I’d been procrastinating over watching Merlin Mann’s latest video. Sure, everyone watched the little 5 minute Merlin Labs bit (“Giant Cock Paper” – heh!), but the other one? Man… 40 minutes of my time!
Then I remembered how much time I spent dicking around on Regretsy last night.
I watched Merlin’s thing.
There are things that, when you read them or watch them, totally change your game. With some things, you realize it at the time. With some, you don’t.
It took Merlin Mann 40 minutes to totally change my game.
His thesis is that people do stuff like read LifeHacker, buy e-books, and dick around on Wikipedia (or Regretsy) all day because they’re waiting for the internet to tell them who they are and what to do.
This really only effects knowledge workers, says Merlin, because it’s painfully obvious what you have to do if your job title is, say, Widget Sorter. When you’re a knowledge worker, your goals and process are more nebulous.
The Beleaguered Race
Of all the knowledge workers this phenomenon effects, I’d say entrepreneurs are at the top of the list.
After all, even if you’re what’s normally called a “knowledge worker” you have a boss who expects you to achieve certain goals or produce certain deliverables. It’s up to you – to a greater or lesser degree – how to do those things, but at least you have something concrete to work towards.
Not so with entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs set their own goals – or should. Entrepreneurs are often the only ones holding themselves accountable to these goals. Being your own boss means that if you dick around on YouTube too much, you don’t get paid. Everyone realizes that, but if you don’t know what to do (or think you don’t know what to do) it’s very easy to kill time and bury your anxieties by surfing the web, buying stuff, reading e-books, and the like.
And this is why the trap is so treacherous.
A lot of what could be mistaken for work – marketing courses, SEO books, “productivity hacks,” etc – can really just become another time sink. Another YouTube or Regretsy or People of Wal-Mart to dick around on.
How to be…?
I think there’s this perception among the new entrepreneurs I’ve met that we need someone to tell us how to run our businesses. Someone to tell us How To Be An Entrepreneur.
What the hell does that even mean?
There are as many kinds of businesses as there are kinds of people. And if you have a business, you’re already an entrepreneur. That’s what the word means.
There is no Platonic form called “Entrepreneur.” It doesn’t exist. No course, book, e-book, YouTube video, or anything else is going to teach you who you are, or who you should be, or who your business needs you to be.
Needs
An ebook, course, seminar, or other kind of information product is someone’s condensed experience. Presumably, the people who make or give these things (the ethical ones, anyway) are very good at what they do, and they condense the sum total of their experience into 87 pages and sell it for $19.95. All you have to do is read and apply.
I thought, while buying 65 million e-courses designed to manifest hordes of people that have no desire in life except to give me money, that those courses were what I needed.
But I found out that what I needed – and need – is not other people’s condensed experience. What I need is to go out and have my own experience.
The Tipping Point
The amount of quality information in or the intrinsic value of the materials is not the problem – or the point. There are fantastic people making fantastic e-books out there. I’ve benefited from a lot of them. Still not the point.
The point is this: There comes a time when consuming (or even just buying, since the vast majority never even read/watch the stuff they buy) these things becomes a method of procrastination. A hindrance, not a help.
As Merlin says, there’s only so much reading you can do about ice fishing before you just have to put on the extra layers, step out onto the ice, and fish.
Come again?
If I want to learn karate, I do not pay a karate master a retainer every month while I sit on my ass at home and avoid going to the dojo because I’m reading the karate master’s e-book on how to kick the world’s collective ass, dontcha know.
No.
What I do is get off my couch every day, go to the dojo, and get my ass kicked by everyone over the age of 3 years old. Repeatedly. Until I learn what I went there to learn.
And so I’m fasting. Cleansing. Changing my information diet, if you will.
For the next little while – a month, at least – I’m not going to purchase any information products. I’m also going to quit reading LifeHacker and ZenHabits and their ilk.
Instead of an information gourmand, I’m going to be an information gourmet.
This does not mean I’m giving up being online. Far from it. Sometimes what sparks my creativity – and probably yours – really is dicking around on YouTube or Twitter for an hour in the middle of the day. I think giving up on useful inputs would be unhelpful – even disastrous.
What I’m cutting out is not the whipped cream or maraschino cherry on top of my time on the internet. I’m not cutting out the stuff that makes me happy and enriches me creatively. What I’m giving up is the cardboard filler below the whipped cream and cherry – stuff that’s not contributing to my enjoyment.
By changing my inputs, I’m almost certain to change my output.
This month is about getting my own experience. In long form.
Let’s see how it goes.
—-
ps – Just to be perfectly clear, this is not to say that ebooks are a racket and that people who write them are bad or corrupt or crooked or just trying to drain away your time. I don’t think that at all. It’s NOT the e-books, courses, etc that cause procrastination. It’s the mindset of “Oh, if only I knew more about [X] I would finally be rich/healthy/happy/whatever – so let me buy 10 things to read all about it and not actually do the hard stuff – i.e. sit in my chair and work.” It’s the mindset of needing the internet to tell you who you are and what to do. That mindset is what this media detox is designed to challenge.
Your mileage may vary.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I know exactly what you mean – I think I too fall frequently into the information trap – out of a fear of failure – probably the root of much procrastination.
When instead of reading about others’ adventures, we need to be out there having more of our own
Cheers…
…Allen