Category: Truth

This question was posed on Reddit recently and the responses are … interesting.

I wanted to go through the popular comments (those with 1,000+ upvotes) and offer up why or how some of these luxuries are obtainable without being rich.

But first, my answer.

I don’t fantasize about “obvious” luxuries anymore. Maybe that’s because there was a time when I did and when I finally got those luxuries it wasn’t luxurious. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t “rich.” I just had more money than I knew what to do with (the year I was 24 I earned ~$300k USD) and I didn’t have good examples of people doing smart things with money. That’s a lie since my Parents were a great example, but they were/are also more traditional than I am and I didn’t want to follow their lead. Although some of their advice was to buy a house, which was bad advice for me, and I listened to it. Basically, I was kind of your typical “young and dumb” guy who wanted to be rich and own stuff I didn’t really want. It wasn’t until I made friends with people who didn’t have a lot of money, but did a lot of traveling and other fun things, that I began learning how to live a better life. Luxurious in a different way. And not expensive by any stretch.

Also, for the record, I wasted nearly all the money I made in my 20s. Although I was smart enough to seed a 401k and other retirement accounts which will suit me well in 30 years.

OK, so that’s a bit of a cop out answer, isn’t it? So here’s my direct answer: if money was of absolutely no concern I wouldn’t spend any time figuring out how to pay for my sometimes wacky ideas (Roller Coaster Tour, for example). I would also buy a large piece of land and build a camp for friends/family to use. I’m actively trying to make this happen right now, and there are many hurdles. Mostly the cost of nice land and getting other people on board since I can’t bankroll it all myself. (Also, I’m currently not in the US which throws another kink in the situation.) This is still kind of a non-answer because I still do the things I want to do: travel, read, think, build things when I can, take lots of time for myself. All being rich does is solve the money problem. But solving the money problem is part of the journey of doing fun things and I don’t know that I’d appreciate life if that problem wasn’t there. (I readily admit this may just be a rationalization.)

So, onto Reddit. There were lots of answers to this question as it was quite a popular thread. Let’s get to it.

The luxury of time

This one is pretty simple. Not easy, but simple.

• Get out of debt.
• Stop spending time and money on wants.
• Save more.
• Earn more.

These can be done concurrently.

Why does this give you the luxury of time?

Because when you’re not in debt you’re not forced to work more than you want to. When you stop spending time and money on wants (as opposed to needs) you have more time and money for yourself. And when you save money you can pay people to take care of the needs (cleaning your home and cooking, for example) that you don’t enjoy doing or you feel are a waste of your time.

Earning more is actually optional at this point. Though if you earn more it can obviously expedite your buying of time.

Traveling where I want when I want. Being able to just jump on a plane go somewhere without plans and just get a hotel without reservations.

I get this. This is almost my idea of absolute freedom. Except that I’ve travelled like this and wouldn’t like it full time. I suspect you wouldn’t either. I do like this style of travel every once in a while because it’s incredibly fun. So, again, I get this. (Actually, our honeymoon was, “Let’s go to the train station and take the next train leaving to somewhere we’ve never been.” I live in Poland right now and we have an extensive rail network.)

Here is how you can make this happen, although it has limits and I admit that. By doing it this way you will be able to test it out and see if you even enjoy traveling in this manner. Maybe you’re more of a planner than you thought.

Sign up for airline and hotel credit cards that have signup bonuses.

Gather enough bonus points from them to take you anywhere you want for a week. I think 100k (OneWorld or Star Alliance) airline miles should do it. Likely less, but I’ve never booked with points on a whim and am unsure if there are extra costs involved. I’m not sure exactly how many hotel points you’ll need, but it’s easy to figure out on the relevant hotel’s website.

That’s it. Only one real step and a bit of time.

To sustain this lifestyle will take a bit more work, but you could still do it with credit card points if you work hard at it. There are people who devote a lot more time to airline miles than me so just use Google and find them.

Not having a job.

OK, this one’s a bit more difficult. I could just say “quit, go on welfare” but I don’t think that’s practical.

That said, maybe it is. See, all you said was you didn’t want a job. So what do you have to take care of? Food, clothing, and shelter.

Shelter is possibly most difficult. While you still have a job, buy a bicycle and a tent. My friend Darren travels the world living like this, but you could do it by staying closer to home.

Next, food, clothing, and other things. Dumpster dive.

Yes, I’m serious.

Check out how much free food Rob Greenfield eats. It’s incredible.

Then check out Matt Malone who dumpster dives for electronics and sells what he finds, earning tens of thousands of dollars. That takes care of your clothing and other expenses. Possibly even enough for an apartment.

You could argue that this is a job. I would argue that I’m solving your problem and since you won’t be earning a paycheck it’s not a job. You could argue you don’t want to dumpster dive. I could argue, OK, that’s fine, me neither. But I don’t mind working.

Elaborate practical jokes. I’d hire 5,000 people, give them each $1000 to spend in a Walmart store and just buy everything on the shelves. A week later, after the store has replaced all their inventory with new merchandise, send all 5,000 people back to return everything they bought.

This isn’t nice. But let’s get my morality out of here!

If you really want to do this you only temporarily need $5,000,000 (5,000 x $1,000) since you’re returning all the merchandise. So the real problem is not that you’re not rich. The problem is you need to borrow $5MM.

To be honest, all my ideas for borrowing $5MM are only speculative and I don’t have a good answer. I just wanted to reframe your problem. This is a creativity problem, not a wealth problem.

Conducting large scale very expensive science and social experiments. Is it possible to cause rain by boiling massive amounts of water? What happens if every resident in the most crime ridden communities receives $1000 a week for 5 years?

You’re misunderstanding how and why it rains although I wouldn’t mind seeing you attempt to boil the water out of a lake (or even a pool) just for laughs. As for the other, fair enough you’ll need to be quite wealthy for that one. That’s $260,000 ($52k x 5) per resident. For a fairly small crime ridden community such as Flint, MI you will need $25,938,380,000 (99,763 residents x $260,000). There are only a few humans with that kind of wealth so you’ll have to consult with them as to how to make that much money.

Extensive travel and super high end dining.

See previous answer about travel and credit card points. The super high end dining isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but I can understand why you’d want to try it. If you can save $2,000 (5 meals x $400) for your next trip and use credit card points to pay for the trip you can use the $2k to experience the high end dining instead of what you’d normally spend on flights/hotels. Massage the number as you see fit. Not every high end dining experience is $400. Some are more, some are less. Do it how you want.

I don’t feel like doing (whatever). I’ll pay some chump to do it.

Not the best attitude, but let’s ignore that.

See previous answer about the luxury of time. It’s simpler than you think to “pay some chump to do it.”

Handmade clothes. All clothes I own are tailored especially to fit me out of my preferred fabrics. I can grab anything out of my drawers and it all looks good together.

Let’s tackle the latter part of this first. If you want all your clothes to mix and match it has nothing to do with if they’re handmade and tailored to your body. But let’s ignore that and get to the handmade tailored clothes situation.

Let’s go with 1 suit ($2k), a pair of dress shoes ($300-500), and 7 tailored shirts ($100-500 each). This can all be had for a few thousand dollars, depending on your preferences. So, save up $5,000 and you’re likely good. Especially if you fly to Thailand on your credit card points to do it.

I’m ignoring casual clothing, but it’s easier to find well fitting casual clothing than it is nice work/dress attire.

So from the time I was a wee lad I always wanted a blimp. My family has joked about this enough that being super rich in our house is referred to as “blimp money.”

Hehe. You can lease one for $2,000 – $10,000 per month, which includes 8-64 hours of flight time per month. So now your new problem is coming up with an extra $2k/month. This is doable in myriad ways. I don’t know what that looks like for you specifically but it can be done. And you don’t need to be wealthy, just willing to throw away $24k+ per year. At which point you’ll probably get bored of having a blimp because it’s not going to impress anybody as much as you seem to think so. (I didn’t include the commenter’s whole message about impressing a girl because it was too long so read it on Reddit.)

A home theater. Screw mansions, cars or any of that stuff. All I want is a really nice home theater to watch movies. If I was rich I wouldn’t even buy a house. I’d buy an old theater and convert an upstairs floor into living space.

This took a turn from “home theater” to “non-home theater.” Being rich won’t help you figure out what you want, but it will allow you to have both.

Home theater: this is open ended, but it can be nicely done for a few thousand dollars. I’m not going to break it all down because it is so open ended. But you can likely already afford this.

As for buying an old theater, this is more difficult. Because first you have to find an old theater for sale. You can find them for about a million dollars right here. That won’t be easy, but it is doable. Especially since you can take a business loan out for one of these if you’re going to run it as a working theater. Maybe don’t tell anybody you’re living there though.

Paying for my parents’ retirement

This is a simple math problem. Your parents are going to get social security benefits which will cover something. The rest depends on lifestyle (and whether your parents already own a home), but you won’t need to be rich to take care of this if you want to. The biggest expense will likely be medical, but it’s too variable to determine without any more information.

Not working. I couldn’t care less about the luxury shit, I just want to not work.

Answered above. You could get by without working if you really wanted to.

If I was SUPER rich I always loved the idea of just going to random houses/families and giving them X amount of money. Nothing huge but enough to make their year somewhat easier. $20,000? Would be worth it to see their reactions.

This is one of those things where, yes, if you want to give $20k to random people on a regular basis then you’re going to need to be rich. But! If you want to know how this might feel you can start with $100. I never mentioned this story before, but just before christmas some time ago (I was 25 or 26 at the time) I got a handful of $100 bills ($500 total), went to a Goodwill thrift store, and handed them out to people who were buying toys. My rationale was if someone is doing their holiday toy shopping at a thrift store then they’ll probably appreciate an extra hundred bucks. It was interesting. The smiles and thank yous were great, but it didn’t actually personally feel as good as I had imagined. It actually felt awkward for me, but that may be due to my social anxiety at the time.

Conclusion

I’m now down to Reddit comments with less than 1,000 upvotes so I’m going to stop here. A lot of these “I wish I was rich” fantasies are far more obtainable than you might’ve imagined. Hopefully this got you thinking about how to create the life you want to lead instead of continually fantasizing about the life you don’t have.

If you’ve known me for any length of time you know I have no tolerance for quackery and lies. But my biggest problem with homeopathy, astrology, reiki, psychics, “healers,” et al. is not the lies and thievery. My problem isn’t even that a lot of these beliefs can actively cause you and your loved ones harm.

My problem is that smart people waste their time debunking the quackery, thereby taking time away from doing work that could further society. We know data doesn’t often work to convince people of something they don’t already agree with — and may even make people dig their heels in further on false beliefs — so it’s mostly all for naught.

If, for example, you have the patently wrong belief that vaccines cause autism or other medical issues then the data isn’t going to change your mind. You already know the data. But you listen to Jenny McCarthy. Sadly, my pointing this out is likely causing you to stick to your beliefs more strongly.

And so it goes as more people waste time trying to save you from yourself.

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If you’re interested in inoculating yourself against irrational thinking I give my strongest recommendation to Your Deceptive Mind by Dr. Steven Novella: http://amzn.to/1EG5m7i

I have listened to this 24-part lecture nearly 5 times since late 2014. I thought I was a decent critical thinker, but I had and still have a lot to learn. Your Deceptive Mind has helped me become more empathetic towards, as well as more vigilant against, quacks of all types.

I mostly use my “before going to sleep” and “eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner” times to listen to podcasts. I think one of the good aspects of owning a car or having a commute to work is one has dead time that can be used productively. I don’t have that. And before I made this list I didn’t think I listened to a lot of podcasts. I was wrong. There are two handfuls that I find consistently interesting and then a bunch more that I listen to in varying degrees of regularity.

My podcast listening is mostly skewed towards comedy and science. As much as I enjoy business and marketing I process that kind of information better via books and blogs.

With that I bring you, in no particular order, several podcasts you should check out if you haven’t already. (All links open in a new window.)

StarTalk Radio

StarTalk Radio is by far, without a doubt, my favorite podcast. If I could only listen to one this would be it. The subtitle of this show should be, “educate yourself out of ignorance.” Which I guess is kind of redundant since education often leads to intelligence and, let’s say, anti-ignorance.

Even if you hate science Neil deGrasse Tyson’s voice is so amazing he will lull you into a trance like few people can. Then he’ll hit you with knowledge bombs left, right, and center and you’ll never be the same.

I’ve listened to every episode of this show. I think it’s the only podcast I can say that for.

I highly recommend this one if you believe in astrology or crystal healing or anything of its ilk. Mr. Tyson is an astronomer — let’s get technical, he’s an astrophysicist — and will quickly, kindly, and non-judgmentally steer your mind happily towards the truth.

Doug Stanhope’s Podcast

Mr. Stanhope is vulgar, politically incorrect, and funny. He’s also often drunk or at least pretending to be. I’m a Louis CK fan as much as the next person, but Stanhope takes “did he really just say that out loud?” to a new level. (So does Jim Jefferies, but Jefferies doesn’t have a podcast.)

Freakonomics Radio

I’ve not read the Freakonomics books yet, though I probably should if the podcast is any indication of the quality of the books. They take a rational, measured, approach to such diverse topics as, “Does religion make you happy?” and “The upside of quitting.”

Skeptoid

This one is tough to recommend. It’s a fantastic podcast. But the creator, Brian Dunning, recently started serving a 15 month prison sentence on federal charges related to illicitly making a few million dollars with the eBay affiliate program nearly 10 years ago. It now has a new host. And it’s still good.

Improv For Humans

This is a recent find and a fun listen. I’ve never done improv, but I love the idea of it. Creating funny on the spot isn’t easy, but Matt Besser and friends do it consistently.

Tiny House Chat

More on this topic in 2015. But if you’re interested in tiny houses and simplicity this is the podcast for you.

Probably Science

This is what I wish I had created with the now-in-limbo Effin’ With podcast. I like that the hosts don’t pretend to know what they don’t know. The tagline is, “Four professional comedians/incompetent scientists take you through this week in science. Incompetently.”

WTF with Marc Maron

I’ve been listening to this one since September of 2009. I had just arrived in Sydney, Australia on my first solo international trip and was looking for stuff to listen to while riding the metro. Back in those days Maron begged for money on every episode (I donated) and now he has a successful TV show and supposedly earns upwards of $20k per podcast episode via advertising. I stopped listening for a while a year or two ago, but started listening again this year. He’s a great interviewer and in 10 years will probably be Larry King level as far as respect goes. (Though Larry King is one of the worst interviewers I can name so not sure why he gets that respect.)

RadioLab

It seems everybody I know already knows RadioLab, but if you don’t well now you do. It’s probably the most interestingly edited podcast around and it will keep you thoroughly engaged.

Others

There are a bunch of other podcasts I listen to as well, though with more irregularity. Some of that may be due to the fact that they’re not regularly updated. Let’s call these honorable mentions.

– No Meat Athlete Radio (I listen to most of these. It’s definitely for you if you’re into plant-based fitness.)

– Tropical MBA (As I already mentioned, I don’t regularly listen to business or marketing podcasts, but I promise this one is worth your 30 minutes. I don’t quite listen to every episode, but I listen often.)

– Doug Loves Movies (I’m not a movie buff, but if the guests are good I’ll listen.)

– Brain Science Podcast (I love this, but I’ve only listened to about 5 episodes thus far.)

– Serial (This is a new one and an interesting form of journalism.)

– Wits (Mostly an improv comedy podcast. It’s good but I prefer the aforementioned Improv For Humans.)

– The Champs (White guys who only have black guests on the show. Often funny.)

– The James Altucher Show (I’ve only listened to a few, but they were good. Except the Biz Markie episode, oh goodness.)

When I look at it like this it seems like I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts, but it’s about 30 minutes per day plus a comedy podcast as I’m falling asleep. (I don’t often re-listen to the parts I missed after falling asleep.)

Based on what you’ve seen here if there’s a podcast you think I should listen to please share it in the comments.

My friend Neil and I just hosted the first 48 Hour eBook Challenge so, in this case, a better question is, “could you write an eBook in 48 hours?”

Sometime last year self-publishing superstar JA Konrath posted an 8 Hour eBook Challenge on his blog. While I knew it would be possible for me to write and publish something in 8 hours, I didn’t participate for a myriad reasons, but the idea stayed top of mind. Maybe because I love doing work sprints, which are incredibly taxing, but also incredibly rewarding.

You’ll recall I wrote and published an eBook/audiobook in 96 hours about 2 months ago. That was also inspired by JA Konrath. But I thought I could one-up my own challenge even if I couldn’t quite reach 8 hours.

48 hours sounded good to me. It’s just one weekend. There are a lot worse things I could do in a weekend. And most weekends I don’t accomplish anything of merit at all.

So Neil and I brainstormed how it would work, created a Facebook event a couple weeks in advance of our set date, and invited some folks.

As you can probably guess based on how humans are, although a handful were interested, nobody showed up. Oh well! Neil and I got to work anyway.

In case you want to do your own 48 hour eBook Challenge this is what I learned and what I suggest. Don’t use it as the only way, use it as a guideline.

Write about something you know.

In other words, something that won’t require much research time.

I had three ideas going into Friday night’s first work session. I wanted to write a new book on minimalism, because I’m not happy with The Luxury of Less. I also wanted to write a book on vegan/vegetarian-ism that’s not preachy and not based on pseudoscience. But upon reflection I knew it would take much more than 48 hours to do either of those books justice.

A few hours before we began I finally decided on a topic, how to get free press passes when traveling, which gives you free access to most tourist attractions. It’s something I’ve done only twice, but I’ve also only tried twice and I know it works. That makes me more of an expert than most people on this topic and it’s something that isn’t complex. I could write less than 10,000 words and it would be enough for someone to go out and do it themselves.

Press pass hint: keep your pitch short and to the point — what can you offer? — when e-mailing the tourist board you’re targeting.

Choose a comfortable place to work.

We could have done better on this point. We chose a great “art house” movie theatre that has WiFi, lots of decent food/coffee, and ample space to work. But there was a film festival going on so it was busy and noisy and the WiFi didn’t work most of the weekend (probably because of the thousands of festival-goers).

Get firm commitments from participants.

If I were to do it over I’d have only invited people who were willing to commit to renting a hotel room or office space and paid in advance.

Had we known it would be just Neil and I we might have done the challenge at one of our respective flats. As it was we were looking for a larger place to work and since nobody showed up we didn’t need it. We were thinking too much about their comfort assuming they were humans of their word. We decided to go through with the original plan and stick with the movie theatre anyway. We didn’t plan out anything else and time spent on searching at that point would have been time not spent writing. (We ran into this issue a bit on Saturday evening when we decided the theatre wasn’t working and spent the better part of an hour looking for an alternative.)

I know full well about the terrible human tendency to break commitments and yet it seems to surprise me every time. There’s a lesson in there about not holding other people to my standards, but I digress …

Plan out food and breaks in advance.

If I were to do this again I’d plan the specific foods/restaurants I would eat. Maybe even plan a food delivery schedule in advance. Mostly I ate at the theatre’s bistro, which has a few vegan & vegetarian choices, but one can only eat so many salads and sandwiches. Actually, I didn’t consume enough calories at all and should have eaten more salads and sandwiches. I was too busy writing a book to worry about silly foodstuffs!

I was also bad at taking short breaks. Neil had a 45 minute timer set. But I’d work through for 2-3 hours before standing up and taking a breather. That said, I think for a work sprint of this magnitude that might be a necessity. If I’m tearing through my writing it’s not helpful to stop, get off track, and then try to get back into the flow.

Get enough sleep.

Doing a project like this is exhausting and feeling rested helps. I got about 7 hours of sleep each night, which was OK. Preferably, I would have scheduled a couple 20 minute naps as well.

Focus on what matters.

What matters is your content. Is what you’re writing about good enough to get the point across? Good. You’re not looking to win awards here. This is not a literary competition. This is about writing about something you know and sharing it with the world. Don’t waste time fixing sentences that aren’t perfect. They won’t be perfect. Write!

Brainstorm / write on Friday night.

I spent the first hour or so with pen & paper writing out notes and key points I wanted to cover in the book. Then I fired up Scrivener and copied each main point into a new chapter along with its relevant notes. I’d barely written anything and already had the skeleton of a book!

Note: I highly recommend you use Scrivener for your challenge. If you don’t want to spend the $45 (it’s worth it) just use their 30 day trial. It’ll save you lots of headaches during formatting.

From there I simply started at the introduction and worked my way through each chapter. By the end of the night — 11pm in this case — I had 2,332 words written. My goal for the night had been 1,000 words, but I now realize that 2,000 is a much better goal for the short Friday night session so I’m glad it worked out like that.

Write, write, and write some more on Saturday.

That’s it. Finish all your main writing today. Don’t worry about editing. Write as clearly as you can, of course, but don’t try to be perfect.

You want to get about 5,000 words written during the extended Saturday session for a 2 day total of 7,000 or so. I didn’t hit my 5,000 word goal — more like 4,500 — because I felt I had written enough detail about everything I wanted to cover and I hate adding fluff. After edits my book ended up at about 6,500 words.

Edit / design / format on Sunday.

Besides editing you have to remember that you’ll need to design a cover (use Canva.com‘s Kindle cover template if you’re not a designer) and format for Kindle (Scrivener makes this easy). That’s why you want to finish writing on Saturday. Spend the first 4-5 hours of your Sunday editing/fixing and set a hard, “OK, I’m done” deadline. Then move on to designing the cover (it won’t be great, that’s OK) and formatting for Kindle.

If you’ve never done any graphic design spend an hour or two going through the Canva tutorials prior to your 48 hour challenge. I would also recommend you go through Scrivener tutorials prior to your 48 hour challenge as well.

Don’t get discouraged.

It’s difficult writing a short eBook in a weekend. Don’t think otherwise. But don’t get discouraged if it’s not coming along well. Take a break when you need to and get back to it. I find setting hard goals helps me, but you do whatever helps you.

Use bits of “non-thinking” time for other tasks.

If you’re having issues writing or if you’re feeling discouraged use that time for other tasks like the cover design and the Kindle formatting. I started my cover design on Saturday when I had a brief period of, “I think this is all I have to say on this topic, but it doesn’t feel quite done yet.” I didn’t get far into designing the cover before I had more thoughts to write.

The Goal Is To Ship

That’s it. The goal isn’t to make a lot of money. And the goal isn’t to write the end-all be-all book about your topic. The goal is to write and publish a short eBook. Maybe the goal is also to prove to yourself you can do something that you didn’t think you could do.

If you’re not happy with your book after publishing it you can make it better at a later date. Though I recommend taking some time off from the topic and letting your thoughts percolate before doing that.

Want To Write Your Own eBook In 48 Hours?

Good! Go, go, go!

When you’re done post in the comments about how it went and what you learned and I’ll send you a copy of my own 48 hour ebook.

Everybody who knows me knows I hate running long distances.

That’s not to say I don’t like being fit.

I grew up in a time, in a place, and with a group of peers, who played every sport. If you weren’t good at everything you were good for nothing because from day-to-day nobody knew what we’d decide to play.

As a youngster I played Little League baseball, basketball, track (100m, 200m, long jump), tennis, street hockey (have a half-fake front tooth to show for it), and ‘murican football. (I played organized futbol for 1 year, but didn’t like it. Too much running, probably.)

Until I was about 14 I probably didn’t go a day without picking up a basketball or doing some other physical activity.

But I hated running.

Short distances? I was one of the fastest.

Long distances? One time when our basketball coach told us we’d be running a mile to start practice I said, “Uhh, not me.” And I mostly walked it. When our track coach would ask us to run 400m or do anything I considered a “long” run, I’d coast, knowing that it wasn’t “my” run.

On the basketball court my lungs failed like clockwork. After a few minutes of sprints up and down the court I’d start breathing heavy and have to hang back on defense for a play. “There go his lungs!” The burning was endless.

I told myself I “just didn’t have the lungs” for distance running. I needed breaks.

Lungs weren’t the only problem. Sometime in high school I went to a podiatrist because of an ingrown toenail and he said I had hammer toes. But they weren’t bad enough for surgery yet so I began wearing orthotics.

By the time my 20s rolled around I’d almost entirely stopped playing sports, except pickup basketball here and there. I still worked out (like riding my bike or doing the Insanity program), but I refused to do things I didn’t enjoy.

When I’d see people running I’d think, “Why? What’s the point? You look bored out of your mind and you need that iPod to keep you going. Stop putting yourself through that torture.”

I had a short-lived change of heart in 2010 after I read the book Born To Run and I did a little beach running in Goa, India before hurting my knee. “I’ll rest and try again, maybe.”

A few months later I decided to run a 5k because it was held on a unique date. I’ll always know where I was on 10/10/10 at 10am. (They should’ve stayed on theme and made it 10k, huh?) I barely trained (because training involves running) and finished in 34 minutes, one of the slowest times of that race.

That 5k convinced me I was not a runner. You might be Born To Run, but I’m surely not.

The years passed and I saw friends do crazy stuff like run full marathons without training. Or run 100 miles straight. It was fun to see what people could do, but at the same time, “nope, not for me.”

Finally, back in November — after being inspired by Matt’s book — I started a little Facebook group called, “I hate running, let’s run!” to train for a 5k. With a little support group and the knowledge that I was doing it because I hated it, I went at it.

By the time training for the 5k ended I began to enjoy myself. And I was able to run 5k in around 30 minutes, 4 minutes faster than in 2010. Not great, but not bad.

“Wow, this running thing’s kind of fun!”

“Hmm, I wonder if I can run a bit further.”

I looked around for half or full marathons and found the Reykjavik night half and the Wrocław night half both in mid-June. Being a night person who doesn’t normally go to bed before 2 or 3 in the morning these night half marathons felt perfect.

I’ve always wanted to visit Iceland, but after a few weeks of indecision I registered for the local race.

I followed Matt’s training plan and — although I took 16 days off to travel around Japan in March — it went well. Every Saturday for my long run I’d think, “I can’t do this,” but then I’d do it and it would’t be so bad.

Until the 10 miler. It was pouring rain that night and it wasn’t a particularly fun run. Then during the 11 miler the week after I got the dreaded runner’s black toenail and my feet/legs never fully recovered. Every run after that, even the shorter runs, was painful.

But at that point, with just 2 weeks until the half, I knew I’d reach my goals when the time came to run nearly 21km (13.1 miles). Those goals were simple: 1) Don’t walk. 2) Finish.

And that was that. Race Saturday rolled in and I came in at a leisurely 2:16:01. The last couple kilometers were painful and I couldn’t walk well on Sunday, but I finished. (I drank too much pre-race and had to pee break at the 12km mark, but I never walked so I consider my goals completed.)

I’m thrilled I did it, but with that, my long distance running career is over.*

Even so, you know what?

I don’t hate running, after all.

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*Kind of. In a few weeks I’m doing a self-paced sprint distance triathlon. Because I hate swimming too.

Human beings believe a lot of funny things.

For example, of the 9,535 reported deaths in London in the year 1632, thirteen (13) of them were allegedly caused by Planet.¹

As in, “the planets were aligned” or “misaligned” or “Mercury was in retrograde.”

This “death by Planet” belief was thanks to the pseudoscience of astrology, which was popular and accepted as fact at the time. Court astrologer was an official position. Queen Elizabeth I even had her own personal astrologer. A man, John Dee, who was basically paid to make stuff up.

If you’re out of work there are lots of well-paid jobs still available in this “make stuff up and get paid” field. See: Deepak Chopra, who earns millions peddling his own charlatanous brand of misinformation and baloney.

And, of course, two of the big beliefs from our past:
– The Earth is flat.
– The Sun revolves around the Earth.

You don’t believe any of that now because you know better. Because we’ve learned some things that our ancestors did not know.

As a result, we think those formerly normal beliefs are silly now.

The more mistakes we make the more we learn. The more we keep fearlessly making mistakes and learning from them the more we’re going to look silly to the people of Earth 2414CE. Just like the beliefs people had 400 years ago make those people look silly to us today.

Which brings me to:

What beliefs do you or I hold today that are going to make future generations think we were idiots?

I can hypothesize a few. You?

———-

¹ Thanks to John Gaunt’s vital statistics work in the 1600s for the data.

Popular opinion seems to skew towards the benefits of surrounding yourself with positivity.

Meaning, surround yourself with people who tell you things like this:

• “You can do anything you put your mind to!”
• “You should do whatever you want, who cares what anyone else thinks!”
• “Those people don’t like what you’re saying/doing because they’re haters.”
• “You’re so amazing. There is nothing at all wrong with what you’re doing or the way you’re doing it. You’re just perfect.”
• “Everything happens for a reason. Whatever happens happens. Don’t worry about it. It will happen the way it’s supposed to.”

But that’s akin to surrounding yourself with “yes men.” History has numerous examples to prove this is not a good idea.

You probably agree as well when you’re looking at it from an objective point of view that doesn’t involve you and your ego.

A better idea, and unfortunately not popular opinion, is to surround yourself with honesty. It’s a rare trait in a friend or colleague and, as a result, much more valuable. Most people are afraid to be honest with you. (Maybe even that person who tells you they’re being honest with you.)

When you find someone who isn’t afraid to tell you the truth cherish them. You don’t have to agree with them. You don’t have to act on what they tell you. But listen, cherish, and appreciate them. They’re helping you more than the yes men.