A groundbreaking work -- named one of the five most influential sports books of the decade by Sports Illustrated -- How Soccer Explains the World is a unique and brilliantly illuminating look at soccer, the world's most popular sport, as a lens through which to view the pressing issues of our age, from the clash of civilizations to the global economy.
i'm so pleased to learn this is a thing that happens.
Later this week, the World Bodypainting Festival begins in Austria, but last month a similar competition took place in the southern hills of China: Buffalo Painting. Located in Jiangcheng county, the annual International Buffalo Bodypainting competition coincides with the region’s founding. This year marked the 60th anniversary for Jiangcheng, and a total of 48 water buffaloes got “dressed” for the occasion.
The tradition behind painting the animals stems from a local story in which a buffalo was attacked by a tiger. As the creatures fought and struggled in a field, the buffalo became caked with mud and blood. The tiger looked at the buffalo, became scared and ran away. Some local herders began painting their buffaloes to keep predators away and eventually a festival of painting the buffaloes emerged.
Each buffalo in the competition was painted by 3-7 artists, with the cash prize for the most beautiful example a sizable 100,000 yuan ($16,042). Some of the competitors are from other countries such as Laos, Vietnam, New Zealand, Finland and Germany. This year, at the end of the harvest themed festival, a group of schoolchildren took home the big prize.
For every doomsday net neutrality thing I post, it's nice to remember that good people doing good things happens.
We're here at the MIT Knight Civic Media Conference, where Alberto Ibarguen and John Bracken have just announced the winners of the latest news challenge, which asked the question "How can we strengthen the Internet for free expression and innovation?" Sands Fish and I were there to liveblog the presentation of grantees. Willow Brugh contributed artwork.
Two of this round's grantees went to public libraries that are planning initiatives for community members to check out WIFI hotspots for their neighborhoods: the New York Public Library's "Check out the Internet" project and "Internet to Go" by the Chicago Public Library. Here's what they said when they went onstage:
Check Out the Internet - @NYPL works to bridge the digital divide by allowing New York residents with limited Internet to borrow portable WIFI hotspots (Tony Marx, James English). Tony describes the New York Public LIbrary as a 19th century institution trying to transform itself for the 21st century. The NYPL is the largest library system in America. Combined, they have 40 million physical visits, more than the cultural institutions and sports events combined. The NYPL is the largest free provider of computer training in New York. A third of New Yorkers rely on them because they don't have computers at home.
Tony Marx gets on stage to tell us more: when first arrived at the library, he was dismayed that publishers weren't allowing libraries to borrow electronic books. He worried about a future where people would not have access to books if they chose to read them electronically. A technology designed to increase access to knowledge was going to reduce that access. Lending electronic books is now an opportunity for all libraries.
Through their partnership with the Digital Public Library of America, the NYPL is excited to create a future vision where everything is online for free any time. That's the holy grail. In the meantime, they noticed that 46% of New York households with incomes below $35k have no broadband access -- around a third of all New Yorkers. In the South Bronx and Harlem, around 90% people can't afford Internet access. The NYPL could have all the content in the world and pump it out for free, and people couldn't get it. When they open the library, there's a line. When they close, people sit on their stoop to get WIFI.
Libraries are no longer constrained by walls -- provision of access should not be constrained. Since NYPL is in every neighborhood, they decided to let's leak purposefully. They've designed an approach that uses MIFI hotspots, testing with 100 hotspots. With Knight Foundation money and another $1.5 million they're raising, they want to provide 10,000 hotspots to people involved in their education programs: the 8k students involved in out of school learning, the 10.5k ESOL students, and the 1.5k students involved in technology training. To demonstrate that this is nationally possible, the NYPL is partnering with Brooklyn and Queens libraries, as well as libraries in Kansas and Maine.
This is about everyone in America, sys Tony. Close to 100 million americans don't have the Internet access we take for granted. If America leaves a third of its population behind, we will not have an economy that works and we won't have a democracy that works.
The Internet To Go at the Chicago Public Library is offering communities WIFI hotspots to check out to access information (Brian Bannon, Michelle Frisque, Andrew Medlar)
Andrew Medlar gets on stage to tell us about The Chicago Public LIbrary, which is already in every community in the city of Chicago. Their new Internet to Go project will distribute WIFI hotspots to community members in areas that have limited access to the Internet. The library already loans fishing poles, school backpacks, and robots. They're giong to start by rolling out 300 of these hotspots in 3 branches in targeted communities. They plan to triple that after the initial pilot. They will double this number after 3 months.
The library hopes that these WIFI hotspots will help community members to learn how the Internet can be relevant to them. They hope to reach 10,000 people in their first year and create a proof of concept that can inspire other libraries to do similar work.
In honor of the U.S. team's big match against Germany today, we decided to collect some of our favorite GIFs and memes from the World Cup so far. Check them out here.
Maybe it's because it's New Castle or maybe it's that old camera magic, but this place looks timeless.
Jonathan Keys is on a mission to bring traditional methods of photography back to the spotlight. Instead of going around the streets with the latest DSLR, Keys takes his 130 year old wooden camera and his 1920s lens to find subjects. Roaming his home city of Newcastle, he captures a classical England in modern times.
Keys uses a wet-plate collodion process in developing the shots; and due to the labor involved, he can only really take two to six images a day. Regardless of the difficulty, he is appreciative of the work involved in the process. “It’s definitely far more rewarding than digital photography because of the time and attention needed for each picture.”
In a world where everyone and their grandmother is taking instant photos with their phones, tablets and cameras, it’s nice to appreciate the “old days” when every single image needed some love and attention to come to life. Check out more of Jonathan’s work on his site, 47 Images.
Nobody really talks about discrimination in these terms. It's pretty stark when you think about where you can go easily and why...and who can't.
People may be increasingly leaning on technology and personal devices to house their personal information, but a hard copy passport still carries a hefty amount of weight. This infographic offers a glimpse into the power of the world's passports -- ranked by the travel freedom a passport holder enjoys.
Tim Wu, the Columbia Law School professor and author who coined the phrase "network neutrality," is running for lieutenant governor in New York.
If he wins, Wu will try to block Comcast's attempted purchase of Time Warner Cable. While the merger is being reviewed by federal regulators, it is also being reviewed at the state level. In New York, the Public Service Commission is scrutinizing the deal.
"The main issue [related to technology] I'm focusing on right now is Comcast and the really big mergers," Wu told Ars today. While the lieutenant governor doesn't make merger decisions, "I see the lieutenant governor position as one that puts pressure on other agencies and advocates for the public's interest. I would push the agencies to block the Comcast merger," he said.
The World Cup started in Brazil this week among celebration and protests. The host nation won the game opener in front of 62,100 fans at Corinthians Arena in Sao Paulo, and masses watched in various positions around the country and world. -Some in protest that a huge amount of funds are directed to this prominent event.--Leanne Burden Seidel (27 photos total)
A boy runs in a decorated street in Fortaleza, Brazil , June 12. The FIFA World Cup 2014 is taking place in Brazil from June 12 to July 13. (JARBAS OLIVEIRA/EPA)
As the FCC sleazes its way towards a world of cable company fuckery, Bittorrent's Join the Fastlane provides a preview of a world where your ability to get reliable access to parts of the Internet you love is a function of those sites' willingness to bribe your ISP for "premium" carriage.
Read the rest
I feel that the current trends in cereal box art--the wildly distorted faces and poses, the lurid digital-airbrush modeling--have surely reached some kind of maximum.
don't know if you go for music, but this is really damn good.
The New Jersey native Sharon Van Etten has just joined the long, long list of indie types who have covered Bruce Springsteen. In her case, she did a soft, emotive solo-piano version of “Drive All Night,” a slow, grand centerpiece from The River. She did it for The A.V. Club’s new video series Pioneering, performing her version at the storied old club the Stone Pony, in Springsteen’s old Asbury Park stomping grounds. Watch her version of the song, along with another video of her talking about Springsteen, below.
What exactly is a good shot in soccer? The nascent field of soccer analytics is hard at work trying to figure that out. It won't surprise anybody to learn that closer is better, and using your feet is much, much better than using your head. So, much like getting into the lane is of paramount importance in basketball, getting the ball at your feet in front of the goal is just about the best thing you can do in soccer. Getting to the byline (baseline) in the corner of the penalty areas (like where Maicon was in the above video) is a hot destination. That's where you can cut the ball back for a teammate to have one of those coveted close shots. Hey, look at that - it's like basketball again: Get to the goal or get to the corners.
In the interest of spreading good music, read about Coltrane. THANKS.
"The day after Christmas, in 2012, I packed my rented Chevrolet Impala in New Orleans and drove five hours northwest to Shreveport. My plan was to spend a couple of days with Dr. Cuthbert Simpkins, Coltrane biographer and trauma surgeon." An Absolute Truth: On Writing a Life of Coltrane, by Sam Stephenson. Splendid.
Beginning June 12, the world’s eyes will turn to Brazil for the start of the 20th FIFA World Cup. In celebration of the event, ESPN commissioned Brazilian artist and graphic designer Cristiano Siqueira to make a series of images featuring each team… and they capture the passion of the game perfectly.
Each image tells the unique story of the featured team, including favorite heroes along with a representation of the countries flag. Siqueira also included each team’s stylized nickname – from Les Bleus and the Dragons, to The Yanks and Seleção.
Make one of these your phone’s wallpaper and you’ll be plenty pumped when the first kick happens.
Compelling! I wish he would comment more on how to improve improv'd scenes.
Using Edgar Wright as a positive example, Tony Zhou laments the lack of good visual comedy in American comedies and provides examples from Wright's films (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, etc.) to show how it's done properly.
Exactly 69 years ago today, on April 24, 1945, a young trumpet player named Miles Dewey Davis got the chance of a lifetime. He had recently left his native East St. Louis for New York City, and at only seventeen years old, he was playing alongside the legendary Charlie Parker. On this day, he was heading into the recording studio for the first time. Perhaps he wasn’t quite up to the task: in his first recordings, Miles’ playing comes across as tentative, especially when compared to Parker’s confident saxophone. But Miles soon found his voice, and over the next forty five years, his vision pushed him into uncharted territory and repeatedly redefined the scope of jazz.
May 27, 1957 Columbia 30th Street Studios, NYC
But Miles Davis didn’t do it alone. At every step of his career he surrounded himself with wonderfully talented musicians who were innovators in their own right. Gil Evans’ arrangements helped drive the birth of cool jazz and supported Miles’ orchestral explorations of the late 1950s. John Coltrane recorded his groundbreaking album Giant Steps only a few weeks after performing on Miles’ Kind of Blue, the best selling jazz album of all time. And in the 1960s and 70s, Miles was backed by players who would become the vanguard of ’70s jazz-rock fusion, including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, and John McLaughlin.
In fact, there are too many talented musicians to name, so we put together Scaled in Miles, an interactive look at Miles Davis’ career and collaborations. Using the history of his recording sessions as documented by the Jazz Discography Project, we show every session that led to a recording, and if that recording is available on iTunes, you can listen to a sample. By scrubbing and clicking over the timeline of recording sessions, you can see who performed with Miles on each date. You can also find specific artists and highlight their sessions by clicking on the circles, or by entering different names in the search box. Larger circles indicate artists who had more sessions with Miles.
Beating into towering walls of freezing water in search of fish, crab and octopus might not sound like the most enjoyable form of employment, but photographer/fisherman Corey Arnold’s fantastic book Fish-Work: The Bering Sea surely makes it look that way (besides an odd missing finger or two).
“When the economy went South in 2002, I decided to head North and return to commercial fishing in Alaska. I landed a deckhand job aboard a 43 foot cod jigger which led to a King crab job in the Bering Sea. I spent 7 years crabbing aboard the f/v Rollo and brought my camera along to document the experience. Known as one of the world’s most dangerous jobs, we battled up to forty foot seas and a marathon of sleepless nights often working in freezing conditions. Many of my best photographs were never made as all hands were needed during the fiercest storms.”
Considering the already fierce wind and waves in many of Corey’s photographs, that’s saying a lot. You can see more of the series Fish-Work, along with enough superb water-based photography to keep any salty soul happy, at coreyfishes.com.
Everything in its own, neat, speedy, expensive, internet-destroying track. Thanks, asshats.
iOS 7 downloads helped show the need for Apple to build a CDN.
It's long been rumored that Apple is building its own content delivery network (CDN), and now it appears that the company is negotiating paid interconnection deals with "some of the largest ISPs in the US" in order to deliver Apple content to consumers.
Dan Rayburn, an analyst with extensive contacts in the CDN and Internet service provider industries, reported on Apple's latest moves today. Apple has not responded to a request for comment from Ars.
"In February I blogged about a new group formed inside of Apple last year, tasked with building out their own CDN to deliver Apple software updates, apps and other Apple related content," Rayburn wrote. "Since my post, Apple has been very busy with their build-out deploying a lot of boxes running Apache Traffic Server and buying a ton of transit, co-location, wavelengths and other infrastructure services. Their CDN is quickly growing, and it won’t be long before we start seeing a portion of their content getting delivered from their new CDN."
This blog has a dumb name, but this post is exceptional. It's tl;dr length so let me draw your attention to INPUT DEPREVATION WEEK. Anyone wanna give it a go?
“This is a holy moment. A sacramental moment. A moment in which a man feels the gods as close as his own breath.
What unknowable mercy has spared us this day? What clemency of the divine has turned the enemy’s spear one handbreadth from our throat and driven it fatally into the breast of the beloved comrade at our side? Why are we still here above the earth, we who are no better, no braver, who reverenced heaven no more than these our brothers whom the gods have dispatched to hell?”
In this speech from Steven Pressfield’s gripping, well-researched re-telling of the Battle of Thermopylae (Gates of Fire), the Spartan King Leonidas addresses his troops after a victory. He is reflecting on the fact that when you do battle in chaos, Lady Fortuna and skill have an equal say in the outcome. Pressfield explains this dynamic in his equally worthwhile non-fiction work, TheWarrior Ethos:
“In the era before gunpowder, all killing was of necessity done hand to hand. For a Greek or Roman warrior to slay his enemy, he had to get so close that there was an equal chance that the enemy’s sword or spear would kill him. This produced an ideal of manly virtue– andreia, in Greek – that prized valor and honor as highly as victory.”
Andreia meant that judgment was based on actions taken — not outcomes. Society understood that the outcome was, at least in part, in the hands of the gods. What was in a man’s control was how he acted.
We tend to mix this up. There is an army of authors studying “successful” people and writing lists of 5, 7, 10, or 20 things that they did to become successful. All you have to do is emulate the list and you, too, can be successful.
That’s like looking at the living Spartan soldiers and explaining why they survived. Leonidas would laugh at their idiotic arrogance.
We have become so focused on results that our actions have become a secondary concern. We judge men based on what they have instead of what they do. We signal our ideals instead of embracing them.
In his short book Do the Work, Pressfield relates a New Yorker cartoon that cleverly skewers our preference for thinking about things, rather than doing them:
“A perplexed person stands before two doors. One door says HEAVEN. The other says BOOKS ABOUT HEAVEN.”
He’s perplexed. He’s considering the book. It’s funny because it’s absurd… and because we know we’d have the same consideration.
That’s where we are as a culture. We run desperately to abstraction and avoid action at all costs. Thoreau’s man of “quiet desperation” has never been so prevalent.
The world is full of men who are “stuck” in life. There has been some mass paralysis. Modern man has forgotten how to take action.
The culture is beginning to shift, though. The popularity of Nassim Taleb and his Incerto series, beginning with Fooled by Randomness, has brought an appreciation of randomness to a large segment of society. As we’ll see soon, a focus on action is dominating the business world as well.
The economist and author of Average is Over, Tyler Cowen, agrees:
“The more information that’s out there, the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn’t what’s scarce; it’s the willingness to do something with it.”
A world that is increasingly confused, uncertain, and paralyzed is calling out for men of action. We need to stop thinking and start acting. Stop looking at the big red button and push it. Stop planning and take a step forward. Stop talking about grit and take a hit.
In short, the world needs men. I’m not sure if you’ll answer the call. I do know some will, though, and that’s all we need. I’ll be out there, too. You’ll probably find me facedown in failure. I’d appreciate a hand.
The next section will provide 10 powerful and mostly overlooked truths about the nature of action.
The final section will provide two specific practices that will force you into creating a habit of taking action.
Your next action? Continue reading.
10 Overlooked Truths About Taking Action
1. Action is Cheaper Than Planning
Do you know why the Wright Bros. beat out all the mega-corporations they were competing with in the race to taking the first flight? Action.
Robert Greene explains in Mastery that the Wright Bros. had a tight budget and were forced to make small, cheap tweaks to each model. They would fly a plane, crash it, tweak it, and fly it again quickly.
The corporations had budgets that allowed them to go back to the drawing board (i.e. abstraction) with each failure. They spent a ton of money and time on each redesign.
The Wright Bros. had a hundred test flights in the time it took these big corporations to complete a handful. Every test flight taught lessons – the one who failed fastest gathered the most information.
This philosophy of failing fast has spread through Silicon Valley and beyond thanks to Eric Ries’ work The Lean Startup. We can imagine the Wright Bros. writing this passage from Ries’ book:
“I’ve come to believe that learning is the essential unit of progress for startups. The effort that is not absolutely necessary for learning what customers want can be eliminated. I call this validated learning because it is always demonstrated by positive improvements in the startup’s core metrics.”
Technology has reached a point where building is often cheaper than planning. We can build the thing and know the answer before we can plan for all the possibilities and determine how it might work. Ries writes:
“The question is not ‘Can this product be built?’ In the modern economy, almost any product that can be imagined can be built. The more pertinent questions are ‘Should this product be built?’ and ‘Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?’”
These are questions that cannot be answered in the abstract – they must be tested in the physical world.
The key is to make the tests cheap and quickly make small improvements.
This applies to everything. Especially your life.
Planning has paralyzed me time and again. I was taught to always have a plan before taking action.
That led to a deep depression. I didn’t know what career I wanted to dedicate my life to and so I did nothing. I didn’t know what girl I wanted to marry and so I didn’t give any a real chance. I didn’t know what fitness plan was the best and so I stayed out of the gym.
Now I do the opposite.
I don’t let myself plan or research until I’ve taken action.
I’ve tried a ton of careers and found which I hate and which I love. I’ve let myself love the imperfect girl and have the best relationship I’ve ever had. I’m not allowed to read anything about fitness until I’ve worked out that day. I don’t let myself learn about a new diet until I’ve stopped eating sugar.
Most of the time, planning is procrastination. It’s based on theory. It’s going to be wrong.
Plans are useless without action.
That’s why Step 1 is to take action based on what you already know. Then improve bit by bit. Then begin forming a plan.
2. Action Allows Emergence
Taking action creates possibilities that didn’t exist before.
We always look out at our future from the place we’re standing. Yet we forget that this is only one spot.
Imagine walking in New York City. All you can see are skyscrapers, neurotic humans, and taxis. You turn down the next street and you’re looking out into the trees of Central Park.
A completely new possibility has emerged.
If you’re obese then you probably don’t see a possible future where you’re fit. But, after three months of working out and eating well there will be a possible future of physical fitness that didn’t exist before.
These possibilities seem to “come out of nowhere” but they actually come out of action.
If you’ve only failed then it’s impossible to see the possibility of success. The trick is to keep trying. That next step might be the key to a better future — you just can’t see around the corner yet.
3. Inaction is Scarier
The pain of action is acute. It’s right in our face.
Inaction tempts us because it’s slow.
We don’t consider refusing to choose to be a choice. We think we’re safe if we don’t expose ourselves to failure. We don’t appreciate the consequences of inaction because they are slow, chronic, and less obvious. That’s what makes them worse.
You don’t get to escape pain.
The pain that comes with action is acute, gives you scars, and makes you grow.
The pain that comes from inaction is low-grade, makes you soft, and makes you decay.
4. Motivation Follows Action
I had zero motivation when I began writing this. I had nothing to say. I wrote a book about action but for some reason I couldn’t think of the words to tell you.
It’s 1,600 words later now and I can’t stop thinking of new things to say.
It’s always like this.
I don’t feel like working out until I’ve been at the gym for 15 minutes. I’m too tired to have sex until we’ve started. I don’t want to go to the party until I’m there.
Motivation (and passion) will follow you if you have the balls to go without them.
5. Action is an Existential Answer
I’m a professional when it comes to existential crises. I’ve spent a large portion of my life in “what is the meaning of my life?” mode. I’ve come up with a lot of clever answers. Some of them even felt original.
The only one that ever really works is disappointingly simple: do something.
The meaning of my life cannot be summed up in a pithy quote or even the most complete philosophy.
It is impossible to give yourself a satisfying purpose in the abstract.
It is only in the flow of action that life can make sense. There are no abstract ideals there, just life.
6. Action Creates Courage
“Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.” -Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath
My business partner and I didn’t charge for anything for more than a year. We gave out some of the best content online and never asked for anything in return.
We didn’t believe that what we had was worth anything.
Intellectually we knew that we deserved to be paid. Something was holding us back, though.
Finally we put down a date. We scheduled a webinar and more than a thousand people showed up.
The webinar was a technical disaster. We started late, laptops went out, our business password was exposed to hundreds of people, and we didn’t know how to run the software. Everything went wrong that could have.
We offered our course for $497 – a price we thought was too high.
It turns out it was too low. We sold more courses than we ever thought we would and, in the process, made more money in a single night than we did in the previous year.
Forcing ourselves into a corner made us ballsier than we thought we could be.
People were amazed at how cheap we offered our course.
Our fake courage became real. Now we know in our bones that we can deliver value to people in a way that they are grateful to pay for it. We know that we are delivering something worthwhile.
Now I’m looking for the next corner. What’s the next abyss to jump into? What is something else I “know” I’m capable of but don’t know I’m capable of?
7. Explanations Follow Actions
Neuroscientist David Eagleman told the participants of a 2004 study to, “Move your finger when the impulse grabs you.” He reports on his findings in Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain:
“Long before a voluntary movement is enacted, a buildup of neural activity can be measured. The ‘readiness potential’ is larger when subjects judge the time of their urge to move, rather than the movement itself.”
They made the choice before they were conscious of it.
Earlier in the book he reports on the findings of a study on people playing a gambling game:
“The interesting part came when I interviewed the players afterward. I asked them what they’d done in the gambling game and why they’d done it. I was surprised to hear all types of baroque explanations, such as ‘The computer liked it when I switched back and forth’ and ‘The computer was trying to punish me, so I switched my game plan.’ In reality, the players’ descriptions of their own strategies did not match what they had actually done, which turned out to be highly predictable. Nor did their descriptions match the computer’s behavior, which was purely formulaic. Instead, their conscious minds, unable to assign the task to a well-oiled zombie system, desperately sought a narrative.”
This urge of ours to create cohesive stories where none exist is called the narrative fallacy.
Knowing you have this need should help you act freely when no story exists. Or at least realize that the story you’re telling yourself is probably wrong. Nassim Taleb makes this suggestion in The Black Swan:
“The way to avoid the ills of the narrative fallacy is to favor experimentation over storytelling, experience over history, and clinical knowledge over theories. . . . Being empirical does not mean running a laboratory in one’s basement: it is just a mind-set that favors a certain class of knowledge over others. I do not forbid myself from using the word cause, but the causes I discuss are either bold speculations (presented as such) or the result of experiments, not stories. Another approach is to predict and keep a tally of the predictions.”
When we know our stories are probably wrong we can give them less power. Don’t let your scary stories paralyze you. Act and let the narrative follow (just as courage and motivation do).
8. Action Beats the Odds
“Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they.” –Plutarch, Sayings of the Spartans
More information rarely helps unless you are ready to act on it. The perfect plan doesn’t exist.
The great Warren Buffett biography The Snowball shows that Buffett had no grand plan when he was younger. He just knew that he wanted to make a lot of money. There was no early master plan, just a powerful urge and the willingness to take opportunities as they came.
“Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.”
You don’t need to know if it will work (you probably can’t know), you need to try and find out.
Your obstacles are yours to face. It doesn’t matter how they compare to the obstacles in history or those of your peers. It’s a waste of time to consider anything except how you will overcome them.
9. Action Makes You Humble
Teenagers think they know everything because they haven’t tested their mettle. They don’t know anything and so they feel like they know everything. They are just beginning to learn about theories and possibilities. They haven’t done anything so they feel like they can do anything.
In Gates of Fire, an older warrior, Dienekes, addresses a younger:
“My wish for you, Kalistos, is that you survive as many battles in the flesh as you already have fought in your imagination. Perhaps then you will acquire the humility of a man and bear yourself no longer as the demigod you presume yourself to be.”
Action carries the potential to bring imagination and reality together. But only when taken consistently and powerfully.
After the young realize they can’t do everything they become disillusioned. They stop trying anything. They fall into inaction.
This is why most adults end up so dull. They don’t do anything because it’s probably going to fail. They mistook early failures for a sign that they should stop trying.
That’s why they’re bored, depressed, and lethargic.
Instead, our failures should strengthen us. We should recognize that failures are how we learn and grow.
Just ask, “What would Leonidas think?”
10. Action Isn’t Petty
“Suckers try to win arguments, nonsuckers try to win.” –Nassim Taleb
Action isn’t concerned with opinions, it’s dedicated to reality.
Action doesn’t leave room for gossip.
Action couldn’t be small if it tried.
Practicing Action
Here we will explore (briefly!) two specific ways you can train yourself to take more action.
I. Systems Over Goals
Nassim Taleb offers an explanation to the mental perils of non-linear rewards in Fooled by Randomness:
“Our brain is not cut out for nonlinearities. People think that if, say, two variables are causally linked, then a steady input in one variable should always yield a result in the other one. Our emotional apparatus is designed for linear causality. For instance, you study every day and learn something in proportion to your studies. If you do not feel that you are going anywhere, your emotions will cause you to become demoralized. But reality rarely gives us the privilege of a satisfying linear positive progression: You may study for a year and learn nothing, then, unless you are disheartened by the empty results and give up, something will come to you in a flash. . . This summarizes why there are routes to success that are nonrandom, but few, very few, people have the mental stamina to follow them. . . Most people give up before the rewards.”
If you train yourself to be emotionally rewarded for actions taken rather than outcomes you may be able to lengthen the time you can spend in active “failure” and increase your chances of success.
A possible solution is to reward yourself for following your system rather than achieving a specific outcome. Select a system you know will lead to success and follow it.
Eating right vs. losing 20 pounds. Building a business vs. achieving financial independence. Going on dates vs. having a successful relationship. The first are systems, the second are goals.
“Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre-success failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.”
When I set a goal of “210 pounds and 13% body fat” I stopped going to the gym and began eating stupid amounts of ice cream. When I decided on the system of “work out every day” I began a real path to fitness success.
That’s the easy step. The next is the real challenge.
II. Input Deprivation Week
Go an entire week with zero information consumption.
I first tried this last year and it was wildly successful. I got more done in one week than I had in the month prior. I also ate the best I had all year and solidified my meditation practice. It was so effective I offered it up to the readers of my blog, StartupBros.
Most of the people mocked me or called me naive. A few actually tried it, though. And many of them are still practicing it to this day. It’s the most effective way I’ve found to boost output.
It’s also the most painful.
You are going to, for an entire week, live without information input.
Stay with me on this.
For one week:
No reading books.
No reading blogs.
No reading newspapers.
No going on Facebook (even just to post).
No watching TV (shows, sports, news, anything).
No watching movies.
No listening to talk radio.
No going on Reddit.
No going on Twitter.
No information input - only output!
You must force yourself to spend an entire week with yourself and the people immediately surrounding you.
This will, first and foremost, force you into action by stripping away every activity you run to in order to avoid actually doing the work you know you should be doing.
Besides that, it will increase mindfulness, increase the respect you have for your own ideas, you’ll have more ideas, unsolvable life problems may begin to make sense, you’ll have an increased appreciation for the news that actually matters, you’ll become more social, you’ll gain perspective, and you’ll become more original.
It sounds too good to be true but it’s not. It’s what happens. The only way for you to appreciate this is to do it.
When I first suggested Input Deprivation Week I provided the following 5 steps to start strong, and they still work just as well:
Install StayFocusdor its equivalent and put all your time-sucking websites on there. ALL of them! Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (??), reddit, Digg (??), Chive, EVERYTHING!
Delete your consumption apps. I deleted Facebook, Pulse, and Twitter off my phone. Delete the apps that you reflexively go to when you have a minute of free time.
Move your books and magazines. They will just taunt you if they’re sitting on your bedstand or at your desk. Make a stack and put it out of sight.
Carry a notebook with you. You’re going to begin having ideas pop up in your head; make notes of them. I like notepads more than phones because we associate them with creating instead of consuming. It’s risky to take notes on a smartphone if you’re trying to avoid inputs.
Take the batteries out of your remote. When you have the urge to flick on the TV you’ll have to go get batteries for the remote. This is a barrier to TV that will save your willpower pool from draining as you stare down the remote thinking about all the Game of Thrones and Mad Men you’re missing.
This may be the hardest thing you do all year. The benefits may not be obvious on Day 2. By Day 6 they’ll be undeniable.
Your focus will turn to production instead of consumption. You will become a giver instead of a taker. You will see your addiction to novelty and useless information plainly.
Remember that this is only a week and not a suggestion for a lifestyle. I love books. I love learning new things. I consume information like crazy. And it’s valuable! Input Deprivation Week is about creating a better relationship with information, not denying its importance.
Like a girlfriend that you didn’t fully appreciate until she was gone, your relationship to information will be forever changed. You will appreciate quality information and be more able to ignore the rest. You won’t be an addict to useless information.
If you need any support or have any questions, comment below or even email me (info below).
Godspeed
This was a long post on something that is actually quite simple.
I wanted you to know Action deeply so that you have the confidence to push when others don’t. This isn’t comprehensive, but it is a great place to push off.
Remember:
Failing can be progress if you use it.
The wisdom you receive from action often remains invisible.
Judge yourself based on the actions you take – not their outcomes.
I hope this is the last thing you read for a week.
_____________________________________
Kyle kick-starts entrepreneurs at StartupBros.com and is offering this free guide of necessary entrepreneurial epiphanies to you. Feel freer than free to contact Kyle anywhere on the web. Even his inbox: kyle at StartupBros dot com.
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29 Congresscritters own stock in Comcast, and Comcast is the 25th most-held stock in Congress.
Read the rest
this is awesome. i just wish it never got to this point.
Lots of people are angry about FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's Internet "fast lane" proposal that would let Internet service providers charge Web services for priority access to consumers. But one Web hosting service called NeoCities isn't just writing letters to the FCC. Instead, the company found the FCC's internal IP address range and throttled all connections to 28.8Kbps speeds.
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NeoCities offers free and paid Web hosting. As Drake noted, FCC access to NeoCities is being throttled on the home page only, and not on websites created by NeoCities users.
I feel that the current trends in cereal box art--the wildly distorted faces and poses, the lurid digital-airbrush modeling--have surely reached some kind of maximum.
Someone dug up the North American continent and transported it to Jupiter to create this awe-inspiring image. (Via Reality Carnival)
From graphic design genius 
