I need a week off from trying to think of a story from the vault. When I was dating and living with Katya, I used to tell her a story every night before we’d go to sleep. She’s never let me forget.

After a year or so I all of a sudden couldn’t think of any new stories. I racked my brain to think of some that I had forgotten, but I was out. I guess that means I have somewhere around 300 stories in my brain. The tough part was that because she lived with me she was part of all my new stories. I wasn’t regenerating them fast enough.

That’s sort of how I feel about you. I write my whole life online between here and Life Nomadic.

I got a new server. This is probably exciting to no one here, but I really enjoy it. It’s unmanaged, which basically means that they take a computer, plug it into the internet at a big hosting facility somewhere, and then it’s up to me to set it up. I connect to it from my computer and have to do everything at a command line.

That means installing the web server, setting up e-mail, and even writing configuration files so that every computer, including yours, can find the site.

Very nerdy stuff. I love building proficiency in different and even opposite areas because it’s unexpected. Pickup and Linux. Eating healthy and rapping. Working out and learning Japanese. I might spread myself too thin sometimes, but I think it’s really cool to be some sort of renaissance man.

And there’s no better way to learn than to just DO it. I had to figure out all that Linux server stuff because otherwise all my sites (including my source of income) would disappear.

I’ve been spending all my time on Conversion Doubler, as you know. It’s been going very well and has been working wonders on my own site. Today I sold a record number of books and I finished a test that yielded a (statistically significant) 100% increase over my previous page. I even left it running longer than necessary to make sure.

Pretty huge.

Of course, not all of that is due to Conversion Doubler. I’ve been reading the classics of copywriting (which I think will make me a better writer too, btw), like John Caples, and have been testing them on my site.

I’ve been making a lot of progress working out with Crossfit. When I first got to Panama 6 weeks ago I couldn’t do more than 3-4 pullups in a row. Then a couple weeks ago I did 13 in a row.

I’m noticing that I’m looking a lot more muscular, too. I don’t know if other people would notice it, but when you’re working out you’re definitely looking for it. Pretty cool.

I’m also working on a new version of my book, Make Her Chase You. A longtime blog reader bought it recently and told me that he thought it was good, but incomplete. Since I know he’s inclined to like it since he reads my stuff, I took his criticism very seriously and have begun a major rewrite.

It’s now up from 71 pages to 110 and I’m still going. I’m extremely happy with how the new version’s coming out, although it took some significant work to get going on it because I lost the original file for the first version!

Once I finish it I’ll be able to sell the whole package for more money, too. (of course anyone who bought the first version will get this version free).

That’s ok, though, it was a good opportunity to redesign the layout as well. I love designing ebook layouts and I think the new one is a lot better.

The book MIGHT be ready to be a real published book now. I’ll have to take a look once I finish it.

I’m trying to write something personal improvement related every Monday and a story every Wednesday. I hope these are interesting to people, because I generally think that most personal improvement articles are relatively useless.

Every couple weeks I scan through lifehacker.com, and inevitably think “Man… this is a lot of useless junk.”

Now… I’ve definitely found some good stuff there, and have had some of my articles featured there, so it’s not ALL bad. I just feel like most personal improvement stuff is geared more towards FEELING like something has been accomplished rather than actually taking action.

My points are these:

1. If you think these posts are fluffy and useless, please send me an e-mail. It’s hard for me to judge.

2. Lifehacker probably won’t feature any of my articles anymore if they read this.

Moving on…

When I created The Skinny Snob, a diet book, I didn’t have excellence in mind. I wanted to create a product as soon as possible and begin selling it.

I wrote the book in a day or two, slapped up the web site, and began selling. The book had fantastic information, but it was incomplete. I didn’t spend the time to research every last food. I just wrote about foods I knew about and left it to the reader to use the book as a general map.

People followed the diet, got healthy, and lost weight. It was a good book, but it wasn’t excellent. Why not?

Later I wrote Make Her Chase You. I was really happy with the result. I spent more time writing it and more time editing it. I had more pickup knowledge than nutrition knowledge, so it was more complete.

People read it, loved it, and got girlfriends. Despite offering a 7 day free trial and 100 day refund policy, I get almost no refunds.

Is it excellent? Not quite.

Virgin Airlines is excellent. Comparing them to their competitors is like comparing apples to oranges.

Jay-Z is excellent. Every one of his songs is a masterpiece. Most other rappers put out one good song and fill the rest of the CD with junk. Kanye, Eminem, and Dr. Dre are excellent as well.

Xin’s Amps are excellent. Comparable headphone amplifiers cost four times as much and are four times the size.

Mercedes used to be excellent.

Calvin and Hobbes was excellent.

Lenovo laptops are, for the most part, excellent. No serious business uses other brands.

Daily Juice, a smoothie place and juice bar in Austin Texas is excellent.

Michael Jordan was excellent.

Conversion Doubler is on its way to excellence, because I now understand what it means and what it takes.

There is ONE thing that these rappers, a juice bar, an airline, and a computer company have in common which makes them excellent. It has everything to do with the PROCESS.

None of the creators of these products (or the people themselves in the rappers’ case) compare themselves to the competition. They set, and meet, their OWN standards.

Here’s how normal people produce:

1. Determine minimum level of quality to be competitive
2. Work until that level of quality is achieved
3. Sell

Here’s how excellent people produce

1. Determine the highest possible level of performance their product could yield
2. Work relentlessly to get it there, passing competitors without even noticing
3. Sell and become uber-successful

Do you think it ever crossed Richard Branson’s mind that American Airlines doesn’t have TVs at every seat? Do you think he cares? Does Jay-Z consider how popular a one hit wonder like Soulja Boy is?

No. In their minds their competition is totally irrelevant. They make up their own standards and accept nothing less. Their competitors then try to COPY them, which NEVER works for one simple reason:

The reason that these excellence producers reached excellence was because they held themselves to their OWN standards. Their competitors make the same mistake they always make - holding themselves to someone else’s standards.

This NEVER works.

What’s interesting is that there are only a few players in any field that are excellent. There are then hundreds or thousands of wannabes who produce “competitive” products and fight tooth and nail over them.

They become a COMMODITY and have to fight over price or minor differences, while the people who are excellent have no problem capitalizing on their product.

Daily Juice is a tiny little juice bar that makes truly excellent smoothies. They have every ingredient you could possibly think of to put in a smoothie. None of their competitors have even 20% of the ingredients they have. Even the apple juice they put in your smoothie is made fresh in front of you. Want a smoothie with fresh coconut milk, camu camu, acai, caco nibs, and maca powder? No problem.

I used to drink a $11 smoothie every single day. It’s expensive, but it’s hard to put a price on excellence.

I think there are two phases to creating a product or a service.

1. Following the leaders. In pretty much any industry there are accepted best practices that are usually pretty good. Daily Juice bought Blendtec Blenders, fresh fruit, and offers 12oz, 16oz, 20oz, and 24oz smoothies. Jay-Z listened to the popular rappers of his time and molded his style after theirs. When I got into pickup I learned Mystery’s method, I learned from Tyler, and I learned from Style.

2. Innovating. I’m not talking about “ooh, let’s add CHERRIES to the smoothies”, but rather taking the knowledge and experience gained in step one and doing something radically different based on it.

Most people never get to step two. They set their sights on their competitors, get to that level, and don’t even THINK of taking it to the next level. They think of small incremental improvements and gimmicks to stay half a step ahead of the non-excellent competition, but that’s it.

They mistakenly hold the belief that “everything worth doing has already been done.”

Of course, no great people have ever come from this mentality. In order for a field to advance, there must be SOME people pushing the envelope by innovating and delivering excellence.

On the other hand, SOME people get caught up in their egos and try to skip step number one entirely.

“I want to be different. I want to be a pioneer!”

They go off in a random direction but get caught in the mindfield of mistakes that other people have already solved.

Internet marketing comes to mind here. There is an established “best” way to make a sales page. It has an annoying heading, a thin LONG column of text, and a huge “BUY NOW” button at the bottom.

Everyone says they hate these pages, but they work. I’ve seen people say,

“I don’t like those pages. I’m going to make mine THIS way.”

They’re never successful. Hundreds of people have spent a lot of money to figure out the best way to make a sales page.

However, the people making the REAL money in online marketing aren’t the ones who are blindly following the formula handed down by the greats of the business. They’re the ones who take that foundation of knowledge and try new things on top of it (The Rich Jerk, Neil Strauss’ group, etc.)

I used to believe that following the leader and innovating were two separate approaches, but now I believe that they’re only effective when both are executed in that order.

Conversion Doubler will be an excellent product. I have a lot of the basic features that competitors have, but I’m also doing many things that NO ONE has ever done before. Not little side features either, but main integral methods of using the program that are measurably more effective.

I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but I never really considered how the other guys did it. I knew that it was a program I wanted for my own personal use, so I built it exactly as I would want it to be - NOT how the best alternative is.

One thing I noticed is that when your goal is excellence, it’s actually easier to work in some ways.

I’m excited when I work on Conversion Doubler because I know that I’m creating something new and powerful. Maybe even important. This excitement keeps me motivated and invested in my work.

When I first wrote Conversion Doubler, my code wasn’t excellent. I didn’t have the proficiency to write excellent code.

I don’t really have any standard to hold my current code up to, but I do know that I try to make it as good as I possibly can, and when I have to go back to it it’s really easy to work with. Doing things right makes it easier to build upon them later.

As for Make Her Chase You, I’m currently working on a second edition. I’ve asked my customers what they would like to read more about, and I’m listening to every single comment. I’m also going over the book personally, reformatting it, and adding in sections that I think need to be addressed.

Everyone who bought the first one will receive the new excellent version for free.

This theory of excellence also applies to real life. Do the things that you KNOW are best practices for life (eating healthy, working out, being social, working hard, being happy, saving money) and then experiment and do the unexpected to build on top of that (life nomadic, living in an RV, going polyphasic, or whatever you’re interested in).

Don’t keep up with the Joneses. Live the life that YOU find ideal. What makes YOU happy? What are YOUR standards?

Ok, I feel like this is a bit rambly. It’s six in the morning and I’ve been working since 2pm (there’s that persistence for you). Goodnight!

“We need to take this, ok?”

The nighttime receptionist didn’t know what to say. I had just grabbed the poinsetta plant from her desk and before she could reply we were already halfway to the door.

“Well, I guess…”

They were almost used to us at the Dobie, the dorm my friends and I lived in. We were so well known from our hijinks that whenever something was awry, we got a knock on our door before anyone else was questioned.

Just a few minutes earlier we were convened in the hallway trying to decide what to do. Some of us wanted to go eat at IHOP, some of us wanted to cause mischief (guess which camp I was in?).

We compromised. We’d go camping in IHOP.

We got my tent and raided our friends’ rooms for a couple small plants. Camping just isn’t complete without nature.

“Hi. We need a table for six and room for our tent.”

She thought we were kidding and showed us to our table. Our timing was perfect. Our waitress took our drink order, and as soon as she left we burst into action.

Tent poles were quickly connected together while the tent was unrolled and situated in the corner. Like a swift military operation we had the tent set up and decorated with plants in just a few minutes.

(how cute was I? I look like I’m about 10 even though I’m 18 here)

We gathered inside the tent with our menus, ready to order.

The waitress was not pleased.

“You can’t eat in there.”

“Why not?”

“It’s against our rules.”

“You have rules against eating in tents?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have rules against ordering in the tent?”

“Umm… I guess that’s ok.”

“Ok, how about drinking water in the tent?”

“That’s fine. But you CAN’T eat in there.”

Good enough. We drank our water and took a few pictures while we waited for the food.

I think the receptionist was surprised to get her poinsetta back.

Oh… and a bonus picture of me in a tux with my formal hat on at my friend Phil’s wedding.

My grandfather grew up in a small apartment in Lawrence, Massachusetts with fourteen older brothers and sisters. His mother stayed at home to watch after the family, and his father worked in a dry goods store.

His parents came from Italy to Ellis Island with no money. He grew up poor.

When he was ten or so he began to work at the dry goods store as well. His job was mainly to run into the rat infested basement and get tins of spaghetti to bring upstairs. He was allowed to keep a portion of the money, but most of it went to his parents.

Later he trained to be an accountant, and was good at it. He worked for a number of companies, including 3M, doing their books.

One day at 3M he was told that the company was going to sell off a small branch that created microfiche. Microfiche is an old way to store lots of data by shrinking it down and putting it on transparent paper. I’m sure there’s more to it, but that’s the gist of it. To prepare for the sale he had to go over the balance sheets of the division.

“I think I’d like to buy it.”

His boss was shocked. The division was losing money and had significant liabilities, including a lease on office space. His boss agreed to make him an offer.

My grandfather refused to tell me how much he paid for the business, but I know it was a pretty paltry sum. After he sold all of the extra furniture and equipment in the offices, he had already made a small profit.

Next to his typewriter, which he still uses, he taped a small business card. Instead of having someone’s name on it, it had five lines of text. It was his favorite quotation.

And then he buckled down. He and my grandmother worked tirelessly and turned the business around. Soon it was flourishing and they bought another business. Ten years ago they retired (although he still does the books for the second business) and built a house.

They live alone, but their house has four extra bedrooms, one for each of their children. The fourth floor is a large playroom for grandchildren. Outside they have their own pool and tennis court.

When I was thirteen or so, my grandfather gave me a small card. He told me that it was a copy of the one he had taped to his desk. He told me that it was the most important thing I could learn.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men of talent.
Genius will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
The slogan, ‘press on’ has solved, and always will solve, the problems of the human race.

I taped it to my monitor and completely ignored it. For my whole life people had told me how smart I was, so I knew that I didn’t have to work hard. I didn’t put much stock in the “Genius will not” portion of the quote.

I struggled through school. Actually, to say that I struggled would insinuate that I cared, which I didn’t. Homework was hard work, and I was too smart for that. I knew that I would inevitably become rich and famous.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually studied for a test. That seems like an exaggeration, but I believe it’s true.

I remember distinctly five years ago or so when my father was helping me. We tore the closet out of a bedroom in the house I had just bought, drove to Houston to buy some seats, and built a screen. We built a movie theater.

We built risers so that the seats would be “stadium” style, and were almost finished tacking the carpet down.

“Hey dad… I think it’s good enough now.”

My father is a carpenter. He works hard every day, but would still make time on the weekends to help me with my crazy projects (which he often advised against). From what I gather being a carpenter isn’t an easy job, but despite raising his rates every year my father is always booked up months in advance.

He ignored me and kept working.

I couldn’t understand it. What was he getting out of this? If I thought it was good enough, what did he care? In fact, he was ALWAYS like this. I felt guilty and slightly sad that I didn’t understand this thing that drove him.

He told us not to buy the schoolbus, but when we did he would always help us when we got stuck. When we gave up trying to cut the backpack racks from the ceiling, he drove back to his house to get a different saw and try it again. It worked.

I was awed by this work ethic. It was something I couldn’t understand at all - I had no way to relate to it. But it seemed impressive.

It’s a testament to my stubbornness that it has taken me this long to finally get this into my head. I was raised around people who all understood the power of persistence and hard work, but I thought I was too good for it.

Now I get it and I’m humbled. And I don’t mean that I “see it”. I mean that deep in my core I FEEL it. I KNOW it now.

When I lived in Hollywood I was making a lot of money through gambling. I didn’t have to do any other work. I started doing workshops and made a good amount of money with Mystery. Real Social Dynamics was struggling back then, but still making some money. Thundercat was just starting out, and was one of the brokest guys I knew.

Here’s a quick breakdown of where they are now:

Mystery - Rich
Style - Rich
Thundercat - Rich
Real Social Dynamics - Rich
Me - Not rich at all

I’m overjoyed for every one of them. One by one I’ve seen them break into the stratosphere of wealth, and it makes me happy every time. What do they have in common? They all HUSTLED.

Mystery was constantly working on new pickup stuff. He lives it. He can’t wait to talk to you and tell you about his new discoveries.

Style worked so much that I think we only went to clubs together maybe a dozen times. He knocks one project out of the park and then hits the next one with even more force. He’s a high quality producing machine. I can’t imagine him working on a project that isn’t successful. The Game was a way bigger hit than he expected, but we all knew the magic of what he was creating.

Thundercat was ALWAYS working on something. He’d take any job in pickup and get it done. He ghostwrote books, had a blog that was updated daily, and was interviewing everyone he could get his hands on.

Tyler from Real Social Dynamics is insane. He’s more focused than anyone I’ve ever known. I haven’t seen his newest product, The Blueprint, but I’d bet my fortune that it’s the best pickup product on the market.

And me? I’m not rich. I haven’t focused. I could have made so much money from gambling that I wouldn’t have to work ever again. Some of my gambling friends did. As soon as I could outsource it, I was out of the office and business suffered.

I’ve jumped from project to project, never once giving one of them more than 20% of my attention.

And now the results are clear. I had every opportunity those guys had. I was in the same business and I was good at it. I was as smart as they were. But… I flitted around and never committed or hunkered down and worked.

I’m not trying to totally dismiss myself. I’ve obviously done ok for myself since I now travel the world full time, but my success is nowhere near these people’s. I’ve also totally transformed myself in a lot of ways, so I don’t really have any regrets either.

In fact, I’ve fulfilled every goal I’ve had other than making money. I’d be surprised if there was a human being on earth happier than me. I’ve made friends with so many awesome people. The level of self respect and awareness I’ve cultivated is incredible. I’ve developed many super important habits that will serve me for the rest of my life.

The reason I’m interested in this and focusing on it is because it’s CRITICALLY important for the future. Not just mine, yours too. Maybe I’m getting overexcited, but I feel like I’ve discovered the key to life here. Or my life, anyway… the BIG CHUNK that I’ve been missing for my whole life.

When I started writing Conversion Doubler, it was a mess. There’s still a file in the project called “setcookie.php” which was the first file I started writing. It’s called that because I had no idea how to program and I wanted to try to learn how to set a cookie.

I was writing it for myself. I called it TynanTrack at first. I needed a way to test different things on my site and measure my results. When it came time to figure out how to actually route the traffic through my program, I came up with a very clever little hack.

Then I spent 5-6 months writing the program around this little hack. The whole project hinges on it. Without the hack, nothing works.

And… you can guess what happened. After six months I realized that it didn’t work. It worked on my server, but for 50% of the people out there, it would crash their entire site.

The piece of code in question was four short lines long.

I was shocked. Was this the end of my program? I worked for seven days on those four lines. I tried EVERYTHING I could possibly think of. Nothing was working.

Finally on the seventh day I had a random idea that I tried… and it worked! It required some modification, but I had it running in a day.

I continued work on the project. During this period of time I had begun to understand the importance of hard work, so I was working 8-16 hours per day. As soon as I got up I’d start, and I wouldn’t stop until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I took two breaks a day for food, and would occasionally see my friends.

Four days ago I was done with Conversion Doubler. I keep saying I’m done, but then I add more features. It’s my masterpiece. Two friends went to install it.

It crashed on BOTH of their sites.

I investigated the problem and once again realized that the hack wouldn’t work. This time it was for good - there was a fundamental problem that just couldn’t be overcome. The software would work on most sites, but not sites where people had a blog or any other complicated PHP software running.

“I think you’re going to have to assume that some people’s sites just won’t be compatible with CD,” said a friend.

Man. That’s not acceptable. I’ve put SO MUCH into this software. It’s SO good. Sometimes I freak out for a split second when I see it as I realize the scale of what I’ve created. It seems so impossible that I’m responsible for it.

I decided to scrap the hack. I spent hours thinking about what I could do instead. Finally I came up with a solution that would actually be better than the hack. It would require a ton of coding and I’d have to rework every single one of the 65 files I’d written.

The silver lining was that it would work on ANY site and would actually be faster.

I started working on it, and then after a while realized that the FTP library built in to PHP is disabled on a lot of servers. I was relying on it.

So I started writing my own FTP library from scratch, manually connecting and specifying every single character sent to the FTP site. Obviously this is something I’d never done before. I even had to build my own web based FTP client for the installation process.

Finally it’s done. I still have a few loose ends to tie up with the new installation process, but I’ve tested everything extensively. Conversion Doubler lives on and is better than ever.

Will I find more problems? I don’t think so, but I didn’t think so before either. I don’t care, though. I know that I can handle anything now.

What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Same goes for my program.

I can’t imagine anything stopping me now. I used to TALK, but not ACT. Now I spend all day producing excellence. I do things right and I do them thoroughly.

And here’s the thing - if **I** can be like this, then you can too. I was the biggest slacker. I did nothing. If I did ONE productive thing in a day I’d consider it a day well spent.

Shipped ONE package? Good day!

Went to the bank? Success!

Seriously. When I dropped out of school I had a 2.01. At a 2.0 they would have kicked me out anyway. I’d say that most of my life was spent in the bottom 5% of America in terms of productive output goes.

Here’s the progression of success as best I understand it:

1. Get an idea
2. Start working
3. PAIN PERIOD
4. Success

1. Getting an idea is easy. Everyone has ideas and thinks they’re so smart for coming up with them (myself included, of course). The thing is, the IDEA is probably the least important part. Why is Jay-Z a great drug dealer and a great rapper and a great clothing line creator? Is it because these are great ideas? NO. It’s because he’s a hustler (baby).

2. Start working. This is the fun part where you have 99 parts of your project, 50 of which are fun and easy. You work on those and feel great.

3. Pain Period. This is where I ALWAYS used to give up. Things stop going perfectly and it’s time to batten the hatches and start rocking. It’s time to put your WANTS aside and focus on the NEEDS of your project. THIS IS THE KEY PART! If you get past here, you succeed. If you don’t, you don’t succeed. Period.

I could write about 10 posts about this alone. Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about how his one skill is pushing through the pain period. And look! He’s a successful body builder, actor, and politician. Good ideas? Natural talents? NOPE. Just pushing through.

4. Success. This is the holy grail. People think that what you’ve done is easy once you get here. “50 cent is a crappy rapper. If I got to work with Eminem and Dr. Dre I’d be as good as him.” Yeah, but you know what? He PUSHED through the pain period of getting there and now enjoys success, which is a lot easier. You see the result, not the process.

What’s that phrase about weak links? You’re only as strong as your weakest link? SAME HERE. If you’re never going to punch through the pain period, why even start? If you don’t do it this time will you do it next time? NOPE.

“Oh, I wasn’t successful, but I learned a lot.”

I hate that. I hear that so much, and I’ve probably said it too. It’s TRUE on one hand because you always learn when you’re DOING. BUT.. what do you need to learn about? Punching through the pain period! And the only way to learn about that is to DO it.

Here are some ideas that helped me a ton:

1. I realized that I could change. For a long time being a slacker was part of my identity. In fact, a lot of my friends may not even believe that I actually work as hard as I do, because they’re so used to me not working. All of a sudden I realized that there was NOTHING but will power stopping me from being a hard worker.
2. You get in the business of GOAL REACHING, not GOAL ATTEMPTING. There is no question in my mind whether Conversion Doubler will be a huge hit. I’ll do everything possible to get it there. I’ll make it so incredibly good that people will get made fun of for not having it.

   It’s the difference between DOING THINGS and having things DONE TO YOU. One accepts failure, the other doesn’t.

3. Roadblocks are NOT bad. They just are. They’re the bouncer that separates the worthy from the unworthy. You’re the one who decides which you are, though. There are a finite number of roadblocks between you and success, and each one you smash brings you one step closer. Think about it… there’s an infinite amount of work you CAN do, but there are only so many roadblocks you NEED to break before success.
4. Everything you do is either moving you TOWARDS success or AWAY from success. Which direction is movies and tv? How about blocking every worthless site you read on a daily basis and quitting them cold turkey (I did that)?

   Obviously you need some balance. You don’t want to ONLY work because then other areas of your life will fall out of balance. But treat them the same way and work towards your goals

   Eat healthy, work out, and spend time with your friends. When you’re taking time off, make it count. That’s why I’m on Life Nomadic. When we take breaks we do things like take a road trip to the interior and experience Carnival.

5. Most importantly, realize that it is ESSENTIAL to do this. Unless you’re willing to bet your entire future on some random one in a billion chance that you’ll get super lucky, you WILL NEED this habit of insane persistence. If you want to reach the top level, you must give it 100%. If you don’t, someone else will.

   This was probably the most important realization for me. It suddenly occurred to me that I would NEED to get this down, and if not now, when?

I want to keep writing about this forever. It’s so important and means so much to me now that I want to write in all caps until every single person reading it realizes how important it is. I wonder if people read posts like this and do something about it, or if they read it and then go eat cookies and watch friends.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men of talent.
Genius will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
The slogan, ‘press on’ has solved, and always will solve, the problems of the human race.

First of all, Best in the Land is back. I’ve recently adopted a new posting schedule (twice a week on btyb, and best in the land, once a week to my pickup newsletter at Make Her Chase You, and twice a week to Life Nomadic including Todd’s posts).

I didn’t want to post about it until I had a few new posts up there for people to check out. A few astute readers here figured it out already, though.

Also, I have a little site at Tynan.net to organize all of my sites in one place. If you already visit them there’s really no point to going there. But… if you stop reading for some reason and want to see what I’m up to years later… that’s the place.

Unless I can get tynan.com. The owner doesn’t respond to my e-mails and once offered to sell it for $20k. No thanks. But I would pretty much kill to have the domain. I guess that establishes around how much I’d have to be paid to kill someone.

Tyler from Real Social Dynamics wrote a killer article today. After culling my huge RSS list down, his is the only blog that I still have on there. I still check a few others once in a while, but I never want to miss one of his articles. You’ll see why I like this one - What’s Fun?.

A big breakthrough for me tonight:

Todd and I were at Casa Vegetariana here in Panama. I speared a broccoli chunk and raised it to my mouth. As it got closer to my face I realized that there was a bug on it. It looked like a white mealworm.

SO I ATE IT!

As some people know, I’m really scared of bugs. It’s totally irrational and stupid, but I cringe when I see them. Not all bugs, but there are some that I really don’t like.

Meal worms are one of those types. Their little gross heads are freaky. BUT, I decided that there was no good reason not to eat it, so I did. I couldn’t taste it because there was a lot of broccoli.

I think I’m going to start eating a lot of bugs. I mean… how cool would it be to train myself to eat bugs? Then if I’m ever in a jungle survival situation, I will flourish. What if I get on survivor? They’ll all be complaining about low rice, and I’ll be eating a bug feast and doing crossfit with tree trunks and rocks and stuff. YEAH!

Speaking of Crossfit, we’ve been doing a lot of running recently. One 10k and two 5ks. Today’s 5k almost killed me… it was SO hot and humid out, even though we ran at night. My arms actually started going numb.

Now that I’ve started, I can’t possibly imagine a situation where I would stop doing crossfit. It was signify such great failure to me.

This year is the year of money. I’ve said that before, but I haven’t backed it up. This year I’m all action and… well, still some talk too.

We’re only a month and a half into the year and I’ve worked more this year than I did all last year probably. More on that on Monday.

Next year will be the year of fame. I’ve decided that it would be totally unacceptable for me to not become a megastar. SO… once I get my money situation all settled this year, which I’m 100% confident I will do, I will dedicate the next year to becoming famous.

I have a lot of thoughts on this that are getting written down. I think I will focus on rap. The new rappers coming out right now are TERRIBLE and I think I can be good. It will take a lot of work, but I will spend 8-16 hours a day writing raps, freestyling, and strategizing.

Anyway… have a great weekend. The way I always discover it’s the weekend is that my stocks don’t seem to move at all. Then I realize they’re not moving at all because the market isn’t open on the weekends.

From second grade until eighth grade I went to a private school in Andover, Massachusetts called The Pike School. It was awesome, and marked the last time that I thought:

1. School was worthwhile
2. School was fun

It’s such an excellent school that when I have kids eventually I’d be inclined to move back around Boston so that my kids could go there.

Class sizes were very small - maybe 80 people in my entire grade. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone talked. Rumors spread quickly.

I was in sixth grade when my friend Nick, a Greek kid who introduced me to the joys of pouring gasoline on the sidewalk and lighting it on fire, told me the rumor.

“There’s a Chinese kid coming here. He doesn’t speak any English.”

I was intrigued. I’d always wanted to be a ninja (seriously… I REALLY wanted to be a ninja), and I was pretty sure that ninjas spoke Chinese.

“Cool. I’m going to teach him English and get him to teach me Chinese.”

A few months later, Charlie Wang arrived. He was 5′7″, which was a good seven inches taller than I was, and a good three inches taller than anyone else in the class.

He was a giant.

We met, and became fast friends. He knew a little bit of English and picked it up very quickly.

He taught me all the swear words in Chinese.

Soon my curiousity spread. To properly direct the insults I needed to know more pronouns. He gradually taught me more.

“Which part of that means ‘your’ and which part means ‘mother’?”

Soon I could form basic sentences. I hung out at his house all the time where all they spoke was Chinese, and kept picking up more. That summer he and his family invited me to go to Taiwan with them for two months.

I pleaded with my parents, but they weren’t about to let a 12 year old who had never even been on a plane before go on a trip halfway around the world.

The next year the invitation was extended again, and my parents caved. It was an amazing trip that I still remember a lot of 14 years later. Our other best friend came as well.

We saw all of the historic places, went to the Science museum, and visited his family there. We spent many days at this awesome indoor pool where they served us watermelon juice. I still love watermelon juice to this day, and it always reminds me of being there.

We played pickup basketball at public courts there. Charlie was an incredible basketball player, which infuriated the others. They’d yell insults in English like “Banana to your brother!”

His family hired a tutor for us there, so my Chinese got even better. I don’t really remember how good I got, but I remember it being pretty good.

The only bad part was that I was an insanely picky eater. I ate no meat and almost no vegetables. They’d have huge spreads of food every day that I would virtually ignore, hoping to go to McDonalds later.

“Wo yao er hao he chokoli nai xi.”

I want a number two and a chocolate milkshake. That was the filet-o-fish meal, which I was obsessed with at the time.

After one month our mutual friend couldn’t handle Taiwan anymore. He got homesick. We had a particular solemn occasion where he gave me a box of oatmeal cookies that he had brought but hadn’t yet eaten.

“Take this. You’re going to need them.”

He was a very picky eater too.

The trip finally came to an end and I headed back alone. Charlie and his family were staying in Taiwan even longer. I distinctly remember being in a connecting airport, looking at myself in the reflection as I went up an escalator. I thought that I was very cool for flying without my parents.

I can still speak some Chinese, but I’ve forgotten almost all of the vocab now. Charlie is an economist in San Francisco now, and I get to see him once a year or so when we both happen to be in Andover.

I’m going back to Taiwan for the first time in a few months, and I’m really excited. I’ve been practicing my Chinese a little bit with a Taiwanese couple here who own a restaurant that we eat at every day, and I plan on unleashing it when we go to Taiwan.

Somewhere off the coast of Central America is an island. Right now it’s uninhabited, besides some monkeys. Long beaches reach from the palm trees to the ocean.

The island is many acres in size, so big that if you were in the middle of the jungle you’d forget that you’re even on an island. If you looked out from the hills in the middle you’d remember it instantly.

One day that island will be Tynan Island.

When I was in ninth grade my friend Mahnu showed me my first copy of Robb Report, a magazine for the super wealthy, and even more for the super wealthy wannabes like me. He let me keep the issue.

Near the back was a classifieds section which contained, among other things, a picture of a pristine circular island for sale. One million dollars.

Ever since I saw that, I’ve been obsessed with having my own island. A few years ago Style and I talked about actually doing it and I spoke with a real estate agent, but it fizzled when we found out that none of the nearby islands have surf. Style loves to surf.

Last weekend Alex Shalman came to visit us, and on his last day we sat around a perfect vegan meal at La Novena and discussed the laws Tynan Island would have.

After all, it would act like, if not actually be, its own nation.

It was a really interesting exercise, and was more difficult than I would have expected. It made me realize some of the difficult positions lawmakers are put in (particularly around the abortion issue).

Here’s some of the stuff we came up with:

Taxes

There would be no tax tied to anything other than your actual usage of government services (which would be minimal) and property. The goal of the island would be to allow people to make all of their own choices and facilitate making money.

The government would maintain roads as well as the land that it owned, which would be largely undeveloped (though legal for people to build stuff for public use in it, like trails). The government would also have a very small airport (basically one clearing with a dirt runway), which would be sold as soon as someone wanted to buy it for a reasonable cost.

The government would be for-profit, but would be restricted to charging for actual services provided. Road use could be purchased daily or monthly. Any guest would have to pay for his usage of roads and other services.

Park use would be optional and would be charged daily or monthly. The government would also organize the purchase of an undersea cable for internet access, which would be billed like an ISP. This branch, like the airport, could be purchased from the government.

Initial funding for the government would come from selling parcels of land to people who want to live on the island. It would probably not be very expensive, because I would want my friends to buy it.

Defense

There would be no formal national defense, although I would personally fight to the death for my island and I imagine others would do the same once they lived there for a while. All guns and weapons would be legal.

Power

The best power sources would be wind and solar, but any power source is legal. To ensure the survival of the island, power plants would have to be inspected by scientists. Inspection scientists would be voted on and would receive the fee for each certification.

Land Ownership

Once you own land it is yours to keep and there is no tax. You’re not allowed to affect other people’s land, via pollution or runoff, or even bad smells (like pig farms or piles of trash). You can be as noisy as you want and can do whatever you want on your land - there’s no zoning.

If you are expelled from the island your land goes up for auction, with proceeds going to fund that can only be used to repair damage inflicted by people who fled the island without paying fines.

Roads

There would be one paved highway that spanned one end to the other and covered the major areas of the island. The government would not sell some parcels for land it might need for future roads. The left lanes of “highways” would have no speed limits, and the right lanes would have a non-enforced speed limit. All exits will be on the right side to facilitate speeding in the left.

All parcels of land sold by the government will have at least one edge touching a road. Some parcels will be small and that will be all they need. Others will require people to build their own roads if they want to access far areas of the parcel (perhaps to make a subdivision). Of course people can charge for use of their roads and maintain them as they like.

Leadership

I would be king for life. Almost all of our laws would regulate what the government CAN’T do, so the king position would actually be powerless. The only real decisions I’d have would be to start more government businesses (which would not have any particular advantage over anyone else’s business), and to sell government businesses.

New laws could only be made with 75% of the people in agreement, and certain laws (like no taxing, no infringing on personal freedom, etc) taking precedence over all new laws.

There would be no laws on morality. As much as I’d love to have a drug free, alcohol free, vegan island, it would be stupid to tell other people what they can and can’t do.

Instead I will design the island to attract smart entrepreneurial people who will probably not be likely to have drug problems.

Crime and Punishment

There would be no police, only a vote amongst all citizens (conducted securely online) on all issues, with statements back and forth between the two parties until each one had spoken 5 times or both decided they were done arguing their cases.

There would be no jail. Every punishment would be the actual cost of undoing the damage (in case of theft or destruction of property), plus a fine. The fine would be waived or minimized if you reported your own crime.

So if you ran your car into a government sign for a park and reported it the next day, you’d just pay to have the sign replaced. If you didn’t report it and someone else had to, you would pay a fine.

Killing people would be illegal and would result in expulsion from the island. Returning to the island would make it legal for you to be shot by any citizen. If 90% of people in a vote believe it was in self defense, there is no penalty.

The reason there’s no death penalty isn’t because I’m against it, but rather because I don’t want to have a complicated legal system which would be necessary for subjectively deciding to kill someone.

Instead we’d forgo revenge and keep them off the island.

Hurting people would make you liable for their medical bills plus a fee to be determined by online vote. Non payment would result in expulsion from the island. Anyone who is expelled from the island can legally be shot if they return.

People could hire private security. In Panama there’s a lot more private security than police, and it’s very safe.

Education

There would be no required or provided education system. Kids could be home schooled or schooled as a group if parents organized it.

….

Obviously a lot more would still need to be worked out. I’m very serious about doing this some day. A suitable 200-300 acre island is only $1-2M, which I should be able to afford in the not-so-distant future, especially if I have some people lined up to buy some of the land.

I’ve been interested in self improvement for a long time. I’d get into stuff like “Mega Memory”, language tapes, or “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. For a while I didn’t really like to talk about being interested in this stuff because it was slightly embarrassing.

Bettering oneself isn’t embarrassing, of course, it’s the association with “those types of people”. You know… the people who read all the books, go to all the seminars, and then don’t do a thing about it. Maybe the most embarrassing part is that I was one of those people to a degree. There were a LOT of things I’d start and either not finish or not get results from it.

Is this the fault of the program or the book? Not at all. It’s up to ME to follow through and implement the things I learn.

This post may be pointless, because people who don’t follow through probably won’t do what I suggest to start following through. We’ll try it though.

One big thing I’ve noticed amongst people who get results is that they have a lot of self respect. That doesn’t mean you have to be an ego maniac like I am (although you could be…), but it means that you like yourself enough to believe that you deserve to improve.

For example, guys who get into pickup and have very low self esteem generally won’t get anywhere unless you address their self esteem first. They don’t BELIEVE they deserve high quality girls, so their actions reflect that.

Equally important is trusting yourself. You can tell how much people trust themselves by the the language they use.

“I’ll see if I can do that.”

“I might try that out.”

“I don’t think I could ever do that.”

These are things that people who don’t trust themselves would say. Think about it… does anyone not have the ABILITY to do self improvement? I mean… can anyone not force themselves to eat healthier food, to spend half an hour a day reading, or to go talk to new people?

Of course not… these are all things that ANYONE is capable of doing. It comes down to whether or not they’ll trust themselves to follow through.

People who trust themselves say things like:

“I’m going to start doing that.”

“I can do that.”

“I’ll try that for 30 days.”

See the difference? They KNOW that if they commit to something it will be completed no matter what. I trust myself completely… I know that if I say I’ll do something I’ll definitely do it no matter what.

This places a bit of a burden on the decision making process, because you don’t want to commit yourself to something that will kill you.

A few days ago the workout of the day for Crossfit was to run 10 kilometers. I’m not a runner and I barely ever run, but I never once even considered my ability to do the run. I knew that one way or another I’d force myself to do it.

Now it’s four days later and I’m still hobbling because my calves are killing me.

When you trust yourself it takes the decision making process out of the equation. On any given day I can think of a bunch of reasons not to work out. But there’s no decision to make. I just do it.

Make your decisions up front when you have all of the info, when it’s a RATIONAL decision, and when you’re nut subject to EMOTIONAL decisions (I don’t feel like working out…).

Another thing I’ve found helpful is ALWAYS taking action after every new piece of information I decide to consider. I can read ANY personal development book and find at least one useful ACTIONABLE tip in it. Usually there’s a lot more than that.

For example, I read a book called “The Goal”. I didn’t really like it that much, but at the same time there were certainly some nuggets of gold in it. Now whenever I am trying to solve a problem I use some of the steps he outlines in the book.

Personal improvement is really nothing but “habit cultivation”. If you have good habits you succeed, and if you don’t have them then you don’t succeed. Having the habit of consuming new ideas and immediately implementing changes based on them is pretty useful.

Also, a big problem I encountered was that I’d work on improvements that weren’t actually getting me closer to where I wanted to be. I’d learn new skills or habits that were interesting but not practical. That’s not bad, but why not learn things that are interesting AND practical.

Actually, that’s something that I got from “The Goal”. Ask yourself what your goal is. My primary goal right now is to make money, so I have a new set of habits I’ve developed that keep me super productive on that goal.

Trying new habits for thirty or sixty days is a good practice too. Make it a mindless commitment for that period of time. At the end, think about your results and make a new decision from there.