Why you need theoretical, non-actionable advice.
When’s the last time a craving really took you down the right path?
A fat body craves sugar.
A junkie craves another hit.
A narcissist craves another compliment.
The gurus that want to sell you something usually want to sell you “actionable advice.” Since that’s what we crave – not more of this ‘worthless’ theory stuff!
Consider 3 elements laid out by Tony Robbins laid out in 2015 in Australia. In an example of losing weight:
Strategy – This is ‘actionable’ non-theoretical stuff – Ex. Eating less calories than we need and exercising (this information is easily accessible / obvious)
Story – Often a wrong belief that you tell yourself on why you don’t have something, backed up with truths uncorrelated to the result, and people will intentionally fail in their strategy to prove their belief accurate – Ex. “I’ve tried everything”, “I don’t have the time.”, “I went to the gym 7 days a week (but didn’t do anything in the gym).”
State – A state of mind, how you think/feel, which dictates the story you can tell.
Changing stories / beliefs is hard, because people don’t like changing their beliefs. People will even sabotage their strategy to make a story remain true by half-assing strategies because their story is bad. Ex “I knew it wouldn’t work to begin with!”
To change quickly:
Change your state, which helps you change your story, which helps you utilize your strategy.
When you’re in a good state, you come up with a good story, and then have a good strategy.
Decisions (not conditions) control your focus, focus controls your state, state controls your story, and story controls your strategy.
Now all this advice above totally feels like fluffy non-actionable advice. But the point is, even if someone did get the advice that’s craved, they wouldn’t do anything with it.
They don’t need to have the step-by-step process laid out for them, because they’ll half-ass it, or say they’ll “get started first thing next week,” and never start. I worked with a successful multi-millionaire stock trader at a hedge fund and he told me that people always beg him for his “secrets” and he said that he had no problem telling people because even if he told them, “they’d never do it themselves anyway.”
In all likelihood, we need more “mumbo jumbo” theoretical, non-actionable advice.
Revealed: Work on your weaknesses or double down on strengths?
Gary Vee says stop working on your weaknesses and double down on those strengths.
James Altucher says he had to work on speaking to crowds and had to work on many his weaknesses.
This gets ridiculously convoluted. So here ya go,
Double down on your core strength, and work on whatever weaknesses the core is supported by.
If you’re a business consultant, you double down on your ability to understand business, but work on your weakness as a marketer to convince people to get your service (don’t work on becoming a world class web developer).
If you’re an actor, you double down on your ability to do impressions, but work on your negotiation skills to get a bigger raise (don’t work on your singing career).
Communication (public speaking, sales, marketing, negotiation) is the universally needed skill you always have to work on.
So, work on 2 things: 1) Your core competency and 2) Communication.
The internet murdered the underline
It’s neat to think about that writers in the past used bold, italics, and underline to emphasize things in different ways.
But writers on the internet can’t use underline anymore because it’s implied to be a link to click on, more so than it’s something that’s important to call attention to. Maybe underline wasn’t ever so great or needed, and bold was good for headlines and italics for quoting someone, but did we ever need the underline? Do we even miss it? Probably not.
Finding gold in garbage.
I watched a video by Gary Halbert, arguably the best copywriter that wrote “The Boron Letters” that shaped a lot of the way direct mail ads were written. As a kid, I’d read these letters selling me the best speed reading techniques, kung fu secrets, and ancient wisdom from Zen monks.
The video I watched was 30 years old. It talked about bulk rate vs 1st class postal rates and how to stuff envelopes.
Obsolete garbage…or was it?
But I’ve been looking for timeless truths hidden inside all short lived techniques.
His universal truth was highly relevant:
1) Do something different than your competitors (don’t use bulk rate, use an actual stamp),
2) Seem like you’re their friend (do hand written stuff),
3) Break their unconscious patterns (if you had a sales letter that looked like a news article, it would actually get read).
Important to note is #3, because it took the internet many years to catch on and abuse that technique. So maybe 66% of his specific material was outdated, but even the last 33% was enough to likely produce massive success.
Also, the fundamentals didn’t change at all. Plus knowing some specific techniques could have helped you come up with the next stage of marketing where you now:
1) Do something different (put ads on Instagram instead of AdWords),
2) Being friendly (may be giving away content),
3) Breaking patterns (instead of typical “CLICK NOW!”, discourage it by using a click-bait title like “Don’t click on this background report check if you’re not prepared for the results – they may shock you.”)
Providing value doesn’t go obsolete, and outdated techniques that provided value will always have truths behind them that you can uncover.
Gambling vs Investing and how words expose expectations.
Your language colors more than you think.
If you use $1 in hopes to turn it into $2, it’s an:
a) Investment if the odds are in your favor
b) Gamble if the odds are out of your favor
Consider the workaholic that works so much and makes so much money that he doesn’t have enough time left over to spend his money or time.
If the gamble worked out, he was “dedicated” / “passionate“, (eg. The company built got acquired and he retired at 30)
If the gamble didn’t work out, he was “obsessed” / “addicted.” (eg. There’s was no time left in the day to use the cash to exchange for anything)
The more based in reality your words can be, the easier is to see reality and make good decisions from there.
The paradox of brain chemistry of masochists
If hurting your self is inherently painful, but if you like hurting yourself on some sort of level, what does the brain chemistry look like for a masochist (is it all cortisol or dopamine)? There’s a lot of studies on this that are pretty interesting.
Stop wasting your time and watch a cat video!
Simplifying everything allows for the greatest progression many times. Let’s simplify the world economy…
Corporations buy time (employees), mark it up and sell the time back to you (time saving devices), or they sell you drugs (dopamine), which is what you’d do with your time.
You’re spending money on either:
1) Dopamine from 2 means – a) things (a nice sofa) or b) experiences (Hulu subscription),
2) Increase the amount of time you have for that dopamine (a dishwasher, a lawn mower). I think saving time is becoming a bigger market than the things you ultimately use your time up with (either things or experiences).
People squander time, just like money. But people are wrong when they say what’s wasted time. They say you’re wasting time reading fiction and watching cat videos. But down deep, that’s all there is. So, someone needs to say it,
The meaning of life is…cat videos.
If you’re getting your dopamine from watching funny TV shows, that’s as good as life gets. If that feels meaningless to you and you need to save the world to feel good, you better get saving. The problem is just like a real drug addict, you need more to get the same high. So sitting on the beach drinking margaritas doesn’t give you the same ‘fix’ as the first week of drinking.
A good example of squandering your time is spending 4 hours at work so you could afford to QuickPass Toll lane that will save you only 2 hours of time. You traded your time for a -50% Time ROI. In contrast, paying $200 a month for health insurance so you can be saved from cancer and extend your life 15 years is a massively profitable Time ROI.
Wasted time is either: a) time not spent feeling good or b) time not invested in things to increase your free time.
I mention time is a currency in another article about people wanting more time and forgetting why they wanted more time to begin with. Why’s this happen? When people work 1 hour, they’re gambling that with the money earned they’ll get more than 1 hour back or have the funds to use it for dopamine via stuff / experiences. Gambling feels good and is highly addictive.
Workaholics get cash to later be traded for time or stuff. He’s gambles that his 1 hour of labor now gets him 2 hours later (“If I work 80 hour weeks for 3 years, invest all my money, I can retire and have time for the next 20 years!”). Not all gamblers are workaholics, but all workaholics are gamblers. Note: If you get dopamine from your work, you get called “passionate” (not a workaholic).
Since gambling is a dopamine causing experience, people can find themselves always desperate for more time for no other purpose other than to gamble for more time.
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