I don’t eat before 3pm. It’s a strategy called “intermittent fasting,” and I do it every day.

There are a lot of reasons for intermittent fasting (many relating to body composition and hormone normalization), but for me, as an insulin-dependent diabetic, it also results in fantastic blood sugar stability. I don’t have to figure out how what I eat will affect my blood sugar because I’m not eating. And, as a bonus, not stopping to eat allows me to work through the most productive part of my day without being distracted.

But there’s one other reason I fast, and one other reason I like doing it.

It gives me the opportunity to make a difficult and unpopular choice.

The problem is choice

Humans — and Americans in particular — just won’t shut the fuck up about choice. Give us more options! More channels! More colors! More open hours and more variety of inventory! Give us more service levels, more ways to connect! And we’ll get bitchy about it, too. It’s our right to have choice! Don’t you dare try and take our choice away! This is why Wal-Mart thrives. It’s hard to resist a store that has everything, for cheap, and is always open.

We devour choices. We want more, and more, and more, and more. If we can’t currently do or have something, it only increases our desire to do or have it.

And so, responding to both market demand and their own sense of wanting more choices, people innovate. They create something new, crack a code, solve a mystery… and once they’ve solved it, that becomes one more choice that’s available to everyone.

You didn’t used to be able to split atoms to create electric power. Now you can.

You didn’t used to be able to get in touch with anyone, anywhere, anytime and from anywhere, for dirt cheap. Now you can.

You didn’t used to be able to sit on the couch and be entertained nonstop, for days and weeks on end, while pizza was delivered right to your door. You didn’t used to be able to get so much great-tasting (but nutritionally deadly) food for so cheap, so fast. You didn’t used to be able to conduct your life without any physical exertion.

But now you can.

We’ve got all the choice in the world nowadays, and the buffet of choices available to us is only expanding.

We can choose whatever we want, whenever we want it.

And we’re choosing such stupid, stupid shit.

Dig your own grave

You’re poor. You have zero prospects. You’re having trouble finding enough money to survive, literally. Your kids are starving. Maybe your spouse has medical issues you can’t afford to treat.

And some guy in a red suit (who may or may not be George Burns) comes up to you and says, “Okay. I’ll give you more than enough money to be set forever. All you need to do is to use a hatchet to cut off one of your fingers.”

Maybe you take it. Maybe you don’t. If you decline the offer, you’re taking the risk that your whole family will die in the gutter. If you accept it, you’re going to have to do something extraordinarily unpleasant.

But the mental fuckery is where this scenario really hurts.

If you take the offer, as you’re wielding the hatchet, you’ll be wondering if there was another way out. Could you have found a job? Could you have gotten an inheritance? Could you have written a blockbuster book while you were homeless, like J.K. Rowling did?

But if you decline the offer, if your kids start to get sick, you’ll wonder if you should have taken it. How bad could it have been? One quick strike and it’s over, and then you’re set forever. You might feel guilty, like you chose your own comfort over them. You’ll feel selfish, and cowardly.

Ironically, the only scenario where there’s no regret and no real downside is to have not been given the choice at all.

Today, tempting choices are everywhere. Some improve our lives, but many are slowly killing us. And sometimes we’ll wish that we’d never been given the option.

It was a lot easier to exercise when there was no choice, when you had to walk from one place to another, hunt the deer, build your house, split the wood for the fire. Now, you can choose to do none of that, and you can eat every meal at McDonald’s for dirt cheap.

It was a lot easier to get kids to read when there were no video games or TV.

It was a lot easier to experience quiet and calm when you couldn’t be called anywhere 24/7, when you couldn’t pull your phone out of your pocket five times every hour to check email or Twitter or Facebook.

It was a lot easier to disappear for a while when it was still possible to get lost.

Maybe sometimes, when your phone is ringing over and over, when the traffic is at its worst, when you feel like a video zombie and your kids won’t stop bothering you about the latest fad that seems to be advertised around the clock, maybe in a few of those moments you kind of wish you’d lived back in the “good old days” that your grandparents are always pining for.

But really, we could still do things the hard way — the “good old days” way — even now.

We could raise our own livestock and grow our own plants. We could live without TV or any other kind of screen. We could eschew all cellular phones. We could even be Amish, and not even use electricity or drive cars.

But we’d have to choose to do it. We’d have to know what was available in terms of convenience and pleasure and hedonism and instant gratification… and we’d have to turn our backs on it, willfully and deliberately. And that’s very, very hard.

Now: Am I saying we should be Amish, that the modern world is bad and evil? Not at all.

I have a smartphone and an iPad. I wouldn’t be alive without the healthcare advances that make my diabetes a mere inconvenience. Sometimes I check my email too often, but I’m still glad to have it, to have the internet at my fingers.

But there has to be a line somewhere, and nobody knows where it is.

My generation is the first to have a lower standard of living than our parents’, because we spend so much more than we make. My kids’ generation is the first that’s expected to have a shorter lifespan than their parents’, because they eat like hell and don’t move much. Most people don’t enjoy what they do all day. Depression is high. Alienation is high. Health is low. All because of things we’re choosing to do — things we never had the option to do until only recently.

It’s as if someone handed us a gun and said, “Use this if you’d like to take away your pain.”

But we didn’t realize it was a gun. We thought it was ice cream.

Progress

Humans are good at persistent curiosity. Give us enough time, and we’ll figure out how to do almost anything.

Not that long ago, the idea of human flight was ridiculous. Unthinkable. But people kept at it, and today you can get from New York to London in an afternoon, while being served pretzels and charged excessive baggage fees.

It wasn’t that long ago that we learned DNA even existed, but once we did, it took no time to start moving things around to create disease-resistant crops and smart bacteria that would do our bidding. You can even have your pets cloned. Got a great dog and want to have him forever? You can. You just have to start over after each lifetime ends… unless you’d like to have two of him at once, which I suppose you could do too.

Today, billions of dollars are going into figuring out how to interface electronic circuits with human brains. Ostensibly it’s about solving medical issues, like helping paralyzed people walk, but you know the commercial sector sees the promise there, too. What if you could operate your TV or your computer with your mind? What if you could drive a car truly hands-free? What if you could call Frank simply by thinking at him?

I figure teleportation is right around the corner. Pretty soon everywhere will be just a few steps away. Going from New York to London will take seconds. It’ll be awesome. We’ll be able to attend every event and will never be able to back out. So what if your boss’s daughter’s bridal shower is at the same time as your kid’s Christmas play? Just pop over for ten minutes. And if the office needs you for a half hour in the middle of your honeymoon, no big deal, because it’s so easy.

I don’t want to have some of these options.

I like that I have the best reason of all (“It’s not possible”) for not doing certain things I don’t want to do. I like that I won’t have to decide whether to accept some Faustian bargains because they can’t currently be made.

Keep my avenues closed. Restrict my options. Tell me what to do. It’s cool to be forced to do something, at a certain point.

But Pandora’s Xbox can’t be closed once it’s open. Once a choice is out there, it’s out there. Nobody’s going to deny you that option. Except for you.

We as a culture seem to say, “We can do that? Awesome! Add it to my inventory of options. Choice is good.”

But it’s time to stop being choice whores. It’s time to stop doing things just because we can.

Opt out

For a while there, Burger King was giving out free cinnamon rolls with every order. It’s as if they were trying to fatten up their customers. Like they were being instructed by their alien overlords to get us ready for a bloody harvest.

Most people took the cinnamon rolls and ate them. And why not? They were free. They smelled and tasted good. The fact that it was an unwise choice didn’t cross most people’s minds.

But it can cross yours.

You can look at something that’s available, and free, and easy, and enticing, and decide to let it go if it doesn’t suit you. You can opt out. People will think you’re nuts if you do this. “But they’re free,” they’ll will say, as if that’s all that matters.

It’s not all that matters. We need to stop living by default and start paying some fucking attention.

Start to look for things that are freely and easily available to you right now, but that you might do better without.

Maybe you check your smartphone too much but you don’t want to get rid of it. So, turn off the 3G or 4G connectivity and use it only when you’re near a wi-fi signal. Now… it’ll be tempting to cheat. You could easily turn it back on and surf Facebook from the beach, and it wouldn’t cost you a cent. But resist the urge.

There are programs that will block internet access from your computer for whatever time periods you set. If you spend too much time online, get one and use it. The only way to break through and get your access back would be to re-boot… and you could, and that would let you IM with your buddy in Seattle about nothing and Tweet about that sandwich you just ate. But don’t. Have some restraint.

Get rid of those fucking donuts and cigarettes. They’re free to keep, but just because something is available doesn’t mean you should say yes to it.

You’ve got nonstop entertainment on TV, but if your family dynamic is suffering, turn it off.

You paid for that giant plate of onion rings, but if you’re full, stop.

There’s an elevator in your building, but if you’re trying to get into better shape, don’t use it.

You’re opting out of something that has been offered to you when you do these things, and people will think it’s nuts.

But it’s there! they’ll say. But it’s free!

One day, someone’s going to offer free arsenic with the Quarter Pounder meal and everyone’s going to eat it because hey, it’s free.

It’s time we stop acting like we need to “get our money’s worth” from everything, everywhere, all the time.

Try suffering

You’re being controlled.

Don’t worry; it’s human nature. We’re social animals, and conformity is baked into our cores, so don’t go feeling bad about being a puppet sometimes… but yeah, it’s true. Other people’s opinions and arguments are controlling some of what you do, say, and think.

You just need to figure out which parts they are. And that involves a bit of suffering.

Choosing to do something unpleasant is the only way to be sure you’re making a choice that is truly your own. Easy, pleasurable choices aren’t like that. Choices that feel good are the ones you can easily fall into, be funneled into, or be brainwashed into.

But the ugly decisions are all you.

Ever wonder why monks spend weeks at a time doing nothing but meditating or chanting?

Ever wonder why anyone would take a vow of silence?

Ever wonder why the minimalist movement is so strong today?

Ever wonder why people go off on vision quests, walkabouts, or become hermits who live in the woods?

Those are all choices to do something difficult and uncomfortable. They are all choices that go against the way the “normal” world operates, creating friction. They’re a way of saying, “Fuck you, world. I’m not going to participate in your bullshit.”

Political prisoners sometimes go on hunger strikes. To a lot of people, this looks dumb. Nobody is going to care if they starve themselves. But it’s not about anyone else caring. It’s about showing themselves that they can’t be owned. It’s Kunta Kinte refusing to say his name was Toby.

Personally, I fast every day because I’d rather eat Pop Tarts, and because Kellogg’s would rather I eat Pop Tarts. Kellogg’s has a lot of commercials showing me how great Pop Tarts are. They also show my kids how great they are. My kids watch those ads and ask for Pop Tarts.

I fast every day because I’d rather eat Pop Tarts, and because Kellogg’s would rather I eat Pop Tarts. And fuck Kellogg’s.

I fast every day because I choose to.

It’s my choice to make, and mine alone.

Deprive yourself

Look at how you’re living. Ask yourself if it could be better. Ask yourself if there are any voluntary but dumb things that are getting in between you and what you want, in between how you are and how you want to be.

Look at everything around you — what you do, how you think, what you consume, how you respond — as if it were a room filled with objects. Ask yourself if the room is too crowded. Ask yourself if you can move around, or if you feel walled in. Ask yourself if, in this room, you feel like you can breathe.

Your choices filled that room.

How many were truly your choices, and how many were made by default? Did you get a smartphone because “why not”? Did you take the cable TV package upgrade because it was only ten dollars more? Do you Supersize It as a knee-jerk reaction? Do you want that new gadget because you actually need and will use it, or because it’s “the newest whiz-bang version”? (You really need to ask this one if you had an iPad 2 and bought the new iPad to replace it.)

Are you going out tonight because others are going, and you figure “what the hell”?

Do you ever find yourself watching a TV show simply because you never turned off the TV when the previous show ended?

Do you take the cinnamon rolls because they’re free, or finish your huge meal because you paid for it and don’t want to “waste” it?

Now, at this point, I want to clarify something:

Eat the fucking rolls if you want. Seriously. Just don’t do it because they’re free. Do it because you want them.

Check your cell phone all the time if the urge strikes you. But don’t do it out of nervous habit, like a smoker twiddling his thumbs while waiting for a smoke break.

Make your own decisions, and know what you’re getting when you make them.

And if your decision-making muscle is weak, if you’re more often than not at the whim of the normal and the accepted? Then try some self denial, to build that muscle.

• Desire something and don’t buy it.
• Stop checking your email.
• Put yourself on a budget — not to save money, but to see what it feels like.
• Fast, and learn to appreciate hunger. (And learn that it won’t kill you.)
• Experiment with sleep.
• Take a sabbatical.
• Take an ice-cold shower.
• Turn off your TV.
• Take an internet holiday.
• Go somewhere remote and live there for a while, totally unplugged.
• Do something that hurts, something that pushes you to your edge.

Not everything that is offered to you is something that you should accept. Get used to sitting in front of life’s buffet, picking and consciously choosing only the best of all that’s offered.

If you don’t, if you aren’t careful, you’ll be like diners at a Golden Corral, stuffing yourself with everything until you waddle out sick and disgusted.

Get used to being offered something, and saying no to it.

The world, more and more and more and more, is conspiring to give you exactly what you want.

Fight back.

Do something that sucks.

This blog can be a downer. I talk about how you will inevitably fail along the path to getting what you want, how doing great things requires a lot of hard work, and how there is no blueprint or map that will tell you where to go or what to do. It’s like being kicked in the face by WordPress.

You can call this stuff tough love, but what it’s really supposed to be is a reality check. See, most people have a really warped view of the way things actually work.

For example:

• Most people think that successful people don’t fail. So if you fail, that means you’ve fucked up. It’s over, and you should quit.
• Most people think that people who have what they want are geniuses, and everything is simple and straightforward for geniuses. So if something you’re doing is really hard and giving you a ton of trouble, that means you’ve fucked up. It’s over, and you should quit.

The people you admire aren’t geniuses. The people you admire don’t always know what they’re doing. The people you admire are scared shitless and frustrated and lost and angry and can’t make things work and feel bad for themselves from time to time.They also fail constantly — including while you’ve been admiring how successful they are.

What makes awesome people stand out isn’t their inherent awesomeness. It’s their ability to deal successfully with all of life’s inevitable shittiness. If someone is where you want to be, the difference between you and that person is not that they haven’t had turds thrown at them by life. It’s they’ve learned how to face those turds with courage and aplomb.

How have they learned that, you ask? What do they do to get through the suck, you ask? Why do I keep asking questions on your behalf, you ask?

The list below is a start. Here are 34 ways to keep your chin up while life is pelting you with bricks.

1. Do something

See how nonspecific that is? That’s intentional. Just do something. It’ll get your mind off the suck, and build momentum to get out of it. The worst thing you can do is to wallow.

2. Wallow

Okay, so sometimes it’s all right to wallow for a bit. I’m adding this one mainly for Type A’s who won’t ALLOW that wallowing bullshit and insist on pressing through and pretending there’s no problem. Go ahead and feel shitty, but set a timer. (Not kidding about the timer.)

3. Do nothing

Sometimes things need time to settle. It’s easy for driven people to keep pushing and banging their head against a wall, trying to FORCE something to work. Sometimes that’s just being resistant, and you should knock it off.

4. Ask for help

You’d be surprised how willing your true friends will be to help you if they’re able, and you shouldn’t be afraid to ask if you’re not constantly bugging them for things in a lopsided way.

5. Ask for advice

There’s a caveat on this one, and it’s to ask for advice, not ask someone to tell you what to do. There’s a difference. Advice is another bit of data — ideally from someone who’s been through the particular bit of suck you’re in currently — that you can weigh and consciously decide if you want to accept or not. Allowing someone to tell you what to do is surrendering your volition. Don’t do the latter.

6. Reframe it as a challenge, or a test of your mettle

You’re going to have to deal with the shit that happens to you regardless of how you frame it in your mind, so why not frame it as something that you get to kick the ass of — the kind of thing you’d be proud to brag about having overcome when it’s all done? Or look at it as a puzzle to solve. Seeing as you have to go through it anyway, either of those choices sound better to me than bitching and whining.

7. Tell your success story in advance

I did this when I was going through some seriously bad crap a few years ago. I know it sounds corny, but I imagined myself a few years later, looking back on the shitty times and telling friends (or a crowd of fans, what the hell) how much it sucked at the time, but how I never lost faith and kept going, and how things changed for the better in the weeks, months, and years followed. Everyone loves a good “rising from the ashes” story, so go ahead and write yours now.

8. Recognize that you’re in a necessary part of a great tale

The problem with a good rising from the ashes story is that you have to first be in ashes. Ashes FUCKING SUCK. That’s why it’s so awesome when people rise from them. Got it? If you want the great story and great victory later, you MUST start in a really shitty situation. You are building your amazing success story right now, and living out a necessary part of that story. Try to see that. It can help.

9. Lie and go into denial

Tony Robbins talks about a visualization technique where you look at something bad that just happened and mentally scramble the event in your mind so that it doesn’t feel so heavy. I think that’s interesting, but a simpler idea might be to just lie to yourself about it — whatever it takes to get you to stop reliving a failure over and over and over. I think we all know the limit here – the place you should STOP lying and being in denial — so don’t be an asshole when using this one.

10. Hang out with amazing people

I wrote a whole post about this a while back. Your life is the average of the people you hang out with, so hang out with people you’d like to be like… even if “hanging out” just means reading/watching/participating in their stuff.

11. Learn the Sedona Method

This is a bit touchy-feely, but it very seriously helped me when I was dealing with some crap circa 2008. Psychologist Carl Jung said that “What we resist persists,” so The Sedona Method is about learning to accept fear and panic so that you can let them go, rather than trying to bury negative emotions… and hence causing them to stick around 24/7.

12. Refuse to be a whiny douchebag

Go ahead and accept (#11) and possibly wallow in your misery for a short while (#2), but then knock it the fuck off before it reaches the point where you’re whining constantly about how things suck. Nobody likes a whiny douchebag.

13. Be positive

I don’t care who you are or what’s going on, there is always something good and exciting and fun in your world. We’re predisposed to pay attention to bad stuff, which is why we tend to be aware of whose house was broken into rather than all of the houses that didn’t get broken into, and aware of the starving children way more than the ones who aren’t starving. So go ahead and face reality, but face REALITY rather than your distorted view of it. Stop thinking everything is going wrong when in fact only one thing is going wrong.

14. Be lucky

There have been studies that show that positive people are luckier than negative people. Why? Positive people see opportunities because they are looking for opportunities. Negative people see shit because they are looking for shit. So start looking for what you want, and you might just find it.

15. Read, watch, or listen to something inspirational

I don’t watch the news or visit news websites or anything like that, because I don’t want my head filled with the filtered out “worst of the world” on a daily basis. In my opinion, what news programs do is akin to sifting the clumps out of kitty litter and showing them all to you. “Hey, here’s some bad shit that happened!” Instead, seek out good shit and fill your head with that instead.

16. Follow inspirational people

So, do you know about The Badass Project? Learn about it.

17. Drop your excuses

See above.

18. But don’t beat yourself up

All species of “get up off your ass and make it happen!” are a double-edged sword. We all do have limits, and while you should push them, expecting sheer will to lead to immediate success — and feeling bad if that steel will falters — is a recipe for disaster. Remember where this all started: Successful people are not always successful. What sometimes makes the difference is not the will to keep going, but the will to try again.

19. Do something crazy

Sometimes stupid, outrageous forms of escape are okay when used with moderation. If you decide to try skydiving as a way of shaking things up and distracting yourself while things suck, I’m not going to judge.

20. Realize that you’re not the only one

Dude, you are SO not the only one. I don’t care what you’re going through, you are NOT the only one. This is especially true if your problems are financial. If you want to find someone else who’s got financial problems right now, throw a rock. Just knowing you aren’t the only one can help shift your mindset.

21. Get a bit of perspective

People hate this one, but it’s valid for a whole lot of situations that seem incredibly dire to the person going through it. If your business just failed, try to remember that other people are dying, or that other people’s children are dying. If you’re dying, try to remember that other people are dying alone or in more painful ways. (NOTE: perspective doesn’t invalidate what you’re going through. The message here is similar to seeing the positive (#13). It’s not about anyone, yourself included, saying, “Toughen up; your problems are tiny.”)

22. Go all in

Some situations are so totally fucked that you might as well just stop holding back and go all in. Meaning: If that business of yours is going to implode either way, you might as well try crazy shit that a sane person would stay away from because it would cause the business to implode. Sometimes that crazy, desperate stuff can yield amazing results. If you have nothing to lose, I say go for it. (Come to think of it, that’s what happened in my novel. You should read it for inspiration, and also because it’s fucking hilarious. Go ahead; you know you want to.)

23. Think of financial problems as minimalism

Are you so broke that you can’t buy anything, are selling everything, and are about to lose your house? Well, Google for “minimalism blogs” and you’ll find a crapload of people who are trying to achieve those things. They are aspiring to the end result that you are so afraid of. Think about it. With some mental gymnastics, this can begin to look like being “ruined” so much that you develop six-pack abs.

24. Find people who will comfort you

Nothing wrong with seeking some comfort. Just be careful about over-relying on this one and of slipping into #12 above.

25. Find people who will make you feel like shit

Watch this video for the full story on “success through feeling like shit,” courtesy of Julien Smith. The short version is that you can often use pain to drive you.

26. Be grateful for adversity

As in #25 above, it’s a good idea to remember that awesome things often require shitty things as a catalyst. In my own case, I was doing fine before my current business, trolling along at a things-are-okay-but-not-great job involving freelance web development and magazine writing. I could have kept doing that forever, doing okay but not great, and almost certainly would have if things hadn’t gotten really shitty for me around 2008. My current business and life (which is amazing) would not have come into being if things in my life hadn’t gotten bad enough to force me into changing. Without the pain, I wouldn’t be where I am.

27. Beat something up

This one is probably for the testosterone crowd. I have a heavy bag in my basement, and most of the time I use it for fitness purposes, but every once in a while it takes some punishment due to something frustrating that’s happened to me. I’ve also played Rock Band drums particularly aggressively for the same reason. It can help.

28. Exercise or take a walk

Suitable for both masculine and feminine types. You don’t even have to go hard; just get moving.

29. Create something

If you’re in business, start a product. If you’re a writer, write. If you’re a painter, paint. Just begin something, and keep working on it. If it’s good, keep working. Standing still and creating nothing is not going to help you.

30. Write it out

I write a journal sometimes, but it’s not a “dear diary” journal. It’s closer to talking aloud to myself, and working out problems that way, never worrying about maintaining a narrative or a clear chain of thought (some people call this “free writing.”) I almost never go back to read old journal entries because once I’ve written them, they’ve done their job. Try it sometime.

31. Talk it out with yourself

If you’re better aloud than in print, try this instead of (or in addition to) #30. There’s probably some scientific principle at work here, like giving your subconscious thought process a voice, but I just know it can yield some surprisingly good ideas.

32. Talk it out with someone else

Just watch out for #12 again.

33. Do something wrong

If you need instant results, ask yourself what you can do NOW, TODAY. If you don’t think you can do anything, then shake up your assumptions by trying to do it wrong. Take business for an example: Do you need cashflow and have nothing to sell? Then do it backward, and sell it first. Most of us feel that every result we’re trying to achieve must go through certain steps: First this, then this, then this. Doing it “wrong” will cause you to question those steps, and focus more on the result than the process.

34. Help someone else

There are three great things about this one. First, focusing on someone else’s issues will distract you from your own. Second, you’re helping someone else and that’s pretty awesome of you. But third, there’s a seriously beneficial psychological effect that happens when you help solve ANY problem, even if it’s not yours. There’s probably a more gentle way to put this, but I think of it as “Big Man Syndrome.” If you can look at someone else’s problem (any problem) and think, “Pshaw! You call that a problem? I can handle that easily!” you’ll start to feel like a Big Man. (You can feel like a Big Man regardless of gender, BTW.) And by being the Big Man for someone else, you’ll be more likely to approach your own issues with your chest out and chin up.

Remember: Everyone goes through things that suck. Everyone is afraid, feels lost, panics, gets frustrated, and needs love and support. Everyone feels worthless and alone sometimes. Nobody who has achieved what you want is immune to any of it, so you don’t have to be immune to it either.

Now go out and stay awesome.

NOTE: The free promo described below has ended, so The Bialy Pimps now costs $3.99. Small price to pay for awesome, really, and people are LOVING it.

Yesterday I told you all about my novel The Bialy Pimps and how, after twelve years of indecision and resistance, I’ve finally rewritten it and published it, yada yada yada. And maybe that was interesting to you and maybe not, but what probably got your attention — if anything did — was the fact that I’m debuting this book at a price of FREE (through the end of today).

On hearing the whole “free” thing, here are some possible reactions you may have had:

“Wow, that’s awesome!”

or

“It’s free? That must mean it sucks.”

and probably most of all

“That’s incredibly stupid. He’s going to lose whatever for-sure sales he was going to get.”

I’m going to explain why I decided to launch for free in just a minute, but first I wanted to remind you to go ahead and download The Bialy Pimps for free here (non-US people, see the first P.S. below) before we go any further, because the free promo ends tonight.

Seriously. Go download it. It’s awesome.

In fact, download it even if you don’t have a Kindle, because there are apps that will let you read it… and even failing that, you can read right there on the website thanks to the “Kindle Cloud Reader,” which makes the process incredibly easy. Or, if you have an e-book reader that’s not a Kindle, email me and I’ll let you know what’s up. Hell, download it even if you don’t want it. Download it to humor me and make me feel better. I don’t have a tip jar, so downloading it to feed my ego (and spreading the word) would be an awesome way to give back if you’re so inclined.

Now, if you haven’t downloaded it yet despite my intolerable pestering, let me try something else in the interest of marketing professionalism:

C’mon.

C’mon.

Do it. You know you want to.

Please?

I’m totally serious. Go get it. It’s free. Then tell your friends and ask them to get it for free. Tweet it. Facebook it. Tell the world, so that as many people as possible can get it without giving me a cent.

Which raises an excellent point.

Why the hell would I be so eager to give something away for free?

Stupid, right?

After all, this book means a lot to me. It was written during a time of intense personal turmoil. It was born from a hell of a lot of pain, with hilarious results. It’s based (hilariously) on a real place and (hilarious) real people who I can safely say are, in the (hilarious) pages of this book, no longer that place or those people, but the sum of which is still (hilariously) still very meaningful to me.

I spent hundreds of hours on each draft of the book. There were four.

I spent dozens of hours prepping the manuscript for publication.

I spent scores of hours researching fiction marketing as it exists today, formulating my plan, and writing emails and posts like the one you’re currently reading.

And my strategy, after all of that work and head-scratching, is to give the book away — and not just to give it away, but to give it away to you, my prime audience… to the people who were most likely to actually shell out cash and buy it.

In short, I’m cutting off all potential royalties from the people most likely to earn me any royalties.

Why?

Angry Birds are smart birds

Let me explain by allegory, because that’s how I roll.

The other day, on a whim, I decided to download the Angry Birds app on my smartphone. I’d never played it before, but I’d heard a lot of hubbub surrounding it, so I figured what the hell. And besides, the app was free. So I opened it and I started playing. My son got very interested in it. Because he got interested, my daughter (who does everything her brother does) got interested.

While I was playing, I accidentally clicked on a few of the ads that exist inside the app. It didn’t annoy me, but it happened.

And then yesterday, we bought two sets of Angry Birds plushes. They are identical, but each kid had to have them. They spent their Christmas money. $25 each.

So if you’re following along, here’s what happened:

1. Angry Birds was released for free.
2. A lot of people liked it, spread it, and started talking about it.
3. Because it was free, I figured what the hell and decided to try it myself.
4. My son saw me playing and liked it.
5. My daughter saw my son playing and liked it.
6. We bought $50 in Angry Birds merchandise, and there’s no way that’ll be our last Angry Birds purchase. I also sent Rovio a few cents in ad revenue due to my fumbling fingers.

Now get this. Rovio could have priced Angry Birds 99 cents or $1.99 and there’s no question people would have paid it, because a buck or two is definitely worth it. Even the Android app has hundreds of individual levels, and it’s really addicting.

But at even a buck or two, I wouldn’t have played it, because I don’t care even a buck or two’s worth about games on my phone. Their decision to charge me $1-2 would have assured that they didn’t get my $50+ this week. And the same goes for millions and millions of other people.

But Rovio did a very smart thing. They created something great, and they made it free. Because of that — and ONLY because of that — they got my attention… and then they got my money.

It’s ironic. They got my money because they refused to charge me any.

The math of free

What would you rather do? Would you rather sell something for ten bucks, or sell the same thing for a hundred bucks?

Ideological concerns and matters of pride and brand integrity aside, you can’t make the decision without knowing how many of each will sell. The market’s appetite for what you’re selling will determine your success, and a large part of the market’s appetite is determined by price.

Again setting aside fears of bottom-feeder thinking and opinions about what a low price “means” or “says to the world,” the truth is that each time you lower the barrier to entry by lowering the price, you get more attention, and the sales get easier. You remove an excuse for a few people, and if what you have to deliver is good, everyone walks away happy.

Want more reasons why free is awesome? Okay, here are three:

1. Free results in delighted fans and lots of thank-yous. Everyone likes receiving gifts.
2. Free is very easy to promote. I can be more aggressive during this promotion because I’m not asking people to spend money; I’m trying to give them a gift.
3. Free is also very easy for others to promote. If you ask your friends to tell the world about your $2 (or $200) product, they’ll flinch because people hate to sell, or appear salesy. But friends are usually happy to tell the world about something you’re giving away.

Would you rather sell fifty thousand thousand copies of a bird-flinging app at $1.99, or would you rather distribute half a billion for free, each of which generate just a few cents in ad revenue?

It’s not a perfect analogy because price isn’t the only option, and I don’t plan to slash all of my own prices to see what happens. I also don’t plan to offer my book for free forever, and I’m not making ad revenue from my book the way Rovio makes it from their free games.

But given a limited and defined set of circumstances, I think you get my point.

The magic of free on Amazon

If you’re an aspiring author, pay close attention to this section.

I’ve enrolled my book in Amazon’s KDP Select program in exchange for the opportunity to offer my book for free on the Amazon Kindle platform for a total of five days, divided however I’d like. The way it works is, I give them a 90-day exclusive (the book’s not available on Barnes & Noble’s e-book store or anywhere else), and as a thanks, they give me the right to give my book away for free. It sounds like a shitty deal, but it’s not for a lot of people I’ve heard about.

It’s because of the algorithm, and because of critical mass.

See, there are two basic ways to drive sales of e-books. One is for people who already know you to seek out (or be driven to) your book. That’s significant if you have a gigantic audience or if you’re an established name. If Steven King farts and has it transcribed (with the possible addition of an evil clown), it becomes a bestseller because people know and love Steven King.

But if you’re like most people, the bigger source of sales is people who didn’t know you in advance, but who somehow run across your book. There are a few ways that happens (you rise in rankings like the top 100 or the genre bestsellers, or maybe you show up in the “people who liked this also bought” suggestions for books like yours) but all of them depend on you already being popular, and already being successful on Amazon.

In other words, it’s kind of a catch-22. You need buyers to attract buyers.

It’s a vicious circle, but the more positive way to think of it is as requiring a critical mass. If you — somehow, anyhow — get enough buyers who think highly of your work, you’ll rise in the rankings and more people will find you. As more people find you, more people will buy from you. And as more people buy from you, more people are able to find (and buy from) you.

Most authors aren’t able to achieve the critical mass needed to get the ball rolling. They don’t have enough “at the ready” buyers to sustain the reaction, and they fizzle out. Nobody can find them, so nobody buys them. And when nobody buys them, it becomes less and less likely that anyone will find them.

Amazon’s ranking algorithm is just as mysterious to the outside world as the Google search algorithm, but there are a few things that are known:

1. Popularity matters. The more people who visit your book’s page, give you good reviews, link to you, and buy your stuff, the higher you’ll rank.

2. Downloads of a free book give you the same momentum as do sales.

and the really important one:

3. It’s a lot easier to “sell” free than it is to sell non-free.

So yes, I’m giving up maybe a thousand relatively for-sure sales, but I’m doing it because much like Angry Birds, I’m trading those sales for what I hope are a lot more eyes. A lot more downloads. A lot more reviews. A lot more popularity.

I could sell X number of books at $3.99 this month and be happy, but I’d rather “sell” ten times that number for $0 and manage to hit my own critical mass.

Will it work?

Hell if I know.

I might as well say right now that what I’m doing scares the bejesus out of me. I write these posts in what probably sounds like a confident, authoritative voice, but it’s the magic of editing and zero body language that makes me seem sure of myself. I’m not sure of myself about this. Not at all.

Truth be told, I’m on a wing and a prayer here.

I haven’t staked my mortgage on selling even one copy of The Bialy Pimps, so no actual harm is going to come to me if, when the free period ends, nobody ever buys it. But I will tell you one thing: that would suck.

I would not like it.

It would seriously bum me out.

Because I spent a lot of time on this book, and because it’s a story that means a lot to me, and because (if I could pretend that it’s possible to be objective about my own work) it’s a really good story. It’s funny as hell, and I think it’ll also make you ponder a bit. I think the story will stay with you and resonate once you’ve finished reading. I think it speaks to some bigger, somewhat more serious truths. I think there are messages in this tale that are about conformity, about the fragile and random nature of fame, and about what we’re truly supposed to spend our lives doing.

It’s occurred to me, in my less-than-confident moments, that this book may have only a few hundred to a few thousand sales in it, and that what I’m doing right now may just be giving all of those sales away and getting nothing in return.

And although I don’t need that money, it’d be nice to have even that small amount of recompense if this thing totally bombs.

What the fuck

There’s a line in the movie Risky Business that forms a cornerstone of my life’s philosophy. It’s when Joe Pantoliano (as Guido the pimp) tells a very young Tom Cruise, “Sometimes you’ve just gotta say, ‘What the fuck.’ ”

Do I know what’s going to happen?

No.

Am I pissing away the small amount of reward I could get from my years of emotional and physical effort?

Maybe.

Should I remember that a (angry) bird in the hand is worth two in the bush? That if I know I can get some sales today, I should take those sales rather than rolling the dice on a free promotion?

Who knows.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta say, “What the fuck.”

So it’s free. And I want you to pick it up, and I hope you like it and share it.

If nothing else, I’ve shipped a work that’s been in my closet for over a decade, and that means a lot, too.

P.S: The book IS available at no charge on non-US Amazon sites too, so if you’re outside of the US and these links tell you that you can’t get it, go to your local Amazon site and search for “The Bialy Pimps.” Here’s the Amazon.co.uk link, for instance.

P.P.S: The free period ends TONIGHT. So be sure to download it now.

P.P.P.S: Remember, you don’t need a Kindle. Read the first part of this post again to see what I mean.

P.P.P.P.S: I think I forgot to mention that I have a book out, and that you can get that book for free. I forgot to mention that, right?

P.P.P.P.P.S: What the fuck.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S: Mitch Hedburg said, “At the end of my letters, I like to write, ‘P.S. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.’ “

Monday night, I uploaded the final elements required by Amazon to publish my novel, The Bialy Pimps, in the Kindle store.

Go over and check it out. I made it FREE for today and tomorrow — a decision I’ll tell you all about tomorrow — so while you’re there, be sure to download the book. (Oh, and if you’re not in the US, see the P.S. at the bottom of this post.)

(Do it even if you don’t have a Kindle, by the way… there’s an app for that, and you can even read without an app… just order the book, and Amazon will deliver it to the “Kindle Cloud Reader,” which will let you read on your screen right away. It’s easy.)

Seriously. Download the book. Do it now; I’ll wait. Consider it a favor to me if you must, but do it.

Now, it’s kind of ridiculous, from a business standpoint, that I’m publishing a novel. You don’t know me as a novelist. Nobody was clamoring for this, and until a few months ago, nobody even knew it existed. I do have some marketing and follow-up ideas that will keep me in the fiction-writing world and hopefully make me some money at it, but this businessy, entrpepreneurish, human-potential-personal-development niche I’m in right now is where I’m known, and where I earn my living.

So why does it matter that I’ve published a novel?

Answer: It matters because it’s AWESOME.

Awesome

Think about what you really love to do, and then think specifically about the things you’re proud of even though none of your friends or family members give a shit. I have a few of these things. One day I deadlifted 475 pounds and came home and proudly told my wife, Robin, and she said, “Huh.” Another day, Seth Godin agreed to speak for The Badass Project conference and I told her, and she said, “Huh.”

She cared more about the book than she did about deadlifting or Godin, but she could never care as much as I care. When I solved narrative problems that had been dogging me and told her about my solutions, she said a nicer version of “Huh.” My parents were interested, and a few friends nodded politely when they heard what I was working on… but that was it.

We’re human. We like validation. We like to do things that seem impressive and then have others tell us that we done good. When that doesn’t happen, it’s annoying, but here’s the rub: many of the truly important things in life are the things that bore everyone else. Those things are important specifically because nobody gives a shit, since that’s how you can be sure you’re doing them for you… and not for anyone else.

(Now, for context, I’m about to explain why my novel means so much to me. But in the spirit of this post, it’s likely that you won’t care. If that’s the case, you can skip it and resume reading at the “For You” subhead below. In fact, I’ll even give you a link. Click here if you don’t give a fuck. I won’t be offended.)

Below, in full, is the “Author’s Note” that appears at the end of The Bialy Pimps. The character names won’t mean much to you if you haven’t read the book yet, so just ignore them if needed and read for the big picture.

Author’s note

This book took me twelve and a half years to write.

Or, more accurately, it took me six months to write, then another twelve years to find the courage to “kill my darlings,” as Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch put it.

See, this book isn’t a true story. That would be ridiculous. But it was inspired by real people and a real place, and those people and that place were very dear to me. I started writing this novel after I’d left the people and the place behind in college, begun grad school laboratory work, and started having some really delightful panic attacks because I had ended up where I wasn’t supposed to be, doing what I wasn’t supposed to do.

When this happened back in 1999, it felt as if in a mere six months, my life had gone from being filled with laughter and fun and camaraderie to having very little of any of those. Without the love and support and companionship of my now-wife Robin (to whom this book is dedicated), I think I would have lost my mind. I hated my new job in a way I didn’t think it was possible to hate something, but it wasn’t venomous hate. It was giving-up hate. I felt like I’d discovered that the best years of my life were behind me, and that the future I had to look forward to — at least the part of the future that comprised work, which was a lot of it once you factored in my 2.5-hour round-trip commute — was nothing but bleak.

I wanted to turn back the clock, to go back to college and the way it had been. But because Superman wasn’t around to scream in anguish and then fly rapidly around the Earth to inexplicably roll time backward, I settled for going back in the privacy of my own mind. So I started to write down the stories we’d shared back then, back there.

At first, the people I wrote into my new manuscript were as they had been in life, and the place was as it had been in concrete and glass. That soon changed, as “Bingham’s” became its own new thing and the characters began to blend and melt into wildly distorted, wildly exaggerated amalgams of the people I’d once known. The plot built itself, our for-real regular “Captain Dipshit” became a villain, Dicky Kulane materialized out of nowhere, and the characters began to think and talk for themselves. And what had begun as a kind of journal became the fully fictional first draft of what you’ve just finished reading.

But I still remembered who the people had been in real life, and I still remembered every small feature of the place that Bingham’s had been based on. There really was a chipped-out shape in the paint that resembled someone the place had once known. There really was a pothole in the middle of the office floor. There really was, once upon a time, a real-life Ghetto Phone.

I’d written this sprawling epic that was partially true, partially blue-sky fabrication — or inspiration, depending on how you see it. And because it was so important to me, I couldn’t edit it. I could nudge it a bit and clean up the wording and “punch it up” as the Hollywood types say, but I couldn’t address the biggest problems. I couldn’t remove the minor characters so that the reader would remember the main ones. I couldn’t remove my recounting of High Street’s many colorful characters that weren’t relevant, but that meant something to me. I couldn’t change the autobiographical truths of some real-life moments so that they made sense in the context of a fictional tale.

In other words, I couldn’t commit to the harsh rewrite it would take to turn something I cared very much about into something that others might care about — and remain interested enough in to read all the way through. The first, second, and third drafts of this book were filled with my precious friends and memories. They were filled with my “darlings,” and I couldn’t bring myself to kill any of them.

Flash forward a decade or so.

In November of 2011, a friend of mine named Adrian Varnam insisted that I read Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art. He insisted, in fact, that he pay for a copy and have it shipped to me. I tried to protest, saying that I could pay for my own books, but he very firmly said, “I’m sending you this book,” and so I let it be. The book arrived, and I read it in a day. And after a week or two of letting Pressfield’s words rattle around in my brain, I realized something troubling.

I realized that The Bialy Pimps was still unfinished, no matter how much I told myself it was complete. I’d given birth to a major creative work, but I’d let Resistance stop me.

I went to my closet and pulled out the manuscript box containing the 180,000-word third draft of my ancient novel (on the box: “IT’S VERY GOOD! TRUST IT! DON’T MESS WITH IT!” and the codicil I’d neglected to add “… UNTIL YOU’RE READY TO KILL SOME UNNECESSARY DARLINGS!”), and began reading.

On the first read, I figured my task would consist mainly of excising the irrelevant parts. This was encouraging, because it meant I could do it relatively quickly. I’d lop out the sections that went nowhere and remove the huge, windy, introspective passages that were all about me telling myself that life was going to work out if I had faith. I’d put myself in the shoes of an objective reader and simply ask myself what bored me. And after a distance of twelve years — time during which I’d gotten and remained very happily married, had two delightful kids, quit the terrible job and created an online business that I enjoyed every minute of, gained some internet fame, and made many amazing new friends — I was every bit objective enough to do that.

But the job was far, far harder than I’d thought. My emotion at the time had masked major problems with the manuscript. Dicky Kulane, who was the only major character that hadn’t been inspired at all by a real person, read like a cardboard cutout. Dicky’s plotting and motivations were totally unbelievable. I cut-jumped around the novel as it suited me as a writer, leaving the reader hanging and confused. A lot of it was still very funny and very good to my older and hopefully wiser eye, but it needed a lot of work.

But I was on fire like I’ve seldom been. I rediscovered that place, now mostly fictional. I re-met those people, now personae in their own, imaginary right. From this, I found the energy for a top-to-bottom rewrite of easily two-thirds of the book, and did it on top of a full-load of “real, for-money business” I had on my plate. I got up early. I stayed up late. I squeezed in over six hours a day on the rewrite in addition to my work and family commitments, and in around seven weeks, the final draft was complete.

Well, almost. Until I published the thing, it would still be incomplete in the way that counted. So I told myself that no matter what happened with this novel, it deserved to at least see the light of day. It deserved, in Seth Godin’s terms, to be “shipped,” regardless of what would happen next. And I pushed through until that happened.

I hope you enjoyed this book, but if you didn’t, I won’t be offended because I didn’t write it for you. I wrote it the first time for me, and the second time for the book itself.

No matter what happens next, I’m proud of this book, and what it’s grown up to be. I’m pleased it had the courage to be born, and then to be reborn. I’m glad it was able to tell its story, and to become what it was meant to become.

For you

We spend a whole hell of a lot of our time doing the things that other people want us to do, or require us to do. Most people go to a job and do the work a boss wants them to do. Freelancers do what their clients want them to do. Entrepreneurs, who like to act like free spirits who are beholden to nobody, spend their time trying to do what the market wants, because that’s what’s profitable. We do the dishes because that’s what our spouse or roommate wants, we pay the bills because that’s what the utility companies want, and we play Candy Land with our kids because it’s what the kids want.

If you’ve got a creative endeavor in the works — no matter which form that “creation” takes — and if that endeavor is something that nobody other than you gives a shit about, then you must take the time to work on it.

You must finish it.

You must ship it, and get it out there into the world.

Maybe the world will magically start to care at that point, and maybe it won’t. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve completed something that you did for you, and for nobody else.

I’d love it if the world fell in love with The Bialy Pimps and it became really popular, but it doesn’t matter if that happens because that’s not the reason I wrote it, and it’s sure as hell not the reason I took the time now, twelve years later, to spend hundreds of hours rewriting it and preparing it for publication.

I did it because it was my own foolish dream to write and publish a novel, and on Monday night I pushed the button that, after decades of dreaming, made that dream a reality.

And it was so damn worth it.

P.S: IMPORTANT NOTE… the book IS available at no charge on non-US Amazon sites, so if you’re outside of the US and these links tell you that you can’t get it, go to your local Amazon site and search for “The Bialy Pimps.” Here’s the Amazon.co.uk link, for instance.

P.P.S: Even though I’ve said I don’t care what happens, I do kind of care and would love if you’d download The Bialy Pimps (remember, it’s free for the first days) because then I get to watch the numbers go up. Even self-realized people who do things “for themselves” aren’t above shallow ego boosts.

P.P.S: If you have an e-reader that won’t recognize the Kindle file format, shoot me an email.

Many times I’ve debated — and have asked friends whose opinions I trust — some form of this question:

Is “follow your heart” good advice?

Because you know what? It sounds really compelling. We all like the notion of a kumbaya world where we can do exactly what we want to do, whenever we want to do it. We all really dig the idea that we can, should, and must ditch the bullshit in our lives and pursue our passions. If you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, it’s really appealing to have permission to quit doing it and to take to the road playing the harmonica if that’s what moves you.

There’s a million variants on this theme.

Do what you love. Follow your bliss. Pursue your passion. Turn your hobby into your vocation.

My friend Lee Stranahan says, “If you’re in a job where people don’t thank you for what you do on a regular basis, I think you should stop doing it.”

For most people, all of these usually amount to the same big question: Faced with a choice between doing something you love (which may not pay) and doing something you don’t love (but that pays), which should you pursue?

Speaking for myself, I have two answers to this question:

First of all, following your passions is an incredibly stupid thing to do.

And second, you absolutely must follow your passions, because not doing so is the stupidest damn thing you could ever do.

Let me explain.

Follow your heart

What terrible advice. I know people who say this, but I also know what they really mean, and “follow your heart” isn’t the whole story.

I would never tell anyone that they should always follow their heart. Passions come and go, and the trouble with passion is that it’s incredibly loud. It drowns out lesser preferences and desires. If you only listen to passion, that’s like listening to the one loud asshole in the crowd who’s complaining about the show you’re putting on and ignoring the quieter majority who are enjoying it just fine. If you follow your passions without thinking, you’re listening to the squeaky wheel and giving it all the grease.

Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say you really want to play the harmonica. It’s all you want to do, all the time. It’s your passion, in the purest sense of the word. You think about the harmonica constantly. You wake up and grab your harmonica. You go to sleep with your harmonica in your mouth. You make room when brushing your teeth so that you can play harmonica at the same time. You bought an electronic harmonica with headphones so that you can play it secretly at work. No sexual experience that does not include harmonica is worth engaging in.

So you should obviously quit your job and just play the harmonica all the time, right?

Wrong. Stupid. Because unless you’re very, very unusual, I’ll bet you have other, quieter desires that your harmonica-lust is drowning out.

For instance, I’ll bet you like to eat food. And I’ll bet you like that food to be a step above Ramen noodles on occasion.

I’ll bet you enjoy living under a roof. In fact, I’d further bet that the vast majority of you prefer to live under a decent, clean roof in a good part of town. And I’d go on to bet that well over half of you enjoy living where you are right now, or have ambitions to live somewhere better.

I’ll bet you enjoy your computer. Your iPod. Your iPhone. Your iPad.

I’ll bet you enjoy pleasing any family members you may live with or may support.

In other words, your harmonica passion isn’t your only passion. Each yin has a yang, and each thing you want has a price. Unless you get a harmonica sponsorship or unless Blues Traveller signs you up, leaving your job to play harmonica is going to involve a significant — possibly total — pay cut. Are you cool with that?

If you are, awesome. Quit your job, marry and fornicate with your harmonica, and have fun out there.

But because most people have those other desires too, my guess is that you aren’t going to be cool with it. Following your heart would net you a big win in the harmonica department… but would cost you in a lot of others.

It’s a recipe for a huge, foolhardy net loss.

But, follow your heart

Noticing some incongruity here?

I’m the guy who told you that you’d better carpe diem immediately because the universe doesn’t care about you, and hey, also, by the way, you’re dying, so you’d better get a move on.

I’m the guy who told you to schedule your fun stuff so that you can have more fun.

I’d also say that burning your days doing things you don’t care about or don’t want to do is akin to slow suicide. We only get one life, and this is yours. We only get one today, and you’re living yours.

Wasting your life doing things that aren’t in your heart is the stupidest thing you could do. It’s just as stupid as quitting the stuff you don’t like in order to do the things that are your heart.

Before I stop fucking with you, let me just incriminate myself a bit further.

I just finished writing a novel called The Bialy Pimps. (I’d very much like to link to it for you, but I can’t publish it until the cover art is ready.) I’m very proud of this novel. Creatively speaking, I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. I can’t wait to have it out in the world. I can’t wait for you to read it, because I think you’ll really, really like it. I can’t wait to write another one. I can’t wait to do a few cool things to spread, market, and disseminate this novel and the ones I write next.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my harmonica.

I’m writing and publishing fiction right now because I’m passionate about it. What other reason could there be? Yes, I might make some money on it, but I’m definitely not counting on it. I don’t expect to become a bestselling fiction author overnight. I don’t think it will help grow the business I’m currently in, because nobody reads a novel and then says, “Hey, that was great… let’s buy some of this guy’s info products!” And I’m certainly not planning to abandon what I’ve built in the business/blogging/rule-questioning space to follow my new bliss, because I like it a lot here.

I’m doing it because I want to do it. Because it’s in my heart. Because I think about it all the time and because I can’t not do it.

Ditto the Badass Project conference I hosted last week. Someone asked me why the team and I went to all that effort when there’s zero financial or business gain to be had from it. I didn’t (and won’t) make a cent off of anything the Badass Project does. I got some good exposure and connections by doing the conference, but that was a side effect. At root, and at its inception, I work on the Badass Project because I’m passionate about giving people props for saying, “Fuck you, world… I’m going to do this whether you think I should or not.” I’m passionate about making people who blame external circumstances for the crap in their lives feel like douchebags.

I think you should ditch the meeting to go to see your kid’s dance recital. I think you should tell co-workers you can’t work a certain time because you want to go see a movie. I’ve said that my mission statement in life is to “do cool shit with cool people.” I believe firmly in the doctrine of dicking off.

Passion. All passion.

So… now what?

Passion is overrated. Passion is underrated. Following your heart is usually a stupid idea. Not following your heart is the stupidest thing you could ever do.

You can believe all of those statements, because very few things in life are absolute.

As always, it comes down to self-awareness… and that means knowing which questions you’re really asking.

The question isn’t, “Should I follow my heart?” It’s “Should I follow this particular aspect of this thing that’s in my heart, now, in this way, in full awareness of both the positive and negative consequences that may or may not arise from my decision?”

Almost nothing is as absolute as YES or NO, regardless of qualifications. I say “It depends” a lot. You know why? Because it always fucking depends.

So, should you pursue your passions?

Yes, if.

No, if.

If you’ve ever asked that question in its naked form, you either aren’t paying much attention or are afraid of taking the scary, decisive action that might come from a legitimate answer to a legitimate question.

So, if you can get a handle on your fear, I’ve got something for you to try. The next time you’re trying to decide whether you should follow a passion, ask yourself five questions.

The first two are:

1. What do I have to gain by following this passion?

2. What am I losing by not following this passion?

These two are easy, because it’s what’s being screamed in your ear by that internal voice. That voice knows all the reasons why you should quit your shitty job and go play harmonica (#1) and it has many pushy opinions about how staying in your shitty job is sucking the life out of you (#2).

But then, keep going, and be honest.

Ask:

3. What am I gaining by not following this passion?

Think really damn hard about this one. Be honest in both directions, meaning that you’ve got to truthfully come up with things that you are gaining from staying right where you are even if you don’t want to admit it (self esteem, the perception of safety, the feeling that there’s safety in numbers) and that you can’t exaggerate the importance of not rocking the boat on your current situation (i.e., your job is not keeping you alive, and it’s pretty unlikely that it’s literally keeping a roof over your head unless you have no friends or relatives who would house you if there was no alternative).

Frame these things in the positive, because you’ve got to see the good in the situation, not just the bad in the alternative. So if you think that quitting your job would have you borrowing money and that would embarrass you, reframe it. Say that your current situation protects your dignity and makes you feel respected.

The next question is the hammer. Pay close attention to it.

4. What’s the price of following this passion?

Everything has a price. EVERYTHING. The price of a normal job is forty to fifty hours per week, a defined salary, and the need for approval of your actions, among other things. The price of playing harmonica all the time for no pay is that you may (may!) have to live in your parents’ basement and have no spending money and be called a loser. Everything has definite and potential upsides, and everything has definite and potential downsides. You’re going to pay the price for whatever you do, so make sure you’re okay with the price you’re choosing to pay.

There’s one more. And this is where things get really fun.

5. Are there other ways to get to where I want to be?

In other words, question the rules, because everything you’ve carefully reasoned out in questions 1-4 may be moot if you find an alternate way to satisfy your passion. The price may be far less in size, and far more appealing than you’d imagined.

I was talking with my buddy Benny Lewis yesterday. Benny travels. Like, that’s what he does, essentially for a living. He goes to different countries and he immerses himself in the local culture and he tries to learn the language. He’s from Ireland, but he really only goes back for Christmas. Everything he owns, all together, weighs fifty pounds. He’s a true nomad.

Benny said that people tell him all the time that they wish they could do what he does. And Benny told me that his response is, “So do it.”

But people don’t think they can do it. They’ve decided that the “price” of doing what Benny does is different from its true price, because they’re “pricing” a traditional, inside-the-box model. Benny’s model is outside the box. Most people think of travel as consisting of an expensive plane ticket, a week or two in a hotel (which is usually expensive), and then all sorts of other vacation expenses. But Benny doesn’t fly in and fly out. He flies in and stays for months. That’s several plane tickets a year, not several a month. He rents a place for the long term. His current place in Taiwan costs $300 a month. And if that’s too pricey? He couch surfs, and gets his accommodations for free.

Benny told me that most people have this mentality that says, “Work hard, save up a big chunk of money, and then travel the world.” But if you hack the system, you can start now. With just a bit of planning, you could do what Benny does for a pittance. So don’t wait. Travel, and earn that pittance as you go along.

The bottom line

I think that you should pursue your passions. I think that you should follow your heart.

…if, that is, you decide what it’s going to cost you, and decide that you’re honestly okay with paying that price.

Anything is possible. The only questions are how, where, when, and at what cost.

Following your heart isn’t bad. Staying where you are isn’t bad. What’s bad is inaction. Malaise. Inertia. Apathy. Unconsciousness.

Decide, then do.

Go.

So you like the idea of being a badass? You’re sold on badassery? You admire people who are badasses, and you want to become more badass yourself?

Are you sold on the idea that excuses suck, that most excuses are bullshit, and that the minute we learn to master our own true abilities is the minute our lives become amazing and virtually unlimited?

Well, lucky you. By joining us online for the Badass Project Conference 2012 next week, you can immerse yourself in an insane amount of badassery — taught by 18 amazing speakers — for FREE.

Here are the details on the conference.

So, I just want to make sure we’re clear about this.

This is virtual (online), meaning that you can attend from anywhere with an internet connection.

18 amazing who believe in our cause are joining us: Leo Babauta, Carole Brown, Brian Clark, Jonathan Fields, Charlie Gilkey, Maggie Ginsburg-Schutz, Matt Glowaki, Seth Godin, Joe Hall, Thor Holt, Warren MacDonald, Anissa Mayhew, Jon Morrow, Amber “Miss Destructo” Osborne, Amber Rae, Julien Smith, John Unger, and Tommy Walker.

They’ll be speaking about topics that will help you achieve your maximum level of badass… things like getting through fear, overcoming resistance, and eliminating excuses.

And IT’S ALL FREE.

Check it out, then block off the time on your calendar. You absolutely don’t want to miss this.

We’ve put together something I’m very, very proud to be a part of. I hope you’ll join us.

If you’re one of those nitpicky assholes who likes to try to catch people screwing up and then tell them Nyah-nyah, you did this wrong, you probably noticed that I’ve fallen short on my promise to try six 30-day trials during 2011 and were all set to yell at me.

I tried biphasic sleep, the Slow-Carb diet, releasing resistance, quasi-minimalism, fighting email addiction, and… and?

And nothing. And 2011 is almost over.

Well, ha-ha! I did a sixth trial already and just haven’t said anything until now… with eleven days in the year to spare.

Here’s what it was: from mid-November until mid-December (to embrace the holiday spirits of both Thanksgiving and Christmas, I suppose), I did a favor each day for friends… with the requirement that they did nothing for me in return.

A little background

I have a confession to make. I’m a little selfish.

I try not to be, but I’m driven and I have big goals, and one of the ways you maintain drive and make progress on big goals is to keep your eye on the prize — which means watching what YOU do and the results YOU are getting very closely, often to the exclusion of other people’s concerns. I think that the vast majority of achievers are in danger of being overly selfish — without meaning to be or wanting to be — for this very reason.

(In fact, if you’re thinking that I’m wrong and that there are a lot of selfless achievers, I’d argue that they’re selfish too… but in a very specific way. A person who wants to feed a million people has a plan to make it happen, and has to stay focused on that plan just like any other goal. Think there are any great world-changers and philanthropists whose families sometimes felt neglected while said philanthropists were out doing good for others? Think any of those great people were sometimes seen as bullheaded or unyielding? I sure do.)

So sometimes, I’ll be trying to go after something, and I’ll look back too late and I’ll say with regret, “Ooh, I didn’t really even thank that person for helping me.” Or, “That person really cheered me on, but I don’t think I’ve ever cheered them on.”

I’ve even been mad at people who haven’t dropped everything they’re doing to be impressed by something I’ve achieved. How selfish is that, when they had a big thing last month that I didn’t even notice?

So, noticing this trend, I thought about trying to reciprocate more and be a better team player from now on.

But that didn’t feel like enough. The karmic scale was out of balance thanks to all the times I’d inadvertently taken without giving.

For a change, I wanted to do a bunch of stuff for people and get nothing back.

What’s in it for me?

A lot of the people who knew I was doing this experiment nodded their heads with understanding when I told them and said something like, “So it’s a networking thing. You’re strengthening your connections.”

And that would have made sense. I think that keeping your network karmically balanced is a good plan (see how my client Ben Rubin explains it here), but that’s not what I was doing. Doing good turns so that people would “owe me one” is honestly not what I was after… especially since a lot of the people involved weren’t business connections anyway.

That said, there’s a lot here that’s splitting hairs.

After doing 30 favors for people and asking nothing in return, might I expect to have better connections, and might I benefit from said connections later on? Sure. But that’s not why I was doing it.

This is something Seth Godin talks about in his book Linchpin: giving gifts. The linchpin gives gifts of him- or herself, and that creates an economy based on art and generosity. But the linchpin doesn’t give gifts in order to receive. The idea is to give freely, and to receive freely.

So yeah, I suppose I might receive. I kind of hope I don’t, though, because I have enough without these favors coming back to me, and I’d rather not mar the intention of the trial.

How I went about it

The idea was super-simple. I sent the following to a bunch of people who have done generous things for me in the past:

At the beginning of this year, I decided to do six 30-day challenges. To end the year, I want to do one unreciprocated favor for a friend for 30 days.

So, as a friend, I’m asking you to let me do a favor for you… and I specifically ask that you do nothing for me in return regarding this favor.

It can be pretty much anything you’d consider to be a “favor” if you asked someone to do it. I can’t walk your dog or pick up your mail or water your plants while you’re on vacation if I don’t live where you live… but I can look over something you’ve written, connect you with someone else I know, make a testimonial or give you a review, participate in your XYZ, give you my recommendation re: the latest widget, give you advice on something I know well… whatever.

If this seems like a strange request to you, then you don’t know me very well. I’ve done much, much stranger things.

A few wiseasses replied with joke requests, like “no more naked photos of you in my email,” and a few more replied that they didn’t need anything. Some didn’t reply at all, necessitating some creativity (more on that in a minute) and a second round of emails.

I did get a few “Nothing, thanks” replies, but because people could tell that I was seriously trying to do this, I tended to get a variant on the theme: “I don’t know what I need. Let me think about it.”

I even had to talk one person into it. He didn’t feel comfortable receiving without giving, which really proved the point of the whole experiment. This guy ALWAYS cheers for and supports me, and wanted nothing. What the hell?

I had to remind a lot of people, too. Hey, remember this email? What can I help you with? And after sending a few emails like that (not to the same people, though. I didn’t want to be a pest) I started trying to be creative and suggest things I could do for them until we came to something that felt right.

What I did

I didn’t explicitly say whether or not these favors would be confidential, but I figure it’s better safe than sorry. So with the exception of a few public cases, I won’t say who requested what.

But that said, here’s the kinds of things I ended up doing:

• Telling others about their good stuff
• Giving advice (I gave a lot of advice)
• Reviewing people’s writing or projects and giving testimonials to people who’ve done good work for me
• Reading/looking through people’s stuff and giving my opinion
• Various personal tasks for the non-businessy people on my list
• Brainstorming with them
• Creating something amusing. One person wanted a funny photo and one wanted a funny video. I can tell you about one of these because he shared it on Twitter; Tony Clark asked me to draw him a picture of Lumpy Space Princess and Lady Rainicorn from the cartoon Adventure Time. OMG the resulting artwork was a masterpiece.
• I also decided to do a favor for my email list as a whole, because those are the clients and friends who make my business possible. So I did a no-strings-attached and zero-promotion Q&A call for them, and told them to ask me anything.
• One person said that he had all he could want, so he asked me to do something for someone else without that person knowing it was me.
• Two people hemmed and hawed but couldn’t really come up with anything, so I told them I’d make a donation to a charity I knew they supported.
• I did some technical fix-it jobs.
• Sonia Simone’s request was for me to record a Third Tribe seminar. I couldn’t believe this didn’t qualify as her doing me a favor.

That last one was interesting, and really brought the issue of reciprocation and synergy back to the fore. How could I not benefit from a Third Tribe seminar? But Sonia needed the content as much as I could use the exposure, proving that some of the best arrangements really do benefit everyone.

What happened

Nothing, and that was the point.

Have I seen any effect from the favors I did? No. I don’t want effects. People have asked me how it went, and my answer has been, “Well, I did the favors.” Sometimes I add “It was interesting” or “It felt good,” but that’s not the answer people are looking for. They want to hear what I got out of it.

When I did the biphasic sleep trial, I could point to something that affected my life: Interesting, but not for me. When I did Slow Carb, the same was true: It was close to a good fit, and it eased me into Paleo — and Paleo is a game-changer.

But this? What did it do? What has occurred? Nothing.

Well, nothing tangible. Maybe it’s realigned the karmic scales, and maybe it will improve my friendships. Maybe it’s shifted my perspective, and maybe it’ll make me more aware of reciprocity in the future. And I guess that’s not nothing.

Happy holidays, everyone. May you give as freely as you receive, and appreciate the joy of both.

Anyone who reads this blog has probably noticed that I really like the work of Julien Smith. And really, if you like my writing, you’d probably like his.

Let’s drill it down a bit further. Remember my post “You are dying, and your world is a lie“?

Well, if you liked that specific post of mine, you’re going to like Julien’s new Kindle book The Flinch. It’s incredibly expensive at $0.00, so you might as well go ahead and grab it. I don’t think Amazon discounts much below that point.

If you’ve been revved up and motivated by some of my recent, “big thoughts” posts but weren’t quite sure what to do, this will fill in some of the missing pieces for you.

Here’s the idea:

When we’re aware of impending pain or suffering, we have an inborn instinct to flinch away from it. This is all well and good in things like protecting your head when you take a fall and in flinching away from a hot stove (or if someone like the Incredible Hulk throws a hot stove at you), but it falls apart when the thing we’re flinching away from is something we need to do.

In other words, it’s that persnickety issue again. The one we all love and hate.

Remarkable things are often uncomfortable by definition. If they weren’t, everyone would be doing them. So in order to be remarkable, you have to get used to discomfort. But we flinch from it. Just as we’re hard-wired to flinch away from actual, physical, destructive impending pain, so too do we learn to flinch away from ridicule, rejection, discomfort, and bad feelings.

Your body says: This thing that’s about to hit us is going to suck. Let’s get the fuck away from it like, now.

Julien says that before champion boxers can become champions, they have to learn to do one thing that novice boxers can’t do. They have to learn how to take a punch.

They have to learn to see the impending pain or discomfort, and not flinch.

Champions in anything are the same way. If you want to achieve anything great, you have to learn when it’s truly appropriate to flinch and when you need to hold your ground and take the hit.

That’s the theory. But there’s practice in here, too.

Want to learn how to get past the flinch? There’s specific strategies in this book. And I’ll admit, they were tough. They all made me want to flinch.

You want to learn how to do big things, start with small things. Start getting intimate with your flinch, and learn how to push through it.

The Flinch was written by Julien Smith for Seth Godin’s Domino Project. It’s free. With that particular combination of attributes, it’s kind of hard for me not to recommend it wholeheartedly.

Julien sent me an advance copy, and I read it in a day and loved it. I think you will too.

Check out The Flinch at Amazon for free. You’ll thank me.

Today’s post is over at my nonprofit, The Badass Project. You should read it.

Read it here.

P.S: My last post was short. This post is short. This one doesn’t really count, though, because the post I’ve linked to isn’t short at all. And it’s bad ass.

P.P.S: Don’t get used to short posts from me.

1. Begin.

2. Do the work.

3. Ship.

4. Repeat.

Almost nobody truly does all four. Those that do inevitably become great.