Have you ever noticed that almost no one actually does anything? Somewhere around 99% of people simply tread water in the sea of life, and always seem to be in the same place whenever you check on them. These people aren’t dumb or incapable - they’re just stuck in a permanent rut.

Listen to people’s problems. They’re always the same. One person always seems to be just short of rent every month. Another keeps meaning to start some project, but it never materializes. Someone else is always in a bad relationship somehow.

This isn’t coincidence or bad luck. If you’re in a situation like this, then pay attention : It’s your fault.

The easiest in the world to do is complain. So alluring is the complaint that most people choose it over taking action. Observe people around you. How many are actively doing something TODAY that will help them reach their goals? How many will complain some time today about not being where they want to be?

In my experience, there is nothing more powerful than taking massive action. I have many successful friends, and I constantly try to observe what they have in common that less successful people don’t have. There are several things I’ve noticed, but one of the most important is that they all take action.

My friend Steve, who runs Smiley Media, works non stop on his business. If he’s at home, he’s probably working on it. He dropped out of school to do it. Mystery, Tyler, and other famous Pick up artists go out every night to learn more about meeting women. Very rarely do you see someone who is actually taking massive action on a regular basis who hasn’t gotten anywhere. How much action do you think bums are taking? Not much.

Direction is important too, but it doesn’t need to be precise. Often people will obsess over every last detail, trying to formulate the perfect plan. This is totally unnecessary, as plans are never followed anyway.

Imagine that you’re in Tynanville and you want to get to Springfield. There are two roads, A and B, that both get there. If one person sits around trying to figure out which route is faster, better, or more efficient, and the other person just takes one of the roads, the latter person is going to get their first. Maybe the first person will decide after a while that it’s too far away or that there’s too much traffic and will never get there. If the second person went in South instead of North he would also never get there, but just knowing the general right direction was enough.

When I wanted to become a professional gambler, I researched but I played at the same time. Within a week I was immersed in gambling and was close to figuring out how to win. If I had spent time overanalyzing everything without getting into the game, I may have never done it.

When I moved to LA to learn pickup I thought I wanted to become a pickup artist. After a while I realized that going out to clubs every night wasn’t my lifestyle of choice, but I had learned the confidence and skills that I had really needed.

When I started my first diet two years ago I hadn’t done enough research to know that eating meat wasn’t healthy. Instead of spending my life researching it while eating hot dogs and french fries I used the best knowledge I had and cut out flour, sugar, and bad fats. A year later when I learned that being Vegan was better, I added those restrictions easily.

Massive action doesn’t guarantee success by any means, but it does provide the opportunity for it. When I wrote my book, The Skinny Snob, I jumped right into it. I wrote the book within 24 hours and had the site ready to go in a week. I didn’t plan it out, print business cards, and research the market. I ended up making a little money, but in the end the venture fizzled. At least I learned a lot about the game, though, and now when I release my book about meeting women it will be a lot easier.

And hey, I’d rather be doing something than nothing. Just sitting around thinking guarantees failure.

Already since getting fired only 11 days ago I’ve started a new blog, written a book about meeting women, sold my old house, and have almost built another site that I will launch soon.

If you feel inspired, take some massive action today. It’s Sunday, so you’re not doing anything else anyway. Buy a house. Start a business. Call your brother that you haven’t spoken to in ten years. Break up with your crappy boyfriend and come in my hot tub.

I’m unemployed for only three days and I’ve already made a new site. This is one that I’ve been thinking about doing for a while, but just finally got around to it. If you were a member of my forums, you would have already seen it, along with a couple other new projects I’m working on.

Anyway, if I were to sit down and think of my strengths and interests, I would come up with the impossible talent of being one of the greatest consumers on earth. For any given product category, from down comforters to toasters, I could tell you what the absolute best item is. In an effort to turn this seemingly useless gift into something, allow me to present Best in the Land.com.

Several times a week (perhaps even once a day), I’ll write about a product that I know has no equal. Occasionally I’ll write about something too expensive for normal people to buy, but most of the time I’ll focus on practical purchases. Most of the products I’m planning on writing about I actually own. Those that I don’t own I have used extensively.

This is the site that I wish already existed. As is I spend hours of my time researching every purchase I make, because there’s nothing worse than buying something that’s the second best (or worse…). I’ve already written four articles for it, and I will have another article tomorrow as well.

Check out the site, and if you like it please link to it on your own page or share it with your friends. BTYB is successful because of all of you and the word of mouth advertising you’ve all helped with. If you don’t like the site, please feel free to let me know what you don’t like about it.

Visit Best in the Land

Fired might be a harsh word, but as of today I no longer work at the glorious Smiley Media. Working there was really fun, and I learned some interesting things, but at the end of the day I don’t think I’m really meant to work in an office.

The only part I’ll really miss are the people at Smiley Media. Steve is really good at hiring interesting people, so it was fun to be in that type of atmosphere every day. Unfortunately I never really “got into” the work, and thus I wasn’t nearly as effective as I should have been. I felt somewhat guilty about that the whole time, occasionally pushing myself to be more useful, but found it hard to maintain. Since I helped hire two really good employees for the company, I may still help them find more, so if you’re awesome and want to work there, let me know.

Now here’s the thing: Smiley was such an awesome place to work, and I still couldn’t hack it. This means that there is no way I will ever get a job again. The only possible exception is a really cool experiment that I’ll be conducting soon, but you’ll agree that it hardly counts.

So what’s next? Luckily I have two things I’ve been working on in my free time. The first is an ebook about pickup, which has come out very well. I’m building the web site and such for it now, and it will be released soon. The second is a really cool web site that I’ve talked about in the forums. I have a bunch of other good ideas too, and now I have the time to do them. Before I would literally do nothing but real work, eat, karaoke, and then work on my side projects.

Overall I’m very happy about this change. It was hard for me to be accountable to anyone else, and also difficult to not have the freedom to travel whenever I wanted. I actually did have a lot of freedom there, but I’m too used to doing my own thing. If you’re reading this, you should be excited. You can expect more posts, more crazy adventures, and more cool new projects!

The only challenge now is to start something fast that will give me enough income to live until my bigger ideas come to fruition.

First, a couple blog notes. I haven’t been posting as much because my free time has been filled with writing my new book. More info and the cover are in the forums. Also, lots of people have been linking to me recently. I really appreciate it!

Ahem… waterboarding.

For those who don’t know, waterboarding is a controversial subject these days. It’s an torture method which is used to interrogate suspects and designed to simulate drowning. Supposedly it’s so bad that the average marine can only handle it for 15 seconds.

It’s done by having the detainee lie on his back with his head lower than his body. A rag is then stretched across his face and water is poured on it. If you’re anything like me, you’re thinking “What? How bad could that be? 15 seconds? These marines are sisses.”

If you’re exactly like me, then you decided to test it. A couple friends came over and we set up a piece of plywood in a declined position. To add to the effect we added some ropes to tie down the victim’s hands. I was dying to go first.

I lay down and got my hands tied. The rag was pulled across my face and cold water was poured from a bucket. It was a lot worse than I thought.

What happens is water seeps through the cloth and runs down the nostrils straight into the sinuses. Nothing you can do will stop this. The effect of having ones sinuses fill with water triggers that “Holy god I’m drowning” reaction that causes panic. After 15 seconds or so I tapped out and they removed the rag. I pushed the water out of my sinuses and waited for my turn again.

My two friends went and lasted similar times. It was harder than we thought - unpleasant but not painful. It was getting cold, but I tried again. This time I tried methods to breathe that didn’t work, but I did notice something. When my sinuses completely filled with water, the drowning sensation ceased to get worse. I can hold my breath for 3 minutes on a good day, so all I’d have to do was put up with the weird water in the sinus feeling.

My last try lasted over 20 seconds and was cut short by the bucket running out of water. Just knowing that it was going to be ok once my sinuses filled made it much easier. I wanted to try again but I was full of water and it was getting cold.

If I ever get taken hostage my plan is to flail after 10 seconds so that they think I hate it (even though I don’t), and hopefully they will let me out before it really becomes a problem. Just practicing a few times really made it a bearable torture. Here are some videos :

In the first one it’s easier to see what’s going on. In the second one I last a bit longer.

Oh, and in case you’re trying this at home - for three days when I sneezed it smelled like tap water, and I got a wicked fever a couple nights after.

So, a couple of my friends, LadyTea and Doug share a goal of losing some weight. Neither is fat, but they each want to slim down a bit before the summer. So, in the interest of motivation, I have promised to post a picture of LadyTea in her bikini and Doug in a speedo on May 1st.

So, prepare yourselves to witness the beauty of two svelte people who are committed to their goals. (By the way… I have two awesome stories coming soon… haven’t had the time to type them up yet)

Hey everyone… one of my favorite sites for personal finance is a site called “Get Rich Slowly”. I just wrote an article for them, which was published today and also featured on Lifehacker. You can read the article here, and make sure to check out some of his other articles as well… lots of good stuff there.

It’s 10 minutes before midnight on the last day of 2006, and I’m sitting in bed writing a post. I guess that shows where my priorities are. Anyway, a year ago I wrote down my goals for 2006, so our first order of business is to review them.

1 - Become Fully Polyphasic.
I guess I did this one, but I’m not polyphasic anymore. I’ll count it as a win since I made it and then decided not to be polyphasic.

2 - Gain 15lb. of lean muscle mass
I totally did not do this one at all. In fact, I lost 12 pounds this year because I went vegan.

3 - Make a Million Dollars
This was a huge failure. I did not make a million dollars. I made several important financial changes that will help with this (cut my unnecessary spending by 50%, started investing in berkshire hathaway, sold some stuff), but that doesn’t count for anything. This is the most disappointing failure because unlike some others that I failed on, I still really want this one.

4 - Become a relatively well known rapper
Argh. Another big no. I’ll give myself 20% credit for having a weekly gig hosting karaoke where I get to sing a lot of rap songs. I’ve made some progress here, but not nearly enough.

5 - Find and date one incredible girl OR date several great girls
I’ll give myself full credit for this one. More details to follow later…

6 - Enlarge my social circle
I did a fantastic job of this one. I definitely have a bunch of new cool friends and hang out with my friends more often.

7 - Do something REALLY nice for someone or a group of people
I’ll give myself 40% credit on this one. I’ve done a few nice things and many people have e-mailed me saying that my site changed their lives. However, I don’t think I did anything exceptionally nice.

My final score? 3.6 out of 7. Not impressive at all.

I’m not letting myself off the hook here, because I set goals and did not reach them, but one thing I realized is that a few months into the year, I didn’t really want all these goals anymore. The two exceptions were rapping and the million dollars. I’ve become somewhat well known around Austin, so that’s along the same vein as the rapper one. Nevertheless, I’m going to make my 2007 goals only things that I know I will really care about.

On the plus side, I accomplished a lot of goals that I didn’t know I had. I went Vegan, which I consider to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I got to lecture at a college, I wrote a book, I made some new songs. I got a real job for the first time, I started Tynan’s Angels, I moved, I hung out with Mel Gibson, I went to Japan and some other places, I found out what it was like to think you’re going to have a kid, I started hosting Karaoke, and thanks to people like you I made a moderately popular blog. All in all, that’s pretty good for a year.

Here are my 2007 goals :

1. Make a Million Dollars This is long overdue. Not much else to say here.
2. Operation Broccoli This is a secret for now… relating to the ladies. I’ll write about it when it’s a success.
3. Have a good relationship with my sleep schedule For as long as I can remember, I have been unhappy with my sleep schedule. I sleep too late, too much, or too chaotically. My options here are either to adopt a regular sleep schedule, go polyphasic, or accept that it’s ok to sleep like a crazy man and not feel bad about it.
4. Start the Tyboy Empire Step one for this should be to come up with a better name. I want to have a regular social scene at my place including cool parties that aren’t typical get-wasted-and-act-like-an-idiot-parties.
5. Figure out what I want to do with my life (or at least the next 5 years) This is probably priority #1.

I think that’s all! This year I think that I can do all of these! I intentionally chose fewer goals because I need to be more focused. Happy new year and all that…