One Thought

Blogging can be a frustrating experience.

As a blogger, you want readers. What’s the point, otherwise? A blog without readers might as well be a private journal — no reason to pay the web hosting fee.

Of course, my blog does have some readers. I’m getting about 500 visitors per month right now. (Yes, I know — you’re impressed.) If I put up Google ads, I might have a few additional cents in my pocket by year end.

My readership is composed almost entirely of my friends. (Hey, guys! I like you. We should hang out more. But you’re an awfully quiet bunch.) I talk to people and hear they’ve read my stuff, but I don’t get much direct feedback.

I can’t say I’m that surprised. Most people browse the internet as consumers: They read headlines, skim articles, and click furiously from one site to another. They treat the web like a library and websites like books — well, books they toss aside after a minute or two.

And I’m no different. I’ve also been like this for most of my tenure on the web: Read, read, click, click, check e-mail, read, click.

I actually began as a contributor, though. In high school, I was part of a few game-related communities. I helped run a modestly popular website — which actually still exists, go figure — wrote some tutorials, participated in forums, and so on.

But once I started college, I reverted to consumption mode. I had less free time and felt less of a connection to my communities. I stopped contributing to them.

Now, nine years later, I’m transitioning back to the contributor role. It’s a strange feeling — like walking into a library and realizing you can have conversations with the books. Weird. But that’s the beauty of the internet: It’s great for information dissemination, but it’s best for interaction and community building. And I’m not just talking about e-mail and Facebook.

But now to my main point. As a blogger, I’m starting to notice something:

It takes a lot to grab people’s attention.

There’s so much to sift through on the web, and most of it is pretty pedestrian. Internet attention spans are short. People want a quick fix, something that will entertain or help them in just a few minutes.

As a blogger, I’m competing for your attention. I’m not used to that. I’ve always tried to avoid being the center of attention. It’s just not something I’ve liked.

But I can feel a change welling in me. When you write stuff and put it on the internet, you want people to read it. And if you’re not getting much attention, you start to crave it. It becomes an obsession.

That’s why so many bloggers are fixated on their “stats” — visitor numbers provided by services like Google Analytics. Their hearts flutter with every increase in traffic and shudder with every decrease. They shriek with glee when their posts reach the front page of sites like Digg.

I’m becoming an attention whore just like the rest of them. Or maybe I’m just an attention whore wannabe or an attention whore in training. There are worse things you could be, right? 

Okay, maybe not.

But that’s the way it is. I’m not so unhappy: It’s fun to enter this new role — competing for people’s attention — and see what I can make of it. I’ve done so little competing for attention so far in my life that everything is new and exciting.

And there are other benefits to blogging.

For one, it’s making me much less self-conscious. If you’re a private person — which I was much more so a year ago — you tend to think people will react strongly to what you say. You’re worried about making a bad impression. You think that if you don’t watch yourself you’ll screw up and put up something embarrassing for all to see. Everyone who searches for your name will think less of you.

I’ve realized these thoughts are delusions. Sure, you’ll always find the odd story of someone who gets screwed over — the corporate boss who sees drunk images of some kid on Facebook and decides not to hire him — but these are the exception. In general, people don’t care as much as you think they will. Your private life is a bigger deal to you than it is to them. It takes a lot more to grab their attention than you might think.

For me, this knowledge is freeing. It means I don’t need to heavily edit or censor myself. I don’t have to stress out about the far-reaching implications of everything I say. If I say something I think is idiotic ten years from now, fine. I’ll just have to deal with it. The only alternative is to say nothing at all or to water myself down so much that no one cares what I have to say, anyway.

There’s a tendency for bloggers to become provocative just for the sake of being provocative: to oversell in their headlines, reveal so much about their personal lives you wish they’d held back a little, or just say “fuck” a lot. I’m trying to avoid that. But you have it admit it’s pretty fucking tempting!

I suspect that it’ll be mostly other bloggers who can relate to this post. (My friend Kim, in fact, has written a similar post recently.) As with anything, it’s hard to understand what it’s like to be a blogger if you aren’t one.

And that’s fine. Bloggers are more likely to leave comments, anyway

Are you sick of hearing “rockstar” applied to everything? I am. Everyone is a rockstar: Internet companies search for “rockstar” Python programmers. Corporate websites advise you on how to be a “rockstar” recruiter. You can even drink high fructose corn syrup and caffeine and be a rockstar.

There’s a reason guys like Jimmy Page and Kurt Cobain aren’t called “top corporate recruiter” musicians. Yes, that would be unwieldy … but it would also be lame. Let’s call a horse a horse.

In that vein, I’d like to look at how rock musicians write rock music. I run a not-so-oft-updated site called The Songwriting Process where I collect quotes from musicians on their creative process. In the process of collecting them, I’ve noticed a few patterns.

Of course, songwriting can’t be boiled down to a definable process. You’ll never find a recipe that makes it easy or straightforward. Creativity doesn’t work that way. Still, there are some techniques that help songs flow more freely. And if you do some analogizing, the patterns I’ve found should be useful for any creative process.

This is how to write rock music like a rockstar:

1. Start with one small, but good, idea.

This is an extremely common technique. The idea is to build songs from the ground up: Rather than worrying about song structure or interplay between instruments, just come up with one good part – a melody, guitar riff, drum loop, lyric, whatever. Once you have a part that moves you, grow it into a full song.

John Lennon describes how he wrote the Beatles’s song “Because”:

I was lying on the sofa in our house, listening to Yoko play Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” on the piano. Suddenly I said, “can you play those chords backwards.” She did, and I wrote “Because” around them.

Metallica used this technique to write their hit “Enter Sandman.” Guitarist Kirk Hammett came up with the song’s main riff, which was then modified slightly by drummer Lars Ulrich. The rest of the song evolved from that single riff. Ulrich calls “Enter Sandman” a “one-riff song.”

2. Use rules or limitations.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed as a songwriter. After all, a song can go in any direction and become almost anything – the freedom’s almost too much to handle. For this reason, some songwriters like to constrain themselves.

Nine Inch Nails mainman Trent Reznor says:

If I come up with rules or limitations it focuses me in a direction. … those rules and limitations can change if you realize it’s a dumb idea. You start to mutate it and see what fits best.

For the album With Teeth, Reznor forced himself to write two songs every 10 days. He also decided before starting that he wanted to album to sound “frail” and “unsure of itself.” This guideline had a big impact on his recording and production process.

Bob Dylan says that if he gets stuck while writing a song, he forces himself to change keys on guitar. Because of the nature of the instrument, playing the song in a new key often leads to new ideas: “Anything you do in A, it’s going to be a different song in G. … There’s too many wide passing notes in G not to influence your writing unless you’re playing barre chords.”

3. Keep it simple.

Many songwriters write with just one instrument–often acoustic guitar or piano–and their voice. A whole band or complex equipment would just confuse things. Other instruments and parts can come later once the core of the song has been formed.

Heidi Tveitan, head of atmospheric rock outfit Star of Ash, describes the writing process for her most recent album:

All songs were written on piano, and when I felt that it worked there, I took it further in the studio. It was important to me having the compositions work in their basic forms before I started layering, as it is so easy to get lost in the arrangements during the writing process. This way I was also more confident and had a clear vision on the songs’ expression before I brought in additional musicians.

Mike Mills of R.E.M. and Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day both report writing hard-rocking numbers by themselves on an acoustic guitar. While Mills says the songs can change a lot when he brings them to the band, Armstrong says he always has the dynamics of the full band in mind:

I always have it in the back of my head about the dynamics of electric guitar and drums and bass. … But I think that’s the beauty of this. That not only can I play these songs with a band at full volume, but also that I can play them on a cheap, acoustic guitar. And it can have the same kind of impact. 

4. Record ideas and come back to them later.

So songwriters often start with a single idea — see (1). But what if they have an idea but don’t know how to use it? Or what if they have too many ideas and can’t use them all right now?

David Gilmour of Pink Floyd solves this problem by recording his ideas to a portable device. Since he started doing this, his output has grown “massively.” He doesn’t forget his ideas any more. Gilmour’s most recent (solo) album was composed from 150 ideas that he recorded over 12 years.

Niklas Sundin of melodic death metal outfit Dark Tranquillity says his band works similarly:

We always have a backlog of tons and tons of different riffs. You write something that everyone agrees is good, but it might not be possible to finish it at that time. Then a few years later it might be perfect for something that’s around then.

Interestingly, avant-garde singer-songwriter Björk takes a completely different approach. She tries not to record her melodic ideas when they first come. Rather, she prefers to “let [her] subconscious do the editing,” using only ideas that she can remember later.

5. Intermingle the writing and recording processes.

Some songwriters don’t like to keep things simple. This is partly a stylistic issue: Some musical ideas are, at their core, too complicated to be composed by one person on one instrument. Instead, a multi-track recording device is necessary: Ideas are recorded, layered, and rearranged as inspiration calls. 

Mikael Åkerfeldt of progressive metal band Opeth actually demos the band’s songs by himself in his house. He uses a simple Pro Tools setup on his computer, recording guitar and vocal parts and programming drums electronically. He listens to recorded rough drafts of his albums before the “real” recording process begins.

Ihsahn, leader of symphonic black metal band Emperor, says that while composing the band’s newer albums in the studio,

I could record a riff when I came up with it, or I could write a riff to accompany a new synth passage, or vice versa. The arrangements became more complete because of this; I had much more freedom. I could delve into various elements for a mid-section of a song, and then not have to worry about the beginning or ending of the songs until later on. … I can document my ideas as I get them, record riffs immediately after they are developed. Later on, I can pick out elements and work more on them or change them afterwards

Previously he had been forced to write “band music” in rehearsal and then layer the symphonic elements later.

6. Jam with the band.

Most people think bands come up with music by jamming together in the same room. And some bands do, of course. But I was surprised to many (and perhaps even the majority) don’t. Instead, a single individual often writes the core of the band’s songs, with other members layering their parts later.

Still, many artists like to compose collaboratively. Madonna describes how she worked with Prince to come up with “Love Song”:

He played drums and I played the synthesizer, and we came up with the original melody line; I just, off the top of my head, started singing lyrics into the microphone. And then he overdubbed some guitar stuff and made a loop of it and sent it to me, and then I just started adding sections to it and singing parts of it. And then I sent it back to him, and he’d sing a part of it and add another instrument and send it back to me … it was like this sentence that turned into a paragraph that turned into a little miniseries.

John Lennon reports that he and Paul McCartney often wrote together, eyeball to eyeball, in the Beatles’s early days. He says:

In “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher’s house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, “Oh you-u-u / got that something…” And Paul hits this chord, and I turn to him and say, “That’s it!” I said, “Do that again!” In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that — both playing into each other’s noses.

Mike Mills says R.E.M. takes a half-way approach: members will come up with ideas themselves at home, but then they’ll jam together to form songs:

Everybody sits at home and diddles around. Sometimes you’ll come up with little ideas and sometimes you’ll come up with a huge part of a song. And then you’ll take that into everyone else and piece it together until you get a song. Other times, things just come out of, literally, just the four of us sitting around and making noise. All of a sudden it will reemerge into a song.

—

These are the patterns I’ve noticed so far. Have you seen others? Do you use techniques like these in other pursuits?

By the way, for many, many more songwriting tips, check out these two articles at Songwriting Zen.

Some people just aren’t ambitious.

Take Michael Skrzypek. The San Francisco resident was covered in the Chronicle last year. For five years, Skrzypek worked 10 weeks per year, earning enough money to finance the remaining 42.

How’d he swing that? Basically, he got lucky. He fell into the arrangement–working with legal trial presentation software–mostly due to happenstance.

So what did Skrzypek do during his 42 free weeks? Not a whole lot. He says:

It’s embarrassing to admit, but I don’t have an answer for what I did on an average day. Most days, I got up and wondered what I would do. … A lot of days I wouldn’t get out of bed. I’d just read. I liked to joke that I was the only person in the United States who read the New Yorker every week, cover to cover.

Skrzypek’s friends observed his inaction and made suggestions. One suggested he take up bluegrass guitar. Another suggested he read the complete works of Dostoevsky. Others wanted him to write short stories or volunteer at a homeless shelter.

Skrzypek wasn’t interested. He held firm: He wasn’t going to do anything; he didn’t need to be productive to be worthwhile. His desire for achievement was nil.

Skrzypek has since taken a full-time job, but only because doing nothing was getting boring. He says, “I don’t have that kind of ambition that makes people anxious or competitive.” He’s just not an ambitious person.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Though Skrzypek was torn apart by SFGate commenters, I have nothing against him. Not everyone needs to work hard or focus on achievement. I’m happy he’s living as he sees fit.

But what about you? Are you ambitious? Most people wouldn’t say they are. Ambition’s a dirty word. It brings to mind greed, competition, and workaholism. It’s seen as something you focus on if you’ve got your priorities wrong. It also means hard work: You can’t claim to be ambitious if you’re resting on your laurels. If you say you’re ambitious but you’re not doing much, you’re basically admitting you’re lazy. 

That’s why far more people are ambitious than will admit it to themselves. They think ambition’s bad. They don’t want to see themselves as lazy.

How do I know this is true? Because of envy.

Envy’s a powerful emotion. We feel it when we want something someone else has: respect, experience, accomplishment, whatever. It’s a very strong–and true–form of desire.

Envy is often hard to detect because it masquerades as anger, hatred, and resentment. Rather than acknowledging envy directly, we focus negative energy on its cause. We come up with reasons–rationalizations–to make ourselves feel better. We become righteously indignant.

I’ve seen this happen in my own life. When I was in college and a struggling beginner guitar player, I tended to resent other musicians on campus. I thought their music was lousy, I thought they were pretentious — I just didn’t like them.

I now realize those feelings were caused mostly by envy. I don’t look back now and think, “Wow, those guys were brilliant!” but I do see that my feelings were more a reflection of who I was than who they were. Their music was no threat to me. My resentment was unwarranted. It was caused by my frustration with where I was as a musician.

This is a common pattern. It’s why anger and resentment–and therefore envy–point to ambition. It’s why if you feel anger and resentment you could be ambitious without knowing it. (Incidentally, this is the focus of a recent post of Jennifer McGuiggan’s at The Word Cellar, “Turn Envy into Inspiration.” Check it out — it’s good.)

So what about ambition? Isn’t it bad? I don’t think so: Ambition’s only a motivating force. It’s one that drives us to want to do remarkable things, to stand out in some way. Many amazing things have been done in the name of ambition. And of course, some awful things–and some merely pathetic or pointless ones–have also been done in its name. Ambition by itself is neither good nor bad. 

I know I’m ambitious. I want to be interesting and remarkable. I know I’m much better off acknowledging that than hiding in a cloud of resentment.

That’s why I’ve chosen to focus my energy on conscientious ambition. Ambition doesn’t have to be about accumulating vast quantities of money or attaining some narcissistic ideal. Conscientious ambition is focusing your ambitious tendencies on making the world a better place. It’s doing things like working to right wrongs, improve people’s quality of life, and produce things of beauty.

Ambition can be a great thing. Do you have it?

I was watching the late comedian Bill Hicks with a friend recently. Hicks has strong opinions, and his audiences love him for them.

In the video we were watching he has a bit on marketing. He begins:

By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing … kill yourself.

The audience laughs. He continues:

Just a little thought. I’m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they’ll take root, I don’t know. You try, you do what you can.

[whispers] Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do.

More laughter. Then the real rant begins:

No really, there’s no rationalization for what you do, and you are Satan’s little helpers, okay. Kill yourselves, seriously. You’re the ruiner of all things good. Seriously. This is not a joke. There’s no fuckin’ joke coming. You are Satan’s spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It’s the only way to save your fuckin’ soul. Kill yourself.

At this point, the audience responds with what sounds like a standing ovation. They love Hicks, and they hate marketers.

I was struck by this video for two reasons. First, it reminded me of how much people hate marketing. They really do. Marketers may be hated more than even lawyers.

But more importantly, I was reminded of recent shifts in my own attitude toward marketing. I probably would have been laughing along with everyone else only a year or two ago. I’ve never had an interest in marketing, and in fact, I’ve actively disliked it. I’m just as annoyed as anyone by cynical marketing ploys. I’m sick of being inundated with inane and obnoxious advertising. I’m tired of our materialist culture and the pressure to buy junk we don’t need. I hate being manipulated, and I despise being seen as a means to an end.

But at the same time, I’m coming to realize that marketing isn’t all bad. It’s useful–and even good–when used in the right way.

So I wasn’t laughing at Hicks. Instead, I found myself resenting the lynch mob that seemed to be forming in his audience.

Hicks has a point, of course. (And if you watch the video, he explains it a little more.) Marketing can be bad — very bad. People hate it for good reasons:

• It’s often about manipulation, about getting you to part with your money rather than helping you or providing you with something of value.
• Marketers don’t seem to care about you as a person. They see you only as a guardian of money; they’re interested in your psychology only in so far as it helps them get you to relinquish it.
• Marketers often use cynical tactics. They’ll do what it takes to get your money. They’re unprincipled. As Hicks later points out, they’ll even try to exploit anti-marketing sentiment as a marketing tactic. 

(Incidentally, blogger Chris Guillebeau covers more on marketing-hate in his recent post, Why People Hate Marketers. He talks about internet marketing attitudes he finds disturbing.)

So yes, marketing’s often bad. But is it always bad? Should we just round up all marketers and call in the firing squad?

I’m actually less interested in marketing is a profession than I am in it as a mentality. After all, I’m never going to be a marketer, per se. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole lot of marketing I can–and even should–be doing.

Marketing in its most basic form is discovering what people want and giving it to them. It’s not about tricking people into buying what they don’t want, and it’s not about exploiting people’s psychology to get something out of them.

The problem with the anti-marketing mindset is that it’s self-limiting. If you think marketing is bad, you won’t do it. You’ll laugh at Bill Hicks and go back to your no-marketing life.

Here’s why this mindset’s limiting. If you subscribe to it, you probably think:

1. Self-promotion is bad.
2. Defining a target audience and marketing to them is bad.
3. Convincing people to buy something is bad.

These attitudes are okay as long as your only concern is filling a well-defined job role. I’ve been there, and I know what it’s like. Your boss is happy as long as you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing — no marketing necessary.

But they stop working when you do something creative or risky. If you’re an entrepreneur, an artist, or otherwise self-employed, you need to shed the anti-marketing mindset. If you don’t, it will severely limit you.

Why is marketing necessary for entrepreneurs, artists, and the self-employed? Because if you are one, you’re not filling an already-defined role — you’re creating one. There isn’t already a clear audience for your work. You need to find one, and you need to appeal to that audience.

You can’t succeed on your own if you live on a desert island. Simply creating things and shipping them off to the rest of the world doesn’t work. You need to think about who’ll be interested in what you’re doing and how they’ll use it, why they’ll want it and how they’ll benefit from it. Marketing’s about taking the perspective of other people: What do they want? What gets them excited? It should be about empathy, not manipulation.

Marketing forces you to avoid masturbatory behavior: doing things that are all about you rather than about other people. Masturbatory behavior isn’t wrong in a moral sense, but it’s wrong if you want other people to care about what you’re doing.

If your primary goal is to impress people–whether it be with how smart, clever, funny, or talented you are–you’re engaging in masturbatory behavior. Sure, you might get lucky and hit on something that people do like. But you probably won’t. Other people care far less about how smart, clever, funny, and talented you are than you do.

If you’re just doing what you like and hoping someone else is interested, you’re engaging in masturbatory behavior. Again, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be doing what you like; it just means you may have a hard time making a living from it. Part of marketing is finding the intersection between what you like to do and what others want.

I’m not saying that it’s always best to watch the polls and let public interest decide what you do. That would kill art (and most creative endeavor in general). I am saying that you should take what other people want into account, even if only after the fact. There’s an audience for almost any kind of art — you just need to find it. And once you find your audience, you need to reach it effectively. 

That’s where marketing comes in – and that’s why I’m realizing its value. Marketing’s about finding an audience for what you do and targeting that audience, giving them what they want. It is (or should be) about empathy and relationships, not trickery and manipulation. It’s a necessary part of any independent endeavor.

Thoughts? (And thanks, Ohad, for inspiring this post!)

I’ve been making my way through Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The book’s good. I love its mix between philosophical discussions and narrative, and it’s very well written.

Pirsig himself is an interesting guy. He was a precocious child with a high IQ score (170) at age 9. He started college as a biochemistry student at age 15, but he dropped out three years later. He was losing faith in science as a means to ultimate truth. After a brief stint in the army, he turned to philosophy, which he studied as an undergraduate and graduate student. He then traveled to India to learn about Eastern philosophy at a Hindu university there.

At 33, Pirsig suffered a nervous breakdown. He spent time in mental hospitals for a few years, eventually getting diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. While hospitalized, doctors subjected him to electroshock treatments, which he says left him a completely different person.

All this happened before Pirsig wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The book chronicles a cross-country motorcycle trip he took with his 11-year-old his son, Chris. It took four years to write and was apparently rejected 121 times by publishers before going on to sell more than 5 million copies.

Classical and Romantic Perspectives

One bit of ZatAoMM that has really struck me so far is Pirsig’s distinction between two modes of thought: “classical” and “romantic.” These modes are more than just ways of thinking. They’re approaches to life — even approaches to truth. 

The classical view sees the world primarily in abstractions, explanations, and underlying forms. It proceeds by reason and by laws. It loves to dissect things (and ideas) into their component parts, to explain, and to classify. The fields of science, law, and medicine (for instance) fall into its realm.

The romantic view sees the world primarily in terms of its immediate appearance. It sees the whole rather than the parts, the thing itself rather than abstract categories or classifications. It is, in Pirsig’s words, “primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive.” To a romantic, feelings take precedence over facts. Art is usually a romantic pursuit.

Although no one sees the world purely from a classical or romantic viewpoint, most fall clearly on one side or the other. People tend to cluster with those on the same side and clash with those on the opposite side. (Side note: if you’re familiar with Myers-Briggs types, I think the most-classical people are probably NT’s (iNtuitive Thinkers) and the most-romantic people are probably SF’s (Sensing Feelers). Classifying people into personality types is a very classical thing to do, so you know what side I’m on!)

Disagreements between classics and romantics can be intense. Pirsig says that both sides misunderstand and underestimate what the other side is about. Neither wants to give up its idea of truth. He writes:

To a romantic, this classic mode often appears dull, awkward, and ugly, like mechanical maintenance itself. Everything is in terms of pieces and parts and components and relationships. Nothing is figured out until it’s run through a computer a dozen times. Everything’s got to be measured and proved. Oppressive. Heavy. Endless grey. The death force.

Conversely, to classics, romantics are:

Frivolous, irrational, erratic, untrustworthy, interested primarily in pleasure-seeking. Shallow. Of no substance. Often a parasite who cannot or will not carry his own weight. A real drag on society.

Pirsig’s distinction is highly applicable to my own life. I’ve spent large swaths of my life immersed in the classical side of things. You have to when you’re a computer programmer, and I spent a good 17 years as one. Besides the fact that I tend to focus monomaniacally when I’m interested in something, computer programming is mentally demanding. It’s not something you can start or stop on a whim. It takes all your concentration and tends to occupy your thoughts even when you aren’t doing it.

Computer programming–as with, say, biochemistry or motorcycle repair–is all about abstractions, components, and laws. You don’t succeed as a programmer by relying on your gut, your feelings, or your intuition (though those do come in handy). Instead, you need to adopt an objective, highly rational, logical perspective. As a programmer, biochemist, or motorcycle repairman, you form and test hypotheses. You surrender your feelings to the laws of nature or the machine: the program works or it doesn’t, the motorcycle runs or it doesn’t, the hypothesis is true or false.

When you spend much of your time working in the classical mindset, it tends to filter into other areas of your life. You don’t just stop being a classic at the end of the workday. You usually live your entire life on one side or the other.

I found myself moving further to the classical side as I got older. I think this was mostly due to specialization. As we get older, we tend to spend more and more of our time doing one thing — specialization is the way most people make a living, after all. For me, that one thing was programming.

I also spent five years in college, and colleges tend to emphasize the classical mindset, even in humanities departments. Academic research is all about analysis: dissection, classification, categorization, and deduction. It’s likely that the longer you stay in academia, the more classical you become. You have to if you want to succeed there.

I think I became frustrated at my job (at Google, as a programmer) in large part because I was becoming increasingly imbalanced. The romantic side of me was being suppressed; I craved an outlet but simply wasn’t getting it at my job. It also was hard to do anything significant or focused outside of work — as I said, programming can be very demanding.

In the past year, I’ve regained the balance that I think I lost when I started college. Writing essays (like this one) exercises the classical part of my mind, while writing music exercises the romantic part. I feel whole in a way that I didn’t a year ago.

So I’ve achieved a balance – but does it make sense, in general, to try to balance the classical and romantic modes?

On the surface, it seems the answer is yes — balance is good, right? But there is a danger: In trying to balance between extremes, it’s possible just to become boring. Sometimes it’s better to go with natural inclinations than to fight them. Balance can be bland, boring, and fake; everyone doesn’t need to be the same, anyway.

In the case of classical and romantic viewpoints, though, I do think it’s worth seeking some sort of balance. You’re missing out on an entire realm of experience if you don’t. Both modes are valid (and even true) in their own way. They both contribute to human experience and achievement. If you fall too far into one camp or the other, you’re only seeing half of the picture. You’re only engaging half of humanity.

One major goal of Pirsig’s book is to establish a common ground between the two modes. I think he’s on the right track.

The English rock band Coldplay writes melancholy and often-grandiose songs. They’ve become quite popular, selling millions of records and touring the world and play their music for those who like it.

Coldplay is hated. Here’s just one example: A 1,200 word essay authored by Joe Pareles (entitled “The case against Coldplay”) states that Coldplay is “the most insufferable band of the decade,” claims that the band’s singer is a “passive-aggressive blowhard,” and calls the band’s songs “tremulous, ringing anthems of insecurity.” (Oh, and let’s not forget about the “Anti-Coldplay Society” on MySpace and the “Anti-Coldplay Coalition” on Facebook.)

… Steve Pavlina runs a well-known personal development website. Its stated purpose is to “help you grow as a conscious human being.” Steve has written hundreds of articles over the past several years, and he offers them free of charge through his site.

Steve Pavlina is hated. Just search for his name on Google: An article entitled “Steve Pavlina Sucks” (and featuring his headshot) begins:

Steve Pavlina is a swindling knave who’s made a fortune for himself blowing hot air up the asses of normal working people, over inflating their egos just to inevitably get popped on one of life’s many thorns through his eponymous website/cash cow.

This quote is tame compared to much of the rest of the article. (Search for it if you like; I’m not providing a link.)

…  Indian film director Parvez Sharma worked on Jihad for Love, a documentary about gay and lesbian Muslims. The film, which shows gay Muslims kissing and holding hands, has been well-received at festivals and by critics.

You guessed it: Parvez Sharma is hated. Before the film was even released, Sharma reported that “About every two weeks I get an e-mail that berates me, condemns me to hell and, if they are nice, asks me to still seek forgiveness while there is still time.” Now he receives death threats. Several countries have banned the film.

Seems pretty easy to arouse people’s hatred, right? Here’s how these things work.

If you take a public stand, people will hate you. They’ll say you’re an idiot. They’ll claim you’re evil. They’ll attack not only your views but also you as a person. They’ll write diatribes against you. If you get really big, they may even create websites in your honor.

If you’re successful, people will hate you. They’ll deride what you do. They’ll insult you. They’ll claim that you got lucky or were over-privileged. They’ll say you cheated. They’ll say your success doesn’t matter.

As you grow in prominence, you’ll attract more detractors. What you say will be used against you. You’ll be misquoted and misconstrued. Your mistakes will be pounced upon. Rumors and false accusations will spread.

Your detractors’ hatred will reach far beyond mere disagreement. Even those who present no specific point of view–artists, actors, musicians, etc.–receive their share of hate. Though it’s often presented in the form of rational argument, hatred is rarely that simple. Your detractors probably aren’t really that worried about the things they complain about.

What lies at the root of most hatred is resentment. If attention is being focused on you, some people will resent that. Rather than accept that what you’ve done is of value to others, they’ll alter their worldview to discount you. To them, your views are unfounded and your success ill-gotten. You are, at best, overrated, and at worst, trash.

Of course, hatred isn’t all about resentment — real disagreement does exist. If you take a stand, someone will disagree with you. If you create something, someone will have different aesthetic sensibilities. That’s inevitable. When you make your views or works public, you are opening them to the criticism of the rest of the world.

That’s why it’s so hard to take a stand. It’s hard to receive criticism, even when it comes alongside praise from others. Most people prefer to stay under the radar. It’s infinitely easier to think, “Oh, I could do all sorts of amazing things if I just put my mind to it,” than it is to do so and receive criticism.

When you make a bold statement or create something awesome, you’re saying, “This is who I am,” to the world. It’s very hard to do that. Most people don’t have the guts or determination. They prefer to hedge their bets: Better to stay quiet and vague than arouse the ire of others by being something.

If you do make a public statement, people will equate you with your statement. To them, you are your statement. And some of them will hate you for it. They’ll resent that you disagree with them or that your aesthetic sensibilities clash. They’ll resent that you’ve created something they don’t appreciate that others do. Rather than work to bring themselves up, they’ll work to tear you down. It’s easier for them that way.

You can’t do something awesome if you’re worried about arousing the hatred of others. It’s impossible to please everyone. Some people like to be contrarian and will hate you if you try. You can’t please them, so don’t try. The path to awesomeness lies in deciding what you want to live for, doing that, and finding a community of supporters. It doesn’t lie in trying to please everyone. Someone will hate you no matter what you do.

In fact, you’re already hated right now. If you’re American, some people hate you just by virtue of that. If you’re a vegetarian, some meat-eaters hate you; if you eat meat, some vegetarians hate you. Whether you’re religious or irreligious, some people hate you. There’s no escaping the hate. You can hide and pretend it doesn’t exist, or you can decide what you want to be and proudly be it, haters be damned.

You will be hated. You are hated. That’s just the way things are. It’s not easy to stick your neck out, and if you do some people will try to chop your head off. Accept the hate and do something awesome anyway. There’s no better alternative.

I just added a new original song to the music portion of my site. Check it out!

I attended Stanford University for five years, first as an undergraduate and then as a Master’s student. I say that only to establish credibility, not because I’m particularly proud of that fact. While my time at Stanford wasn’t miserable, it also wasn’t particularly happy. I was bothered the entire time by the vague feeling that something was wrong.

I ended up there mostly because of my competitive drive. I don’t remember thinking about college much before the age of 17. My parents went to college, and I assumed I would too. Beyond that, I was too busy making video games and hanging out with friends to care.

But at 17, I started caring — I think because that was around the time you started taking the SAT and hearing from the school’s college counselors. Suddenly college was a big deal. Everyone was talking about it, and I got sucked into the hysteria. It was too late to change my lifestyle in any dramatic way, but I do remember spending a lot of time studying for the SAT and strategizing for my college applications. It was a competitive thing.

So I got into Stanford. Hooray for me. I was a minor celebrity at my high school, which doesn’t often place students in top colleges, for a few months.

Have I benefitted from my (so-called) elite education? In some sense, yes. I got a well-paying job out of school that I surely wouldn’t have gotten without the degree. But I left that job a year ago; it wasn’t for me. And I’m not sure any of the jobs an elite education most advantages you for–ones in academia, the professions, and large corporations–are for me.

Sure, I learned a lot in school. But I’ve also learned a lot before and after. And the stuff I’ve learned outside of school has stuck with me the longest. There’s something about learning on your own that, at least for me, is infinitely more satisfying than learning in a class.

Here’s one thing I did learn at Stanford: As a rule, students and graduates of elite universities all agree on one thing: Their elite education is very important. They’re not elitists, per se — they may see themselves as privileged, and they may wish others had the same opportunities they did. They may even feel some guilt. But they do agree: An elite education is important. It’s a big deal.

But how important is an elite education, really? Just who cares if you have one?

Not as many people as you might think. It’s easy to forget that as a student–and often also as a graduate–of an elite university, you live in a bubble:

1. While in school, you’re surrounded by other students who also value an elite education — they wouldn’t have applied in the first place otherwise, right?
2. From the day you’re accepted till the day you graduate, you’re inundated with praise from administrators. Self-congratulation is always in the air. As an attendee, you are one of “the best and brightest.” You’re part of elite group of future leaders and world-changers. The future of civilization depends on you.
3. You form some of your closest, longest-lasting friendships in college. Elite-university-goers tend to stick together long after they have graduated. They network, they meet friends-of-friends. Everyone within their circle believes strongly in the prestige and importance of an elite education.
4. Elite universities are feeders for other institutions: the professions (law, medicine, etc.), academia, and large corporations. These institutions are filled with graduates from elite universities (and college graduates, in general). Within these institutions, the importance of an elite education is usually accepted as irrefutable fact.

Is it surprising self-congratulation is inescapable at elite universities? Not really. Administrators are telling students and their bill-paying parents what they want to hear. (These schools aren’t cheap, after all.) And administrators praise themselves by praising students — their own self-worth is also tied up in the prestige of the school.

Students like to hear that they’re special. After all, who doesn’t? But an elite education isn’t universally respected. Outside the bubble, many people will shrug their shoulders (or worse) when they learn you have one. And I don’t just mean “dumb” people — many smart people also have this reaction.

People tend to value things that make them look good. When we’re good at something, we place great importance in it, and when we’re bad, we think, “Who needs that crap, anyway?” This is what allows us all to be above average in our own minds.

It’s natural to value an elite education if you have one. And if you stay within the bubble, you’ll certainly have your belief corroborated. But an elite education isn’t without its drawbacks. Consider the following:

1. At an elite university (or any college, for that matter), you spend four important years of your life in school learning rather than out in the world doing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but there are trade-offs: It’s hard to discover what you want in school, and depending on what you choose to do, you may be disadvantaged compared to people who were busy doing it while you were in school.
2. If you’re like most people accepted to an elite university, you’re convinced at a very young age that you have, at least in some sense, made it. As a result, you start to believe you have something to lose. You become less accepting of failure. This can make you more risk-averse and conservative in your career choices.
3. As a graduate of an elite university, you feel a strong urge–almost an obligation–to put your degree to use. It cost a lot of money and took a lot of work to get, after all. And since an elite education is a big deal (you think), you’d be throwing away a huge opportunity if you didn’t use it. This limits your career options — namely, to the ones an elite university degree most advantages you for. If you do anything else, you feel like you’re taking a step down.
4. You’re trained at prestigious institutions to define yourself in terms of your association to them. And because you learn to take great pride in your institutional associations, you become accepting (and even needing) of their prestige and authority. Your personal identity becomes wrapped up in them. This makes it more difficult to live free of institutions: You may start to see them as the solution to your problems, seeking refuge in them to escape the uncertainties of the outside world.

Clearly these problems don’t apply to every student and graduate of elite universities. There are many exceptions. But the tendency is there — and if you live within the elite education bubble, it’s particularly easy to suffer from them without even noticing their effects.

An elite education isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s good for some things and bad for others. Getting one certainly isn’t unequivocally a good idea — and it may be a bad one for many people.

Why Self-Discipline?

Self-discipline sometimes gets a bad rap, and I can understand why: On first glance, it seems to be about forcing ourselves to do things we don’t want to do; it seems to impose a rigid structure on our lives and undermine spontaneity.

Self-discipline is, in some sense, about these things. But that’s not what it’s really about: Self-discipline isn’t about denying ourselves pleasure. It’s about pursuing a different kind of pleasure.

We have short-term and long-term wants. Short-term wants can be fulfilled right now, while long-term ones require prolonged and consistent effort. Without self-discipline, we tend to address only our short-term wants; long-term ones get the short-shrift.

Short-term wants can be powerful. Many mornings I wake up and don’t feel like going to the gym. I feel tired and unmotivated. My mind is working frantically to come up with reasons not to go. I (usually) go anyway–and overrule my short-term wants–because I know doing so is in my long-term best interest. (And I tend to feel better immediately afterward, anyway.)

Like most people, I fear public speaking. When I’ve done it, I’ve always been nervous–and sometimes intensely so–beforehand. I short-term want to back out–to call in sick, “forget,” whatever–but I know doing so isn’t in my long-term best interest. I force myself to get on stage and give the speech even though every short-term bone in my body is telling me not to.  And as with the gym, I tend to feel better after giving the speech.

There will always be some conflict between short-term and long-term wants. When we pursue short-term wants, we sometimes override long-term ones (and vice-versa). The challenge is to minimize this conflict. Don’t deny your short-term or long-term wants; acknowledge that they both exist and work to bring them as close to agreement as possible. Self-discipline isn’t about denying wants. It’s about creating a compromise between them.

The Components

Of course, it’s hard to create this compromise — self-discipline isn’t easy. But it’s never impossible: Self-discipline is a skill that everyone possesses, and it can be trained. It isn’t something you can be born without, and it’s not something you can lose forever if you fail to maintain it.

Having had both great success and great failure maintaining self-discipline, I’ve noticed a pattern: it has worked only when a few components are all fully addressed. These components are: clarity, commitment, and consistency.

Clarity

Clarity is precisely defining what you’re going to do. To be self-disciplined, you need a clear vision of what you’re trying to achieve: You need a goal. From the goal, you work backward and define the actions that will be required to meet it.

Why do you need a goal? Because without a goal, it will be hard to come up with specific actions, and the ones you do come up with will seem arbitrary. It’s hard to motivate yourself to do things that seem arbitrary. Realize, though, that you don’t need to know what you want in any definite or ultimate sense to be self-disciplined. You just need a specific goal — and specific goals can be formed even from uncertainty.

Say you have no idea what you want to be doing or where you want to be a year from now. Your goal, then, can be to find out what you want to do. From that goal, you can work backward to generate a list of actions. (If you’re in this situation, incidentally, I recommend making a list of possibilities, picking something, and trying it for a while. Finding what you want takes more than just sitting around thinking about it.)

Here’s another example: I love music, and I know I want to create it. But I have no idea how music will fit into my life in a big-picture sense; I’m still trying to figure that out. For now, I intend to compose and record an album of my own music. I know I do want to do that, and it’s pretty easy for me to see the actions required to accomplish that goal.

It’s important that you feel the importance of your goal. If you don’t, the actions you take will, again, seem arbitrary, and it will be hard to stay motivated. You need to believe your goal is worthy to push past the obstacles you’ll encounter. If you feel uncertain about a goal–and you probably will if it involves doing something new–keep in mind that the point of pursuing a goal can be to obtain certainty.

Say you’re out of shape and considering starting an exercise routine, but you have reservations about the time commitment. You’re considering exercising three days per week, but you’re worried you won’t have time to do other things. As long as you have this reservation, you’ll have trouble motivating yourself. You won’t be able to commit because you won’t believe in the purpose of your goal.

Here’s what I recommend: Don’t try to convince yourself that a regular exercise routine is a good idea. Instead, reformulate your goal: Don’t just say your goal is to get in shape; instead say your goal is to get in shape in a way that doesn’t intrude on the rest of your life. Or, since you probably don’t know how intrusive a routine will be until you try it, say your goal is to find an exercise routine that doesn’t intrude on the rest of your life. You should be able to buy into one of these goals even if you have reservations about a whatever-it-takes approach to getting in shape.

Commitment

The second component of self-discipline is commitment. Once you have clarity about what you’re trying to achieve, you need to come up with short-term actions — and then you need to commit to doing them.

Your commitments need a time frame and a definite success point; they’re useless without them. In particular, short-term actions should be fully achievable within the next few months. If you’re trying to develop an exercise routine, a good one would be to perform a trial routine for three months.

Make sure not to think too much about how things are going while you work on the commitment. The time the evaluate a commitment is after you’ve met it. Once the time has elapsed, you can gauge how things are going and make any necessary changes.

Why not just plan to stop the routine if it’s not working out? Because sometimes it won’t be working out. Particularly in the beginning, you’ll feel uncomfortable, tired, and distracted much of the time. You’ll feel annoyed by how exercise is disrupting your normal routine. You need to push through this period to understand what regular exercise (or anything) is really like. That’s why commitment is important: it gives you reason to keep going even when things don’t seem to be working out. Remember that this commitment is only for the short-term — you’ll have a chance to evaluate what you’re doing after the time is up.

Consistency

Part of being committed is being consistent. Consistency is important for two reasons: First, you can only follow through on your commitment by being consistent; you’re not going to get much accomplished if you flake out all the time. Second–and perhaps more importantly–consistency actually makes self-discipline easier. The more consistent you are, the easier it is to be consistent. Every time you uphold a commitment, you make it easier to uphold the next one (and every time you flake out on one, you make it easier to flake out the next time).

Clarity helps you to be consistent–and without it, you probably won’t be–but it’s far from sufficient. Consistency is the hardest part of self-discipline. Every day is a battle for consistency: You don’t get things done in the future by thinking about them; you get them done today by doing them.

The good news: Consistency can be practiced — and if you find it hard to be consistent, that just means you’re out of practice. To get better, you need to challenge yourself. I like Steve Pavlina’s weight-training analogy: Self-discipline is like a muscle. It can be strong or weak, and it can be trained. Just as you shouldn’t try to bench press 300 pounds on your first visit to the gym, you shouldn’t attempt more self-discipline than you can handle. To get better, you must gradually increase the weight (difficulty), always moving slightly beyond what’s comfortable.

It’s important to recognize your present limitations. Though it’s easy to say, “I’ll go to the gym five days a week,” it’s much harder actually to do that: Your self-discipline may simply be too weak. Instead of setting yourself up for failure, recognize your present limitations and set less-ambitious short-term goals. Plan to go to the gym one day per week, and do that for a few months. After that time has passed, try something more challenging.

If you’ve set a goal for yourself and you’re finding it extremely difficult to be consistent, you’ve probably overshot your bounds. If you keep trying and failing to maintain consistency, you may give up. Don’t let that happen: If you’re inconsistent for too long, reshape your short-term goal. Having to do that sucks, but it’s better than the alternative. And as you gain experience, you’ll get better at setting realistic goals for yourself. You’ll also get better at being consistent, which means your goals can increase in difficulty.

If you’re bad at being consistent, it helps to overcompensate. Start out with a rigid, fully-planned routine, and make exceptions only when you absolutely have to. This doesn’t sound like fun–and it may not be–but rigidity helps a lot in building consistency. It’s much easier to turn away every distraction than it is to weigh the costs and benefits of each as it arises.

The idea here isn’t to change you into a person who loves a predictable routine and hates spontaneity. It’s only to help you build consistency. Once you’re confident in your ability to maintain a consistent routine, you can start to lessen its rigidity. Self-discipline doesn’t have to be a trade-off between planning and spontaneity. The more self-discipline you have, the more possible it is to be spontaneous while still maintaining a fairly set and regular schedule. If your self-discipline is low, this is very hard to do — which is why it’s good to overcompensate in the beginning.

Wrap Up

If you make sure you have the three components covered, you’ll have much greater success maintaining self-discipline. They’ve worked for me, and I’ve seen them work for many other people.

Don’t be fooled by the idea that self-discipline is about denying yourself pleasure. It’s not. Self-discipline’s about balancing between your short- and long-term needs. Don’t let either dominate the other.

I’ve talked in the past about performing thought experiments to discover what you want. Those can be effective, but they’re not the best method. The best way to discover what you want is to do it.

When you do something, you get a real measure of how much you like it. You cut through fears and fantasies. You adjust your expectations to fit reality. To discover whether you like something, you need to do it. There’s just no other reliable method.

That’s why school is dangerous. The work you do in school is rarely similar to the work you do after you graduate. Sometimes your post-school job is more enjoyable, but often it’s less. In any case, it’s always different.

School is time-consuming. It’s possible to go through years of school only to realize a year into your post-school job that you hate what you’re doing. And since it can be hard to admit you wasted the time, it’s tempting to stay the course, even when that means spending the rest of your life doing something you don’t like.

School is often expensive. It’s common to graduate from law school, medical school, and business school, for example, with tremendous debt. When graduating with this kind of debt, it’s hard to switch directions: you’d better like what you’re doing because you may need to do it to pay off your debt. These schools are able to charge so much in part because their students expect to earn high incomes when they graduate.

When you’re in school, you don’t get a good picture of your future working life. The day-to-day of school is vastly different from the day-to-day of a job. It’s possible to love school but hate what it’s training you to do. That’s its danger: school saps your time and money without doing much to help you to discover what you want. When you graduate, you know whether you like school or not, but not much else.

School is a good option when you’re certain of your chosen path. But it may be a terrible one if you’re not. School’s an attractive form of procrastination: It allows you to spend several years living comfortably. It gives you structure. It gives you a feeling of certainty about your direction. As long as you’re in school, it’s easy to think you’ll love what you’ll do after you graduate, even when that’s not the case.

When you don’t know what you want, school is rarely the best option. It’s particularly dangerous when it puts you in debt. If you don’t know what you’d like to do and are thinking of returning to school, be sure to consider the alternatives.

If you think you want to do something that requires a degree, you’re not going to do it before you get the degree. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot you can do before heading to school. If you think you want to be a lawyer, work with lawyers for a year — say, as a paralegal. You’ll get a realistic view of what it’s like to be a lawyer. You’ll be able to talk to lawyers about what they like and dislike about what they’re doing. If you decide being a lawyer isn’t for you, you’ve dodged a bullet: no years of law school, no debt, and no need to work as a lawyer to pay off that debt.

If you’re not sure of what you want to do, it’s worth doing even unpaid work if it will help you learn more. School carries an immediate prestige boost, which is why many find it tempting. It’s more glamorous to be in grad school than it is to be an unpaid intern. But the unglamorous approach is often the best one — do the thing that will help you find and do what you want the soonest, not the thing that’s most comfortable right now. Don’t sell out your future self by wasting time and acquiring needless debt.

If you think you’d like to do self-employed work, do it. What you’re doing doesn’t need to be profitable — and it probably won’t be for a while anyway. If you like the idea of writing, write. No need to get an MFA (or whatever) unless you’re sure of what you want and know the degree is going to help you get there.

How can you afford to do unprofitable self-employed work? There are two main approaches: being unemployed and being partially employed. If you already have a reasonably well-paying job and have saved money, take a year or two off work. You can do this for substantially less money than it would cost to attend most schools, and you’ll have all the time in the world to pursue your interests. If you’re disciplined, you’ll learn far more about what you like to do than you would in school.

If being unemployed isn’t a realistic option right now, take the partial-employment route. Take a part-time job that pays the bills and isn’t mentally taxing. Pursue your interests in the time you’re not working. You’ll make slower progress when partially employed than unemployed, but it still shouldn’t take long to discover what you like (and don’t like) doing.

Why is doing so effective in discovering what you want? Because when you do something, you cut through the fantasies of what it’s like to do that thing. You see what it’s really like. You’ll learn far more about what you want doing things that interest you day after day than you will learning how to do them in school. If you’re unemployed or partially employed, you can make quick adjustments: if something’s not working for you, change it or try something else. You can’t do that in school without considerable pain.

If you don’t know what you want and you aren’t working toward finding out, you’re procrastinating. School is a particularly time-consuming and expensive form of procrastination. Grad school is not a good place to find yourself — if you need to find what you want, take the most direct route, not the most comfortable or prestigious one.

When you’re trying to find what you want, money and prestige are your enemies. They can cloud your judgment and make things seem better than they really are. It feels good to have or be working toward a well-paying job, at least for a little while.  Money and prestige make you feel important. But their effects eventually wear off — if you don’t like what you’re doing, you’re left with nothing.

For this reason, it’s actually better to do activities with low prestige and money attached to them while trying to find what you want. You can be sure they aren’t clouding your judgment if they aren’t there in the first place. Going to a top-ranked school is more prestigious than working part-time as a waiter and writing for free, but the latter is often more effective in helping you find what you want.

What if you don’t know what you want and no clear possibility springs to mind? Here’s my suggestion: Make a list of all the things you might be interested in doing. Choose one. Commit to doing it for a few months, and then do it. After a few months, gauge whether it’s working for you. If it is, great — it’s not easy to discover something you love. If it’s not, cross it off your list and pick something else.

This approach sounds time-consuming, and it is. But it’s the best way to discover what you want. Don’t dive into school just because you don’t know what you want. And don’t assume you do know what you want if you haven’t actually done it. There are other options besides school, and they may be a better fit for you.