the terrible truth about boredom and money

This is one of the ultimate secrets of making money, a secret so blindlingly obvious, so common it has never, to my knowledge ever been given the importance it deserves.

I learnt this in Japan from Sato Sensei, a 6^th Dan part time teacher of Aikido who was also the owner of a furniture company started by his family. He was a millionaire, the first I’d ever met. Sato Sensei was about fifty, very fit, and always laughing, having fun while every one else was grim faced and slogging away. This cheerful and lighthearted demeanor made it even more surprising when he told me, “the secret of making money is enduring boredom.” He saw me about to smile and for once did not grin back. He was serious. “In martial arts you learn how to deal with boredom without being bored. You do many many times the same throw, the same lock. But if you get bored you get hurt so you learn how to stay focused and interested. In business I hate it very much for years. For years! Then I finally learn: making money is boring! That made it easy. I ust made the boredom as interesting as I could!

Of course I forgot this except in its relation to my immediate concerns- which was doing martial arts. I did not relate it to money making activity until several years later when I actually had to make money rather than get paid a salary. I also started to observe the rich people I met. Sure enough they often made their fortune from something incredibly boring- the second millionaire I met had made his fortune from chicken drinkers, devices for allocating water to intensively reared chickens, but cast in plastic not metal. This cost, and weight, saving he passed on to the grateful farmers who bought them eagerly. But how boring! Or the next millionaire- who I actually attended college with- Roland- who was known as the least academicly gifted undergraduate around and ultimately sold his company for $70 million dollars. The product? Financial PR. Ie bullshit. Hotair. A spun story about widgets and loans and deals. Call me a philistine but what could be more tedious week in week out than meeting fat (or even thin) executives who tell you are boring story about their company which you then have to pretend is interesting to a bunch of journalists who have heard it all before.

But therein lies part of the key. Roland had found a challenge he could meet in making the boring stuff interesting- to himself and therefore to others. And he got paid very handsomely for it.

In brief, the terrible truth about making money is that you get paid in proportion to how much boredom you can stomach without getting bored yourself.

Take poker, often cited as a great school for money making training. Lots of businessmen in the world claim everything you need to learn about cutting a deal is in poker. For years I thought this meant reading faces, memorising details, calculating odds. Bull, I’m afraid. The main thing about playing poker to win is being able to endure the boredom of hours of bad hands that you must fold even though you’re dying to play just for something to do. Winning at poker is not about great hands, it’s about increasing your chip pile- and you do that by careful boring play with medium hands and chucking away bad hands. A good poker player shouldn’t have to rely on more than an average share of luck.

All jobs involve boredom, or rather, combating potential boredom. Take writing. Sitting for hours on your backside staring at a blank screen or page is boring. But a bored writer will only turn his reader off. So the writer must struggle to interest him or herself. By making the boring task interesting (and this isn’t just done through subject matter, it’s also done by counting words (to a writer a 1000 words HE’S WRITTEN is VERY interesting believe me), writing with a fancy inkpen (I have a Sailor collector’s pen for that very purpose) or a nice notebook (Hemingway and Bruce Chatwin preferred a moleskine one made in Paris) or sitting at a special desk or reading first a favourite inspiring fellow author- all ways of beating the intrinsic boredom of it.

Just recently I met another Japanese millionaire. He was travelling around the world with his young wife staying in the weirdest and funnest hotels they could find. They’d just come from an ice hotel in Finland and were on their way to an underwater hotel in Florida. Silly, maybe, but not boring, at least not compared to how he made his fortune. How had he done it? From a single car part he sold in millions, a device that contained the central processing unit of the car and prevented better its destruction in an accident. A box to put it bluntly. And he’d stuck to one product. “I did want to do more,” he told me, “But I thought it better to keep to the one thing I did best.” He’d weathered the boredom, bitten the bullet, and now he was taking his reward.

It’s boring to sit in a shop day after day waiting for customers. Or it can be.

It’s boring to make call after call trying to get the chance to make a sales pitch. Or it can be.

It’s boring having to make budgets and plans and talk to bankers and buy advertising and get people to do things they’d rather not do. Or it can be.

The terrible truth is: you have to be able to find a way to make boring things interesting if you want to make money out of your lifeshift. This is where you have to get inventive. Wear clothes that ‘express yourself’ rather than a dull suit. Drive a car that gives you a laugh or a thrill. Have that business meeting in a trendy restaurant rather than your usual place. Now you see why business folks tend to do these things that seemed a tad silly before- they’re trying to beat the boredom just as you will.

Luckily, a lifeshift activity is by its very nature, not boring. But turning it into money you run the risk of infecting it with boredom. But knowing this in advance is more than half the battle. Other tips include dividing up boring tasks into bitesized chunks, injecting silliness and fun wherever you can (one reason why Richard Branson is such an inveterate practical joker and party giver maybe) sticking to a ritual and making a challenge out of defeating boredom. But the main thing is facing up to it: if you want unalloyed fun you’re going to be poor.

how to make money and have fun

People always tell me: if only I had the money I’d lifeshift straightaway, dump the career and do what I love- be it photography, tango dancing or growing carnivorous plants.

Money is always the biggest excuse for not changing.

I even coined my own pnemonic to deal with that negative thought when it occurred, which it does fairly regularly: MINTS- Money Is Not The Solution.

When I think MINTS I force myself to think of all the ways I can solve a problem without money. For added emphasis it might work to have a bag of mints ready to suck on sitting on your desk.

The thing is there is a paradox or two here. 1)Rich people often don't worry about money- really- they just act rich and even more comes to them and 2) to make money you need money but instead of focussing on money too much focus on people, work, production and things you can get for free.

MINTS means attracting people to a project before money. If you have believers the money will follow. Instead of thinking I need X amount think of the kind of person who has whatever good or service you need. Think how you could attract or persuade them rather than simply forking over a ton of cash.

MINTS means you should think about earning or working sincerely to achieve a lifestyle, rather than trying to buy it immediately off the shelf. If you want a farm you can start by renting a field rather than looking for the money to buy land.

MINTS means that having lots of money won’t help you find something worthwhile to spend it on. Neither does the presence of money reduce your problems- it just changes their nature. If you are a worrier by nature, more money will probably just make you worry more unless you deal with it first.

But surely we need money to start anything?

Of course- but you need the right perspective on money, you need to realize that being creative can cut massive costs right at the beginning.

My friend Frank was a penniless immigrant from Iran to Australia in the 1990s. His family trade had been weaving and selling carpets- so he looked for a place to start a shop in Melbourne. The minimum  rent he was looking at paying up front was $26,000. He didn’t have that. Instead he went looking for an empty place in a busy street that had been overlooked for whatever reason. Eventually he found a promising site -in a red light district. It was a disused pub. The owner was eager to let the place to a reputable business and Frank told him he would take the place if he was given three months free rent just to get started. The owner agreed. So right at the beginning he had saved thousands of dollars.

Generally speaking- the more meaningful a task is to you, the less money you need to accomplish it. When I set out to cross Western Canada by birchbark canoe I was told I would have to pay guides to go with me. Instead, because of my complete dedication to making the journey I found enthusiasts who helped pay for the trip and help me as well.

Money may be the goal, the way you keep score- but it is not the right way to start thinking about starting something new. It's a tool that takes second place behind people, ideas, energy, enthusiasm and a correctly structured effort.

Top aikido teacher Robert Mustard spent years in Japan learning his skills. He had no idea that he would one day do it for a living- for him it was just what he loved to do. He returned to Canada with a 6^th Dan and a towering reputation. Over time he built a good living  from teaching at his own dojo and at seminars.

One of my favourite lifeshifters is Peter Vido, the obsessive scythe enthusiast and co-author of “The Scythe Book” that has run to several editions and is still very much in print twenty years after being published. It would be hard to find a more obscure lifeshift  niche than scything (for those in the dark it’s a long handled sickle for cutting grass and corn) but Vido’s fascination comes over both in his book, website and instructional videos. He also runs seminars to teach scything (it’s all in the sharpness of the blade).

Long Tail Lifeshifters

The scythe man illustrates the so called Long Tail phenomenon where obscure subjects can be remunerative through the internet’s ability to link up enthusiasts from all over the world. The long tail can be put to work by lifeshifters worldwide.

There may be nobody in your town interested in finding new rock art in the Libyan desert. But Hungarian Lifeshifter Andras Zboray has built a business, FJ expeditions that links everyone in the world interested in Saharan rock art. Through his extensive website, CDs and translations Zboray attracts clients for his expeditions to search for new art- mining the long tail to make a good living in his chosen work.

By harnessing the power of the long tail almost any lifeshift can be made remunerative.

The stages of making money from an interest are:

1)Build your competence in your chosen lifeshift- not difficult because it’s your dream work, what you find most meaningful.

2) Establish a website with an information heavy content. Providing real value with updates in the form of news, reviews and useful blog material.

3) Publish a book on lulu.com publicized through the website. Produce dvds, courses, talks etc.

4) organize events that combine travel with teaching people your lifeshift skill.

5)Combine travel or tourism with your interest- courses in exotic locations that trade on the value added of being a holiday as well as a course.

I have followed this method with the successful Explorer School where my Lifeshift interest in exploration has been built into a business providing courses where people can learn exploration skills.

more on the corporate life

Recently, one friendly reader of this blog, Gary Speakman, pointed out I may have a few inconsistancies in my approach to capitalism...this was my reply:

As you can see, as well as publishing the odd incendiary anti-corporate piece on my blog I have my books distributed through corporations and have earned some fat fees trying to teach executives leadership and team work! Am I trying to have my cake and eat it? Maybe.

I suppose that the key thing is to not be 'owned' by your job. Corporate life is, in the higher reaches, like being a highly valued slave in ancient Rome. You are respected, you have great wealth- but you are not free. Are you?

I am not advocating a rejection of all corporations- ie. big companies- all I tend to emphasise, or want to emphasise, is that having a full time “career” corporate job will not be in line with your best interests as a human being unless you are a)single and obsessive or b) a robot  or c)learning things you aim to take elsewhere.

I think it’s salutary to look at how the earnings of middle class mid-level corporate employees have plummeted since the 1950s. Gone are the possibilities of a big house, car and private school for the kids. Now both partners have to work just to keep the (smaller) house and car. But CEOs are wealthier than they have ever been. And why not? A corporation is not a democracy- it is a hierarchy devoted to making profit. I find it strange that we all talk about promoting democracy the world over and yet we condone working in hierarchical organisations where you follow orders or get fired- no democracy there- I’ve seen far more democracy in action in a jungle village of former headhunters in North Borneo....

Corporations have been evolving for over a hundred years into incredibly efficient profit making machines completely welded into the structure of everyday life in the West, and more recently, the world. To be ‘against’ them would be a weird posture since everything we do is touched by some big company or other. So that is not what I suggest.

My thoughts are aimed more at the future. If you are about to choose a career- choose one where you have freedom, where you are not owned body and soul by a company whose sole aim is to enrich a board of directors and a handful of wealthy investors.

However, if you have a product that you wish to distribute then, either invent your distribution system, or, use a corporate one. There’s no problem with that since you are not ‘owned’ by them. You are using them – they are not using you.

break free!

What was the most significant event of 300AD?

A bunch of guys going into the Egyptian desert.

Turning their back on Rome with all its excess and glory.

The desert fathers inspired the Christian Church. Which then reversed into, and took over, the Roman Empire.

The inspiration however was from these few ascetics living on starling eggs and locusts and focusing their whole thinking on what was important, really important in human existence.

Can you think now of the equivalent?

OK scroll back to the United States in the early  19^th century- Emerson and Walt Whitman and Theroux- versus the growing industrial muscle and might of the United States of America. Were they the ascetics then? Looks like they got overshadowed somewhat.

Scroll forward not to Walden pond but to lonely Montana- another recluse in a hut- but this one is making intricate wooden cased letter bombs and delivers them on a bicycle- the Unabomber- is he the modern ascetic?

I don’t think so. Asceticism these days is about being free of the slavery of working all your hours for some giant corporate entity. It’s pretty low key.

The biggest difference is between people who have jobs and earn money to live the life they think they want.

And people who live the life they want and get money somehow.

One of the single most radical things you can do is give up your ‘career’- be it with BP, USAID, Microsoft, or any other famous organization or corporation.

The next most radical thing is to maximize microadventures within the texture of your everyday life. And though I am in rant mode here I’m still far from good at that myself.

Because if you don’t the model of ‘obsessive professionalism’ will pollute your own thing. If it does it is time to lifeshift again.

You might be able to do that even if you are a corporate slave. Maybe.

This website functions as a forum of ideas to liberate you from the corporate yoke. From centring your life around their plan rather than your plan. Get your own plan and stop kidding yourself that there is ANY overlap between the corporate plan and your life. There isn’t. Work for them for money only, short term. Or work for them to learn something specific, then leave.

Are you a slave?

A slave is someone who is not free.

If you can walk out of your job anytime you are not a slave.

If you can earn enough to live in three weeks to live for three months you are not a slave.

The Roman Empire, like all empires, was run by slaves. Some were every wealthy, belonged to sporting and social clubs and lived very well. But they were not free and could not leave their job. Sound familiar?

Slave=Empire.

The Greek empire was run by slaves. So was the Persian and the British and the Ottoman.

And so is the American. The slaves aren’t black and living in the deep south, they’re white and living in a 2 million dollar townhouse in New York, among other places. Anyone who cannot afford to stop working is a slave.

The orthodoxy says: get a qualification, get an MBA, get a great job: that’s life!

Except we know: that’s a crock of shit. Your great job is just a way for the empire to grow. The meaningless (in terms of anything more than money) empire of Jobs, Gates, General Motors, BP, and all the rest. They don’t even have the cultural impact of the Greek or Roman empires. They are not a civilizing force. They are a decivilising force. The corporate world has only one morality: expand, grow or die. In other words- the moral stature of a virus. Of course even viruses have a function...

If you are old it may not make sense. You might not think you can change- except you can. Neural pathways grow as and when they are needed. If you need to change you will.

If you are young- start taking the right steps now. The earlier you start the easier it will be. Start by taking courses that will enable you to be free by earning your own crust in an interesting way. Film making, editing, building, plumbing, carpentry- anything practical that leads to MONEY and not to A JOB.

Use the corporate delivery system to make money, deliver your product. Just as the ancient Christianity used the Roman empire as its delivery system.

change the world?

How about simply aiming to leave it a better place?

Less room for the screw ups other 'world changers' have managed.

When people talk about wanting to 'change the world' what they really mean is "I want to be in power telling others what to do". 

how to stand-up paddleboard (the easy way)

Stand-up paddleboarding isn’t that easy. It’s taken me a fair few goes, probably ten excursions, to get the knack of it. I haven’t been pushing myself so I’m sure if you were super keen you could get the skill quicker. Plus I learnt on a less than absolutely rigid inflatable board. On a stiff board it’ll be easier. What’s certainly true is that if you read the below you will learn a lot faster than I did.

Because a paddleboard looks very like a surf board I thought standing up on it would be like standing up on a surf board. Wrong.

Because you paddle it with a single bladed paddle I thought it would be like paddling a Canadian canoe. Wrong.

Paddleboarding has a skill entirely it’s own- but once you get it, it’s great. My breakthrough was this: think of a gondalier leaning on his great long pole- that’s the right mental image for interacting with the paddleboard paddle. Think of it as your third leg…then you’ll be really stable. Stand facing foward leaning right out on the long paddle. Angle the board with your feet, against your push, kind of like the way you angle a windsurfer against the force of the wind. That angle between the third leg and the two on the board is how you brace against the power of the push.

You can practice this by kneeling in a high up position on the board and imagining each toe-to-knee length as a giant foot and your thighs as your entire legs. You can then practice leaning out on the paddleboard way over the edge, angling the board and generally getting the feel of the thing before you wobble up to a standing position.

As you pick up speed it gets easier of course- like riding a bike.

As you make paddle strokes the paddling image should not be predominantly forwards- instead think of pulling towards the side of the board, sweeping in a sort of ‘C’, or even just towards yourself as if trying to make the board go sideways. With the board angled by standing a bit to one side, the result will be forward movement but no spinning, which is what happens if you paddle as if in a canoe.

You’re going to fall in- a lot- and being of a wimpy nature I donned a thin short wetsuit and put in my trusty ‘Dr’s pro-plugs’ ear protectors which I swear by for diving and other watery activities. Basically they are musicians’ ear plugs adapted by freedivers to slow rushes of water banging your eardrums. They’ll reduce discomfort and also the chance of an ear infection.

I found that it was easiest to practice with the wind behind me and riding in on gentle (very gentle) surf. Probably even easier with no surf and just the wind pushing you. The wind helps keep your speed up.

When it clicks it’s addictive!

polymathy and motivation

A recent slew of experimental evidence has upset the comfortable notion that talent is what you need to become expert at anything. We now know it is the hours you put in that are really the crucial factor. It seems that 10,000 hours of application to be precise. Though a certain level of innate talent helps you to get started on the path to being a musician, artist or chess grandmaster- after that it mainly about how motivated you are to keep practicing and learning.

Talent helps motivation because of all the positive feedback you keep getting in the form of praise. It also helps because you can do hard things more easily than the less talented. But in the end this is talent’s undoing: when the going gets really tough the initially talented have just not got the stamina to keep going. The less talented have learnt they have to ‘eat bitter’ to get good at anything and they take the rising curve of difficulty in mastering an art in their stride.

Youthful soccer players are much more likely to succeed if they are born in the early part of the school year rather than the later. The older children are more physically developed and dominate their younger classmates. Initial success at an early stage motivates them to carry on.

The Hungarian educator Laszlo Polgar homeschooled his three daughters in chess for up to six hours a day. Instead of rebelling, as one might expect, one became an international master and the other two became grandmasters- the strongest chess playing siblings in history irrespective of their sex. The youngest, Judit Polgar is ranked currently as 51^st best player in the world, but she has been ranked as high as eighth.

It is very clear that early success and massive encouragement from parents feeds motivation. But in the end it is self-motivation that is needed. And real self-motivation comes not from kicking yourself to try harder but by putting yourself in the best possible environment to succeed.

How does that connect to polymathy? To want to master not one but several subjects requires motivation both common and unusual. Common, because most of us want to be good at more than one narrow specialty and unusual because we are unable or unwilling to put ourselves in the best possible environment to succeed in acquiring new skills.

Take writing for example. To succeed you need a distraction-free environment free to you for at least one and a half hours a day. Doesn’t have to be silent but it does have to be distraction free. And you have to pursue this skill a minimum of four days a week. Any less and you are not going to build up enough momentum to succeed. Language learning may require the same amount of dedication. For the study of martial arts I only began to make progress when I practiced a minimum of four hours a day four and half days a week.

But why attempt to be a polymath? Why not just try and be good or even very good at just one thing?

First being crap at lots of things doesn’t mean, if you forego them, that you’ll be good at the one thing you choose.

Focusing on one thing exclusively may not be optimal. Writers need something to write about. Pure ambition to write leads to sterile literary type novels short on meaningful content.

To have polymathic ambitions you must believe it is possible, that it is desirable and that it doesn’t interfere with your life, in fact that it enhances your life.

Polymathy helps general motivation because it supplies more than one pole to your life. When something goes wrong you can turn to another interest. All your eggs are not in one basket. Crucially you don’t lose momentum. You simply switch tracks.

Having something interesting in your life is a like a light that illuminates everything else.

Increasing the number of lights increases the chances of being well lit.