re always creating effects. As you walk into a room, the social texture of that room changes. Every business you patronize, you create for them revenue that affects their profitability and numbers. The work you do makes ripples, sometimes larger or smaller, through the entire world around you.

45Your ability to consciously shape the effects you’re creating around you — that’s what Kai and I call “Capacity.”

46Be sure — you’re creating effects, intentionally or not. But to understand Capacity, imagine a large problem happening and different people you know saying, “I’ve got this under control.”

47There are people who, right away, you’d think: “Oh, phew, they’re on it. It’ll get fixed.”

48Those people have high Capacity; they can fix things. These people that can always do what they set out to do are incredibly valuable. If you know someone like this, you know how appreciated they are, and how much everyone counts on them.

49There are other people who, once they’ve pledged to get it done, you’d think, “They said they’ve got it under control... hmm... there’s a 50/50 chance it’ll get done. I’ll have to pay attention.”

50Those people have a lower Capacity, but a decent one; they are unreliable in their results, but can sometimes produce. This is most of us.

51And of course, there’s people who, after promising to get it done, you’d feel no reassurance at all. You’d still be looking to get it fixed, because you know they’re not going to get it done. Low Capacity.

52A lot of the things that go towards “Capacity” are things that wouldn’t normally get lumped together.

53A greater ability to function when stressed, fatigued, or in distress means higher Capacity.

54An ability to spot opportunities as they emerge — higher Capacity, again.

55Putting together novel connections to produce better results? That does it.

56So does being able to concentrate more.

57Being able to speak clearly helps; so does being able to understood the point another person is making.

58Being able to understand numbers well is often useful.

59Some of these are active processes. Some of them operate in the background. And some of them, people think are aspects of who they are, immutable and unchangeable.

60In a world with less defined careers and less clear paths, the simple ability to get a job done is incredibly prized and valuable.

61A case could be made that this generalized effectiveness has become the most valuable trade. Specialist’s knowledge still reigns in medicine, law, and architecture, but even these very-established fields are seeing a greatly increased need for people who can learn quickly, adapt flexibly, and produce results .

62That is, people who can consciously make effects happen  — people of high Capacity.

63***

65In  Gateless , Kai and I focused on Four Levers Of Capacity  — Biochemistry, Cognition, Action, and Environment — as ways to broadly alter and improve your ability to consciously create effects.

66A lot goes into this, under many names and categories — health, productivity, meaning, thinking, creating, consistency, training, thought processes, attitudes and affinities, beliefs, prejudices, skills, physical characteristics, mental characteristics, habits, knowledge, and so on — all of this goes into Capacity.

67There are many universals, and searching for them and installing them into your life makes you universally more effective.

68Much of these chapters on Upstream Effects has focused on Capacity — entrainment, biochemistry, firebreaks and rapid repairs, doing those micro-upstream actions to make tomorrow and the coming couple weeks better, planning, basic mathematics, working on trajectory.

69I do think it’s worthwhile to see Capacity as a unified whole — in short, learning better planning skills and spending time getting your athletic training in order both help this same generalized ability.

70***

72“Network” and “networking” have awful reputations as words, and probably for good reason.

73Frankly, neither both Kai and I don’t love the word “network” or “networking”... there just isn’t anything better that’s not too wordy or too contrived.

74One speculates whether “networking” has such a bad reputation because of the impersonal-seeming nature of it.

75Sitting with a friend in a comfortable cafe with a strong coffee in hand... Recounting adventures, swapping stories about your lives, and planning how to keep moving up in the world. Is this “networking”? Is this person “a node in your network”?

76It seems absurd. It doesn’t capture it. It’s so... impersonal. Clinical.

77The word “network” could imply some abstract graph of interconnecting dots and lines. But in reality, it’s so much more than that — it’s about the living, breathing people you choose to share your life with.

78Friendship, camaraderie, working together, helping each other — these are some of the most beautiful and noble things we do. And the sum of your friendships, collaborations, and mutual regard for others becomes your... well, network.

79***

81In the book, Kai and I started by outlining the importance of Network, the magnifying effect of it on everything you do, the importance of taking a character-first approach to fixing and improving yourself before trying blindly to make connections.

82But then, ok, you’ve got all that down — now what? You do you know if you’ve actually improved your Network? How do you stay on top of it?

83And that’s where a measurement that we devised comes very much in handy.

84To figure out how well your network fits with what you want to do in the world, evaluate along three lines

851. how relevant each person in your network is to your goals and life,
2. how intimate you are with each person,
3. and the character of each person.

86***

88A “higher quality network” is one where you’re more intimate with people of excellent character who are relevant to what you want to do in the world.

89How do you measure that?

90Here’s an exercise.

91To start, write down on a piece of paper the 50 to 150 people you know most well.

92Then, write down next to their name how “Relevant” each person is to what your current core goals and purposes are on a scale of 1 to 5. Be sparing putting someone down as “Relevancy 5” — that might be only a few people who are real trailblazers and key people in the field you’re in.

93Relevancy is pretty straightforward, and people tend to naturally come up with good numbers for it. Intimacy is a little trickier, because it’s so subjective. But is it? There’s actually a way to make it objective. Try this —

941. The person only vaguely knows who you are, and might or might not remember you.
2. The person knows who you are, but won’t always take your phone call.
3. The person will take your call every single time you call, and call you back if you miss each other.
4. The person will actively help you if you ask, even if there’s nothing explicitly in it for them.
5. They’ll “tell you where the bodies are buried.”

95As you can see, this maps from almost strangers at 1 to acquaintances at 2, then starting to become friends at 3 (they respect you enough to consistently take your calls), to friends at 4, and really close confidants and intimate friends at 5.

96It’s a pretty objective scale.

97***

99Almost everyone who does this exercise for the first time is surprised when they mark these numbers down.

100If you’re like most people, the first thing that’ll stand out to you is that it’s likely the people that are most relevant to your life are also the ones you’re least intimate with and followup with the least.

101People tend to get intimidated when they meet someone who is “powerful” or “accomplished” — and there’s something to that, but people are people. Almost everyone who does this exercise realizes they don’t reach out enough to people they’ve met who could really help make a big boost in their lives.

102You’ll want to fix that.

103Gradually, intentionally increasing the amount of outreach you do with people who are highly relevant to your life is critical to going where you want to go.

104***

105(CHARACTER CAVEAT)

106One caveat!

107Character is more important than anything else.

108The attitudes, habits, world views, politics, personality — even the way you speak and language you choose — this is hugely affected by the people you have in your life.

109“Character” is harder to nail down. There’s no numerical scale for it. But you should be constantly looking to become closer only with people of excellent character.

110You’ll almost certainly have opportunities in your life to advance yourself by mixing in with someone of slightly bad character. Maybe they’re a little sloppy, or a little dishonest, or whatever else.

111Avoid it.

112When you’re around people who are honest, diligent, friendly, hard working, who like to evolve, who are conscientious, and so on — this makes life easier and more enjoyable. And more importantly, it makes you more like that. Doing the opposite, no matter how promising the opportunity, is a recipe for long-term disaster.

113That’s not to say that everyone in your network must be a saint. Actually, navigating relationships with people who are highly relevant to your life or are gatekeepers or stakeholders — but who have poor character — is an important skill. But be very careful not to nurture and develop those relationships with people with poor character. You become like the people you’re around.

114***

116The most appreciated and commented-on part of  Gateless  were the sections on Signal.

117We put it down as: "Your own “Signal” is always on; it’s what you’re intentionally and unintentionally broadcasting about yourself, and how others perceive your Signal has a huge impact on how you get treated and what you’re able to do in the world.”

118***

120Everything you do with other people becomes easier or harder, depending on your Signal. Again, that’s the sum total of what you’re intentionally and unintentionally broadcasting about yourself to others.

121Obviously, this has a huge multiplier on just about everything in life involving others.

122To improve your Signal, there’s six areas to go to work on gradually —

1231. Artifacts  of what you’ve built and done: One of the highest credibility aspects of Signal. Use liberally. If you have claims to make, put them into action and get artifacts out of it.

1242. Claims  of what you can do: One of the lower credibility aspects of Signal. Better done with another method when possible. If needing to use claims, look to make them accurate and process-oriented rather than state-oriented.

1253. Opinions  of third parties on you: The most surprisingly credible and impactful aspect of Signal. Often underestimated by smart people, references and testimonials go incredibly far to build your Signal. Learn how to get these; it’s not that hard to learn and very useful.

1264. Observations  people make when seeing you: Hard to control, but given an extremely high weighting by most people. This can be obsessed over to your detriment — once it’s “Above the bar,” switch to building Character, Capacity, etc. Revisit and tweak occasionally, but this has the least bearing on your actual ability and is the least useful in isolation (and it’s the most over-invested in societally).

1275. Context  in which you first come across each other: Surprisingly confusingly important. Not entirely controllable, but look to get into contexts that the people who you want on your side are receptive, trusting, and open to connecting with people. Introductions rule here; so do organizations and events that just being there means being valuable.

1286. Biases  the other person brings to the table: Study which ones might apply to you. It’s hard to get people to be honest about these, because no one wants to admit they’re prejudiced. Get feedback, listen to stories from people with a similar background who found a way to thrive, and experiment to learn what works. Figure out how you can deal with what you’re up against in a way that harmonizes with your values. It can be uncomfortable, but try not to bury your head in the sand on this stuff. You should win at life, and there’s many ways to get there — you can find one that works for you.

129***

131One of the coolest concepts to see emerge after writing Gateless was seeing people we know, now that these concepts were identified, do “Signal Cycles” — meaning, search through everything about their signal, think through how each can be tuned and improved to make life more effective, and improve them all.

132The key part of a better Signal is “Better Reality” — actually doing better, consistently. Do more, serve more, be better. But after that, you can start capturing and Artifact-izing the gains of what you’ve done. Writing a single great case study, taking photos or videos to document good work you’ve done, writing debriefs and reports that are useful — all of these show proof of what you’ve done in the past, and make life easier.

133Instead of thinking about “credentials” abstractly, you think about Signal. An official mainstream credential might be more powerful or less powerful than a simple testimonial or endorsement from someone well-respected. If you can do outstanding work for a single person well-respected in your field, have them attest to it, and have some proofs/samples of the good work you’ve done, you’ve dramatically improved your Signal.

134***

136We talked about Assets quite a bit last chapter — it’s the easy example to use in terms of Trajectory, given that it’s the one that’s gotten the most mainstream ink and has the most common straightforward guides on how to measure and interact with. (I will just say, very briefly, that it’s worth occasionally overviewing everything you own, what its function is, and analyzing if there’s better quality or more effective versions of the tools and items you use regularly.)

137Then, we’ll talk about Meaning in the later sections and chapters, given how precious it is — it’s what everything else can and should add up to.

138When talking about virtue and goodness in life, Aristotle wrote that,

139“To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement."

140Sage advice. Hopefully this chapter has given you some new frameworks and tools to measure these intangibles. If you didn’t do that Relevancy/Intimacy/Character exercise from the middle of it, consider going back and doing it now.

1 U PSTREAM E FFECTS #9: A DHERENCE AND M ASTERY

3If you dive into traditional Japanese works, they frequently speak of “The Way.”

4If you’re trying to have a maximally rational and cohesive definition of everything, “The Way” can be frustrating and elusive.

5There are various Ways — the Way of Music, the Way of Farming, the Way of Poetry — but greatest of all is simply The Way .

6For some people — particularly martial artists and certain types of athletes — this will just click and resonate instantly.

7For others, it would take repeated exposure, study, and training.

8It’s worth it.

9I dare say, The Way is the greatest thing.

10***

12The idea is a simple but critical one: who you are and how you’re living, right now, is a result of the decisions you’ve made upstream in the past that have flowed downstream to you right now.

13The decisions you’re making right now will flow downstream — and in some distant future, you’ll be living better or worse, doing more or less, being healthy or less healthy, being engaged or less engaged…

14… it’s obvious enough, but often frustrating to driven people. “Mind over matter!” Well, fine, but the person who is well-hydrated, well-prepared, with a clear plan, and who slept well last night has the ability to outperform the dehydrated, unprepared, unplanned, poorly rested person.

15I’ve done lots of tracking and stats around this. It’s basically bulletproof. No matter how hard I try, I produce better work when I’m healthier, planned, and my environment is set up correctly.

16Yes, you can will yourself to perform on bad days. But if you had set yourself up better, you still use that will — and reap even greater gains.

17This is a powerful view of the world: instead of being frustrated and flailing moment-to-moment, you think: “What do I want? What serves my purposes? How do I set up the future for myself?"

18***

19This has been the entire thrust of this book so far.

20But let’s address the hardest aspect of it: many of the best practices go against our nature.

21The difficult ones for you will be different than the ones for me.

22Doing basic math calculations like “use cost” comes intuitive and is obvious to many people; for others, it’s pure torture.

23Some people love to go out and jump into projects and collaborations with good people to find future colleagues, collaborators, friends, and allies. For other people, there’s immense anxiety and shyness around asking someone to work on a project together.

24And yet, from time to time, there’s something that’s clearly important that we’re not very good at. We try to get better at it, and initial attempts don’t pay off.

25Try to get on a fitness plan, fall off in 5 weeks with a little injury.

26Try to do a weekly review, forget to do it after the 3rd week and have it die.

27Get on a new diet… break the diet and binge eat junk and get back on the old way of eating.

28Decide to do an entrepreneurial project… start procrastinating, let the project get buried, and move on with a gnawing sense of disappointment.

29This happens to all of us. What do we do about it?

30I’ve got seven guidelines that I think will be very powerful for you, that I think it very likely you’ve never read before.

31But first, I want to share a section of Minamoto Musashi’s 1645 manual of swordsmanship, “ The Book of Five Rings .”

32***

34Here’s Musashi, likely the greatest swordsman of an age of great swordsmen, writing on strategy… and carpentry —

42***

45Start here: “Statistics apply to me.”

46If you’re not in an office where you’d be odd to say it out loud, say it out loud.

47“Statistics apply to me.”

48I’m dead serious. “Statistics apply to me.”

49This is liberating.

50What do I mean by this?

51I assume I’m completely regular and not-special statistically.

52People hate uncertainty, so they like to make definitive statements.

53So if they smoke cigarettes, they either get optimistic (“I won’t get cancer”) or fatalistic (“I’ll probably get cancer”).

54In reality, if there’s a 24.4% chance of developing lung cancer as a smoker, I tend to assume that if I smoke, I’ll have … a 24.4% chance of lung cancer.

55Well, this is all reasonably obvious, right?

56But where it’s less obvious is in how fast it’s possible to change habits, patterns of action, business success, etc.

59If you’re starting a business that’s almost guaranteed to be able to get acquired for its tech even if the business side fails, that’s a great way to floor your success… and yes, it means you shouldn’t compare yourself to the average business that starts (that includes everything from undercapitalized coffee shops to major public/private partnerships, none of which apply to you).

60But then: if you’re building a company to push the frontiers of Computer Science and develop new working tech, you’ll then get normal statistics within that cohort.

61If you have a special advantage — industry connections, a really prolific partnership with a great cofounder, whatever — then you’ll get normal statistics within the cohort of people like that.

62I can’t stress how important this is, and how liberating.

63Your results in a new discipline will likely be the baseline results of that field. If you take up running, you’ll get injured at the rate that new runners get injured. If you’ve been incredibly durable in the past, then you’ll get injured at the rate that incredibly durable people get injured.

64Why is this important? Because it sets realistic expectations, and then you can mitigate the risks and improve your statistical odds.

65Weekly Reviews tend to fall off as a habit. They’re great, but people tend to get busy, miss one, and fall off.

66When that happens, you need to not get upset and whine and cry or beat yourself up because it’s totally normal and part of the process.

67Then you start researching and taking actions to increase your adherence rate here. (For Weekly Reviews specifically, the first and biggest one I’ve found is being able to do a “mini-Weekly Review” that takes under 10 minutes to reset things.)

68“Statistics apply to me.” Bank on it and plan around it.

69***

71Perfection is a fool’s errand. Nobody  ever goes a whole lifetime without missing a gym workout, meditation session, or whatever else. Things happen. Statistics apply to you.

72So you start with a baseline of how often a habit or practice atrophies or breaks down, and then you start stacking up advantages to increase your adherence rate .

73Adherence rate is doing what you want to be doing.

74If you eat like junk most of the time, and you’re able to cut that in half without making the other half of the time totally out of control, you’ve done better.

75Best advice I’ve read from a nutritionist on eating better is to cover half of your plate during every meal with vegetables.

76Why is it good advice? Because you can’t physically eat all that much junk if you fill up with half vegetables. It increases the adherence rate of eating well.

77The goal is not to be perfect , it’s to be better and get the results from being better.

79So we’ve looked at two ways of seeing the world — first, assume statistics apply to you; second, work on increasing your adherence rate to what you want to do.

80Now, let’s talk about one of the key skills: Impulse Control.

81Impulse Control is a trainable, generalized skill. We’ll do a full issue on Impulse Control in the future (or you could read up on it in  Gateless , which I coauthored), but the basic idea is this: due to the way our minds work, impulses arise. The process of noticing them, acknowledging them, deciding what to do with them, and acting — this is a trainable skill not particularly different from driving a car or cooking food.

82People sometimes exaggerate the specialness or uniqueness of the human mind, mood, emotions, etc.

83I think that section from Miyamoto Musashi on carpentry and warfare covers much of life — use strong wood where it needs to bear weight, use weak but pretty wood where it’s visible but doesn’t need to bear weight, use crooked wood as scaffolding and then firewood.

84Likewise, Impulse Control isn’t magical — it’s just applying the process to a variety of situations.

85Mindfulness meditation is of course the easiest and most direct way to train this, but many exercises can be developed around athletics, creativity and writing, facing one’s fears in any area (making sales cold calls, public speaking, etc), pushing through negative emotions to do the right thing, or whatever else.

86I recommend meditating to everyone; it’s an easy way to give your mind some training in this ability. You close your eyes and concentrate on your breath, and when your mind wanders, you simply note it and re-concentrate on your breath. 5-10 minutes a day of this goes a long way to observing how your mind works and practicing controlling your attention.

87Then — start generalizing it out to everyday life. Doing the right thing means controlling one’s impulse. Like how carpentry and swordsmanship are so different but share underlying principles of applying the right thing to the right purpose, likewise, there’s nothing magical about performing under stress or anxiety or unhappiness — they’re just slight variants of the fundamental skill.

89It’s not enough to have moment-by-moment mastery — it only gets you so far.

90To really thrive on a grand scale, you need to start developing operational skill.

91My definition of operations: the coordination of tactics over time.

92Tactics are individual actions. For running: long runs, short runs, speed work, walking, leg strengthening, stretching, hydration, foam roller, keeping your stats and making a running plan, active recovery, cross-training.

93Any of those can be good, but you can do a lot of damage by over-training or not healing enough. Too much unbalanced action and you can break down; not enough cohesion among your actions and you get middling trivial gains.

94That’s where operational skill comes in. It’s about those seemingly basic but utterly critical skills: scheduling, planning things out, communicating, checking and making adjustments periodically, etc.

95Much of our exploration of Upstream Effects has explored ideas for having better operations, but going a step further, I encourage you to see this as a discipline and train in it.

96It’s as simple as saying, “Ok, how do I ensure that all the right action happens over time? Over the next weeks, months, and even a year+?”

97If this way of thinking isn’t natural and automatic to you (it wasn’t to me, not at all), then learn from people who are naturally operationally skilled. I’m always extremely grateful I get to work on projects with Kai Zau, who is so operationally sound, and I’m constantly asking his opinion and learning from how he does things. Don’t try to just figure this out yourself if it’s not your forte; ask for guidance from people who are naturally highly organized and operational.

99It blows my mind that people mention some problem that came up as an excuse for why they failed.

100“The stock market crashed.”

101“I got laid off.”

102“I got a foot injury.”

103“I got a sick.”

104Umm, yes, the stock market crashes, layoffs happen, injuries happen, illness happen.

106You need to build your life so you can weather these types of events. Build safeguards so you’re okay even if the market crashes (no excessive leverage), even if you get laid off (savings + be in demand for your skill among good people), you get injured (have some cross-training ability and switch sports for a bit while healing), or illness (be ahead of schedule, not behind/frantic, so things don’t all break when setbacks occur).

107That quote by Peter Drucker is worth reflecting more deeply on –

109This means troubleshooting problems when they come in, and put in long-term fixes . In other words, don’t just survive the layoff, analyze and figure out that the problem was exasperated by not having regular job and project offers (so get your skill up and increase your public profile) and a lack of savings (so build up savings).

110Problems are normal, but they don’t have to become crises.

111With skill, you convert crisis into routine.

113The forward-thinking aspect of “problems are normal and must be troubleshot” is “defense matters.”

114It’s easy for ambitious people to want to be expansionary, and to neglect to defend and consolidate what they already have.

115It’s hard to say, “I’m getting older, and I’ve had no health problems, but I should proactively put a stretching plan into place.” People don’t think that way; they’re caught up in their current problems… but then they rip their knee up, and now they’ve got to deal with the problem on a much larger and more unpleasant scale.

116As you take up new projects, hobbies, initiatives, and disciplines — do an analysis of what could go wrong, and put defensive measures in place.

117We know diets fail, we know good habits get broken, we know about the variety of interruptions and nonsense can happen… all of these can be anticipated and defense measures can be taken.

118You can prepare verbal replies to well-meaning people trying to push junk food on you if you’re on a diet in advance. You can eat before you go out to a restaurant so you’re not hungry. Maybe you take up intermittent fasting and finish eating for the day at 2PM.

119The best CEOs I know all look for disruptions, interruptions, little risks, and existential risks and spend time mitigating them periodically. It’s not sexy and you don’t get hero points for nothing going wrong, but you do live a much better life. Defense matters.

121Blah blah blah, enjoy the process, blah blah blah — I won’t give you the speech, you’ve heard it before

122Frankly, I like to win and I like getting the outcomes I’ve been driving towards. I’m not purely in the “process” camp; I like results and sometimes being laser focused on results outperforms plodding along.

123But ambitious overdrive can lead to all sorts of self-hate and disappointment when it doesn’t work.

124And that’s when you remember it’s a process.

125Every time a habit falls off, or I spend my time poorly, or I backslide, or I neglect an initiative — and we all do it, don’t we? — I want to learn something and get a little stronger.

126I consider myself a student and practitioner of The Way, that elusive and grand thing, that encompasses everything. It’s not magical — it’s often as straightforward as choosing the right wood for the job in carpentry — but perhaps that’s almost all of life.

127Being “mastery-oriented” doesn’t cover The Way entirely, but it’s a good start. Statistics apply to me, problems happen, so I need to get better at my play over time — both personally (impulse control) and by setting the world up around me correctly (operations).

128And then — Adherence Rate. So much of Upstream Effects shouldn’t be seen as aiming for perfection, but of giving yourself more room and more opportunity to do great things tomorrow, next week, next month, and in the weeks and months and years beyond.

129Perfection isn’t needed. Do better than last week, last month, last year over time. Problems happen and deal with them. And never stray from The Way.

130Sebastian

1II

2Toughness

1 T OUGHNESS #1: M ISSION O RIENTATION

3On this late August afternoon, it was still hot outside, but Torii Mototada felt a dull chill circulating through his body.

4Outside, he would be stoical and steadfast, an emblem of loyalty and fierceness unto the end.

5But no matter how strong his exterior, walking past his retainers and soldiers at Fushimi Castle, a chill void tugged at his heart.

6These 2000 battle-hardened, loyal, and ferocious men under his command – all of them would shortly never see their families again.

7His movements were slow as he walked among his defenders at Fushimi, partially to show resolve, partially because old war wounds in his legs from the disastrous Battle of Mikatagahara a decade earlier had left him semi-crippled.

8But now, the dull pain of movement was helpful in these final days as he made the last preparations.

9The pain kept him sharp, focused.

10The defenders would need to hold out against the lightning fast advances of Mitsunari’s 40,000 strong army so that their side could regroup and mount a defense and counterattack.

11***

13The year is 1600. Japan’s fragile and short-lived peace has once again shattered.

14When Torii Mototada had been born in 1539, Japan was in the middle of one of the largest and most complex multi-sided civil wars in history.

15The central authority had been in terminal decline for over 100 years, and local warlords now fought a constant set of battles, intrigues, assassinations… the ground shifted with alliances made and broken, betrayals, near constant strife and warfare.

16This era was coming to a close.

17Power had gathered and consolidated until there were only two sides left in the year 1600: the Western forces under Ishida Mitsunari, and the Eastern forces under Torii Mototada’s old friend and lord Tokugawa Ieyasu.

18On those fateful days in late August, the Western and Eastern forces were in a race against time: Tokugawa’s Eastern forces needed to capture the fortresses along Japan’s most important road network, the Nakasendo, before the Western forces could link up their considerably larger army, capture Kyoto, and isolate the Easterners.

19This was the prelude to the final battle – and everything was at stake. Whichever side lost this conflict, the commanders from the noble families would be dishonored and executed; the common soldiers would go from being samurai to fallen ronin and vagabonds.

20The Easterners seemed in bad shape: Mitsunari had mobilized his 40,000 strong army and was rampaging lightning-fast towards the Tokugawa positions.

21***

23Mototada’s cavalary scouts had returned.

24The report was confirmed: 40,000 of Mitsunari’s men were converging on the 2,000 defenders at Fushimi Castle.

25Old Mototada had been reflecting on what instructions to leave his children for some time. Now, the moment at hand, he took up his ink brush and wrote to his eldest son Tadamasa –

26“It would not take much trouble to break through a part of their numbers and escape, no matter how many tens of thousands of horsemen approached for the attack or by how many columns we were surrounded... but that is not the true meaning of being a warrior, and it would be difficult to account as loyalty. Rather, I will stand off the forces of the entire country here, and, without even one one-hundredth of the men necessary to do so, will throw up a defense and die a resplendent death.  By doing so I will show that to abandon a castle that should be defended, or to value one's life so much as to avoid danger and to show the enemy one's weakness is not within the family traditions of my master Ieyasu.”

27Lord Torii’s final testament comes out to two and a half pages when translated into modern English.

28Did the old warrior lord pause between the passages he wrote, or did he write swiftly in one session?

29We cannot know.

30Away from the presence of his retainers and soldiers, was his heart heavy or light when he wrote those words?

31We cannot know.

32He lays out that the Tokugawa forces will win and Ieyasu will rule the land, with his family loyal to the Tokugawa – did he truly deeply believe this, or was there any doubt in his mind that Mitsunari’s larger forces might overrun the Easterners?

33We cannot know.

34In front of his soldiers, he would have been steadfast and stoic.

35In private, reflecting in those last moments as those 40,000 troops began to lay to Fushimi Castle, did tears fall from Torii Mototada’s eyes?

36We cannot know.

37It doesn’t matter.

38The 2,000 defenders held out for 10 days against the Western forces.

39When the walls were finally breached by the overwhelming force, the defenders fought in wave after wave of combat, ending the lives of as many of the overwhelming number of assailants as they could.

40On 8 September 1600, with a mere dozen men still living, with Fushimi Castle bathed in flames, Torii Mototada committed seppuku – ritual suicide – rather than be captured.

41He was 62 years old.

42The onslaught of the 40,000 Ishida soldiers had been delayed 10 days by Torii’s stand at Fushimi Castle.

43Six weeks later, Tokugawa Ieyasu’s outnumbered forces defeated Ishida Mitsunari at the Battle of Sekihagara, finally unifying Japan.

44***

46We turn our attentions now to Toughness .

47We will discuss how to train and build physical and mental toughness, as well as explore how you can cultivate, tame, and harness your emotions to serve your causes.

48Certainly, those soldiers fighting to their death under Torii Mototada at Fushimi Castle were tough. Outnumbered 20-to-1, they sold their lives dearly for their cause. The used their guns and bows until they ran out of ammunition, and then their swords and daggers until nothing remained.

49But before we turn a magnifying glass on toughness and valor, we must zoom far out, far above, we must move from the tactics of any individual campaign to a much broader sense of things.

50In other words – we must look at, what’s the point of toughness?

51***

52The American strength training expert, Mark Rippetoe, has been known to quip –

53“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.”

54This is true – of course this is true – this is somewhat obvious in its truth if one is unbiased –  but what does it mean to be “more useful” ?

55Yes, if you’re physically stronger, you can lift things off the ground more easily. Okay. You can open a stuck jar of tomato sauce.  Great. In the rare event of a natural disaster, you can move piles of rubble faster and more easily.

56Is that it? Is that all? It’s often very hard work  to become tougher; it takes training and a fair amount of agony. Is it worth it? Why train?

57This is where Mission Orientation  comes in.

58***

60There is perhaps a single all-time most clear and striking example of how toughness and mission orientation interact.

61Mike Tyson.

62Tyson had a bad upbringing – to put it mildly. He was bullied, he was picked on, he was robbed of his lunch money. He took solace in his pigeons, that he raised in a coop on his roof.

63Even as he grew into his powerful frame, he never fought back. He was meek – until the day that an older bully took one of his pigeons and killed it in front of him, throwing the dead bird at the young Mike.

64Tyson flipped out and started hitting him – his first time inflicting violence on another person.

65He got mixed in with crime… his early “mentors” were slightly older street kids, gang kids, robbing houses, pickpocketing people, doing a whole lot of no good.

66For this, he eventually got sent to a correctional school in upstate New York. That’s when his life turned around – when he got introduced to boxing.

67He wound up meeting the legendary Cus D’Amato.

68Cus saw in the 12-year-old Tyson the ability to become the youngest heavyweight champion of all-time – he saw the potential greatness in Tyson.

69After Tyson was discharged from correctional school, his mother gave permission for Cus and his girlfriend to take the young Mike in and raise him up themselves.

70If you read Tyson’s story in his autobiography, Undisputed Truth , you can see how D’Amato helped Tyson train and get focused. The young Tyson had the potential to be a great athlete and had developed immense pain tolerance and fierceness from his tough background, but D’Amato took him to mental, physical, and emotional levels of toughness and focus never before visited.

71This, combined with elite technical training, led Mike Tyson to rapidly rise to prominence.

72When Cus D’Amato died on 4 November 1985, Mike’s record was 11 wins and 0 losses – with all 11 wins coming by knockout.

73D’Amato’s death was hard on Tyson and all the people that loved Cus, but Tyson still had the goal in mind of being the youngest heavyweight champion of all time, as well as the relationships and the infrastructure in terms of agent, trainer, training protocols, and so on that were set up when Cus was alive.

74On 22 November 1986, Mike Tyson went into his first championship match for the WBC heavyweight title with a 27-0 record… with an unreal 27 wins by knockout.

75He won.

76Youngest heavyweight champ ever.

77In March 1987, he won the WBA championship, and in August he added the IBF heavyweight title – thus becoming the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

78And then he started to fall apart.

79The decline didn’t show immediately, but without any goal or mission any more, his training slowed down… his fitness slowed down… he spent money wildly and purposelessly, even buying mansions that he’d only stay a few days at in his whole life.

80One of the most famous boxing fights of all time – probably the most famous upset of all time – is when a nobody named Buster Douglas KO’d Mike in February 1990 in Tokyo.

81From there, you probably know some of the story – all the criminal charges, the prolific drug use, the bankruptcy, the money problems, the fight where he bites Holyfield’s ear…

82In his autobiography, Tyson wrote about how it happened after taking the championship –

83“I really wanted to enjoy being the champion. It was the first time we had ever set a goal and gone through all the blood, sweat, and tears to accomplish it. Now I could be mentioned in the same breath as Joe Louis and Ali. I wanted to bask in that, but I felt guilty and empty. Cus wasn’t there to give me direction. For the first time in years, I didn’t have a goal or a desire to do anything. “

84Tyson built elite levels of self-discipline, physical toughness, mental toughness, and animated his spirit with a rugged aggressiveness in pursuit of a key mission  – the result was greatness.

85In the absence of a mission, all that built-up toughness led to erratic and eventually self-destructive results.

86***

88Before we get into the rest of understanding Toughness, we need to triple-underline a statement –

90Torii Mototada took the suicide assignment of defending Fushimi Castle in order that the Eastern Forces could regroup and end the civil war.

91Mike Tyson is perhaps the ultimate case study in what happens if you develop maximum toughness with and without mission orientation – because when he had mission orientation, he went on to become one of the most spectacular and inspiring athletes of all time, and – now forgotten – was actually on his way to being a major force for good with Public Service Announcements and charity work before he fell off into the dark side of missionlessness.

92***

94Talking about a grand mission in life is beyond the scope of this chapter, but here is the key thing – it’s not necessary to begin training in Mission Orientation.

95Rather, any worthy small or medium-sized goal can be the opportunity to both build and express toughness.

96A lot of people who don’t succeed blame it on the fact that they don’t care about what they’re currently doing. “Yeah, I’m lazy here, but once I start my own company…”

97– this never works. You become how you act. How you act trains and becomes automatic about your future behavior.

98To that end, this is a mentality – you want to consider why  you are doing everything you’re doing, and what the mission behind it is. Then you ensure your actions harmonize with the mission. You build up your toughness, your steadfastness, your emotional control, your technical skills in the service of the mission at hand.

99And again, it does not have to be grand and glorious. There is a reason that all effective militaries spend so much time having young soldiers learn to make their bed and have a clean and crisp uniform – the habits of routinely and consistently doing the right thing transfer over to all areas of life.

100***

102Our first foray into Toughness has largely been about a mental shift – shifting your thinking from doing actions in order to considering the mission at hand.

103To that end, if you want to go deeper on the topic, let’s look at two German words – Auftragstaktik vs Befehlstaktik.

104The “taktik” you see in there translates almost exactly to the English word “tactic” – taking an action of some sort.

105But the compound words don’t perfectly translate; rather, they have to be described and studied to be understood.

106The origins of the “Auftragstaktik” style of orders comes largely from the Prussian/German Army Chief Helmuth von Moltke, who along with Otto von Bismarck led the Unification of Germany in the mid-1800’s.

107Moltke is, in my opinion, one of the greatest Generals in history – his reputation suffers from that great paradox that generals who win engagements without much bloodshed, who do not overreach, and who stop once they get what’s suitable for their country are often not remembered as much as more belligerent characters who overreach and have more grand scenes. Were I able to select any General from history to lead an army, I’d take Moltke over Napoleon or Alexander without blinking.

108Let’s learn a little from his 1869 Operations document, “Instructions for Large Unit Commanders”, emphasis added by me –

109“In general, one does well to order no more than is absolutely necessary and to avoid planning beyond the situations one can foresee.  These change very rapidly in war. Seldom will orders that anticipate far in advance and in detail succeed completely to execution. This shakes the confidence of the subordinate commander and it gives the units a feeling of uncertainty when things develop differently than what the high command's order had presumed.

110“Moreover, it must be pointed out that if one orders much, then the important thing that needs to be carried out unconditionally will be carried out only incidentally or not at all  because it is obscured by the mass of secondary things and those which are valid only under the circumstances.

111“The higher the authority, the shorter and more general will the orders be. The next lower command adds what further precision appears necessary. The detail of the execution is left to the verbal order, to the command. Each thereby retains freedom of action and decision within his authority. "

112Imagine that – anti-micromanaging… as far back as 1869!

113This work developed into the German style that’s often called Auftragstaktik – Wikipedia has it defined as “tactics focused on accomplishing the task/mission” as opposed to Befehlstaktik , “tactics focused on executing a set of orders.”

114***

116Mission Orientation is a way of thinking – instead of thinking merely about actions to take, you constantly think about what your intent  is, and what the intent and goals are of the organization and people you work with.

117For some readers out there, this will sound incredibly obvious. “Yes, of course that’s true.”

118For others, though, many aspects of their behavior and how they spend the time is just autopilot or beliefs inherited from society that aren’t serving one well.

119Regardless if you already think this way, it’s very possible to train at getting better in clarifying the outcome you want and why you’re doing any individual thing you’re doing, both clarifying that for yourself and to be able to communicate it with others.

120Former Marine Recon Officer Nathan Fick wrote about learning this in “ One Bullet Away ” –

121“Before every operation, the leader wrote and delivered a formal order. Sometimes the orders stretched into dozens of pages, accounting for every detail of navigation, communication, resupply, and actions upon running into the enemy. We bitched and complained about the onerous process of writing orders. Would we have time for this in combat? Of course not, and that was the point. We wrote so many orders in SMEAC format that its components became ingrained. In December, when I was given a tactical problem and one minute to identify key considerations, I may have come up with five. By March, I saw thirty. In May, fifty. Our assessment process sped up, and with it our actions.”

122And how does this relate to toughness?

123“Instruction at TBS [Marine Basic School] goes far beyond rote memorization, growing into some amalgamation of chess, history, boxing, and game theory. We studied the fog and friction of war, how the simplest things become difficult. During our written test on the subject, the instructors cranked Metallica at full volume, hurled tennis balls at our heads, and sprayed our faces with water pistols. The lesson was focus: ignore the distractions and do your job.”

124Mission orientation.

125Toughness will led you persevere longer, be disrupted less, hold yourself together when you feel like hell, and push through blocks and barriers – but to what end?

126That’s the question that Mission Orientation answers.

127It’s both a way of thinking about the world, and a skill that can be practiced – the simplest version is merely clarifying every action you take – asking what the ideal outcome of it is.

128In absence of Mission Orientation, all the fortitude and toughness in the world is dissipatated randomly, wastefully.

129With this comes coolness and being collected under the greatest of pressures – knowing the intent and outcome lets you tap into all your mental resources to drive hard towards one’s goal.

1 T OUGHNESS #2: M ENTAL T OUGHNESS

4– Dante’s Inferno, Canto IV

5Freezing to death.

6Falling to death.

7These were the mountaineer’s options.

8It was mid-June; it did not feel like mid-June on Mont Blanc.

913,500 feet above sea level has its own climate even on the best of days – and this was not the best of days.

102,000 feet below, the storm raged – and was rising fast.

11Relative safety was at the Vallot Refuge at 14,311 feet – not far in good times!

12These were not good times.

13The fog rose alongside the wind and snow – and suddenly, the mountaineer could not even see his own boots when looking down.

14Vexing storms indeed – 60 mile per hour winds began to howl incessantly around  Greg Nance , pulling his precious body heat away from him; carrying swirling frozen ice crystals to shave away at his life force; a heavy fog making the ground treacherous to navigate.

15He stood alone on one of the most deadly mountains in the world – standing still in the harrowing snowy winds was to freeze to death; movement in the thick fog was a near-guarantee of falling to death.

16It was not a good day in mid-June.

17***

19This is the second chapter of our ascent into Toughness  – we are investigating how to train and build physical and mental toughness, as well as learning to cultivate, tame, and harness our emotions to serve our causes.

20Mental Toughness gets right to the heart of the issue – clearly, mentally tough people can outperform more weak or cowardly people, people more prone to panic or self-destruction.

21But what is  mental toughness, exactly? How do we cultivate it? Why do our minds sometimes fail us?

22***

24Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia , published in 1320, stands as one of greatest works of literature. The symbolism is so rich and vivid that it’s well-worth studying for its lessons.

25Often lacking in summaries of the work are the motion and emotion felt by Dante and his companion Virgil as they travel through Hell.

26There’s plenty of descriptions of what the various sinners suffer – who could forget the image of Alexander the Great submerged in the boiling river of blood? – but perhaps just as profound are the levels of sadness and exhaustion that Dante feels throughout the journey.

27In Canto XXIV, Dante needs to climb through a difficult area to make his way on their journey through Hell, and he becomes exhausted, emphasis added –

28At length the point of our descent we reach'd from the last flag: soon as to that arriv'd, so was  the breath exhausted from my lungs, I could no further , but did seat me there.

29"Now needs thy best of man;" so spake my guide: "For  not on downy plumes, nor under shade of canopy reposing, fame is won , without which whosoe'er consumes his days leaveth such vestige of himself on earth, as smoke in air or foam upon the wave.

30 Thou therefore rise: vanish thy weariness by the mind's effort , in each struggle form'd to vanquish, if she suffer not the weight of her corporeal frame to crush her down.

32 I straightway rose, and show'd myself less spent than I in truth did feel me.   "On," I cried, “for I am stout and fearless."

33***

35Nance is in a harrowing position – 60-mile-an-hour winds and 13,500 feet above sea level. Fog rolling in, can’t see his feet – and thus can’t maneuver to safety. Sharp biting cold which is going to be fatal if hypothermia sets in.

36He later reflected on the experience –

37“There was no choice; all I could do was lean forward, widen my stance, clench my fists and repeatedly move in a tight circle, like a dog chasing its tail in slow-motion. I needed to keep my blood flowing to ward off hypothermia and frostbite but had to tread the same ground to avoid walking off a mountain cliff into one of the crevasses silently waiting to swallow another victim.”

38***

40I think mental toughness is, if we investigate it, a relatively simple thing –

41It’s doing what one ought to do, regardless if you feel like doing it or not.

42This is simple to write, simple to comprehend, simple enough on the surface – a relatively simple thing – and yet, at times, incredibly difficult.

43***

45If mental toughness is doing what we ought to do regardless, then if we want to become mentally tough, it’s key to know what to do .

46Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman wrote in  On Combat  about how knowing and training just a single way to do things  leads to superior performance under stress –

48Incredible. As you go from one option to two options on what to do, it takes 58% longer to decide what action to take.

49In many situations, that’s life or death. And that’s from merely two  options.

50Learning one right way to do things and drilling in that way, along with clarifying what should be done, leads to superior performance.

51Theoretical mental toughness is worthless is you pick the wrong thing to do, or if the situation is confusing and you can’t pick a course of action in time.

52***

54It’s long been known that athletes and soldiers need to prepare by training the physical actions they’ll undertake when in competition or combat.

55It’s only been relatively recently, though, that this has applied to people doing less physical activities.

56Training is still erratic and inconsistent across different mental fields. Accountants almost universally receive considerable training and practice when studying their field, so balancing and reviewing accounts becomes second nature to them.

57Meanwhile, training in fields like sales is more haphazard. Better companies will have workshops, roleplaying, hot-seat training where a single person does sales in front of a group or instructor, debriefs, and analyzes, but many companies don’t do this.

58Last chapter, we noted that the U.S. Marine Corps has their new officers repeatedly write and re-write many types of orders to learn how to rapidly spot what factors matter and to communicate them concisely.

59Some companies have similar types of trainings for their executives and managers, but most don’t.

60Regardless – repeatedly practicing an action that you want to habituate gives you a higher level of comfort and familiarity with it, and lets you perform that action that action under stress and pressure. If the organization you’re part of doesn’t have training for a key skill you need, or if you’re self-employed, you should develop trainings for yourself in the areas you’ll need when under stress and pressure.

61***

63If you read about firsthand account of people surviving incredibly challenging situations – ultra-endurance sports, getting into elite military units like the Navy SEAL Teams with their infamously brutal Hell Week training, surviving a huge storm during mountaineering – one patterns stands out as occurring over and over and over again.

65In his survival of that hellish storm on Mont Blanc, Greg Nance repeatedly focused on the next step he needed to do. He walked in slow circles until the storm broke enough for him to make his way to the next relatively protected area. Then he massaged his toes and fingers in the sleeping bag until the blood was going. Then he focused on doing sit-ups in his sleeping bag to stay warm. And so on.

66This is not a unique thing about Nance – this seems to be the norm among people who handle huge and complex situations.

67The ultramarathoner who is running 100 miles and feels miserable at mile 70 doesn’t think about the fact that they still need to run more than an entire marathon – they think about getting to the next checkpoint in the face, or even just getting through the next mile.

68When you read about the incredible soldiers who are able to persevere through Hell Week to become SEALs, they’re always writing about being present and getting through the current drill, the current exercise, the current race or instructions or fitness that the trainers are demanding. They survive Hell Week one minute at a time.

69Emergencies or feats of incredible human endurance can’t be handled as a gigantic whole – there’s only one of you, and you can take only one action at a time. The way you navigate gigantic feats, or crises, is by reducing the whole to the single next action to do, doing that action, and then reducing it to the single next action to do.

70***

72Nance recounts two key parts of what helped him survive and summit Mont Blanc –

73“My cell phone which I brought to wake me each morning somehow picked up signal and I was able to use my last credits to call my family.  I knew they were watching Mont Blanc’s weather and had heard of the storm battering the higher elevations.  I assured my sobbing mother that I would make it back home in one piece while promising my brother that if I could get my energy back I’d make a summit bid when the weather cleared.  My father gave me some last-minute guidance and reminded me to stay tough despite the circumstances.  Those thirty minutes of support over the phone made up for the hunger, altitude and thirst-induced weakness.”

74Falling into a catatonic half-sleep, Nance was surprised when others arrived –

75“I was stirred from slack jawed melancholy at 3am by the sound of iron clangs on the stairs. Three mountain guides had rounded up stragglers and would rest in the refuge before making their next moves.  Most were heading down while others still harbored summit aspirations.  A few folks shared war stories from their climb but most sat silently trying to muster strength for the last push.  My wind-whipped face, pale blue skin and ten-mile stare revealed that I was in a bad way. “You got caught in that after Gouter and have been in here 13 hours? Merde!” An Australian supplied the predictable, crikey!  No war story was necessary.  They could sense my fleeting strength.  A few who had also been hammered by the storm generously sacrificed some of their last rations to the straggler from Seattle, perhaps endangering their successful return to sea level.  I was the beneficiary of two sips of tang orange drink, a thermos top of tea, three swigs of water and a half-eaten dark chocolate bar.”

76Dante Alighieri is so readable because he has such a discerning grasp on human nature… the Inferno is obviously a work of fiction, but he captures the dynamic of struggle in that 24th Canto – when he’s totally exhausted after pursuit by various monsters and demons, and can’t climb any more, Virgil says to him – “Come now, it’s not resting in the shade that makes great deeds. People who just rest through life leave nothing of worth behind…  vanish thy weariness by the mind’s effort. ” And immediately after that encouragement, Dante starts climbing again, crying out: “Onwards, for I am stout and fearless!”

77There’s all sorts of myths about lone geniuses and lonely achievements, but most of them are false. For whatever reason, we can draw immense strength and boosts of morale from encouragement of other tough-minded people.

78In the worst of times, Emperor Augustus had his close childhood friend General Agrippa; the final Unifier of Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu, had an intimate and close relationship with the Master Ninja, Hattori Hanzo.

79Mental Toughness can wear down under pressure – having good friends and allies to encourage you is one key to rebuilding and refueling that toughness.

80***

82Mental Toughness, again, we define simply – it’s doing what one ought to do, regardless if you feel like doing it or not.

83To build mental toughness, then, we’ve identified four things to work on –

841. Know What To Do: This means study and reduce complexity in advance of emergencies. Learn and habituate a single correct way of doing things, as much as possible.

852. Train: Actions that you’ve repeatedly performed and practiced under a variety of circumstances are easier to keep doing in times of extreme stress and pressure.

863. Reduce Complex Situations to Simple Actions: When you are in a situation that’s overwhelming, you need to break it down to the next thing to do, and do that. This is both the right thing to do in the moment, and moreover, it’s a general skillset and way of thinking that can be practiced and built throughout life.

874. Recruit and Build Relationships and Allies With Good People: We get huge mental toughness boosts from having good friends and allies. Build relationships and earn the respect and trust of other excellent, tough-minded people, who you can lean on and who can lean on you in tough times.

88The final piece of putting this all together is merely experience  – all of the above can be done repeatedly, habituated, as you become a more mentally tough person.

89In the movie Fight Club , there’s a scene where Edward Norton is sitting in his office job with his boss coming into his cubicle in a bad mood to berate him. The night prior, he’d been in an underground street-fighting club getting knocked around.

90Sitting at his desk, wounded, he reflects: “After fighting… everything else got the volume turned down… you could deal with anything. “

91Such is true of any struggle – the volume on any regular stresses and pressures are turned down from conquering any marathon, summiting any mountain, taking any complex and intractable problem in business and working through it to success.

92After reaching the bottom of the mountain intact, Nance would reflect –

93“Mountaineering’s essence is a simple one—just one boot in front of the other, over and over again.  But something so straightforward has rarely been so trying.  One’s deepest breaths at altitude are frustratingly shallow, slopes discourage, winds disenchant and the cold disheartens. 

94“But this, perhaps, is the enduring lesson of mountaineering: once we’ve hit our target we are but halfway.  Soldier on. “

1 T OUGHNESS #3: P HYSICAL T OUGHNESS

3
 “Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not. As humanity has developed throughout history, physical strength has become less critical to our daily existence, but no less important to our lives. Our strength, more than any other thing we possess, still determines the quality and the quantity of our time here in these bodies. Whereas previously our physical strength determined how much food we ate and how warm and dry we stayed, it now merely determines how well we function in these new surroundings we have crafted for ourselves as our culture has accumulated. But we are still animals - our physical existence is, in the final analysis, the only one that actually matters. A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.
 
[...]

5“Over and above any considerations of performance for sports, exercise is the stimulus that returns our bodies to the conditions for which they were designed. Humans are not physically normal in the absence of hard physical effort. Exercise is not a thing we do to fix a problem - it is a thing we must do anyway, a thing without which there will always be problems. Exercise is the thing we must do to replicate the conditions under which our physiology was — and still is - adapted, the conditions under which we are physically normal. In other words, exercise is substitute cave-man activity, the thing we need to make our bodies, and in fact our minds, normal in the 21st century. And merely normal, for most worthwhile humans, is not good enough.”
 
– Mark Rippetoe,  Starting Strength

6***

8We’re in the midst of examining  Toughness .

9What is toughness, anyways?

10Toughness is elusive to define, but like Judge Stewart said, “I know it when I see it.”

11The Spartans – tough.

12The Samurai – tough.

13The French under Napoleon’s command? Tough as hell.

14The French during World War I? Even tougher.

15The Brits and Russians that were the last bulwarks against Nazi conquest? Tough.

16The French during WWII? … not so much, most of them!

17Those farm boys who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day? Tough. The Marines who took Iwo Jima? Maximally tough. The Japanese on the other side? Also maximally tough. The Russians who held Stalingrad against all odds? Tougher than maximally tough; ridiculously suicidally insanely tough.

18Well, it’s easy to dwell on winners – and those who lose in a noble blaze of glory. But what’s the other side?

19Duke Stolypin? Very tough; he was the last hope of the Russian Empire. The Romanovs after Stolypin’s assassination? Not very tough – with ultimately disastrous consequences.

20This “toughness” stuff is all well and good when we’re sitting on our fancy computers and musing over history… you could, maybe, sort of argue it doesn’t matter any more… and that’s true, and has been true, and is always true – during times of no adversity.

21But when toughness matters, it matters a lot.

22Hey, quick, pop quiz – what’s the most stable and prosperous Muslim country in the Middle East since World War I?

23Turkey, right?

24Why is Turkey great?

25My answer: because the Turks got a mentally and physically tough leader – the great Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – who led the Turkish people to stand up to their myriad of enemies and occupiers in the aftermath of World War I and rejected the disastrous Treaty of Sevres.

26(Never heard of Sevres? It tried to treat the Ottoman Empire even worse than what the Treaty of Versailles did to Imperial Germany. Why haven’t you heard of it? Because Kemal led the Turkish War of Independence against insurmountable odds, and surmounted them, forcing the Allies to tear up the treaty and led Turkey be independent instead of ruled by a puppet government. Toughness!)

27Look, I think this Toughness  stuff matters. It’s not even all that  hard to see.

28Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement government? Not tough! Churchill’s "We shall never surrender" government? Tough!

29What’s the greatest civilization of all time? For my money, it’s the Chinese. What’s the most important thing that happened after World War II in terms of world affairs? For my money, it’s the Mao’s forces overrunning Chiang’s.

30Why did the Communists beat the Nationalists?

31There’s ten million reasons – perhaps paramount among them is that the Communists were simply tougher  than the Nationalists. Mentally and physically tougher, spiritually tougher, and more dedicated to their mission. Corruption doesn’t always originate from weakness, but weakness always produces corruption.

32The vicious cycle of the Chinese Nationalist forces was one of weakness and corruption – Nationalist troops would get armed with better weapons, and defect to the Communists with those weapons. (Better technology seems to not be an acceptable answer to endemic weakness.)

33The cycle is really the devastating part – the general weakness of Nationalist leaders led to high corruption, pettiness, and a lack of focus on the mission. And weakness is like a disease once it starts spreading – lack of focus on the mission means worse training, less victories, less morale… less toughness… more weakness… more corruption and senior people only looking for themselves… the sincere Nationalist Chinese defect or disengage… more weakness… more losing… more corruption…

34Does this stuff matter any more? We’ve got fancy computers and Walmart and Starbucks. This stuff doesn’t matter any more, right? What could go wrong? After all, the Roman Empire never fell once it reached paramountancy, and the Sun still never sets on the Victorian British Empire, right?

35Right?

36Oh, wait. Hmm.

37***

39This the third chapter in our series on Toughness .

40In the first chapter, we talked about Mission Orientation  – because toughness needs direction to become flourishing. The under-fed junkyard pitbull might be a tough animal, but most of us would prefer to be tough like Churchill or Ataturk rather than tough like a crazed dog. Mission Orientation produces that direction, lets us channel our toughness into worthy endeavors.

41Last chapter, we talked about Mental Toughness  – our working definition of mental toughness, once again, is a simple one: mental toughness is doing what one ought to do, regardless if you feel like doing it or not.

42Now, we turn to Physical Toughness  – but c’mon, really, does it matter? Really? The 1900’s are long over by this point. I’m sitting here in the Starbucks in a shopping mall in the suburbs of Tokyo writing this on my fancy Macintosh computer, while using the free WiFi internet to listen to music for free on Youtube.

43There’s no samurai around. There’s no imperial soldiers around. On a quick look, it seems there’s no communist insurgents around. There’s people milling around between shopping at Uniqlo and Muji, sipping milky sugar drinks and eating pastries. No one’s particularly happy nor particularly sad. Who needs to be physically  tough? Why bother?

44And then we come back to Coach Ripptoe’s quote –

45“A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.”

46Hmm.

47***

49Let’s refer to three quotes from Coach Rippetoe on this matter.

50The first two reasons for Physical Toughness  are obvious enough –

511. “A weak man is not as happy as that same would be if he were strong.”

52That’s a straightforward enough claim. All of modern science, basically, agrees. Fitness, health, etc etc, happiness. We know this already.

532. “Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.”

54Also straightforward – build a base of good physical strength and you’re less likely to have a whole host of diseases and acute injuries. You can also, like, lift heavy stuff up if you’re stronger. That’s useful, obviously. Not as useful as it would have been on a farm during the 1800’s, but still useful to greater or lesser extent, no?

55But perhaps you’re un-persuaded still. The third reason, well, that’s the interesting one to me –

563. “This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up. ”

57That’s interesting. Happiness, longevity, and usefulness – these are plain enough. There’s hundreds of millions of weak flabby out-of-shape people in the Western world who these obvious reasons have obviously failed to persuade.

58But this third reason, it’s a little more mysterious. “It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.”

59What, pray tell, does happen as someone gets physically stronger and tougher?

60***

62Our definition of Mental Toughness, again –

64Clearly, that must be one of the most good things for anyone in humanity. It works regardless of what your particular ethics are, it works regardless of what you feel is important.

65If you think communication and empathy is the most important thing in the world, mental toughness lets you communicate and be empathetic even in the most challenging and fraught situations.

66If you think standing up to injustice is the most important thing in the world, mental toughness is what allows you to do that even when you know you’d suffer personally if you do so.

67In less lofty matters, more mental toughness helps you abstain from giving in to dumb short-term cravings, mental toughness stops you from buying high and selling low in a panic on the stock market, mental toughness is where you finish that last 10% of work and get it out the door even if you’re a little tired, thus relieving your stress and discharging your duties, in whatever sphere of life those duties happen to be.

68Clearly, we want to be mentally tough. Everyone should obviously want that; it’s a gateway we must pass through to get just about everything else we want.

69What’s physical toughness, then?

70I think we ought to take it off a lofty and abstract perch, make it really simple.

72***

74Let’s descend into Hell for a minute.

75I read as many books as I can find written by elite soldiers – Navy SEAL Team members, Delta Force, Marine Recon, etc.

76Anyone who gets into SEAL Team needs to go through “Basic Underwater Demolition School,” which is known for including a particularly brutal trial to get through – “Hell Week.”

77Here’s Richard Machowicz talking about the start of his Hell Week experience from “ Unleash the Warrior Within ” –

80“Then,  ra-ta-ta-ta! Boom! Boom! All of a sudden machine guns were sounding off over our heads, big flash explosions went off. A violet haze hung in the air from smoke grenades. You couldn’t even see your backpack, you couldn’t see anybody, everybody was bumping into each other. “Get the hell out!” came this thunderous bellow. They ran us out of the tent, screaming: “Go here, go over there, you guys can’t get it right, drop on the ground, get up.” We were trying to do what they were telling us to do, but there was too much at once, it was impossible. They were spraying us with hoses, shooting off guns. “Hit the ocean,” they ordered and we had to jump in the surf. It was a cold night, and we were freezing. After we were completely soaked, they hauled us back out and screamed at us to do push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups. Then, we ran back into the tent, and before our eyes they pulled out all the fresh clothes that we had packed for later in the week and had us drag them through the sand, then soak them in the dirt and salt water. After that, we were ordered to bring them all in and fold and organize them again. Then everything got kicked over and knocked all apart.”

81Candidates to join SEAL Team are already some of the fittest and strongest people in the world – if you look up the standards to even qualify to test to try to join, they’re otherworldly strong, fast, durable people who even get invited to try.

82And between 75% and 90% of some of the strongest people on the planet can’t handle this Week and quit. There’s constant sleep deprivation, the most intense physical training, and a variety of misery like needing to immerse in very cold ocean water for long periods of time.

83Here’s Machowicz describing “surf torture” –

84“ Surf torture formed the rhythm of our lives.  It marked the next descent into another ring of hell, the only way we knew one drill had ended and another would begin. Everything always came back to sitting in the water, arms linked together like a barrel of monkeys to form a chain of freezing bodies. As the surf came in, it pounded you and made it hard to breathe because of all the salt water, sand, and shells that went up your nose and down your throat. When a strong wave came in, the line got snaky and uneven, but you couldn’t let go. If you broke, the punishment wasn’t worth it. If somebody broke you tried to grab their arm so quickly that, hopefully, the instructors wouldn’t catch it. But, again, they knew the game, you didn’t. They ordered you to stand up, and just when you thought you’re about to go out and get warm again, they turned you around and put you back in.

88“ The line between winning and losing was clear.  I may have done some damage to my feet, but it was a kind of a morale victory that meant so much to me. It gave me a small victory to hold on to.  It provided the confidence to know that, if I could win once, I could win again. ”

89If you read memoirs written by veteran SEAL team members, similar things keep cropping up – first, just about everyone who gets through realizes the inherent unfairness of what they’re going through, and doesn’t let that get to them. Second, they stay focused on getting through the current mission at hand – they have no choice but to do that. Focusing on the pain or the bleeding or the freezing cold is not the answer.

90But finally, the biggest thing that stands out to me is that, after persevering and enduring far past one’s seeming limits, the elite soldier then has deep wells of confidence. Machowicz: “ It provided the confidence to know that, if I could win once, I could win again. ”

91Perhaps it’s like that quote in Fight Club –

92“After a night in fight club, everything in the real world gets the volume turned down. Nothing can piss you off. Your word is law, and if other people break that law or question you, even that doesn’t piss you off.”

93***

95Your word is law.  What an expression – imagine that.

96There’s no strict separation between the body and mind – physical toughness and mental toughness feed back into each other. Your mind lives in your body; you live your life in your body. Knowing that you’ve honed your body’s ability to be strong and endure through challenges gives you a stronger mind. Expanding your limits and hardening yourself makes the rest of life easier – it means less distress, permanently – “the volume gets turned down” – and it means more capacity to stay focused and accomplish your missions in life.

97Why become physically tougher?

98Because it makes everything better.

99***

101I’m privileged to know a few people who have performed at truly elite levels in their sport – Josef Wasinski as a powerlifter, Greg Nance in climbing and endurance athletics, Bryan Hernandez and Jason Shen in gymnastics.

102I’ve gotten to lift with Josef and run with Nance – it’s a transcendental experience watching how these men use their bodies and minds in harmony.

103Performing at that level is beyond the scope of what we’re going to talk about here – our focus is on the fundamentals.

104With our remaining time on Physical Toughness , I’d like to lay our four simple rules if you’re getting started to build more of this in your life. I learned all of these the hard way and suffered for it along the way.

105They are –

1061. Defense First
2. Accumulation
3. Adherence and Consistency
4. Generalization

107***

108RULE #1 FOR PHYSICAL TOUGHNESS:  DEFENSE FIRST

109The first and most important rule for training physical toughness is  DEFENSE FIRST.

110This cannot be emphasized highly enough.

111Whenever you begin a new training regime, it’s absolutely critical to learn correct movement patterns, study the common injuries and pitfalls people face, and take a smart progression that ensures you don’t get injured.

112We get to read memoirs of elite athletes and elite soldiers who succeed. We typically do not read memoirs from potentially elite athletes or elite soldiers who neglected to take do adequate defense, got injured, and were never able to reach their potential.

113Some of our readers are younger and have never been injured. To them, talking about stretching, warming up, cooling down, using things like a foam roller to beat the tightness and lactic acid out of your muscles – it can seem like a big waste of time.

114Going very slow, on low weight, and really learning great form for a squat or bench press – who wants to do that? Put more plates on, bro!

115Ever torn the cartilage in your knee because you have too many plates and bad form when squatting? I have. It’s… umm… not fun. Nor productive.

116Were the dozen or two workouts I got to “look cool” doing with two extra big plates on the bar in the squat worth months of rehab and being unable to walk for a while?

117Nope!

118I broke one of my teeth with a going-too-fast-and-reckless sparring partner doing Krav Maga. I knew he was out of control, but didn’t want to say anything for fear of looking not macho.

119A lot of aggravation and some expensive dental work later, was it worth it that I got to “look macho” and not to tell the knucklehead to slow down?

120Nope!

121Some injuries are unavoidable, and the occasional injury is part of the price of being an active and thriving physical animal. I never regret a fluke injury, and I’ve had my share of those too.

122But in the long term, you’re overwhelmingly best served by doing things correctly.

123Cultivate an intense and almost fanatically paranoid emphasis on getting down form, preparation, and recovery.

124You’re in the highest level of danger when you’re around “macho” people, especially young people, who care more about the optics and appearances of any particular workout than with staying in the game.

125Look – life is really long. There’s nothing  in terms of short-term gains that can be made up for by taking even a 1% higher chance of a significant injury. Whenever you tweak something badly or “things feel wrong” – at all – go conservative. Aggressively play defense, heal up, and recover. This must  be the foundation of any physical training at least until strong intermediate levels, at which point you can reassess what risks you want to take with a coach.

126***

128Coach Dan John holds a variety of achievements in discus throwing, olympic weightlifting, highland games, and the weight pentathlon — this is a true expert on all-around high levels of fitness.

129In his excellent book “ Never Let Go ,” he describes an “AIT Formula” — Accumulate, Intensify, Transform.

130John –
 
“If I could highlight the single greatest error most lifting enthusiasts make, it would be this: They have no variety. I’m not talking about using the decline rather than the incline for your pec development. I’m talking about doing nothing save going to the gym, walking on the treadmill, hopping off and doing a set of benches, playing with a machine or two, and hitting the steam room.

132“Accumulation is actively seeking and learning new sports, lifts, moves, ideas, and games. One literally accumulates a number of new training moves and attempts a low level of mastery in each.”
 
Too many people obsess over what the “perfect” thing to do is and don’t get started. If you don’t already have a sport or a profession that calls for certain types of physical training, then exploring and accumulating a low level of mastery in many different ones is key for being a thriving human.

133If you’re not sure what to do, pick anything. Do it until you’ve gotten the basics down and know broadly if it’s suitable for you or not.

134I’m going to guess our average reader age is about 35 years old. If so, that would mean you’ve likely got more than five decades left on this planet . People are, in general, too short-term oriented. If you spent the entire next decade  learning different types of lifting, running, swimming, endurance sports, team sports, martial arts, yoga, and whatever else, it’d be time well-spent.

135Accumulate different patterns of movement. When you do, constantly study the form and look to perfect it, and look to prevent and aggressively recover from potential injuries.

136***

138I’ve sometimes got a crazy travel schedule, and I’ve heard from a number of our readers who do too.

139For years, my travel schedule would throw off whatever training plan I’d be on. If I was on the road for something like the GiveGetWin Tour (typically over a dozen cities in around a month), my training would be liable to breaking.

140It wouldn’t always – but it’d break often enough, and I’d have to go through the hassle of restarting.

141Around a year ago, in early 2015, I tried something different: I set my minimum goal for weightlifting to be “once per calendar week” – a very flexible amount of time. If I knew I had a particularly brutal stretch, I might lift weights at the start of one week (say, Monday) and not again until two Fridays later – but this was enough to sustain a consistent level of strength that didn’t go backwards.

142More importantly, it was very possible to adhere to. I’ve missed zero weeks in that time – a year of lifting weights at least once per calendar week.

143If I’ve got a great setup and a gym, I might go 3x/week or every other day. But if I don’t, I go at least once. It’s compatible with just about any kind of diet or other form of training, too.

144I’m not the strongest dude around, but I’m strong enough and get the life-enhancing benefits of weightlifting.

145Our community tends to be very achiever-y, busy people. Those types of people tend to get hardcore into things, and perhaps, overdo them. Then fall off.

146No good!

147“Perfect or bust” is a dumb game to play.

148As a very useful tip, I check in on my physical training during every weekly and monthly review. It takes about 30 seconds. I ask if I need to tweak my diet or training this week, next week, or any time coming up.

149Again, this feeds consistency.

150A base of physical fitness and physical toughness is much built by being regularly active, not by being occasionally hyper-active while being burned-out, injured, or having fallen off the rest of the time.

151***

153And this is where the gains come from – periodically reflect on and apply your physical training to the real world being better.

154I like to commute by doing hikes or long walks; sometimes I’ll land at the airport and hike into whatever city. It often saves $20 to $50 in cab or train fare as a bonus, and it’s a great way to get really exhausted and thus sleep deeply and beat jet lag.

155I had a six hour walk across Tokyo recently from downtown to the suburbs north of the city where I’m staying. It was one of my friend’s last night in town, so I’d hung with him until late, then worked at a fast food place on some work I had to do, and it was very late.

156Everything was closed and dark as I was walking back… and then it started to snow.

157Not a lot.

158Just a bit.

159I rapidly started to feel a little miserable, though – it was warm earlier, and I had on relatively light clothing and a hat.

160The mind will play tricks on you – “oh, maybe I should get a cab” – or just starting to feel a little miserable and ruminating on it.

161But then I started to think: hold on a second, there’s people like Navy SEAL candidates that go an entire week on 2 hours of sleep while constantly doing intense physical fitness, carrying heavy logs and boats over their head, and getting through “surf torture” as part of it. They can get through it. I’m just walking  through a very nice and safe city and it’s a little cold.

162And then, it wasn’t such a big deal. Made the rest of the walk. No problem.

163You get all those fitness endorphins when you do stuff like that, but also, you come to respect yourself and get more confident.

164You start to think, “Well, this isn’t particularly a big deal.”

165Does it translate over to intense situations? Crisis mode at work, an intense negotiation, a critical period that you need to perform even though fatigued?

166Absolutely.

167You can sharpen this instinct by actually reflecting and journaling on your physical training and the lessons you feel. I ask myself little questions at the end of every day when I review it, and likewise at the end of the week.

168Don’t neglect those little opportunities to document and solidify your win, reinforcing your own self-conception as a tougher person.

169Add to that by actively looking for stories by elite coaches like Dan John and Mark Ripptoe, and elite soldiers like Richard Machowicz and  Veteran SEAL Commander Rorke Denver .

170You read about what those guys survive and thrive through, and you start to realize that your limits are far more than you thought.

171The more you stop, reflect, and reassess yourself as you build greater physical capacity, the more situations you’ll realize you can apply it.

172It sounds a little abstract – it is abstract – but it’s something you’ll see people performing at very high levels doing regularly. Train, get tougher, achieve things, reflect on what you achieved, and use that to get tougher still.

173***

175Biggest thing we talked about is why  become physically tough. For some of us, it’s already a known and accepted fact. If you haven’t taken physical toughness seriously enough, I hope this is both persuasive and something of a wakeup call.

176From there, four steps –

1771. Defense First : Life is a long game and it’s more important to not get injured and out of the game than it is to be “10% more hardcore” in a stupid way.

1782. Accumulation : Regularly start seeking out new movements, sports, and patterns of action. It’ll serve you life-long.

1793. Consistency : Review your physical state and make adjustments on a weekly and monthly basis, as needed. Set your minimum targets sustainably and be consistent with them.

1804. Generalization : In situations where you feel physically miserable, reflect on times you’ve been tough and persevered and use it as fuel. Reflect after achievements to consolidate lessons. Actively seek out and read narratives and memoirs from people who perform at a high physical level, and then reflect on those for lessons too.

181***

182PS: I couldn’t work this quote into this chapter but had to share it anyways –

1 T OUGHNESS #4: R ELIGIO

3
There had been whispers and rumors for some time now, but there were often whispers and they were often wrong.

4Confirmation came as more messengers came streaming into Athens.

6Alexander III of Macedon, ruler of the largest empire ever known, had died in Babylon. His body would be returned to Macedon in a funeral procession.

7The Athenians had been paying tribute for nearly exactly 15 years to the Macedonians since submitting to Alexander’s father, Philip II, as their Hegemon , grand ruler.

8Almost exactly 13 years earlier, they had risen in revolt when Philip was assassinated.

9Alexander had marched quickly to enforce his will on the great city, and had made peace and pardoned the rebels.

10Many of them, thus, would still be alive now, 13 years later, now that Alexander too had died.

11And so the whispers grew to spoken voices, and the spoken voices to shouted words.

13Many of the elders of Athens would have been alive before Philip II had claimed his hegemony – and while mostly quiet the past 13 years, now they began to rise against the Macedonian Regent Antipater.

14The following year, the Athenian Eurymedon stands in front of an assembly – more like a mob, really – and says, “Aristotle served the despot! Aristotle is no Athenian! Aristotle respects not the gods! The impious must be punished!”

15***

17Aristotle, now 62 years old, reacted differently than Socrates when faced with a similar charge.

18He proclaimed – "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy!" – and fled, never setting foot in Athens again.

19He died later that year, of natural causes, in Chalcis.

20***

22We are of course enamored with Aristotle’s life, even to this day. The word “Philosophy” comes from the Greek compound “Philo Sophia” – love of wisdom.

23It included some of what we understand to be philosophy these days, yes, but broadly was the study of everything .

24Aristotle pushed forward science, biology, zoology, poetry and drama, theories of government and politics, logic, rhetoric, and day-to-day conduct among people.

25Perhaps this may seem odd, but one question I find myself coming back to again and again – I wonder how Aristotle traveled between cities.

26He was, you know, a man once. Flesh, blood, bone, sinew. Not too different from you or I.

27The young Aristotle’s father had been court physician to King Amyntas of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s grandfather. The young Aristotle would likely have lived and quartered near the Macedonian monarchy in Pella.

28He father died when he was only 10 years old; when he was 18, he went to the famous Academy in Athens for the first time to study.

29A trivial question, maybe, but one that intrigues me – how did he get there? Ship, foot, or horseback?

30I want to know how the man whose mind sprung forth such greatness chose to travel, how he moved his body through time and space.

31He would have transited to Lesbos to do his famous studies of the animal life by ship; of course, it was an island.

32When he fled the persecution of Athens, did he gather his materials and immediately take to foot? Horseback? Did he get passage on one of the merchant ships, slipping away to the docks one morning before they set sail?

33This question is of the utmost interest to me. Horseback, foot, or ship – what was Aristotle’s preferred means of transit?

34***

36We’ll come back to that question; first, let us turn our attention to 21 centuries later.

37It is May in the year 1840; it is 25 years after the final defeat of Napoleon; it is 25 years into the Pax Britannica ; London is the capital of the world.

38The foremost scribe of this era is the Scottish lawyer, Tomas Carlyle, and he is giving a series of lectures on Heroism ; the next year they would become a book. His oratory is still explosive today, some 200 years later –

39“ It is well said, in every sense, that a man’s religion is the chief fact with regard to him.  A man’s, or a nation of men’s. By religion I do not mean here the church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith which he will sign and, in words or otherwise, assert; not this wholly, in many cases not this at all. We see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any of them.  This is not what I call religion, this profession and assertion; which is often only a profession and assertion from the outworks of the man, from the mere argumentative region of him , if even so deep as that. But the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest.  That is his religion…”

40***

42You’ll recall from Chapter #4 that our definition of Mental Toughness is –

43“Doing what one ought to do, regardless if you feel like doing it or not. ”

44Carlyle is another one of those titans of thought, one of those types that penetrates deep into the nature of mankind.

45In On Heroes , he continued –

46“ The thoughts they had were the parents of the actions they did; their feelings were parents of their thoughts: it was the unseen and spiritual in them that determined the outward and actual;—their religion, as I say, was the great fact about them. ”

47Hmm – this seems true.

48Is there something here?

49It seems like there’s something important here.

50***

52We need one more data point before we can understand how one’s religio  turns into toughness.

53Let’s turn to another season in Europe, one that felt warm for one Englishman – and devastatingly cold for another:

54“This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. […] We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. […] My good friends, for the second time in our history a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.” – Neville Chamberlain, on signing the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler

55“We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat […] we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: ‘ Though art weighed in the balance and found wanting.’  Do not suppose this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning, this is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proferred to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.” – Winston Churchill, on Chamberlain’s signing the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler

56Churchill, that old and unlikable war monger, that belligerent relic of a dying age, that leftover from Victorian times, that holdover of something more primitive than Chamberlain’s sophisticated treaty-making and compromising – Churchill would continue on this theme in the coming months –

57“ You were given the choice between war and dishonour – you have chose dishonour, and you will have war. ”

58He was roundly booed and jeered in the House of Commons for this line of thinking.

59In September 1939, Hitler’s tanks rolled into Poland. The Munich Agreement forcing the Czechs to disarm and concede to the Nazi Empire, the illusion of Chamberlain’s “peace for our time”… this had lasted… for all of a single year.

60***

62It is, of course, more useful to be strong than to be weak; more useful to be brave than to be cowardly; more useful to be solid than to be a quivering mess; more useful to take action when action is called for, than to be a useless bundle of anxious and nervous energy…

63Two chapters ago, we laid out our definition of Mental Toughness –

64“Doing what one ought to do, regardless if you feel like doing it or not. ”

65If you agree with that definition of Mental Toughness, then it’s one of the most useful things on the planet. Mental Toughness is what lets you breach through the walls of fear and inaction, to do what you ought to do.

66But what ought you to do?

67Where does an instinct to appease come from, as compared to an instinct towards a “supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour”?

68This is not a question of a tax rate a little lower or higher; Chamberlain and Churchill do not merely disagree on a simple question of policy; no, it seems like the very foundations of their instincts differ immensely .

69Their feelings differ immensely – those feelings become their thoughts, and those thoughts then become their actions.

70Whither comes this from?

71***

73In On Heroes , Carlyle talked of how every man has a religion, and that a man’s religion is the most important characteristic about him.

74“By religion I do not mean here the church-creed which he professes…”

75The word “religion” could have been confused in Carlyle’s day, and is even more likely to be confused in our own.

76I prefer a Latin word – religio  – that’s used in English exactly the way we’re talking about.

77In 1645, an English physician wrote Religio Medici , “The Religion of a Doctor,” but he meant it to go far beyond organized religion –

78“But to difference my self neerer, & draw into a lesser circle:  There is no Church whose every part so squares unto my conscience , whose articles, constitutions, and customes seeme so consonant unto reason, and as it were framed to my particular devotion, as this whereof I hold my beliefe, the Church of England, to whose faith I am a sworn subject; and therefore in a double obligation, subscribe unto her Articles, and endeavour to observe her constitutions: whatsoever is beyond, as points indifferent, I observe according to the rules of my private reason, or the humor and fashion of my devotion, neither believing this, because Luther affirmed it, or disproving that, because Calvin hath disavouched it. I condemne not all things in the Councell of Trent, nor approve all in the Synod of Dort.  In briefe, where the Scripture is silent, the Church is my Text; where that speaks, tis but my Comment; where there is a joynt silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my Religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason. ”

79We’ll undoubtedly cover “faith vs works” at some point in a future edition of The Strategic Review, and Martin Luther’s claim that direct interpretation of the Scriptures from the Bible is paramount over the authority of any given priest or church – these have been two of the longest running debates in history. America is firmly in the Protestant “faith” camp over the Catholic “works” camp, and in the Protestant “direct reading” over the Catholic “authority” camp – though most people are not aware of the historical context.

80But let’s merely put an asterisk on that history, and say we’ll come back to it in the future – we’re right now investigating in Toughness , that great and terrific thing that lets us do worthy things on this planet.

81I’ll state my view simply: Organized religion varies greatly based on time and place, based on the leadership and community participation, but an individual’s religio  is always and ever critical to how their life is lived and what they do in this world.

82To come back around to Carlyle – “… the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest.”
 
***

84When you think about it, isn’t that the most potent and marvelous statements?

85My first reading of On Heroes  shook me; it’s something so clear, and yet was so elusive until I read it on paper.

86What you lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning your relation to this mysterious Universe, and your duties and destiny here… this is the primary thing for you, and creatively determines all the rest.

87Wow.

88Wow.

89Wow.

90I’m not talking about any mysterious forces, no “laws of attraction”, no angels, no provenance guiding your hand – no, I’m talking about a much more simple and straightforward phenomenon. Your belief at the deepest level about how you relate to the universe and your duties and destinies here, this becomes the wellspring of your feelings – those become your thoughts, and those becomes your actions.

91Wow.

92***

94The connection to Toughness , then, becomes simple and obvious – some of us believe on the deepest levels in service, especially in times of crisis, in navigating strife in order to produce and serve.

95Others do not; many people believe on the deepest levels that avoidance of pain is of paramount importance.

96Churchill’s Religio , his relationship with the Universe and his belief about his place here, was not just evident in his belligerence against Hitlerism and later, Stalin’s Iron Curtain; no, more than that, that force deeply animated him across all his affairs.

97All of us know Churchill as Prime Minister during World War II, but not as many people realize that he was a committed historian, journalist, soldier, painter, and bricklayer in his life as well. He won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1953 and wrote dozens of books in his life.

98In just that single paragraph denouncing the Munich Agreement with Hitler, we can see so much about how Churchill relates with the Universe –

99“…’Though art weighed in the balance and found wanting.’ Do not suppose this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning, this is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proferred to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time. ”

100Read that paragraph and reflect on it – you can Churchill’s whole religio  on display. He believes that history is judging him, that every people is “weighed in the balance” – and lo, if you are found wanting, then there will be a reckoning.

101Cowardice will be forced to drink a bitter cup, year-in and year-out, unless met by moral health, martial vigour, and arising and standing for freedom as in olden times.

102You can see the defiance of Hitler’s takeover of Sudetenland there, but you can see infinitely more if you reflect on it – this is a person who believes that the way to building great things is through enduring through strife, through cultivating honour and vigour and health, and requiring one to stand in the face of fire.

103His religio  – his deepest understanding of his purpose in the Universe – was a wellspring of toughness for Sir Winston.

104***

106Aristotle’s school of philosophy became known as the “Peripatetic School” – peripatetic meaning “walking about” in Greek.

107For my part, I imagine Aristotle went over land on foot and horseback often, even though he had the funds to travel by ship.

108I don’t know – it’s not recorded – but he seems like the type who liked to engage his body. He lived on the ground, not in the clouds.

109We see a stark difference between him and Socrates when the Athenian mob wanted to have him executed – “I will not let them sin twice against philosophy!”

110Compare that to Socrates drinking the cup of hemlock, accepting execution in a high-minded way to make a political and moral point.

111These two old Greek philosophers, they differed in this regard. Aristotle had no inclination to martyrdom or making an abstract point about democracy and piety.

112***

114It is clear that developing your understanding of your relation to the Universe has the most critical significant on how you live your life.

115Is this all high-minded stuff? If you go to the final last abstractions of moral concepts, there are not too many of them – justice, loyalty, family, beauty, a few more along those lines.

116Frankly, this is not the thing that interests me the most.

117I’m more interested in whether one commutes by walking or by taxi.

118A few questions to mull over –

119How valuable is tactile pleasure to you? Cakes, wonderful coffees, etc?

120Do you express your true viewpoints and feelings when sober, or only when intoxicated?

121Is intoxication good, bad, or neither?

122Is it virtuous to lose in a morally superior way?

123Is conflict to be avoided at all costs?

124Is there merit in being in more beautiful surroundings?

125Is there more value in beautiful tools and furnishings, or functional and hardy less-beautiful items?

126Is sweating good or bad?

127***

129The economists have a term called “revealed preferences” – it means that the only way you can tell a consumer’s preference is by observing what they actually do when they purchase things, not by surveying or asking them.

130I think, to understand ourselves, we should look at our revealed preferences.

131Justice, beauty, honor – bah! These are worthless if they live in the realm of ideals without prompting any action or living.

132Vigour requires strain; most triumph requires strife; most people in wealthy and comfortable backgrounds, if they study themselves, will find that strain and strife is not how they are living and relating to the Universe.

133Can you evolve?

134Yes, of course yes. This is the reason that we have books, scriptures, lectures, community, art, culture.

135It’s worth studying yourself to see how you’ve been living, and then studying the lives of others while thinking deeply on why they lived the way they did.

136Churchill’s life was certainly a fantastic one, Aristotle’s life was a fantastic one – can we gain some of Churchill’s vigour and Aristotle’s pragmatic sense of study and love of wisdom?

137Of course we can. These men were not born finished products; they grew into who they became.

138If I lived 200 years ago, in 1816, I might have used the term “Spiritual Toughness” – but the time has passed for that way of thinking about the world.

139And yet, now as always, inescapable, ever-present, we all have some view, deep down, of how we ought to relate to the Universe.

140We must study ourselves to discover how we relate to the world now, and then study lives of admirable people to see where we can cultivate better ways to live and relate.

141Religio  – toughness.

1 T OUGHNESS #5: I NTEGRATION

3Sometimes I sit and wonder what the Romans during Augustus Caesar’s time thought.

4Rome, of course, went through a hell of a mess. Constant strife and civil wars, the nature of military service, work, and life being reordered. Internal and external war, conflict, change.

5And then — just like that — it was over. Julius Caesar was dictator for life.

6And then — just like that — it wasn’t over.

7Caesar lays bleeding on the Senate Floor and sees Brutus among the conspirators.

8“You too, my child? Then die, Caesar.”

9More civil war. Bloodbaths. Proscriptions.

10And then — just like that — Augustus was in power.

11A strange era that would have rippling effects for the next 15 centuries, at least — we can perhaps understand it looking backwards, but what was it to live through such times?

12110 years ago, a baby boy was born in Pennsylvania — who would live through a similar tidal wave of changes across the known world.

13To understand this world, our world, could we try to understand it as he understood it unfolding?

14When he was born in 1906 in Lewistown PA, Samuel B. Griffith was, of course, not yet a Brigadier General in the Marine Corps, a veteran of multiple campaigns; he had not served as the Executive Officer or commander of the 1st Marine Raiders Battalion, modeled off the British commandos that had done so much damage to Adolf Hitler; he had not received the Navy Cross in ’42 for “extreme heroism and courageous devotion to duty”; neither had he received the Purple Heart for the serious wounds he sustained fighting the Empire of Japan in Guadalcanal; he had not received Distinguished Service Cross for fighting in New Georgia; he had not instructed at the Naval War College post-WWII; and he most certainly hadn’t gotten his doctorate from Oxford University in Chinese Military History yet.

15No, of course not; in 1906, Brigadier General Griffith was not yet a soldier, commander, or scholar; he was a baby, born just 6 years into a new century being held in Mama Griffith’s arms.

16Theodore Roosevelt was still President of the United States in 1906 when young Samuel became the newest member of the Griffith family. That same year, Teddy Roosevelt would become the first statesman to win the Nobel Peace Prize — for brokering peace between Russia and Japan in the Russo-Japanese War.

17“The Great War” — World War I — had not happened yet. The Russian Empire under the House of Romanov was 185 years old at that point, and the Japanese Empire was young at 38 years old and still under its first very first Emperor, Meiji.

18The Great War would start 8 years later; some of his first adolescent memories likely would be of the American Expeditionary Force mobilizing under General Pershing in 1917 — when Samuel was a mere 11 years old.

19The Romanov dynasty fell that same year, and then liquidated shortly after, bringing Vladimir Lenin to command of the Rus.

20Oft-forgotten now, the young Empire of Japan entered on the side of the Allies, savaging and expanding at the expense of Imperial Germany’s colonies and bases in the Pacific.

21Later, the youngster would be Brigadier General Griffith — now he was still a pre-teen — his was to be an eventful life.

22***

24What is it about Pennsylvania?

25In January of 1927, as the future General Griffith would have been studying at university, another baby was born in Pennsylvania who would greatly shape the course of American military thinking.

26A mere 200 miles from Griffith’s birthplace of Lewistown, the future Air Force Colonel John Richard Boyd is born in in Erie, Pennsylvania.

27As young Boyd enters the world in ’27, “Silent Cal” Coolidge is President.

28He became commander-in-chief when his predecessor, Warren G. Harding, died in office after being elected on the promise of a “Return to Normalcy.” As Harding put it in 1920 —

30When Harding died in office, Coolidge became President and kept the same style of governance, winning re-election in 1924.

31In 1929, little John Boyd was 2-years-old as Samuel Griffith is uneventfully commissioned into the U.S. Navy, Herbert Hoover becomes the new President, and the decade of the “Roaring Twenties” was set to comes to a close — not with a whimper, but with a bang.

32Soon, the old “Normalcy” would be gone forever, though who could have known it then?

33On October 29th 1929, the stock market crashes, and the Great Depression begins.

34John Boyd — still a toddler — was to have an eventful life.

35***

37You’ll recall we’re in the midst of exploring Toughness .

38For this chapter, we’ve introduced two remarkable American thinkers — Marine Corps Major General Samuel B. Griffith, and Air Force Colonel John Boyd.

39Both men were devoted servants of their country in troubled times, but the remarkable thing about both of them is their broad and open-minded thinking and learning. There is no partisan rah-rah Americanness here; these men are as macho as it can be, and yet see life and death in this world in its full scale of vivid color.

40Both Griffith and Boyd had a deep respect for history, even as it was unfolding in real time, and both engaged in serious military scholarship later. Both were able to largely size-up why America and its allies sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed, and why America’s adversaries sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed.

41Each of these thinkers is worth reading; taken together, they paint an incredible picture of when people can endure under stress and pressure, and when they can’t, on scales from the very largest to the very most personal.

42We will endeavor to learn from these men.

43***

45Enter Griffith —

47“At the other end of this spectrum, a tired man wearing a greasy felt hat, a tattered shirt, and soiled shorts is seated, his back against a tree. Barrel pressed between his knees, butt resting on the moist earth between sandaled feet, is a Browning automatic rifle. Hooked to his belt, two dirty canvas sacks—one holding three home-made bombs, the other four magazines loaded with .30-caliber ammunition. Draped around his neck, a sausage-like cloth tube with three days’ supply of rice. The man stands, raises a water bottle to his lips, rinses his mouth, spits out the water. He looks about him carefully, corks the bottle, slaps tile stock of the Browning three times, pauses, slaps it again twice, and disappears silently into the shadows. In forty minutes, his group of fifteen men will occupy a previously prepared ambush.”

— Griffith’s Introduction to his translation of “On Guerrilla Warfare” by Mao, 1961

48***

50It is, I contend, impossible to come to any reasonable understanding of history if you take “rooting interests” in every conflict and period.

51When Roman Civil War breaks out once again, between Julius Caesar’s adopted son Augustus, and his right-hand man, Mark Anthony, it is hard not to be stirred and pick sides.

52It’s hard enough to understand Augustus when you aren’t “rooting for him” or “rooting against him” — if you start by either cheering or booing him, your historical studies will be biased and it will be nearly impossible to get a complete picture. You cripple your mind when you take rooting interests.

53Well, that’s easy enough to say about Augustus; Augustus has been dead a long time.

54It becomes much harder when looking at figures who still tower over the current day.

55Across the lives of Griffith and Boyd, world power shifted from the British Empire being paramount, with France, Germany, and Japan its secondary powers, to a deadlock between the Soviet and NATO blocs, with Red China being one of the most important countries that could tilt the balance of power in one direction or the other.

56Beginning lives in a world where indoor plumbing and electricity were still a relative rarity, Griffith and Boyd departed a world with fingers on the triggers of gigantic nuclear arsenals.

57Their views of how this world unfolded come to us like a long-lived Roman Republican soldier, living through the times before Caesar’s rise well into Augustus’s reign.

58Perhaps the most informative is seeing the scholarship of these men as they looked to understand what happened in China during their lifetimes.

59***

61The Third Chinese Zen Patriarch, Jianzhi Sengcan, wrote in poetry —

63I contend that both Griffith and Boyd were able to have that almost supernatural drive towards clarity and away from bias. They were battle-hardened Americans living through an era being torn apart; they were undoubtedly Americans and shaped by their Americanness; and yet, you see something a love of wisdom and scholarship come through their writings more than any political agenda.

64Mao.

65What can we say of Mao?

66If you don’t at least attempt to understand the Late Qing Dynasty that Mao was born into, I reckon it’s impossible to understand Mao at all. That’s already a problem for our Western readers who aren’t familiar with Chinese history.

67The Late Qing, of course, were incredibly corrupt and brutal. They were a small minority group of Chinese, the Manchu, who conquered the much larger Han. While the Early Qing were resourceful, innovative, and technological, the Late Qing can only be characterized by their paranoia, repressiveness, and backwards-looking policies. Constantly terrified of their Han subjects rising up in revolt, and did everything they could to repress science, technology, and military tracts in their late reign.

68But even if I could paint an introduction of the Manchu and the Han Mandarins they governed through, it would still be impossible to separate out Mao the guerrilla commander from Mao the later statesman.

69Of the latter, much has been said; of the former, not nearly enough. Mao is probably the most accomplished guerrilla commander in all of history — but he is such a towering figure, how can we isolate one period of his life to learn from it, over and apart from the later years?

70We cannot; at least, I cannot.

71Thankfully, we don’t need to try to get a perfectly clear understanding of Mao as-he-was to learn the lessons of history — if we instead step into the shoes of two Americans who we can largely understand, Griffith and Boyd, we can see how this Marine General and Air Force Colonel came to understand and relate what happened in the oldest civilization on the planet as Mao’s forces came to power — and those lessons are perhaps universal; not just in warfare, but to all of conflict, society, and human life.

72***

74Our reference text is “ Fleet Marine Force Reference Publication 12-18 ”, the 1989 reprinting of Griffith’s translation along with commentary.

75It’s not well-known among civilians, but important and valuable to learn that every non-classified work produced by the U.S. Government is freely available — there are treasure troves of historical documents, analyses, and things to learn from. FMFRP 12-18 is one of those documents.

76Brigadier General Griffith was a devoted American soldier, but he saw the world far beyond any black and white terms — you can see both a sympathy for people in hard situations, and a genuine respect for those who master the laws of the universe in his work.

77From the first part of his commentary —

80Griffith continues,

82(“Antediluvian” means “really old-fashioned”; I didn’t know the word, either.)

83***

85We’ll return to Griffith and Mao in a moment. As you can see from his writing, General Griffith takes a deep look at the causes that give way to revolutionary war, and you can see that he’s completely understanding, even sympathetic, to the people who are ground down under the oppressive conditions where revolutions can so easily take hold.

86Both Griffith and later-Colonel John Boyd were hardened in combat; Griffith with his commands during World War II, Boyd flying fighter pilot missions over Korea.

87Both of them harnessed their war experiences into a deep curiosity of how conflict originates and how different societies deal with their conflicts.

88In his early years, John Boyd was a hot-shot fighter pilot who went on to study calculus and mechanical engineering in order to make his first great contribution to the military, Energy Maneuverability Theory, which still guides aircraft design and flight patterns to this day.

89Later, he became interested in the roots of conflict between peoples and the nature of strategy itself.

90He did not leave behind many written works; his preferred method of sharing his lessons was by giving briefings to senior military and government officials.

91We’re left with copies of his slides from those briefings, and explanations by his students, colleagues, and friends as to what they mean.

92One of the most intriguing sets of slides by Boyd are titled,

93“The Strategic Game of ? And ?”

94You can look at the Slides on your own here —

95http://www.ausairpower.net/JRB/strategic_game.pdf

96They stand on their own, but they’ll make even more sense if you’ve read a good biography of Boyd, such as Coram’s “ Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the World ,” which is excellent and highly recommended.

97***

99Boyd quotes Robert Taber in those slides —

102“It follows, that it must be the business of the guerrilla, and of his clandestine political organization in the cities, to destroy the stable image of the government, and so to deny its credits, to dry up its source of revenue, and to create dissension within the frightened owning classes, within the government bureaucracy (whose payrolls will be pinched), and within the military itself. Isolation, military and political, is the great enemy of guerrilla movements. It is the task of the urban organization to prevent this isolation, to provide diversions and provocations when needed, to maintain contact, to keep the world aware of a revolution in progress even when there is no progress to report.”

***

104We are coming soon to our lessons on Toughness.

105Boyd goes on to point out that,

106“Living systems are open systems; closed systems are non-living systems. Point: If we don’t communicate with outside world—to gain information for knowledge and understanding as well as matter and energy for sustenance— we die out to become a non-discerning and uninteresting part of that world.”

And comes to the conclusion that,

107“Simply stated:  As human beings, we cannot exist without an external or surrounding environment from which we can draw sustenance, nourishment, or support. In other words Interaction permits vitality and growth while Isolation leads to decay and disintegration. ”

108***

110I recall the first time I read Griffith’s translation of “On Guerrilla War” — it seemed so... simple... trivial... basic. Why did people find this insightful?

111The translation —

113“Remarks:
1. Replace the door when you leave the house. [hanging doors were used as beds in the summer]
2. Roll up the bedding on which you have slept.
3. Be courteous.
4. Be honest in your transactions.
5. Return what you borrow.
6. Replace what you break.
7. Do not bathe in the presence of women.
8. Do not without authority search the pocketbooks of those you arrest.“ 

Later, as I studied more, I came to realize that those rules, correctly instituted and followed well, contained an immense amount of wisdom.

114***

116“It is often said that guerrilla warfare is primitive. This generalization is dangerously misleading and true only in the technological sense. If one considers the picture as a whole, a paradox is immediately apparent, and the primitive form is understood to be in fact more sophisticated than nuclear war or atomic war or war as it was waged by conventional armies, navies, and air forces. Guerrilla war is not dependent for success on the efficient operation of complex mechanical devices, highly organized logistical systems, or the accuracy of electronic computers. It can be conducted in any terrain, in any climate, in any weather; in swamps, in mountains, in farmed fields. Its basic element is man, and man is more complex than any of his machines. He is endowed with intelligence, emotions, and will. Guerrilla warfare is therefore suffused with, and reflects, man’s admirable qualities as well as his less pleasant ones.”

And then —

117“Intelligence is the decisive factor in planning guerrilla operations. Where is the enemy? In what strength? What does he propose to do? What is the state of his equipment, his supply, his morale? Are his leaders intelligent, bold, and imaginative or stupid and impetuous? Are his troops tough, efficient, and well disciplined, or poorly trained and soft? Guerrillas expect the members of their intelligence service to provide the answers to these and dozens more detailed questions. “Guerrilla intelligence nets are tightly organized and pervasive. In a guerrilla area, every person without exception must be considered an agent — old men and women, boys driving ox carts, girls tending goats, farm laborers, storekeepers, schoolteachers, priests, boatmen, scavengers. The local cadres “put the heat” on everyone, without regard to age or sex, to produce all conceivable information. And produce it they do.

“As a corollary, guerrillas deny all information of themselves to their enemy, who is enveloped in an impenetrable fog. Total inability to get information was a constant complaint of the Nationalists during the first four Suppression Campaigns, as it was later of the Japanese in China and of the French in both Indochina and Algeria. This is a characteristic feature of all guerrilla wars, The enemy stands as on a lighted stage; from the darkness around him, thousands of unseen eyes intently study his every move, his every gesture. When he strikes out, he hits the air; his antagonists are insubstantial, as intangible as fleeting shadows in the moonlight.

118“Because of superior information, guerrillas always engage under conditions of their own choosing; because of superior knowledge of terrain, they are able to use it to their advantage and the enemy’s discomfiture. Guerrillas fight only when the chances of victory are weighted heavily in their favor; if the tide of battle unexpectedly flows against them, they withdraw. They rely on imaginative leadership, distraction, sunrise, and mobility to create a victorious situation before battle is joined. The enemy is deceived and again deceived. Attacks are sudden, sharp, vicious, and of short duration. Many are harassing in nature; others designed to dislocate the enemy’s plans and to agitate and confuse his commanders. The mind of the enemy and the will of his leaders is a target of far more importance than the bodies of his troops.”

***

120Remarkably, then, we see how “roll up the bedding on which you slept” becomes such a critical thing to do.

121Mao blurred the lines between combatant and non-combatant; he didn’t have a black-and-white understanding of who was part of the war effort against the Japanese, or later against the Nationalists.

122Griffith tried to put this in context for Americans —

123“In the United States, we go to considerable trouble to keep soldiers out of politics, and even more to keep politics out of soldiers. Guerrillas do exactly the opposite. They go to great lengths to make sure that their men are politically educated and thoroughly aware of the issues at stake. A trained and disciplined guerrilla is much more than a patriotic peasant, workman, or student armed with an antiquated fowling-piece and a home-made bomb. His indoctrination begins even before he is taught to shoot accurately, and it is unceasing. The end product is an intensely loyal and politically alert fighting man.”

***

125History is of course enjoyable on its own, but what are we driving at here?

126Writing about the Long March, General Griffith wrote, “The Reds faced many critical situations, but they were tough and determined. Every natural obstacle, and there were many, was overcome.“

127Indeed, the endurance of Mao’s soldiers is something to behold; we have seen not too many instances of such immense and world-shaping fortitude since the times of Sparta. Many people can win when things are going well, but how many people can endure for so long under such hardship and deprivation?

128This is an ability we want for ourselves and our friends.

129***

131Boyd points out that all conflict is a game of integration and isolation — you want to integrate and refine yourself and your allies physically, mentally, and morally. (And if in a direct conflict, you want to isolate your adversaries physically, mentally, morally.)

132John Boyd and Samuel Griffith were contemporaries, but it’s not clear to me if they ever met or came across each other’s works. My best guess is — probably.

133Nonetheless, reading the two of them together and thinking on it gives some guidelines for militaries and entire societies — the question for us, then, is how do we apply this to our everyday lives?

134***

136In two chapters, we’ll talk about Christians being burned to death and savaged under some Roman Emperors. They often went to their deaths willingly, even joyfully.

137Such fortitude! The grace and poise of those martyrs did much to win over the world to Christianity.

138And also — such toughness!

139In our last chapter, Religio, we discussed how your feelings about your purpose in this universe effect your drive to continue, the standards you set for yourself; indeed, it’s perhaps the primary wellspring of any action beyond mere reflex.

140Whereas we all have our personal beliefs of how we relate to this world and what we are to do in our time here, this is then shaped most deeply by what groups we are integrated into. To continue for long and brutal stretches of time, integration is critical and isolation is perhaps fatal.

141Let’s explore three ways of greater integration —

1421. Society-wide, such as in a Golden age
2. Membership in an individual faction or movement worth backing
3. Integration despite lonely paths to greatness

143***

145It is hard to see past the present day.

146As of this writing, in early 2016, we live in a time of deep divides and division. Tensions seem to be rising the world over. We live in interesting times.

147It’s hard to recognize that this is not always the case.

148For brief flashes of history, entire societies are brought into harmony and enter Golden Ages.

149Fleeting — they tend to be fleeting — but how much of the world’s progress comes when entire societies have all their members developing all of their potential and rapidly advancing?

150I have no prescriptions for starting a Golden Age across an entire nation; it is a topic I wish I knew some answer to; alas, I do not. I’ll continue scouring history books and doing my work, and see what I can find — yet, I do not even have speculations for you on this score.

151But I can say, firmly, across my travels I’ve seen many places where their own rhythms and affairs moved only to their own clockwork, and where a surge of expansion seemed to be happening.

152Silicon Valley has of course been such a place for the United States, and may well continue to be; no one that I know who has been in Saigon, Beijing, or Dubai over the past 15 years can help but remark on how rapidly those places have developed; perhaps they will continue to develop.

153Istanbul moves to its own rhythms; despite being in some of the most dangerous geography in the world (look at their neighbors — the Balkans to the northwest, Russia across the Black Sea, Iraq to the southeast, Iran to the east, Syria to the south — egads)... and yet, the Turks are uniquely full of life. Perhaps Istanbul will be special over the coming decades.

154America is a large place; different parts of it move to different rhythms. Individual cities flourish and grow. In the United States, I’ve seen Boulder and Austin seem poised on a certain sort of renaissance.

155I cannot say definitively where will boom and grow at large scale, but I can say that it’s worth seeking that place out if you’re stagnant. There’s something special at MIT in Cambridge if you’re wanting to push forward engineering, likewise Silicon Valley if you’re a programmer.

156Seeking out a place that’s particularly suited to your talents and is booming across the board is a wonderful way to get integration and gains once the hard work of getting there and getting your bona fides in that society is completed.

157The opposite are places where people feel isolated and which have entered spirals of defeat. As I passed through old Raton, in New Mexico, I wrote a poem about it —

158 Raton Station

164***

166Being part of a society having a broad Golden Age is probably the best of things; widespread benefits, optimism, constant exchanges of ideas, of trade, growth and prosperity reigns.

167Going down the spectrum, Mao’s guidelines become prescient — items like “Be courteous,” “Return what you borrow,” “Replace what you break” are, I dare say, more important than ideology for functioning.

168Movements or factions live in tumultuous times and places. If you cannot find a Golden Age, you could instead find a meritorious group to be a part of.

169Caution is warranted! How many of these could-be-good things turn very bad?

170Many, of course.

171But tight-knit groups that live during times of strife can mutually support each other, bringing forth resources and understanding. Sometimes the strife brings the people inside even closer together.

172General Griffith commented on this —

175Macabre indeed — for the Americans and Nationalists. But as Griffith reflected in his commentary on Mao, it’s not unique to China or to Communism. The American Revolutionary company under Francis Marian — the “Swamp Fox” — lived in such a way.

176Whereas Silicon Valley now is booming loudly, it was once a nascent and still-largely-invisible movement, an early movement; one that was small and where cultivating courtesy and good manners was perhaps the most paramount in finding a place among the young group.

177If the paths you’ve chosen place you somewhere where you’re part of a small group, cultivating courtesy and mastering those fundamentals are probably the most important to integrating.

178***

180But we’re not talking about mere resources. Yes, resources are critical; but so much is possible with so very little resources if one has the will.

181What if your path is lonelier?

182This is where isolation, I dare say, is most possible and most dangerous.

183Endurance and constant trying — despite constant setbacks and failures — is a hallmarked requirement of most large and worthy things.

184If there is a society for you, find it! If there is a truly worthy movement, cultivate your courtesy constantly and join it.

185What if there isn’t?

186This is where loneliness and isolation are most dangerous.

187Vincent van Gogh is the first to come to mind. He had his brother, Theo, and not much else across the entire timeframe of his too-short life.

188One can’t help but wonder what Van Gogh might have done with another decade or two in this world — as it is, he leaves behind some of the finest things done with a human hand — alas, no?

189This is where Boyd’s work is poignant, and with thinking upon it, perhaps we can deduce lessons for ourselves.

190How to be integrated and refined physically, mentally, and morally in this world?

191A society during a Golden Age — yes, that’s the easiest way. Nearly automatic.

192A courteous and well-received member of a group — harder, still possible.

193But if you are alone?

194There is, of course, friendship — which warrants its own issue; we’ll cover it in great depth during our next Series.

195Beyond that, isolation mentally or morally is devastating.

196It’s also more common than one would think, since it’s so rarely talked about.

197Winston Churchill himself suffered —

198“I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand back and, if possible, get a pillar between me and the train. I don’t like to stand by the side of the ship and look down into the water. A second’s action would end everything. A few drops of desperation.”

Churchill, of course, made it to the end of his natural life — and squeezed just about every drop of heroism and artistry out of himself in the process.

199Friendship, yes, helped Churchill, even when was ostracized from much of what he cared about in London.

200But beyond that, you see a quality in people who can endure on lonely paths — they make the connection in their minds and spirits to similar types of people across all of history.

201Churchill famously studied and wrote a biography of his ancestor, the brilliant and incredibly accomplished Duke of Marlborough. Likewise, he kept busts of Admiral Nelson and Emperor Napoleon on his desk.

202In his darkest times, he was with them.

203Was Sun-Tzu with Mao in his darkest times? Did Carlyle take Dante around with him?

204I strongly suspect so.

205Can we take Sun-Tzu and Dante with us, in our darkest times?

206I don’t see why not.

207In this way, then, it might be possible to be physically alone for stretches of time, and yet mentally and morally integrated with the great fabric of history, those that came before us, did the things we wish to do, and suffered the ways we’ll at times suffer.

208Toughness — integration produces toughness.

209***

211We took a glance at the end of the Roman Republic, and then walked back and forth from 1906 to 1997, with long stopovers in World War II and during the Chinese Civil War, flashing back and forth between America, China, and Europe.

212The lesson from Colonel Boyd?

213Integration and isolation are the key to success in conflict.

214Not war — conflict of any sort.

215So often, the battle rages inside of us. How do we keep ourselves together?

216Toughness, we want to be tough, endure, and accomplish what we set out to do.

217The guidelines to being integrated — and to avoiding isolation — are necessarily broad. I’ve painted what I can. My three big suggestions are as follows,

2181. The easiest integration comes when you find a society that you can belong to, during a Golden Age, and gain acceptance in that society. Integration, optimism, gain, reinforcement, and support become almost automatic in such a place. Search for one if you can.

2192. Integration in a sub-group of particular faction, I contend, follows far more excellent courtesy, manners, and good discipline than ideology.  You should of course join groups carefully; if you find one that suits you, then, relentlessly cultivate your courtesy, discipline, and usefulness to become integrated.

2203. If you’re on the loneliest of paths, first, do seek good friends and individuals as you can. But then cultivate a broader love of the eternal ; find those that came before you and walked the same paths, cultivate a sense of connection with your profession and the greats that came before you; this is perhaps the hardest way to remain integrated and avoid isolation, but it’s also the one that exists solely in your mind, providing sustenance even when otherwise physically alone.

221Integration is paramount – we’ll explore a connection to history a little more next chapter.

222***

223PS: I couldn’t quite work this quote from Griffith into this chapter, but it was too entertaining to leave out —

1 T OUGHNESS #6: H ISTORICAL S ENSE

3It would be foolish to aim for toughness purely alone, failing to notice all the world can offer us, and all that we can offer in return.

4Mental Toughness, Physical Toughness, and Religio — one’s overarching philosophy at the deepest level as to what we ought to be doing in the universe — these are very personal, first-person type things.

5Water runs downhill, surely; but where does this water flow?

6Isolation is death in conflict; we explored this question last chapter, in “Integration” — Colonel John Boyd believed that all conflict is about interaction and isolation; we want to be integrated with good institutions and good people; we must avoid being isolated.

7Our example of someone brilliant who was unable to achieve integration?

8Vincent van Gogh.

9Those brilliant hands and eyes and mind, that powerful animating force inside him, so lofty at times, and then fallen...

10Van Gogh is haunting; his legacy is haunting; reflecting on this tragic figure — tragic in the classical Greek sense — is haunting.

11We need to linger somewhat longer on this ground.

12***

14I think it is not so bad to be haunted; to feel a chill shiver along the spine, and when a swift cold breeze blows, to feel the first hints of moisture along the eyes.

15There is little room for slow musing and haunting in much of today’s busy world — athletics are reduced to shots of triumph and the years of sweat and strain are swept away; we see confetti floating to the ground at the Championship Game, and we see great moments, and perhaps we see heartbreak on the grandest stage…

16…but we do not linger so long on it, do we?

17Would it profitable to?

18Will we have to deal with heartbreak and isolation at various times?

19Let’s be haunted then, just for a moment, to see if it is profitable.

20***

22We already know how the story ends.

23He would be the victorious commander.

24Not so long after, in 1781 at Yorktown, the British band would play “The World Turned Upside Down” as General Cornwallis surrendered.

25Who could have imagined? The world was shocked. Nothing of the kind had been seen in long ages.

26The commander-in-chief would go on to the First President of the new American Republic.

27The young Republic would grow from “sea to shining sea”; Manifest Destiny.

28The Americans would largely abstain from being involved in Europe’s affairs for 130 years.

29The World Wars came next, and suddenly, America was the most powerful nation in the world.

30We already know how this story ends.

31In May of 1775, he didn’t know.

32No one knew.

33We must bear this in mind.

34He did not know how the story would end.

35If you read Washington’s brief acceptance speech taking charge of the newly formed Continental Army, it is a haunting moment.

36Well, it is not a haunting moment if you know how the story ends.

37But imagine you didn’t  know.

38When I read this speech and try to place myself in Philadelphia in the Spring of 1775, I see a man, a flesh and blood man, who could not see the future, and who was, perhaps, terrified.

39Washington’s acceptance speech began —

40“I beg they will accept my cordial thanks for this distinguished testimony of their approbation. But lest some unlucky event should happen, unfavorable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room that I this declare with the utmost sincerity I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with...”

Chills.

41***

43Would the weather break?

44It is June of 1944.

45Hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers are massing on the South Coast of England for the largest amphibious invasion of all-time.

46The go-day is June 4th.

47It’s raining and storming heavily.

48No-go.

49Would the weather break?

50If the weather breaks, can the invasion succeed?

51Again, we know the end of this story.

52Ike didn’t know the end of the story.

53Ten months later, Nazi Berlin would be in flames.

54We know this.

55Eisenhower could not know this.

56Eisenhower did know about the last large-scale amphibious invasion —

57Gallipoli.

58An unmitigated disaster, the worst military defeat in British history.

59Operation Overlord — the Invasion of Normandy — would be the largest of its type.

60The weather was still bad, but forecasted to improve — very, very slightly — on June 6th.

61General Eisenhower’s outward demeanor was solid, professional, and mildly friendly.

62Before Operational Overlord began, Eisenhower wrote the speech he would give if the invasion failed —

64***

66History feels like a cruel joke at times.

67In Ancient Times, not understanding the natural world and confused and anxious about the randomness of life, the Greeks created stories and mythology to make it make sense.

68I find myself occasionally thinking of Cassandra. The mythology goes, she was gifted with the ability to see the future, but cursed so that no one would believe what she said.

69When the Trojan Horse arrived, she knew there were Greeks inside, and the city would fall.

70“There’s enemies inside! It’s a trick! It’s a trap! Don’t bring it in!”

71Alas.

72If the Ancient Greeks had to make sense of our modern world, there would perhaps be Zeus appearing, and cursing us as such —

73“It shall make sense looking backwards!”

74In the moment, we are plagued by uncertainties and confusions. Seemingly random events and movements and trends gather power and momentum, unseen for long periods of time, and then bursting to the surface unexpectedly.

75It will, of course, all make sense in 100 years as the historians mull through it.

76But for those of us in the moment, we are often forced to ask,

77“What the hell is going on here?”

78History feels like a cruel joke at times.

79It will make perfect sense after it is complete, but the blinders are on our eyes in the present.

80***

82It certainly looks like it.

83Draw up a map of Nazi power right before Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

84From that map, who could have predicted the entire collapse and destruction of the Nazi Empire?

85If the Nazis had successfully taken or destroyed either of Stalingrad or Moscow — and they came close to doing both — it’s very possible the Soviets are knocked out of the war.

86A mere generation beforehand, the Russian Empire was knocked out of the First World War, and straightaway, all those German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers on the Eastern Front were redeployed to the West, almost turning the tide against France.

87Nazi Germany’s power at the start of Barbarossa was much, much higher than Imperial Germany’s power when the Russians were knocked out of the First World War.

88In our mythology of the happenings, Josef Stalin is not really a man; he’s this quasi-mystical creature, seemingly a force of nature. We don’t think of Stalin as a man who got up to go to the bathroom, who smoked a little tobacco, who secretly liked to watch American cowboy movies when he had some free time.

89Stalin had liquidated and killed so many of his own side; if Moscow had been overrun, could his fate have been like Mussolini’s later became? Would Josef have been captured by his countrymen, summarily executed, and hung upside down from a bridge?

90Looking backwards, well, of course not.

91We know what happened.

92In the moment, this was not so.

93***

95Let’s step away from a poetic exploration, and put things in more plain terms.

96There are a number of known factors that naturally work against someone on a lonely path in times of uncertainty.

971. Emotional contagion.
2. Self-reinforcing moods.
3. Natural isolation.
4. Anxiety and perhaps paralysis.
5. Downward spiral.

98***

100The psychologists have a term — emotional contagion.

101When other people are acting a certain way around you, you tend to absorb some of those emotions.

102This has been known in less-fancy less-sophisticated terms for just about forever. Victories and triumphs lead to smiling and cheering amongst one’s group, pessimism is likely infectious.

103You see the range of confidence and emotions in stock markets; you see it in the culture of companies; you see it in the morale of armies.

104***

106When you are in a certain mood, it tends to promote being more in that mood.

107This is actually rather obvious if you sit and think on it.

108When you’re cheerful and in a mood, you go around smiling, skipping a little, put on your favorite music.

109Other people see you cheerful, they smile back

110When you’re in a particularly great mood, little stupid slights and nonsense have less effect on you; you shrug them off.

111In a great mood with lots of energy, you also tend to do the right things that make your life better — eat well, get your work done, appreciate the people around you.

112Upward spiral — under those conditions.

113(The opposite is also true.)

114***

116Those first two points are uncontroversial and known — we move towards the emotional states of the people around us that we are intimate with, and moods tend to reinforce themselves and promote more of the same.

117Uncontroversial stuff.

118Pretty obvious, too, when you think about it.

119Herein lies the problem — lonely paths are given to natural isolation.

120This is obvious enough when reading the memoirs of anyone who leads into the unknown — when they be a soldier or statesman on one hand, or an artist or inventor on another.

121I originally was going to quote the Emperor Napoleon here — he has a number of quotes about how he was never happy upon the Throne of the Empire, and how his life was dictated by circumstances beyond his control — but no, we could go even further back in time.

122Even as far back as 300 BC, there was the parable of the Sword of Damocles.

123The young courtier, Damocles, was remarking on how wonderful the life of King Dionysius was: all the splendor, servants, and power.

124The King offered trade places with Damocles so that the young man could see how it was to be King. Damocles enthusiastically accepted.

125The King then set up Damocles on the throne, surrounded by servants bearing food and drink, others coming to pay him homage.

126With one other little detail.

127King Dionysius instructed one of his soldiers to hang a heavy sword over Damocles’s head, hung by a single hair from a horse’s tail.

128To sit on the King’s Throne was to have a sword hanging over one’s head.

129Damocles politely asked to step down from his role on the king’s throne.

130***

132“The Sword of Damocles” was meant to symbolize how precarious and dangerous power was; the outward trappings of splendor and grandeur are visible; the dangers are often invisible — but nevertheless ever-present.

133Things have changed a little bit in 2,300 years.

134It is not quite as dangerous to pursue the highest paths and roles.

135And yet, nevertheless, lonely paths aiming at ascent have some of this character even now.

136To walk a lonely path — whether it be Vincent van Gogh’s, or General Washington’s, or anything where your hands guide your destiny — this is prone to anxiety and anxiousness.

137I dare say that anxiety is a natural and inevitable characteristic of pursuing this way in the world; I dare say it’s nearly unavoidable to experience at least some anxiety if you’re to make up any ground in the grand stretches of the world.

138Certainly, Charles Darwin was terribly afraid that his new views would cause ostracism and hatred towards him; certainly, though now largely forgotten, Albert Einstein often had to deal with accusations of being a crank and he had his detractors; certainly, Abraham Lincoln had a number of great friends, but certainly a number of enemies and detractors (one of them, Booth, acted on his malice in the closing acts of the American Civil War — to our great loss).

139Enemies, to some extent, make things easier — what does Stalin need to do? Stalin needs to defeat the Nazis.

140It can be harder still for someone like a Van Gogh or Nietzsche; what does one need to do to survive and endure in this world if you’re of that temperament, no clear enemies in sight?

141The anxiety, I dare say, comes with the territory.

142It paralyzes some — though unlike the anxiety, the paralysis is not automatic, and then...

143***

145The more alone you are, the harder it is to take emotional succor from your environment. There are less people like you.

146Meanwhile, the greater the uncertainty and confusion in what you’re doing, the more you’re going to have reflected back to you feelings of uncertainty and doubt.

147Emotional contagion can rise from that.

148The natural anxiety, the Sword of Damocles, can easily spiral into one’s actions and moods.

149The effects of this are poison.

150The question is whether they give way to breakdown and paralysis, and eventually destruction.

151It’s little-known among non-historians that General Washington was almost killed after the British re-conquered New York. He stood on the battlefield, dumb and flat-footed, with Redcoats advancing on him. Feeling spent in every single way, he did not flee or make his way off the battlefield — if his aides-de-camp had not literally grabbed him and hurried him off the battlefield, Washington would have met his end.

152And Washington was one of the better cases!

153He dealt with the anxieties of command better than most!

154It’s haunting to read Eisenhower’s letter.

155Of course, we know what happened to the Allied forces — they won complete and total victory over Nazi Germany.

156Eisenhower could not know that when he wrote those fateful words, when he had to imagine those young men he sent into battle dying on the shores of France if Operation Overlord had failed to dislodge the Nazis from the beaches of Normandy.

157Stalin... we need not even address Stalin much more — he endured, the Russians endured, such remarkable endurance to survive on the Eastern Front — but at what cost, what dreadful cost to himself, his friends, his countrymen, the world...

158***

160Here is our problem, then, if on lonely paths —

1611. Emotional contagion is real, and there is more potential for negative emotional contain than positive for a leader or innovator who is walking a lonely path.

1622. Moods are self-reinforcing; when negative moods grip us, they tend to be self-reinforcing.

1633. The natural isolation of leaders and innovators, people who do things in lonely fashions, leads naturally to feelings of potential isolation and danger, the Sword of Damocles hanging over one’s head.

1644. Altogether, this leads to almost inevitable anxiety; anxiety which, following the above points, can tend to be self-reinforcing and hard to break free from.

1655. Not managed, this can lead to downward spirals — all the way down for Van Gogh, much of the way down for Nietzsche... even people who are relatively unscathed by the spiral’s grip — Eisenhower, Washington — still have to live and endure through tumultuous and anxious times.

166***

168Well, this chapter is heavy!

169How could it not be?

170Last chapter, we covered “Integration” — the first two paths we discussed were integrating into a society during a Golden Age, or joining a meritorious group or faction and cultivating your courtesy and skill so you are well-accepted and thrive in that group.

171Those are straightforward enough paths; not necessarily easy depending on where you’re at, but relatively straightforward.

172Now, then — what if you are on a lonely path?

173We’ve outlined the problem already. It’s a, umm, somewhat vicious problem.

175***

177We’d be remiss not to mention physical fitness, eating well, practicing gratitude, and getting time in nature.

178We know those work.

179We’re not discussing those today, because you can get those anywhere and everywhere.

180That’s not to trivialize them — they’re critical and frankly must be done to give yourself the best chance at long-term endurance and sustaining yourself — but you can read good guides on these elsewhere.

181I want to cover something that’s not covered elsewhere, and yet, is ultimately true and a large piece of the puzzle — a historical sense.

182***

184Napoleon famously advocated to, “Read and re-read the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene, and Frederick; take them as your model, that is the only way of becoming a great captain, to obtain the secrets of the art of war.”

185When you study the campaigns of military commanders, of course, you can perhaps gain some perspective in that art.

186But something else happens you read good biographies, histories, and memoirs.

187In our own lives and on our own paths, so many of the trials we face seem absurd, stupid, ridiculous. Constantly, there is a question of, “This  is what I have to deal with?”

188When you read a good account like Ron Chernow’s “ Washington: A Life ,” you realize what the terrific man had to deal with —

190Chernow goes on to detail the measures Washington took with dentists, with sponge toothbrushes and toothache medicines, with dentists, bone and ivory dentures wound together with wires.

191It’s not, on a glance, heroic stuff.

192But then, as you read more of the accounts of how Washington grew from boy to man, from surveyor to military officer, from military officer to statesmen — something slowly happens.

193Pioneering greatness can be terrifically lonely, something like a cold and starless night.

194But as you come to understand Washington-the-man, the stern figure in the paintings; the coldened visage carved in marble; this starts to give way to more color and movement.

195Washington was flesh and blood. He dealt with all he dealt with — and gave his stately guidance to the young Republic at the same time.

196George Washington — George Washington who was in petty squabbles over how much he would be paid for his Virginia military service, George Washington who fought to keep his farmlands productive and went into debt while away performing military service, George Washington who dealt with problems with his teeth, George Washington who had to fight off petty jealousies and rivalries from others who wanted his office as their own — George Washington was all the greatness that we now so rightly revere in marble statues and stately paintings, but more than that, Washington was a man who had to deal with the anxieties and problems and nonsense that we all have to deal with.

197George Washington was Great, truly Great, in so many senses — and yet, he was flesh and blood, like us.

199If you have seen a sunrise over the mountains, it is a little like that.

200At first, it is entirely dark.

201But slowly, gradually, the darkness begins to recede. The world becomes brighter. You cannot yet see the Sun’s light — what is chasing this darkness away? — it is not obvious.

202But it grows brighter.

203Lincoln, Lincoln too had his problems.

204Anyone who tries to do bold things will sooner-or-later overreach, and wind up in a regrettable position.

205In the summer of 1842, Lincoln had insulted a political rival in a newspaper, semi-anonymously, and when the rival found out, he challenged him in a duel to the death.

206We think of the Lincoln Memorial, that towering figure of that epic statesman, again, he seems otherworldly — superhuman, perhaps.

207He didn’t feel that way in 1842, heading off to “Bloody Island” in Missouri — where dueling was still legal, to face James Shield to the death.

208Shields was a better shot than he; Lincoln knew it, and didn’t want to die, but felt trapped; honor’s consideration, in that era, meant serious repercussions if he did not accept the duel.

209Broadswords. Cavalry broadswords.

210The challenged in a duel gets to specify the weapon — Abraham Lincoln chose the largest, heaviest melee he could think of — cavalry broadswords.

211“I didn’t want the damned fellow to kill me, which I think he would have done if we had selected pistols.”

212Lincoln! Abraham Lincoln, trying to figure out a way to disentangle himself from a fight he’d talked his way into it.

213When the parties arrived on Bloody Island, Shields, seeing the obvious disadvantage in using the heavy swords against the taller and longer-armed man, reconciled.

214Lincoln! Lincoln, trying to figure out how not to get himself shot to death by a rival, facing a challenge that he did not wish to fight, but felt he had no option but to accept under the customs of the day.

215The Sun rises a little higher, still behind the mountains, and the world is a little brighter and warmer.

217Aye, indeed; and more than that, we can deal with their agonies as we study their lives, as they become human to us — Frederick’s close friend being executed by his father, Alexander’s grief at drunkenly slaying one of his close companions, Caesar being forced to fight his old friend and the former husband of his daughter due to circumstances, Hannibal’s Carthaginian Senate refusing to send him much-needed money and reinforcements out of jealousy and civil strife at home as he fought his desperate campaign against the Romans.

218Add Napoleon’s name to his own list, indeed — his genius at Austerlitz, dealing with his own greedy overreaches in Spain, his tragedies in Russia, Josephine’s mixed loyalties, dealing with the treacherous Talleyrand and Fouche.

219Indeed, study his campaign and learn his art — but also have him dissolve from the epic painting of him crossing the Alps into something flesh, something blood, something still great — but undoubtedly human.

220Dawn breaks.

221***

223We know Lincoln and Washington; they are fresh in our memories and traditions.

224Who knows Xenophon?

225Xenophon was a young observer and companion of a mercenary expedition into Persia, backing Cyrus the Younger against his brother Artaxerxes II in a Persian Civil War.

226The Persian/Greek invading force won the initial engagement, but the point was mooted when Cyrus died in a personal charge against Artaxerxes’s position.

227The Greeks were suddenly stranded in Persia, the toughest fighters on the field, but leaderless and with no more purpose.

228Rejecting the Persian call for unconditional surrender, they began to fight their way out of Persia.

229Finally, Persian messengers came and offered peace terms: Leave Persia peacefully, their forces will escort the Greeks out, do not lay waste to the countryside, and there would be no more fighting.

230These were reasonable terms, and duly accepted.

231Betrayal.

232Not immediately.

233After the march out of Persia started uneventfully, the Persian satrap Tissaphernes invited the leaders of the Greek mercenaries to a banquet.

234There, he betrayed, captured, and executed them.

235Suddenly, the Greeks were leaderless and about to be slaughtered.

236Xenophon, still a very young man, took command of the company, and led a fighting retreat out of Persia that took more than a year.

237This was over 2,400 years ago, but Xenophon’s writing in “ Anabasis ” — the tale of the march — it still speaks to me, personally.

238Xenophon had his epic and heroic moments — but he additionally dealt with the same nonsense that everyone deals with. In times of extreme danger, he acted as well as he could.

239As soon as danger seemed to pass, rivals started attacking him politically, claiming he had done a bad job, trying to rally the other soldiers against him.

240The patterns that emerge from our humanness — the good and the bad parts — happen again and again in history.

24124 centuries later, we’re much more sophisticated than those Athenians and Spartans that fought desperately to go home.

242But we’re broadly the same genetics of them; those are our great-great-grandfathers; their DNA has come down to us; for all that’s changed, human nature has not changed all that  much.

243Reading and re-reading Anabasis will, of course, teach you about leadership, about improvisation, about how people will break their word when it is expedient, about cruelty, about valor, about endurance.

244But more than that, it is possible to march with Xenophon, some 2400 years later, and weariness is lightened by the march.

245***

247Some diseases can be cured; others can only be managed.

248Anxiety and strife are perhaps incurable side effects of an ambition and will to make this world into something different and better.

249You’ll recall our five point syllogism, that which anyone walking a lonely path is up against —

2501. Emotional contagion.
2. Self-reinforcing moods.
3. Natural isolation.
4. Anxiety and perhaps paralysis.
5. Downward spiral.

251And an answer, an incomplete and partial answer, but an answer worth invoking and seizing, is to cultivate a historical sense.

252What would Washington do here?

253How did Lincoln do in this type of situation?

254How would Xenophon deal with this?

255By all means, by every means, please do everything we know works — do fitness, do nutrition, find good friends, spend time in nature.

256And then over and beyond that, start cultivating the counsel and company of the ancients — it seems to manage the diseases of ambition and will.

257It takes time. It takes work. But it is pleasurable work, and time well spent.

258And suddenly, once the realization truly sets in — these men were just like me — suddenly, we can start to feel their emotions through the pages of history.

259That syllogism starts to break — we can benefit from understanding and resonating to the moods of Theodore Roosevelt, or Abraham Lincoln, or whichever figure we like and relate to.

260They go from being figures worthy of abstract praise, to figures we can relate to and understand.

261And then,

2621. We’re able to gain succor and resonance from understanding and feeling deeply the emotions of those who came before us.

2632. This leads to a self-reinforcing sense of triumph and endurance.

2643. The oh-so-natural isolation is broken you realize you are descended from those greats who came before us.

2654. The pressures remain, but there is action to break through.

2665. And we spiral upwards.

267Cultivate a historical sense, a personal sense of history and those who came before us; gather them close to you, keep their counsel faithfully, and know you’re not alone.

1 T OUGHNESS #7: A DVERSITY

3“When you’re going through Hell — keep going.”

4— Churchill

5***

7I didn’t make you know how glad I was   
To have you come and camp here on our land.   
I promised myself to get down some day   
And see the way you lived, but I don’t know!   
With a houseful of hungry men to feed
I guess you’d find.... It seems to me   
I can’t express my feelings any more   
Than I can raise my voice or want to lift   
My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to).   
Did ever you feel so? I hope you never.
It’s got so I don’t even know for sure   
Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything.   
There’s nothing but a voice-like left inside   
That seems to tell me how I ought to feel,   
And would feel if I wasn’t all gone wrong.

— opening of Robert Frost’s “A Servant to Servants”

8***

10Poor Boethius.

11Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, that majestic and noble Roman, that rare uncorrupt politician — who is now suffering so greatly for his uprightness.

12Poor Boethius.

13The year is 523 AD.

14It has been 47 years since Odoacer overthrew the final Western Emperor of Rome.

15Odoacer’s reign was short. Theodoric the Great invades and conquers in 493, killing Odoacer at a banquet.

16(The most reliable lesson from history is to be very careful at banquets.)

17Boethius.

18Boethius would have been 13 years old when Theodoric takes control of the Western Empire. He was from a noble patrician Roman family, though the luster of the Roman patrician families had certainly dimmed now that the Germans were in power.

19Nevertheless, he built himself a career of public service and scholarship, doing some terrific works in mathematics, logic, music, theology, and philosophy while building a strong family.

20But now, 30 years after Theodoric took the throne, Boethius is 43 years old — and under arrest, awaiting execution.

21For my part, Boethius seems like one of those people who somewhat naively believed that honesty and service were adequate defenses against wicked people. When a politician was accused of treason publicly, Boethius stood up to defend the charges as false and the accuser as corrupt.

22Boethius had always had an anti-corruption bent; again for my part, he seems an honest man.

23He was co-indicted and placed under arrest.

24He would be executed the following year.

25We will return to Boethius in his prison in a moment, to spend the last year of his life with him.

26***

28Old Carthage, Carthaginian Carthage, had been conquered and exterminated many generations beforehand — it was a Roman province now, with Roman judges, under Roman laws.

29A young mother is being brought in front of the judge and asked to either renounce her crimes, or to be condemned for them.

30The sentence if convicted?

31Death by wild beasts in the Arena.

32The crime was not being Christian, per se — it was failing to pay due respects and rites to the Roman Gods and Roman system.

33The young Christians all confess publicly, refusing to renounce their young religion.

34Her elderly father breaks in and tries to stop Perpetua from doing the same —

35“The news of the trial spread fast and brought a huge crowd together in the forum. We were placed on a sort of platform before the judge, who was Hilarion, procurator of the province, since the proconsul had lately died. The others were questioned before me and confessed their faith. But when it came to my turn, my father appeared with my child, and drawing me down the steps besought me, 'Have pity on the child.' The judge Hilarion joined with my father and said: 'Spare your father's white hairs. Spare the tender years of your child. Offer sacrifice for the prosperity of the emperors.' I replied, 'No." Are you a Christian?' asked Hilarion, and I answered, 'Yes, I am.' My father then attempted to drag me down from the platform, at which Hilarion commanded that he should be beaten off, and he was struck with a rod. I felt this as much as if I myself had been struck, so deeply did I grieve to see my father treated thus in his old age. The judge then passed sentence on us all and condemned us to the wild beasts, and in great joy we returned to our prison.”

The whole account is worth reading; a good version is here —

36http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/PERPETUA.htm

37It continues in that vein —

39This continued even as they were brought into the arena to face death —

41The death of one of the young men with Perpetua, Saturus, was particularly striking —

43 And finally, Perpetua’s death —

44“Perpetua and Felicitas were exposed to a mad heifer. Perpetua was tossed first and fell on her back, but raised herself and gathered her torn tunic modestly about her; then, after fastening up her hair, lest she look as if she were in mourning, she rose and went to help Felicitas, who had been badly hurt by the animal. Side by side they stood, expecting another assault, but the sated audience cried out that it was enough. They were therefore led to the gate Sanevivaria, where victims who had not been killed in the arena were dispatched by gladiators. Here Perpetua seemed to arouse herself from an ecstasy and could not believe that she had already been exposed to a mad heifer until she saw the marks of her injuries. She then called out to her brother and to the catechumen: "Stand fast in the faith, and love one another. Do not let our sufferings be a stumbling block to you." By this time the fickle populace was clamoring for the women to come back into the open. This they did willingly, and after giving each other the kiss of peace, they were killed by the gladiators. Perpetua had to guide the sword of the nervous executioner to her throat.”

***

46This is the final chapter in our investigation into Toughness.

47There is one final point to address before the curtain falls on Toughness — how to handle oneself in times of adversity.

48The guidelines are relatively simple; if studied and practiced, you can become more stalwart and focused in times of adversity.

49We will learn from history on these matters.

50***

52In the worst of times, I believe there are only two:

531. Use what’s happening.
2. Action.

54***

56There are, of course, many variants of Adversity. There is the type that comes you at hard, and then passes — an earthquake, a hurricane, a pitched battle.

57We will talk about surviving those moments in a minute.

58The harder type of adversity is that adversity that lingers — falling from a high position into disgrace, being ostracized or alienated from an old career or old friends, things of that sort.

59This is a tough type of adversity.

60On the off chance you ever have to experience it, I want you to burn this next point into your mind.

62I hope you’re never in disgrace or alienated from what you care about. But if it happens to you, heaven forbid, use it to your advantage.

63Our species, for whatever reason, often does its best under the worst conditions.

64Thucydides is often considered the first historian — his “History of the Peloponnesian War” is a masterpiece; it was the first of its type. He is still revered to this day.

65It’s less commonly known, though, that he was a disgraced General that was exiled from his home in Athens for failing to relieve a city that the Spartans captured.

66He reflected,

68Thus, Thucydides uses the pain and disgrace of what’s happening to him to his best advantage. Exiled and countryless, he no longer is a partisan or commander of Athens; instead, he can become a neutral historian — the first historian — and record the events of the wars faithfully.

69Machiavelli almost certainly wouldn’t have written The Prince if he, too, was not in disgrace and exile.

70Formerly a civil servant in Florence, he was jailed, tortured, and exiled when the Medici re-conquered the city.

71He wrote in a letter to a friend about his studies and writing in exile,

73We see additionally a Historical Sense in him, like we described last chapter; moreover, we see that he used his adversity in order to produce his best works.

74Dante Alighieri, too, was exiled from Florence, about 200 years before Machiavelli’s time. Again, he was on the wrong side of a political fight.

75There was a death warrant out on him if he ever returned.

76He didn’t; instead, he wrote his Divine Comedy. He placed his enemies in “The Inferno” — his only way of getting revenge.

77And yet, The Divine Comedy — The Inferno in particular — has been said many times to be the finest work ever written in Italian.

78(Everyone has heard of it. Have you read it? Reading a commented version online is a wonderful experience; the book is both short and a masterpiece, at least worthy of an afternoon’s study at some point.)

79Again, Dante without adversity is Dante who does not do his best poetic work. Chased away from his home, from most of his colleagues and friends, somewhat alone in the world, he turns his grief and anxiousness to poetry and the nature of mankind in this world and the next — the result is a masterpiece.

82***

84They forced Stjepan Filipovic to stand on a little footstool, a sad little contraption, as the Nazi jailers tightened the rope around his neck.

85He did not weep or wail or gnash in his teeth; no, his was a response embodying all of the energy and virtue of defiance in Yugoslavic culture.

86The swastika’d jailers are about to kick the little bench out from his feet; if he is lucky, Stejpan’s neck will break; if he is unlucky, he will be strangled and slowly suffocate, dying much more slowly.

87Is he worried?

88It does not appear so.

89The Nazi occupiers had brought out a crowd to watch the execution; this type of thing, they must have figured, would deter future partisans.

90It did not have the desired effect.

91Stjepan shouts “Death to the fascists, freedom to the people!” — and he raises his arms triumphantly into the air.

92Just then, a photographer snaps a photo. It becomes one of the most famous symbols of the resistance.

93It is not recorded whether his neck broke or whether he was strangled slower. In the grand scheme of things, this question is irrelevant — whether he died five minutes earlier or later, and slightly more painfully or slightly less.

94No, his last conscious act of volition was his energetic defiance of the conquest of his homeland. Yugoslavian partisans would drive the Nazis out of their lands, and then, despite being socialist, were able to avoid being conquered by Stalin and remained independent.

95Stjepan’s defiance became the watch-word of Yugoslavian independence. He’s still remembered favorably to this day.

96***

98No matter how overwhelming or crushing circumstances are, you can only do one thing at a time. If you select from the best action possible to you every moment, you will have done as well as you can.

99This sounds basic, but is not.

100I will say it again —

102Members of the U.S. Navy SEAL Teams frequently describe getting through insane amounts of pain and performing incredible feats of endurance by going “one evolution at a time.”

103The human mind can so easily break if we look at long and hopeless odds stretched in front of us. Indeed, if you wind up with a rope around your neck like Stjepan’s, the situation for survival is now hopeless; your death is now imminent.

104But you still have choice, agency — you can still take action.

105What will your action be?

106Stjepan’s defiantly raising his arms and shouting for freedom had a rousing effect, first on the immediate crowd, and eventually through all of his people.

107When Perpetua died in Roman Carthage’s arena, her gracefulness in dying won sympathy and converts to Christianity.

108Again, though, this was simply a matter of taking one action at a time.

109If you look at Perpetua’s death in the arena, she did at least seven individual actions that showed bravery, resolve, friendship, and steadfastness —

1101. Perpetua was tossed first and fell on her back, but raised herself and gathered her torn tunic modestly about her;

1112. then, after fastening up her hair, lest she look as if she were in mourning,

1123. she rose and went to help Felicitas, who had been badly hurt by the animal.

1134. She then called out to her brother and to the catechumen: "Stand fast in the faith, and love one another. Do not let our sufferings be a stumbling block to you."

1145. By this time the fickle populace was clamoring for the women to come back into the open. This they did willingly,

1156. and after giving each other the kiss of peace, they were killed by the gladiators.

1167. Perpetua had to guide the sword of the nervous executioner to her throat.

117Each — each was one action.

118***

120Poor Boethius.

121Thinking about Boethius, though he died 1500 years ago, still makes me a little sad.

122It’s something we see often enough: an honest man thinking his honesty is a shield in a dishonest world; not arming himself sufficiently against corrupt adversaries.

123And now, Boethius is under arrest; he knows he will quite likely be executed soon.

124How easy would it be to sit around, feeling bad for himself?

125Indeed, that’s what he starts to do.

126But then... he reflects on it on a moment, and takes up his pen, writing out his sorrows —

127“Who wrought my studious numbers
Smoothly once in happier days,
Now perforce in tears and sadness
Learn a mournful strain to raise.
Lo, the Muses, grief-dishevelled,
Guide my pen and voice my woe;
Down their cheeks unfeigned the tear drops
To my sad complainings flow!”

Boethius writes a long poem along those lines, about how bad he is feeling, and how unlucky he is, and how awful his life has become.

128But then — almost magically, something clicks .

129Maybe you’d need the context to truly understand it — or maybe not — but I dare say it’s the most striking paragraph-by-paragraph change coming over a writer in a time of grief.

130After his long feeling-bad-for-self poem, he writes —

131“While I was thus mutely pondering within myself, and recording my sorrowful complainings with my pen, it seemed to me that there appeared above my head a woman of a countenance exceeding venerable. Her eyes were bright as fire, and of a more than human keenness; her complexion was lively, her vigour showed no trace of enfeeblement; and yet her years were right full, and she plainly seemed not of our age and time.”

Thus begins “The Consolation of Philosophy” — which would go on to become one of the most popular works in Europe for the next 1000 years, greatly impacting history.

132***

134Writing his masterpiece, The Consolation, Boethius goes through long dialogs with the Personification of Philosophy — a spirit of profound wisdom.

135The whole work is a masterpiece in conquering one’s own mind, no matter how rough the circumstances. The third chapter opens —

137I shiver when I read The Consolation; I cannot read too much of it at a time, it’s heavy stuff, it’s too heavy to read straight through, but there is a profound magic in it.

138Come, think of it — there is, you know, not actually a Spirit of Philosophy there with Boethius as he is under arrest.

139No, he is still alone, by himself, with his pen and paper, awaiting final judgment.

140But Boethius grasps the situation — owns it — reasons through it — and goes on to yoke and harness it, having it pull him forwards.

141“'Ah! why,' I cried, 'mistress of all excellence, hast thou come down from on high, and entered the solitude of this my exile? Is it that thou, too, even as I, mayst be persecuted with false accusations?'”

And Lady Philosophy replies —

142“'Could I desert thee, child,' said she, 'and not lighten the burden which thou hast taken upon thee through the hatred of my name, by sharing this trouble? Even forgetting that it were not lawful for Philosophy to leave companionless the way of the innocent, should I, thinkest thou, fear to incur reproach, or shrink from it, as though some strange new thing had befallen? Thinkest thou that now, for the first time in an evil age, Wisdom hath been assailed by peril? Did I not often in days of old, before my servant Plato lived, wage stern warfare with the rashness of folly?”

***

144Boethius, to me, is the canonical example of using the worst of adversity to one’s own benefit — and the benefit of the world at large.

145It’s worth reading The Consolation; albeit, it’s hard reading.

146Overview —

147https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Consolation_of_Philosophy

1481897 translation into English —

149https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14328/14328-h/14328-h.htm

150The whole work is a marvel... I was going to quote heavily from it, for you dear reader, but I cannot read too many paragraphs in a row before stopping to reflect and get lost in thought.

151Philosophy instructs Boethius, reasons with him; he talks out his problems, and the problems of the world, and reflects on them. Soon, they come to Fortune, and seeing that honors and treasures are not wholly within one’s own control, that Fortune has a great say in matters.

152Fortune’s words to Boethius —

154Huh!

155This whole thing is striking.

156***

158Boethius reasons himself through the conflicts raging inside his mind and spirit.

159Again, our two guidelines —

1601. Use what’s happening.
2. Action.

161So, you are imprisoned. You will be executed. You worry for your family. It cannot really get much worse than Boethius’s condition.

162And yet, he follows the universal guidelines — he takes his pen, he takes his paper, he writes and does his very best work of philosophy; he writes The Consolation; it is a marvelous work.

163He uses where he is at, does not deny it. He takes action; he reasons, he writes.

164He would be executed one year later, but his work would inspire others as one of the most popular works of the next millennia; it is still read to this day.

165And though it is somewhat besides the point, King Theodoric was not as harsh as he could have been to Boethius’s children; and his successor reinstated Boethius’s sons in good standing at Rome. It is possible, likely even, that Boethius has descendants and great-great-grandchildren even alive and with us to this day.

166What if he had not penned this marvelous work? He no doubt was able to die with some dignity and modesty, having reconciled his thoughts.

167This penning of this work, accepting Fortune as it was, perhaps saved his children’s lives.

168He did what he could — he owned the situation he was in, he used it every bit as well as he could, he took every bit of action he could in his captivity.

169He left something monumental behind — in a strange and ironic way, perhaps, his unjust fall might have been the catalyst for his true and lasting greatness and impact on this world.

170***

172Sometimes adversity is truly overwhelmingly large — Thucydides, Machiavelli, Dante, Boethius — those early Carthaginian Christians facing death by early beasts, the Nazi rope around Stjepan Filipovic’s neck — these situations loom large in their quality of very-badness.

173It’s not always so. Sometimes adversity is quieter, but the prescription is still the same.

174Frost outlined that in A Servant to Servants; it was the dull melancholy of days going by, not enough money, struggling with alienation and isolation.

175The same rules apply.

176We began with Frost’s poem. Here is a little more —

177“The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them,
Sometimes we don’t. We’ve a good piece of shore   
That ought to be worth something, and may yet.   
But I don’t count on it as much as Len.   
He looks on the bright side of everything,
Including me. He thinks I’ll be all right   
With doctoring. But it’s not medicine—   
Lowe is the only doctor’s dared to say so—   
It’s rest I want—there, I have said it out—   
From cooking meals for hungry hired men
And washing dishes after them—from doing   
Things over and over that just won’t stay done.   
By good rights I ought not to have so much   
Put on me, but there seems no other way.   
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.
He says the best way out is always through.”

Indeed, those lines — one steady pull... the best way out is always through.

178Who knows what torments Frost was experiencing and harnessing in his own life; his illnesses, his failing at agriculture; his wanting to break free and really fly, but perhaps not being able to at times.

179And again — using it, harnessing it... action.

180The prescription is always the same.

181***

183Our investigation of Toughness comes to a close.

184We’ve explored seven big ideas across seven chapters, as we dig to the roots of Toughness –

1851. Mission Orientation
2. Mental Toughness
3. Physical Toughness
4. Religio
5. Integration
6. Historical Sense
7. Adversity

186But to conclude, I find myself circling back, just briefly, to Upstream Effects.

187We spoke in Upstream Effects about “Cold Determination” and the necessity of cultivating it to ensure you stay upon the path.

188It is easy enough to be in good cheer and to be celebratory when all is going well.

189Fine.

190Great.

191But things will inevitably go badly.

194What ought one to do?

195You find out by studying and cultivating your feelings of how you relate to the Universe, your “Religio” — independent of any dogmas or formal pledges or creeds, you study yourself and others to understand what you ought to be doing at the deepest level.

196You build strength through Mental and Physical Toughness; you practice these things, to get stronger in mind and body.

197You adopt Mission Orientation to ensure you convert all your personal toughness into worthy results.

198You keep yourself strong and fill yourself with morale and strength through Integration with worthy societies, and building a Historical Sense so that you understand you’re not alone on the path.

199And finally, yes, adversity will come. It is inevitable if you’re doing great things.

200And then,

2011. Use what’s happening.
2. Action.

202If you follow those guidelines, you do as well as you possibly can.

203Enough said!

1III

2UNCOMMON VIRTUES

1 U NCOMMON V IRTUES #1: M ERE C OMPETENCE

3“In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain & the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba- no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his cooperation, and quickly.

8General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. ”

9-- Elbert Hubbard, “ A Letter to Garcia ,” 1899

10***

12There is a joke that goes something like this –

13“In heaven, the cooks are French, the police are British, the lovers are Italian and everything is organized by the Germans. In hell, the cooks are British, the police are French, the lovers are German and everything is organized by the Italians.”

14Do you know why that joke is funny?

15Because it’s true.

16***

18Now, I’ve spent time in all of those countries, and in fact, I find them all marvelous. But is inarguably true that, in different times and places, some things are more rare than others.

19Through an accident of scheduling, I found myself on four continents over a period of two weeks last year, going from Boston to Bogota to Dublin to Beijing from 27 October to 6 November.

20Traveling at that pace is taxing and I recommend against it; really, it’s less sexy than it sounds.

21But there is one strong advantage to it: it throws the differences between various societies into stark contrast.

22Across just about all of Bogota society, there is just about an order of magnitude more attention to experience, decor, and aesthetics than the other places mentioned.

23It’s beautiful… it’s really hard to describe if you haven’t seen it… at the Colombian university El CESA, the amount of care and attention and sheer beauty paid to decorations around Halloween, the amount of grooming and presentation that both men and women invest in…

24… I don’t know how to describe it if you haven’t seen it. The people are beautiful, and they take experience so seriously. You can’t help but be inspired by the welcoming spaces they create and the detailed precision around beautification and immersion.

25Contrast this to Beijing.

26I lived in Beijing for years. Frankly, the Chinese just don’t do this. Luxury anywhere is of course largely the same as anywhere else, but outside of the uppermost reaches of society, the Chinese simply do not pay all that much attention to aesthetics.

27The flipside is that the Chinese savings rate is, depending on what numbers you’re using, are somewhere from a little more than double the Colombian savings rate (Worldbank gross savings rate as % of GDP) to about 7x higher (IMF private savings rate as % of GNP).

28Economists spend lots of time debating the merits of these numbers, arguing them and their implications; savings vs consumption, etc.

29Whatever. We don’t need precision here. The simplest eye test shows Colombians caring much more about presentation, experience, and aesthetics and the Chinese saving a whole lot more money than the Colombians (more than pretty much everyone, actually).

30***

32So I’m scratching my head.

33You don’t need to be a genius to work these calculations out –

34Colombia:
Less savings = less financial capital accumulating = lower asset prices.

35China:
Less spending on aesthetics = lower cost to have top-quality aesthetics = ability to differentiate and gain advantages with relatively lower spending on aesthetics.

36***

38… most people can’t bring themselves to do it.

39People thus compete on the same parameters everyone else in their society competes, and thus they get middling or underperforming results.

40***

42One of the first really beautiful webapps natively developed in China was Weixin (you can download it as “WeChat” in the West), and indeed, they took over the market rapidly and now have over one billion created accounts with 650 million active users.

43This is unsurprising. The history of the world is the history of people investing in dying trends to follow the crowd, whereas the people looking forwards and developing rarer skills and abilities get ahead.

44This is easy enough to see in investing and business – you don’t want to be in an aggressive commoditized space with no differentiation, and you don’t want to buy the asset class that’s overpriced because everyone else invests in it without checking the fundamentals.

45***

47Both hyper-pragmatic cost suppression (currently very normal in Beijing) and an intense devotion and care about experience and aesthetics (currently very normal in Bogota) – both of these are virtues.

48Likewise, willingness to take smart risks is a virtue, and conservatism and careful selection of reasonably guaranteed success are virtues.

49Rarer virtues are more likely to outperform. In a place and era with a high appetite for risk, the good risks get chewed up quickly, and the opportunities to take smart risks get harder to find and take comfortably. Likewise, conservatism across the board eats itself as safe bets get their prices bid up higher and higher – until they’re guaranteed small losses instead of guaranteed small gains.

50***

52We’re now set to be talking about Uncommon Virtues  in today’s day and age.

53And while people will read this book from across the world, we’ll be primarily talking from an American point of view.

54On the off chance you’re reading in the far future, as of right now in 2016, the United States of America has held sole superpower status in the world for 25 years now, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

55There are people now who are 20 years old who never knew a world in which the USA really faced any threat to its existence or way of life.

56To be sure, the Iraqi Army seemed somewhat dangerous in the 1990’s, but it was never really  an existential threat to the existence of the USA. Likewise, terrorism is a problem.

57But these aren’t problems for the USA the way that Nazi Germany was a problem for its neighbors in the 1930’s and 1940’s, where your very existence is in doubt. Likewise, not the way that the Soviet nuclear arsenal seemed to the USA during the Cold War.

58That’s the backdrop; there doesn’t seem to be any real threat to the existence of the USA right now, and doesn’t seem like there has been in 25 years.

59It’s peaceful. Things are good. That’s the world we live in now. We don’t have anything to worry about. (Right?)

60***

62Despite the vast potential gains, this is not too complicated if you ground yourself in history and understand different cultures.

63We’ll look at which virtues are uncommon in this day and age, ideally ones that have been common in other eras and are proven, that are now highly worthwhile to cultivate in yourself.

64Some are rare because they’re hard to do; others are rare due to cultural bias and blindspots.

65The theory is simple: cultivating virtues that are neglected, uncommon, or out of favor should lead to potentially very great outperformance.

66***

68We start with a simple one: competence.

69Mere competence.

70Just competence.

71Not excellence; not greatness; nothing transcendental.

72Just… being competent.

73***

75Non-competence… that’s not a nicer way of saying incompetence. We don’t refer to a total bumbler or bungler of things. Merely – a lack of competence. Non-competence.

76Competence is rare. On the surface, that doesn’t make sense – shouldn’t everyone want to be competent?

77So we dig a bit, try to figure out the roots of this non-competent tree.

78In Richard Rumelt’s seminal book “ Good Strategy, Bad Strategy ,” Chapter 4 is titled simply: “Why So Much Bad Strategy?”

79Rumelt –

80“Bad strategy flourishes because it floats above analysis, logic, and choice, held aloft by the hot hope that one can avoid dealing with these tricky fundamentals and the difficulties of mastering them. … Not miscalculation, bad strategy is the active avoidance of the hard work of crafting a good strategy .”

81***

83Why so much non-competence?

84Because it’s hard work.

85Oh.

86How anticlimactic.

87People don’t become competent because it takes work to become competent. Specifically, analysis, logic, and choice – and by “choice,” Rumelt means “sacrifice.”

88***

90Sometimes I wonder how many men with the talent of Napoleon Bonaparte have lived – and never had their talents flourish because they lived during peacetime.

91Napoleon was born in 1769. In 1793, he was promoted to Brigadier General – at the age of 24 years old.

92In a struggle for one’s very existence, competence is the  defining virtue. While most of the French officers were losing, he was winning. It would be simplistic to say that was enough, and yet, it explains most of his rise.

93When he was given command of France’s Army of Italy, things were in disarray. The soldiers lacked discipline, order, and even the most basic of supplies – ammunition and shoes.

94The soldiers were not paid on time, and often looted and stole – sometimes from enemies, and sometimes friends – to survive.

95While it sounds so basic and trivial, Napoleon found a way to get his soldiers in shoes, get their wages paid, secured enough ammunition and food, improved sanitation, dismissed unruly and incompetent officers, and otherwise just got on with the business of soldiering.

96There was no particular magic to it, though the effects would be dramatic.

97Likewise, while known for some of his brilliant maneuvers, Napoleon often just out-worked his adversaries. He planned more. He did more reconnaissance. He engaged in more diplomacy. He trained more. He marched more.

98Unsurprisingly, fixing these very basic of problems led to a better fighting force, which led to victories, which led to momentum and morale, which led to more victories.

99It didn’t start with brilliant maneuvers – it started with getting shoes, getting the soldiers he inherited to stop committing crimes, and paying them on time.

100Competence. Mere Competence.

101***

103One of the more memorable of Warren Buffet’s wry expressions: “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”

104Competence can feel so… trivial… during boom times, during luxurious peacetimes.

105Often, competence comes at great expense in sweating and training; of constant rigorous examination of weak points; of mastering the subject area one wants to be competent at, and rigorously training and drilling the right behaviors into oneself, one’s colleagues, and one’s subordinates.

106People who devote themselves to being competent are often less fun or less enjoyable to be around than people engaged in more luxurious virtues.

107One of the more amusing theories of large-scale success I’ve seen is that most organizations who achieve dominance in their field are eventually unable to identify why they are successful, and attribute it to reasons having nothing to do with their success.

108As such, they get very excited about a bunch of luxurious virtues and sloganeering, and begin to think themselves infallible. Eventually, someone who is competent in the core of the domain comes and drinks their milkshake.

109Early in his career, most of Napoleon’s adversaries did not promote by merit – by competence – and instead relied on superfluous factors like lineage, birth, class, prestige, charisma, etc.

110He ran roughshod over them.

111Napoleon, for whatever reason, could not stop his expansionary pushes. He kept opening war-fronts, and eventually, through attrition and evolution, competent battle-hardened adversaries came to oppose him. The English, Germans, Spanish, and Russians eventually produced excellent officers and statesmen that, while perhaps not as brilliant as Napoleon, were competent enough to defeat him with when combined with overwhelming advantages in numbers and economics.

112Early-stage Napoleon relied heavily on competence – brilliance too, sure, but mostly competence. And he fought against people in positions of leadership for reasons other than competence. The results were predictable.

113But it didn’t take genius to defeat him: he began to rely more on genius and brilliance at just the time his advantages were deteriorating. His enemies became competent, and the Emperor was defeated and banished.

114I don’t think it’s a reach to say that competence, mere competence, explains the majority of both Napoleon’s rise – and fall.

115***

117In nearly all of my writings, I aim for some level of actionability. Entertainment and information are nice, I suppose, but my aim is always for you to live better as a result of the writing and reading.

118But how do we instill competence? A tough challenge.

119I hazard to say that there’s four steps to it –

1201. Acknowledge the truth of things.
2. Commit to competence, including all the hard work and downsides.
3. Study one’s domain rigorously.
4. Do all  the work required to become competent.

121***

123“Assume your service is bad. It can’t hurt, and it will force you to improve.” – Harry Beckwith,  Selling the Invisible

124Originally recommended by Derek Sivers to me as “the best book on marketing he’s ever read,”  Selling the Invisible  is a masterpiece.

125In it, Harry Beckwith repeatedly makes the point that, before you do any fancy marketing, you need to make your service good.

126And he recommends you start by assuming it’s bad.

127Heck, let’s repeat that quote again. It’s amazing –

129Likewise, in luxurious peacetimes, people can get by on bluster, appearances, political skill… and maybe – maybe – it makes sense to position yourself as lofty and flawless and all that. (Then again, maybe not.)

130Regardless, competence flees from the person who asserts they’re competent, who feels “just fine” without doing the work.

131Reality is vast, vaster than imaginable. Every domain has a potential for nearly unlimited invention and innovation. The theme you see, over and over again, among successful people in any discipline, is both a fanatical commitment to mastering their domain, and a mild paranoia that maybe they suck.

132Beckwith has an elegant solution – assume you suck. Acknowledge there’s a lot to be done.

133Move on to Step 2.

134***

136How do you show up, 100% of the time, on time?

137I learned from the father of a girl I dated. He was the fifth child born, but the first son, in a country that was devastated by World War II.

138He explained how to always show up on time –

139You calculate the maximum possible time it could take to go through every single step in getting somewhere.

140So if you’re taking the subway to a meeting and need to change subway lines, it goes like this:

141First, front door to main subway. Takes 5 to 7 minutes.
Second, waiting for the first train. Takes 1 to 10 minutes.
Third, the time it takes the first train to arrive at the station. 5 to 8 minutes.
Fourth, waiting for the second train. Takes 1 to 10 minutes.
Fifth, the time it takes the second train to arrive. 10 to 13 minutes.
Sixth, the time it takes to walk to the meeting. Takes 5 to 7 minutes.

142If you’re both lucky and everything runs smoothly, it will take 27 minutes to reach your destination.

143On average, it will only take 41 minutes to get through this journey.

144But if you want to always  be on time, you need to budget… the whole 55 minutes it could possibly take.

145If you do, you’ll be early most of the time. (Bring a book, newspaper, or some work to do.)

146What do most people do, though?

147They give themselves 30 minutes – and are late pretty much always.

148Or they give themselves 40 minutes – and are late consistently.

149Or they give themselves 50 minutes – and are still late sometimes!

150It’s fine to be late to things if competence in your field doesn’t require punctuality. Sometimes, it really doesn’t – there’s a number of pure scientists or pure inventors who succeed or fail based on how good their best work is, and their best work is great, and so you put up with them being late.

151But it blows my mind that someone will be going out for an appointment that’s life-changing for them if the meeting goes well, and they don’t do the “plan backwards and always be on time” thing.

152(Later, I learned from a very talented veteran of the U.S. Army’s Engineering Corps that the U.S. Army uses this same method to ensure punctuality of arrival times in warzones.)

154Most people never think about how long their commutes take, and don’t plan for worst-case scenario. As such, sometimes they’re late. If this happens before a life-changing meeting, maybe you just blew it and miss a huge opportunity.

155Competence is like this.

156There’s no magic to it. It means going through the hard mental work of calculating things like showing up on time, having slack in case something goes wrong, and then making preparations so that you have something productive to do when you’re inevitably early.

157And this is just – showing up on time. That’s not even table stakes in most fields. This is the lowest of bars of competence, and yet most people are unwilling to commit to doing the work of clearing that bar.

158***

160In his autobiography, “ Made in America ,” Sam Walton relates how he stopped and looked at just about every single store he ever came across.

161He studied their mix of goods and services, how their staff acted, their pricing, their product placement, and so on.

162Every domain has different components needed for mastery.

163It’s not hard to figure out what they are. Study everything rigorously and implement everything you find.

164This is the theme you see over and over again at really outsized successes: at Walmart, Sam Walton studied everything. At Toyota, they studied every aspect of making automobiles and tried to refine every single one of them to perfection. Under the leadership of Wozniak, Jobs, and Ive among others, Apple of course became fanatical about getting the tiniest details perfect.

165It’s not complicated.

166You study everything in your domain.

167If something does fail or go wrong, you don’t sweep it under the rug – you study it relentlessly, and put new policies in place, and then train them up.

168Again, no magic – just building competence.

169***

171And finally, you do the work.

172Often, it sucks and is hard to do the work.

173The alternative is mediocrity.

174I won’t bang on about doing the work here – because I dare say it comes down more to a mental shift first and foremost.

175Most people think they’re just marvelously terrific, and who cares if they’re on time? They’re special and lovely.

176The mindset shift to the opposite is powerful. No luxury. No preening. No bombast. Just competence. Mere competence.

177Again,

1791. Acknowledge the truth of things.
2. Commit to competence, including all the hard work and downsides.
3. Study your domain rigorously.
4. Do the work.

180It’s not complicated – it’s pretty simple.

181The mindset shift drives it. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, you probably suck and could probably be 10x better than you are right now.

182This demoralizes some people – “oh boo hoo, I want easy success” – whereas for others, it’s a flash of awakening to the prospect of great power and great results.

183“Wait, most people aren’t trying and most things suck? If I acknowledge that and commit to being competent at what I do, study my domain, and put the work in, I can build an extremely powerful foundation that makes success happen reliably?”

184Well – yup, that’s it, you got it.

185***

187We opened with the start of the wonderful 1899 piece “A Letter to Garcia” –

188http://www.birdsnest.com/garcia.htm

189My friend Ted Gonder shared it with me, and it is absolutely wonderful.

190Read the whole thing for a shot in the arm of competence.

1 U NCOMMON V IRTUES #2: A RISTOTELIAN F RIENDSHIP

3"...the friendship of young people seems to aim at pleasure; for they live under the guidance of emotion, and pursue above all what is pleasant to themselves and what is immediately before them; but with increasing age their pleasures become different. This is why they quickly become friends and quickly cease to be so; their friendship changes with the object that is found pleasant, and such pleasure alters quickly.”  – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

4***

6Finding Aristotle, for me, was like finding a cool and clear oasis in the desert – when on the verge of dying of thirst.

7The type of writing in the ascent in America is so much trivia; at the high end of society, you have detailed investigations of… nothing. Of trivia. The most banal, useless, pointless stuff is teased apart and put together with fancy and flourishing prose.

8The poorer elements of society get a different type of writing: whereas the rich and educated are fed banal distraction, the poor are force-fed shovelfuls of nonsense; miracle cures, miracle ways to earn money without any skill developed or value created; “achieve XYZ Big Thing in just 10 minutes!”

9It would be riotously entertaining – if were not so tragic.

10But gradually, if you dig deep into humanity’s archives, you can find clear and lucid thought – pointed straight at the heart of what’s most important.

11Aristotle is not the only thought of this type, but he is probably the most wide-ranging.

12***

15Why not?

16Clearly, choosing who we share our lives with is one of the most important questions.

17You don’t get to choose your parents. You have only some say on choosing who your children turn out to be. You can choose your work colleagues, and should choose them well, but it’s likely your work will often demand mixing in with certain people regardless of your views of them.

18But your friends – these are perhaps the most important thing to choose in all of life. These become the people you go to for counsel and guidance, who you share your triumphs with, how you plan to overcome your struggles, and – if you’ve chosen well – the people that salve your wounds after bitterest defeats.

19More importantly, you’ll become like them, inadvertently, inheriting the ways they talk about and see the world. The people you choose as your friends have one of the largest bearings on how your entire life on this planet turns out.

20Friendship is one of the highest of virtues for me – when I think about everything that we can choose in life to celebrate or disdain, what we can live for or against, I think living celebrated friendships with admirable people is paramount.

21If you get this one aspect of life right, cultivating excellent friendships with excellent friends, being an excellent friend – just about every other aspect of life improves.

22It’s really important.

23So I ask again – have you ever sat and asked yourself, “What is friendship?”

24***

26We led with the most fundamental of virtues, Mere Competence . Competence – in this day and age, such an unheralded but critical thing.

27Let us turn our attention, now, to friendship. Specifically,

281. We’ll discuss the three origins of friendship Aristotle identified in Nicomachean Ethics.

292. We’ll discuss the current understanding of friendship in modern American culture. (I find it, unfortunately, to be in a very sorry state of affairs.)

303. We’ll explore how to make better friends, be better friends, bring out the best in our friends, and encourage them to bring out the best in ourselves.

31***

33Aristotle identified two types of friendship that are largely inferior to the highest type of friendship: friendships based on pleasure and friendships based on advantage.

34Come back to our opening excerpt from Aristotle:

35"...the friendship of young people seems to aim at pleasure; for they live under the guidance of emotion, and pursue above all what is pleasant to themselves and what is immediately before them; but with increasing age their pleasures become different. This is why they quickly become friends and quickly cease to be so; their friendship changes with the object that is found pleasant, and such pleasure alters quickly.”

36In this type of friendship, it is all about being entertaining, engaging, witty, charming, pleasurable. These are drinking companions, or carousing companions, or companions for dining at nice restaurants, and things of that nature.

37Who doesn’t like pleasure? Pleasure is of course pleasurable.

38But is an eminently unstable ground to build on.

39Pleasures change. We get bored and tired of one form of entertainment. Friendships built on pleasure and enjoyment typically do not endure if one of the friends undergoes a major life transformation.

40When I was younger, from age 17 to 19 or so, I had a friend who was a nice guy, but whom practically our entire relationship centered around drinking, playing video games, and eating junk food.

41We played lots of Soul Caliber, NFL games (Blitz and Street), and sometimes co-op strategy games. We drank lovely fancy craft beer and ate lots of pizza and really decadent fancy glazed chicken wings.

42Our friendship got stressed and strained when I started trying to eat healthier.

43That sounds so silly and trivial, doesn’t it? And yet, that was one of the three pillars on which our friendship was based – we’d always order pizzas or chicken wings when we played games.

44It was aggravating when I started eating healthier, because I still liked hanging out, but every time we hung out, I found myself eating like junk inadvertently. And when I tried not to, it seemed to dull the proceedings we had together. He was happy with his dietary choices (and luckily for him, his metabolism was such that he could eat immense amounts of junk food and not get pudgy). So if he was ordering a couple pizzas and I said, “Wait, just get a salad for me” – it was like ruining the buzz.

45As my tastes changed and I became more achievement-oriented, there was no common ground left. I eventually quit drinking and largely quit video games – what did we have in common after that?

46Nothing.

47It had been pleasant to share drinks, games, and pizza together; in absence of that pleasure, nothing was left and our association was gone. I barely remember the time we were friends and barely remember him; writing this piece is the first time I’ve thought of him this decade.

48Pleasurable shared activities can certainly be a bonus to a friendship – I’ll scubadive, shoot guns, or play board games with my friends these days, certainly – but it’s an inherently unstable basis for a friendship.

49***

51“Now those who love each other for their utility do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they get from each other. … [and] the useful is not permanent but is always changing.”

52Due to the nature of the different fields I work in, I have acquaintances and friends across the political and religious spectrum, and I have acquaintances and friends who operate with very different levels of risk in their profession or business.

53In material terms, I’ve seen people go up in the world very quickly, and I’ve seen people go down in the world very quickly.

54While I wouldn’t have planned for my life to go this way if you gave me a choice, I think being 24 years old when the Financial Crash hit in 2008 resulted in some very useful lessons about human nature.

55At that stage of my life, all my friends were older than me. It was… remarkable watching some of them get largely deserted by the majority of people they knew, once their power and prestige and wealth declined.

56I don’t mean “remarkable” as a synonym for good or great; I mean, it’s worth remarking on.

57Doing business transactionally is fine; sometimes you want to buy what someone is selling, and you’ll have no regard for them after that. This is fine and necessary at times to do.

58Where you get into trouble is being mixed in with people who you think are your friends, but for whom the friendship is based on potential advantage.

59As Aristotle says, what’s useful is not permanent and is always changing.

60Thus, when I see a young person achieve an inordinate amount of success early, before having developed very solid friendships on firmer ground, I feel for them to some extent. They’ll now be surrounded by people who want the advantages, power, and prestige that comes with associating with them.

61This can be very hard to ascertain, especially during glories and triumphs – the great unifier of Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu, said: “After victory, tighten the straps on your helmet.”

62But it’s hard to do; it’s easy to get lax and lose vigilance during successful times, and to assume everything will continue as-is. And it’s easy for people to associate with others who are very successful and can mutually help each other.

63And yes, it’s easy to not see this is going on.

64But very few positions of power or advantage are permanent; and with them, friendships based on advantage or power are impermanent.

65***

67“Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good-and goodness is an enduring thing.”

69What is friendship?

70Friendship, Aristotle’s perfect friendship, is loving and admiring what is good in another person, and having the feelings reciprocated.

71This stands apart from pleasure and advantage; mutual genuine admiration of a person’s character is a much firmer ground to stand on.

72***

74When I listen to the talk and assumptions about friendship in modern America, I find the whole arrangement – sadly lacking.

75You’ll no doubt have heard things like, “You should love your friends for their faults.” Or things along the lines of, “Yeah, he gets drunk and makes a mess of it sometimes, but he’s a good guy deep down.”

76I perhaps underrated friendship when I was younger due to hearing statements like these and many similar variants.

77On the surface of it, it doesn’t make sense.

78“You should love your friends for their faults” – what?

79What?

80It doesn’t make sense.

81Under that line of thinking, accepting someone as a friend of yours means accepting their flaws and inviting the defective aspects of their character and behavior into your life – and then, just abiding it.

82This is not what I want from my friends, and not what I want my friends to want from me. To the extent I’m screwing up, I want my friends to help me correct the screw-ups.

83It’s almost hard to write this line of thinking down, because it’s so obvious.

84Why is it superior to be healthy than to be sick?

85Because… it so obviously is, no? It can be surprisingly hard to argue in favor of things that are so obviously true.

86Aristotle’s idea of perfect friendship is loving the virtue – both in character and behavior – of your friend, and vice-versa.

87This gives us the opportunity to improve each other’s character and behavior over time… to learn from each other, to evolve together, to improve together.

88I was happy to just dispatch with the idea of “loving someone for  their flaws” – this seemed just silly – but perhaps it bears more examination on where this comes from.

89***

91And eventually it hit me – those prescriptions, to love someone for  their flaws, is prescribing acceptance  as a foundation for friendship; or, looked at differently, sympathy  as a foundation for friendship.

92This seems incredibly defective.

93Sympathy, to a large extent, presumes weakness and flaw.

94If someone is excellent in every single way, there is no need for sympathy.

95But likewise, if someone is on the path to excellence in every way, there is likewise no need for sympathy.

96Empathy has its uses – “I can relate to where you’re at” – this is useful.

97Sympathy is pity, it’s soothing, it attempts to make a person feel better for their defects – rather than correct those defects.

98As I looked at it more closely, I came to realize that this is not a unique class of reason for friendship, friendship built on sympathy , but rather another form of friendship built on pleasure .

99If someone loves you for your flaws, and then you correct your flaws, what happens to that love?

100***

102Not to pick on any particular tradition, but merely to give you a jumping-off point if you want to do research – as far as I can tell, friendship-built-on-sympathy is post-Christian thought.

103Christianity, which can be wonderful and I’m proud to be friends with a number of Christian friends and acquaintances – Christianity has a fundamental idea to it that we’re all sinners and flawed.

104This isn’t a bad thing, by itself, because in traditional Christian thought, it could be overcome by becoming closer to God, either by cultivating faith (the Protestant interpretation) or by doing works (the Catholic interpretation), and otherwise working for one’s salvation. Both traditions emphasize community and doing exercises to become more godly and pious.

105The premise that we’re flawed and sinners worked adequately in Christianity when combined with a vigor of fighting against that.

106The post-Christian thought in America seems to have kept the premise that we’re flawed, but seems to have discarded the overcoming of flaw.

107***

109Aristotelian friendship – Aristotle’s “perfect friendship” – is built on virtue, recognizing virtue, and deepening friendship over time through action.

110It’s hard to do; Aristotle says as much –

111“But it is natural that such friendships should be infrequent; for such men are rare. Further, such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have 'eaten salt together' ; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not.”

114It resonated immediately – to build strong friendships and truly develop those high levels of resonance and magnificence, you need to endure shared trials, campaigns, and work together to do things worth doing.

115***

117This all suggests a few very practical actions if you want to develop really wonderful friendships.

1181. Update your search criteria for who you associate with to primarily be based on virtue and fantastic character and behavior in the people in your life.

1192. Plan campaigns, projects, work towards improving the world and improving each other’s lives and character together with people you meet who you see initial sparks of virtue and want to get to know closer.

1203. Be very careful about not accidentally building your friendships on purely pleasurable grounds; in fact, shared hardships for worthy causes tend to lead to more understanding of each other and stronger friendships than mere pleasure.

1214. (most controversially) Discard sympathy. Ask for none of it and give none of it to your friends. Empathy – yes. Shared trials – yes. Support during hard times – yes. But desire for your friends to overcome their struggles, flaws, and challenges. Don’t love them for their flaws – desire for them to conquer and subjugate their flaws, for the greater good.

122***

123Friendship is so very important – nothing would thrill me more as a writer than knowing that I got you to carefully thinking through what you want out of friendship, and who you associate with.

124It starts there: thinking through it.

125Next chapter, we'll get very deep into cause and effect and aim to become more far-sighted in life.

1 U NCOMMON V IRTUES #3: H IGHER -O RDER T HINKING

4-- Ray Dalio, Founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest and most successful hedge fund, in “ Principles ”

5***

7Too often, these anecdotes sound like merely little moral lessons of a time gone by.

8Imagine instead you were in the position of the British civil servant in India.

9The British, the Victorian British, they had so many good and bad things about them. More good than bad, for my money; these were truly remarkable people.

10But imagine you’re one of them.

11It is the 1800’s, you’ve joined the British Empire’s India Department, you took a long journey over ship and land, and you’ve wound up on the Indian subcontinent.

12You live somewhat isolated from the natives, you have a certain smug sense of British superiority – it is, on one hand, an insufferable quality that rubs many other people the wrong way.

13On the other hand, you have supreme confidence in your ability to remake the world for the better. You and your colleagues are constantly improving roads, infrastructure, sanitation, military postings and garrisons, industry, infrastructure.

14Periodically, you get together with whoever you’re reporting to in the chain of command – some mix of soldiers, administrators, a viceroy, whatever – and you discuss what problems you want to address.

15Cobras are a problem.

16The cobra, you know, it’s a nasty and dangerous snake.

17We must admit that, not only is it dangerous, it’s somewhat beautiful.

18This slithering beast is powerful, it flicks its little tongue up, it rises up and fans out its powerful head.

19Maybe you’ve seen one of the victims who did not receive anti-venom brought in from the wilds – chalky skin, choked to dead, breathing stopped.

20Cobra bite.

21This little creature, so mysterious and glorious on one hand, but such a menace and so dangerous… this little slithering thing, such a menace to the civilization you’re trying to install.

22Some innocent people can be moving through the bush, and then that dull hissing sound, and a SNAP! Cobra poison. The victim has 30 minutes to live.

23“Well, we ought to do something about this.”

24Reasonable enough.

25The approach and policy are debated.

26What would be the most efficient way to eliminate cobras?

27How about we pay for dead cobras? Then, skilled wilderness men have an incentive to capture and kill these dangerous snakes.

28This all sounds reasonable enough. The price is debated, some amount of schillings are fixed as the bounty for dead cobras, some disbursement scheme is set, announcements of the policy are promulgated, everyone is instructed –

30Marvelous! The march of civilization. You pat yourself on the back a little, and go off to have a drink at the club.

31Dead cobras start trickling in, slowly at first, and then faster. Marvelous policy! Less snakes in the wild.

32And then, oddly, the dead snakes start coming in in larger and larger amounts… far more than one would have thought possible.

33A marvelous success!

34Wait, what’s going on here?

35Oh… some enterprising people are now breeding cobras for income?

36This… this was not what was intended.

37Damn.

38Policy: pay money for dead cobras.

39First-order consequence: cobras hunted and killed, less cobras.

40Second-order consequence: cobra breeding starts taking place.

41The way the story is told, when the British discontinued this policy, many cobra breeders just let their pets back into the wild, thereby increasing the cobra population.

42Damn.

43***

45Come, join me now backwards in history a half-century ago in Japan.

46We’re visiting a Toyota assembly line in the 1970’s.

47Something remarkable is about to happen.

48Well, first something unremarkable is about to happen – a minor defect is about to happen in an automobile. The glass windshield is about to be sealed imperfectly on a new car.

49Somehow, the error is not noticed immediately at its station, and it passes on to the next step in the production line.

50This is, of course, not so remarkable. Errors in manufacturing happen, and all around the world, inspections and re-work are done at the end of the process to ensure defective products do not get into the hands of the consumers.

51But no, slow down, observe, something remarkable is about to happen.

52An assembly line worker, making the equivalent of somewhere from $30,000 to $60,000 per year, who is not working on windshields and sealing, is about to notice the poorly sealed glass – even though it is not explicitly his responsibility.

53Now, the stage is set for the remarkable thing.

54The worker, noticing the defect, now flips a signal that stops the entire assembly line at every single stage, costing Toyota over a half million dollars of lost production.

55Imagine that – you have a finely tuned factory producing automobiles rapidly. An assembly line worker, noticing a single mistake that is not his responsibility, turns the entire assembly line off.

56So…

57Action: The lever is pulled to signal the defect.

58First-order consequences: The entire assembly line stops to correct the defect.

59Second-order consequences: Over a half million dollars of production are lost to this massive disruption in process.

60On this surface, this seems insane. Stopping an entire assembly line to correct a relatively minor error should be fatally expensive to an industrial manufacturer.

61But, we must now follow the policy to the logical conclusion.

62Knowing that every assembly line stoppage is disastrously bad for productivity and business, everyone at the factory takes it very seriously. Workers, engineers, supervisors, managers, and executives take the case exceedingly seriously.

63The individual defect is corrected, but moveover, steps are taken to design things so that this type of mistake never happens again at Toyota.

64Third-order consequences: Toyota winds up with the highest quality rates, lowest defect rates, and most efficient factories in the world.

65This would be borne out over the comings years – after decades of this pattern, Toyota became a more valuable company than every other automobile manufacturer in the entire world.

66You didn’t read that wrong – the entire value of General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Peugeot, Ferrari, BMW, Mercedes, etc etc – all of these combined, combined , were worth less than Toyota by itself.

67The worker on the line was empowered to stop production in a way that would cost Toyota somewhere around 10x his entire annual salary , to correct just a single mistake .

68The first-order and second-order consequences of this policy seem like a massive overreaction, almost insanity.

69But they prompted third-order consequences  of having overwhelmingly the best quality, effectiveness, and efficiency in industry over time.

70This is remarkable, no?

71***

73We do not know exactly what Marvin Katko would do with the money he was to make from his burglary.

74The “NO TRESSPASSING” sign was of course no deterrent to Marvin the Burglar; he was coming to burgle, and he would burgle regardless of the farmhouse owner’s feelings on the matter.

75It was Edward Briney’s farm, though it’s likely that Marvin Katko did not the farm belonged to Briney; Marvin, it seems to me, was not against Briney so much as just wanting to burgle.

76So there, the old farmhouse is boarded-up, locked down, the sign instructs Marvin not to trespass – Marvin does not care; Marvin is going to trespass and burgle; his point is burglary; he will burgle, sign be damned.

77How did Marvin Katko break into the farm? The historical record probably captured the particular details, but I don’t have those at hand. Perhaps he used a crow-bar to break open the front door.

78His adrenalin, I imagine, would be going slightly as Marvin came to do his burgling.

79The front door is broken into now, perhaps from a crow-bar.

80Marvin slinks into the house, he will burgle now.

81Marvin moves through the house, no one seems to be there.

82Marvin opens the bedroom door – BOOOOM!

83His ears explode with ringing, he falls to the ground, screaming in pain.

84Marvin the Burglar is bleeding heavily from his legs.

85The farmhouse owner, Briney, had rigged a shotgun booby-trapped to go off if anyone broke into the property.

86The burglar, Marvin, is badly wounded; his legs are a mess of wounds from the buckshot discharged from the shotgun.

87Marvin gets himself to the hospital, gets treated. And then, in a case that is still regularly discussed to this day, files a lawsuit against Edward Briney.

88***

90We don’t need dramatic buildup here – the outcome is counterintuitive:

91Marvin Katko, Marvin the Burglar, wins his lawsuit against Briney.

92Yes, Marvin was there to burgle, to break the law; the Iowa judges do not care.

93The ruling – if you set a booby trap and it goes off against someone, you are liable. Marvin the Burglar wins a $30,000 lawsuit against Briney.

94***

96In modern days, the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato is rather revered – perhaps for good reason, or perhaps not.

97At his best, he is a terrific poet, storyteller, recorder of thoughts and dialogs of Socrates and his contemporaries. At his worst… well…

98One of the more enduringly controversial ideas Plato advanced in The Republic was that every citizen should be told a “noble lie” that the everyone had a certain type of metal in their soul – the rulers of society would be those with gold souls, the silver-souled would be soldiers and auxiliaries, and those with baser metals in their soul would just obey but not try to rule or influence the state.

99This is, of course, a whole lot of nonsense. You can see why people look at it and frown, especially in Modern America.

100I, of course, think it’s a whole lot of nonsense.

101But, like a lot of other nonsense grounded in thought experiments, and from no observation of the world – the Cave Allegory is another one – it can be fun, maybe even illuminative to reflect on.

102Plato has his fictional Socrates muse on what attributes make up a gold-souled person – they’re not ruled by their lower passions, they don’t lust for power, they consider the good and the enduring good, rather than the shadow of good, when they make decisions.

103As I reflected on this, I thought to myself – if I only had a single attribute with which to select “gold souled” people, it would be higher-order thinking .

104Selflessness or temperance alone certainly isn’t the answer: I genuinely believe the Prohibition-era reformers that successfully banned alcohol in the United States really were genuinely working against what they believed to a great societal evil in alcohol and alcoholism. They observed many people being ruined by alcohol, they observed drunkenness leading to both domestic violence and random brawling out in society, they saw many people ruining their lives on drink.

105So, they ban drink. Hurrah!

106Oh, now we have a mafia class producing all the alcohol. Oops.

107First-order consequences of Prohibition: alcohol is made illegal, legitimate producers of alcohol go out of business, decrease in drinking.

108Second-order consequences of Prohibition: alcohol starts getting produced by organized crime, the law starts getting flaunted, a thriving black market in alcohol emerges.

109Third-order consequences of Prohibition: the law is repealed, the status quo is restored – but with the organized crime that bootstrapped itself off alcohol still existing.

110Boo; hiss. Bad outcome.

111It is nowhere near enough  to want to be a good person or to moderate one’s own ambitions and appetites. To truly be able to govern – to govern oneself, to govern and manage an institution or in business, to govern a city or country – you need to be able to study, understand, reflect on, anticipate, and adjust to second-order consequences, third-order consequences, and so on.

112If I were forced to pick just one attribute that would make someone “gold souled,” it would be simply that – the ability to see all the cascading consequences of immediate actions.

113***

115In Chapter 1, we explored “Mere Competence” – we contrasted it against luxurious virtues, and investigated why people do not embrace and cultivate competence when it is so obviously critical and hugely beneficial.

116In Chapter 2, we charted a course through “Aristotelian Friendship” – friendship that is built not on pleasure or advantage, which is fragile, but on a love of the best attributes of the characters of those around us. Truly, good friendships are one of the greatest things in the world.

117In this chapter, we are tackling another one of those “seemingly obvious things which is hiding in plain sight” – higher orders of thinking.

118The challenge in covering Higher-Order Thinking is that people think  they know it when they hear about it, but they are wrong and do not do it very often.

119The junk food example – Dalio’s – is one of the more common. People think they know it. “Yeah, of course I know that. Duh.”

120No; please do not make that error.

121I personally have spent many years trying to investigate second-order and third-order effects of everything, and I’m staggered on a regular basis by how often I miss the hidden parameters and outcomes of my behavior, both on a very personal levels (habits and behavior), on organizational levels (management, culture building, workflows, etc), and on how I interact with the world at large (developing skills, making money, spending money, making friendships and relationships, etc).

122And the same skillset applies to a great many professions, even when it’s invisible.

123The challenge of Higher-Order Thinking is that it sounds obvious  even when most people are woefully untrained in it. Just a tiny little bit of study and practice in this virtue is hugely life-enhancing, but most people are unaware of how great of a difference-maker it would be for them.

124***

126I remember the first time I came across that Katko v Briney  legal decision. I think the vast majority of American-trained lawyers would have heard of this, and probably many international lawyers, but the non-lawyers have likely not heard of it.

127At first, I found the whole thing vaguely offensive. Marvin Katko came to burgle, to commit a crime, he didn’t care at all about Edward Briney, and now Briney has to pay him money after Katko got hurt during the commission of his crime by that shotgun booby-trap.

128But if you think a little closer on Katko v Briney , you can see a deeper reasoning of the Court’s, which is –

130The first-order consequence is that Briney, that poor fellow who had to deal with Marvin’s burgling attempt, now has to pay the burglar money. Yes, on some level this is offensive.

131But the second-order consequence is that knowledge of that decision spreads through Iowa and all of American society, and property owners are on notice not to set traps.

132Why does this matter?

133This is where you think for a moment – who else would go into a farmhouse without permission?

134We can think of a few people immediately – the first one to come to mind are firefighters and first-responders.

135If a farmhouse started to burn down and firefighters break in to try to put out the blaze, it’s really not okay  for the property owner to have set up a trap that grievously wounds the firefighter.

136Additionally, if some neighbors ever got caught out in a “storm of the century” and broke into a seemingly abandoned property in order to ensure they’re not washed out or frozen out… we can debate whether it should be considered a serious crime to trespass in the event of a life-threatening emergency, but is the appropriate response to get shot by a shotgun blast in those circumstances?

137The Court says: no, hell no, of course not.

138We can think of a few more applications: what if there is a manhunt in the area and the police, seeing that the front door was already broken into, sweep Briney’s farm? Again, booby traps are unacceptable.

139And finally, what if some young children decide to be a little stupid and break in for a rush? Certainly, plenty of children aged 8 to 16 years old occasionally do dumb things to prove themselves and explore the world. Is it alright for a 12-year old to get shot, perhaps in the stomach, and bleed to death while trespassing?

140Maybe some people believe yes; perhaps some people would think so, but the Court does not believe it. The Court does not want booby traps set. You could wound or kill firefighters, police, tax appraisers, children who are exploring, people who are caught out in a storm and seek shelter, or even one’s own descendants if Briney passed away and the booby-trapped farmhouse was inherited.

141This is Higher-Order Thinking: when I came across it, it was vaguely offensive to me that a property owner had to pay a criminal who got hurt in the commission of a crime… but as you think it through more, the second-order and third-order consequences mean less hazards to human life in abandoned buildings that would indiscriminately hurt anyone  without any judgment or remorse.

142The Court acknowledged that if Briney had been in the building when Katko broke in, shooting him personally with a shotgun would have been acceptable – the man is committing a crime and his intentions are bad or unknown. Their problem was the booby-trapping – once a trap is set, you can not control how it goes off.

143This is Higher-Order Thinking: it goes beyond Briney and Katko, and thinks about the wide-ranging consequences.

144***

146I’ll say it again – I think most people are not great at higher-order thinking, even if it “sounds obvious” at a first glance.

147I also think it’s surprisingly hard to learn and execute well.

148Take the Toyota assembly line example: it’s not at all obvious  that stopping the entire production line for a small defect, incurring a half million dollars of costs and stopping the entire factory, will lead to a company that is the most profitable and effective.

149Yes, if you read about the practice and the final outcome, you can nod. You can say, “Okay, that makes sense.”

150But I contend it was not at all obvious  when they first did it.

151And yet, if you can grasp these abilities and get better at them, you can make radically better decisions – even more, you can make radically better decisions that are very hard to copy  because others do not want to take the upfront cost/damage that comes from the First-Order Consequences.

152It’s powerful. But that’s already part of the reason why it’s hard.

153It’s not hard to do actions that have positive first-order, second-order, and third-order consequences. If something is pleasurable, enjoyable, and beneficial on all timescales, those decisions are going to get made easily.

154Learning to go against that grain, to seize advantages that only come to fruition after multiple cycles, this is legitimately hard to do.

155***

157The first building block of third-order thinking is being able to break things into component pieces.

158Some people do this naturally – it tends to come very naturally to engineers and programmers, for instance – but it is not a natural way of thinking for most people.

159Take that “eat junk food or not” decision. Some of the components of that decision are –

160*Taste and pleasure
*Food cost
*Time required to procure/eat food
*Blood sugar levels
*Other biochemical reactions to the food
*Macronutrient mix
*Micronutrient mix
*Secondary effects on mood from eating and digestion, both immediately and over the coming hours
*The effects on salience (how significant things are) going forwards; EX, the more you eat pleasurable branded junk food, the more you notice it going forwards
*Social/interpersonal factors: going out to eat or not when invited by friends, colleagues, etc.
*And a whole lot of other factors.

161It is actually somewhat difficult, and again, not entirely obvious what all the components of eating a certain type of food are. It’s really not all that damaging for a very healthy person who gets a triple-burger, gigantic fries, and gigantic soda at McDonald’s once every month or two.

162The damage comes when the short-term factors start to overwrite and conquer the long-term factors. The taste, pleasure, cheap cost, convenience, immediate mood/biochemistry boost from the low-fiber carbs and fat and salt are indeed pleasurable and beneficial.

163If you only did this very rarely, it would not be so bad for you. But as you start to eat that stuff more, the chain gets more salient  to you. You start to get hungry and crave a little when you see a McDonald’s, or similar chain, if you eat there and enjoy it.

164This makes it a little easier to go to McDonald’s next time. Meanwhile, as your energy and mood crash while you digest the food and when the insulin rush wears off, later in the day you feel kind of low – and a natural and easy temptation is to go have more junk food.

165***

167Another example – getting an undergraduate degree. Components include –

168*The direct lessons from the classes you take (EX, learning double-entry accounting in an Accounting 201 class)
*The indirect lessons around how to think critically
*The indirect lessons and shaping of behavior on how to study, prioritize, etc.
*Being able to make friends, mentors, and connections at the undergraduate institution you’re in
*Having a “rite of passage” in society
*The credential from getting the degree
*Professional licensing, if applicable
*Getting access to the alumni network of your school
*Having time and space, when young, to explore a lot of different ideas and ways of living
*A sort of contained experience with which to learn how to live on one’s own, away from your parents – cooking, laundry, etc.
*Other on-campus resources
*It answers a number of identity-related and profession-related questions for a few years. (“What do you do?” – “I’m a student, I’m studying Economics.”)
*And a whole lot of other components.

169There’s also potential downsides to going – the cost of getting a degree, the loss of freedom that comes from student loan debt, the opportunity cost of doing different things with your time, the general career trajectory that you’re stepping onto when getting a degree if that particular degree fails to output some of the resources and components you want.

170For whatever reason, it’s not natural for most people to think this way, but I contend it’s one of the critical steps in higher-order thinking.

171I’ve spoken at and met a number of professors and students at the top-rated universities in a number of countries, including the USA and China.  I’ve also spoken at and met professors and student at solid middle-tier institutions, the ones that are not as famous or prestigious.

172You might disagree with me – and that’s fine – but my impression is that Top 10 universities do not offer much  better learning and instruction. There are some exceptions – certainly, in every field that are a few professors who are really on the forefront of what they’re doing and are exceptionally good at teaching.

173But in general, I think the quality of Accounting 201 is really about the same at a state university and an Ivy League university.

174Thus, if you were a student choosing between a full scholarship at a solid state university, or $150,000 in student loan debt at a Top 10 American university, the question comes down to: what do you want?

175That means considering all the components of getting an undergraduate degree and prioritizing them.

176***

178Let’s take another example that’s dear to my heart.

179If you know anyone that works in any sort of contracted service business – whether it’s remodeling kitchens, designing websites, doing graphic design, landscaping, or whatever else – you’ve no doubt heard horror stories about when clients do all kinds of dumb things.

180In this type of profession, one of the largest reasons for friction and problems with clients is when they change their mind after the process has started.

181So you’re remodeling someone’s kitchen, and it’s one-third done, and they change their mind and say, “Wait, I don’t want linoleum; I want tile.”

182Or you’re making a website for a client, you’ve gotten the basic functionality down, and they say: “Wait, I just want this little change…”

183This can be very aggravating and massively screw up a project, leading to bad feelings all around.

184The temptation for many, at first, is to write draconian contract terms.

185“If you make changes mid-process, your job will cost 50% more.”

186Or,

187“We will not make changes after we’re passed an approved stage.”

188This addresses one problem – changing the scope mid-project – but it neglects a number of other components.

189So again, let’s break down some of the components you want to have happen in a project.

190*Project gets completed on-time.
*You get paid on-time.
*The client is very happy afterwards.
*The client does repeat business with you.
*The client refers more business to you.
*The client gives you a happy testimonial.
*The client trusts you and lets you do your best work.
*Low stress and friction in the process of doing the job.
*Many more components.

191You might find that contractual terms like, “Changes are not allowed, period” actually result in clients getting upset and refusing to pay. At the very least, handling it that way greatly decreases the likelihood that they’re happy, that they do repeat business with you, that they send referrals to you.

192The first-order problem you’re trying to solve is clients changing their mind – but there’s many more second-order and third-order effects to consider. Start by figuring out all of the components.

193One easy contractual term that doesn’t seem draconian is to set your payment terms that they pay for whatever next step once you’ve both agreed to what that step is.

194This sounds small, but is actually a pretty big deal.

195A lot of jobs include a “paid on completion” aspect, or get paid after some amount of work is finished.

196So you cheerfully go on to the next stage, it’s all prepped and ready to go, you do some of the work, but then the client changes their mind. Then, perhaps they don’t want to pay. This is bad.

197Changing the timing of when they pay to be concurrent with agreement on the design direction for the next step makes them think things through much more – it’s easy to ask your contractor or designer to “just do some stuff” without realizing it’s a lot of work, but actually writing a check or wiring money feels much more significant; they’ll think about it more.

198Meanwhile – and this is odd, but true – if someone pays simultaneously as they make a decision, it feels much more understandable to them that they need to pay more if they want that work re-done.

199Alternatively, you could raise your prices and offer more room for changes and adjustments. But until you’ve figured out the list of components that matter to you, it’s easy to fight first-order consequences (haphazard requests to change decisions) while ignoring the higher-order consequences in client happiness, referrals, etc.

200***

202It’s easy to want everything, but not possible to have everything. At some point, there’s just tradeoffs.

203The Russian Kalashnikov rifle, the AK-47, is famous for being very fault tolerant. It handles gun jams, lack of maintenance and cleaning, sand, muck, and grime better than the vast majority of rifles.

204But it’s not the highest-precision or highest-accuracy rifle by any means.

205If you were a military official doing weapons procurement, it’s not-at-all obvious what you should prioritize for different military units. Do you want higher-precision rifles that are more liable to fail under the harshest conditions, or do you want lower-precision weapons that keep working but at a lower level of accuracy?

206One of the reasons that Higher-Order Thinking is hard to do is the natural tendency of people to say “I want it all.”

207Obviously, you should get all the fundamentals and easy gains.

208For a factory that’s on the brink of death with no spare cash reserves, they might not be able to afford to take the relatively drastic step of stopping the production line for any single defect.

209But Toyota had the cash reserves, workers, management, and executives where they could accept the heavy short-term loss of production in pursuit of the highest quality and best process.

210There are a number of ways to prioritize and rank priorities that are beyond the scope of this chapter – the simplest would just be ranking things in roughly what order they matter to you.

211You could classify things as “must,” “want,” or “nice-to-have” where the musts are absolute constraints, the wants are what you try to make happen, and nice-to-haves don’t matter as much to you.

212You could try different ways of ranking priorities that other organizations use – you might look up  Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints  to aid in this process, or you might consider the American military’s  CARVER Matrix , which you could read up on and see if it applies.

213How  you do it is less important than that  you do it. A simple must/want/niceties analysis (which is what I do when leading negotiations), assigning a score from 1-10 to each component on its importance, or just putting the list in order – any of these is far, far superior to not thinking about it.

214***

216Paranoia?

217Well, if we want to put in a nicer way, we could say “curiosity” instead.

218Another Toyota innovation was going through an analysis of “5 Why’s” –

219When something goes wrong, you ask “why” repeatedly to go beyond the surface level issues.

220Wikipedia has both a good overview, and a good example –

221The vehicle will not start. (the problem)
1. Why? The battery is dead. (first why)
2. Why? The accelerator is not functioning. (second why)
3. Why? The alternator belt has broken. (third why)
4. Why? The alternator belt was well beyond its useful service life and not replaced. (fourth why)
5. Why? The vehicle was not maintained according to the recommended service schedule. (fifth why, the root cause)

222When looking at how and why things happen in the world, you want to cultivate a deep curiosity. Ask “why” repeatedly. This helps you figure out the broken alternator is merely a symptom of a general problem of a lack of maintenance.

223Paranoia is sort of like a forwards-looking curiosity.

224It’s asking,

225“Why could go wrong here?”

226“What else matters here?”

227“What are we missing if anything?”

228“How could this affect stuff we weren’t anticipating?”

229“Are we leaving any huge gains on the table?”

230“Are we taking any risks here that we don’t want to take?”

231There’s no magic to curiosity or paranoia – you just do it, thoroughly.

232I recommend both doing it alone and on paper (to get the rough idea of the problem), and then doing it in dialog with other smart people.

233Both offer different perspectives. If what you’re doing is significant to your life, you really ought to regularly do both of them. You’ll undoubtedly uncover a lot of second-order, third-order, and higher-order consequences that you were unaware of.

234***

236Higher-Order Thinking  is one of the defining abilities of people that are able to make really great things happen. It applies to everything from your smallest personal habits, to the largest multi-billion and multi-trillion dollar investments in infrastructure and international affairs.

237Our method of doing it is relatively simple –

2381. Break down decisions into the component parts and outcomes.

2392. Prioritize what matters. This doesn’t need to be advanced; any  thinking-through of priorities gets most of the gains here. (Though for whatever reason, people resist prioritization.)

2403. Get very curious and/or paranoid to unearth hidden consequences, implications, root causes, opportunities, and risks. Do this solo on paper and  in dialog if anything is significant enough.

241How do you train this long-term?

242I think nothing beats personal analysis and dialog – there’s a reason that business schools have all gone onto the case study model, where instead of reading an expert’s conclusions alone, you actually run through the case as if you’re making the hard decisions, analyze, and debate. It’s a terrific way to learn.

243You can and should do these types of analyses with your friends, confidants, and colleagues regularly.

244You can apply it to anything – the choice of movies that an actor or director chooses to make, the trades and drafting of a professional sports team, a company expanding or contracting a product line.

245There’s fodder everywhere for analysis, dialog, and debate. In my social circle, we constantly do this – we analyze anything and everything that’s interesting.

246Find contemporary examples of stuff happening, then debate and analyze it.

247Likewise, go back in time and look at things like past company successes and failures, alliances that have succeeded (NATO) and failed (the World War I alliances, the Belgian-Nazi neutrality pact pre-WWII).

248You can go back and try to analyze how and why the Lakers traded away Shaquille O’Neal and see if you can understand their thought processes and risks, and see if you can come up with lessons from it. (It both failed to some extent, in that they got worse afterwards, and succeeded, in that they were able to build a championship team around Kobe Bryant without Shaq.)

249There’s nearly infinite opportunities and examples to learn Higher-Order Thinking, just hiding in plain sight. Seize them, grow your thinking in this area, and you’ll develop into a much more effective and powerful human.

1 U NCOMMON V IRTUES #4: C AUSAL / E MPIRICAL

3Unforgiven.

4Unforgiven is my favorite movie.

5It’s a Clint Eastwood Western, but, umm…

6Hmm.

7The movie starts with a random, stupid act of violence.

8A bounty is put on the head of the man who did it – and also one of the innocent and decent cowboys he rode with.

9And then, we’re at Clint Eastwood’s farm.

10I mean, his character is “William Muney” but he’s basically Clint Eastwood.

11But he’s not a flawless, powerful Clint Eastwood.

12No.

13He’s an old Clint Eastwood.

14He’s running a small farm. He’s got two little kids. He’s a widower, he’s raising his little kids by himself.

15He’s not a good farmer. But when he tries to see how his horse-riding and gun-shooting skills are doing, they’re rusty.

16They’re not so good.

17He can’t shoot so well or ride so well.

18But he gets into it, and then – on the journey to go kill those two men and get the bounty, he gets the flu. Reflects on his mortality.

19He’s very human.

20All the violence makes sense, but is pretty sad. There’s no glory in it, no triumph.

21At the final showdown – I won’t ruin it, watch the whole movie since it’s a masterpiece – but I’ll share one line.

22The antagonist, a strange character who is a mix of uprightness and brutality, Eastwood shoots him down.

23The rest of the gunfight plays out, and then it’s just Eastwood standing over this upright and brutal man.

24The guy laying on the ground bleeding, he thinks he’s the good guy. Maybe he is. Eastwood’s character is a career criminal; the guy on the ground is supposedly the good guy. At least in his own mind.

25Eastwood is standing over him with a rifle.

26And then, perhaps the most perfect line from any Western –

27Bill: “I don’t deserve this… to die like this. I was… building a house.”

28Eastwood: “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

29Bill: “I’ll see you in Hell, William Muney.”

30Eastwood: “Yeah.”

31Bang.

32***

34The year is 1724; Ben Franklin is 18 years old.

35I’d like you to imagine that you are this young Ben Franklin for a moment.

36In order to do this successfully, you’re going to need to forget most of what you know about Ben Franklin.

37He is not yet the diplomat and spymaster fighting for the American cause in Paris.

38He is not yet the thriving owner of printshops and capital.

39He hasn’t written Poor Richard’s Almanack  and come to be known as one of the wittiest and most respected Americans.

40The 17-year-old has obviously not been inducted into the Royal Society for his later-life experiments with lightning and electricity.

41He hasn’t invented the Franklin stove, bifocals, or lightning rod.

42He hasn’t built the first Firefighting Company, nor the first public library in Philadelphia.

43No, when you imagine you’re the young Franklin, you need to forget all these achievements.

44You’re merely a brilliant and headstrong young man who just ran away from his apprenticeship to his brother.

45You took off to New York with only a few pennies in your pocket and some bread. Finding no work in New York, you get a lead that Philadelphia has some work and travel there.

46So – you are 18. Talented, brilliant, headstrong.

47No money, not much in the way of connections.

48You need to make your way in the world.

49So when the Governor of Pennsylvania agrees to sponsor you in going to London to buy printing equipment and set up your own shop, this sounds like a very good deal.

50***

52We can let Franklin speak in his own words now; we’ll quote from his later-life Autobiography –

54Again ,  imagine you are Franklin for a moment.

55You are 18. What do you know of the world? Not too much, of course!

56The Governor has offered you letters of credit and introductions in London, and you book passage on a ship there.

57The letters are slow in getting to you. Well, so what? It’s the Governor , one of the most powerful men in the Colonies, so it must be all right.

58The letters will come soon enough.

59And then,

61“A little puzzled” – why can’t the Governor meet for a few minutes to give those promised letters? The ship is already moving.

62But you’re still not doubting. Why would you? It’s the Governor .

63(You might already suspect where this is going.)

65This is, umm, still all right… right?

67Well – ouch!

68You are 18 years old, you are in London away from your home continent, you have no money, and you have been thoroughly lied-to about your promised letters of introduction and credit.

69Ouch.

70***

72Later in his life, at 65-years-old, a more world-wise Franklin would reflect –

73“But what shall we think of a governor's playing such pitiful tricks, and imposing so grossly on a poor ignorant boy! It was a habit he had acquired. He wish'd to please everybody; and, having little to give, he gave expectations. He was otherwise an ingenious, sensible man, a pretty good writer, and a good governor for the people, tho' not for his constituents, the proprietaries, whose instructions he sometimes disregarded.”
 
But if you imagined you were  Franklin and walked yourself through his logic, wouldn’t you have made the same error?

74How could you not? How could you know better?

75You couldn’t; of course you couldn’t; you would have made the same mistake.

76Again, I would like you imagine that you  were  the 18-year-old Benjamin Franklin.

77If you can do so, there are lessons and profit in it.