Reinventing Yourself
techcrunch.comI didn't like his book and I didn't like this post, mostly because it involves a lot of 'magic functions', black-box advice, and repeated (boring) information. Most of this self-help stuff can be abstracted out to "Discipline, Knowledge, Connections, Capital", plus or minus a few things depending on the field.
Do you need an echo chamber of motivation to keep yourself motivated? That's fine! I think there's a real and useful effect to doing that.
I'm put off by things like this in this (and other's) post, however:
- Everything is a mentor. $METAPHORS
- When can you say, “I do X!” where X is your new career? Today. (Don't lie to yourself. Find out the requirements to get started and go do them. Painter? Buy paint and canvas. Now you're a painter. Programmer? Install the language and a text editor, compile a program. Now you're a programmer. Doctor? Yeah, don't lie to yourself; you need a bit more for that. Some titles are worth the wait and the work)
- Reinvention will boost every healthy chemical in your body: serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin. (A scientific claim. Is there data to support this? Where is it?)
- What if I’m shy? Make your weaknesses your strengths. Introverts listen better, focus better, and have ways of being more endearing. (As I was corrected by someone else a while ago, introversion != shyness)
- What if I get depressed? Sit in silence for one hour a day. You need to get back to your core. If you think this sounds stupid then don’t do it. Stay depressed. (Or, get advice from someone that's qualified to treat depression or other mood disorders. If an hour of quiet time fixes it, it probably wasn't depression.)
Disclaimer: I'm not financially successful.
Ah, self help tripe. A world in which the experiences of one person are assumed to be universal, and where depression can be solved by sitting in silence for one hour.
Congratulations on your blog post/book full of platitudes and cliché. I hope this is not the height of your accomplishment. When you're done being dismissive of the struggles of others, I hope you can write a book about humility.
As a generally happy and content person in the middle of a "reinvention", even I found this post absurd.
Absurd how?
Absurd in that this Tech Crunch article reads like something out of Elite Daily. Feelgood, relatable, information sushi which isn't even that fresh.
To people who are actually in that process, this seems like regurgitating the obvious. Imagine if there was an article in the Scientific American that consisted of a list of 100 items on "How to do Science", among which are "Keep pen and paper ready, you might have to write stuff down" or "The process can take several years, depending on what kind of science you do" or even "Don't give up if science seems hard to you". That'd be really, really absurd. Technically every fact is right, but really, really absurd.
If the article is to be trusted on the general timeline (yay, I'm almost hitting year 5...so where's my cash?), at any point after year 3, it'll be absolutely useless. After 5, you'll be wary of those who promise you pies in the sky, through reinvention, or reincarnation, or rekindling of your chi.
"Take your favorite author and type your favorite story of his word for word. Wonder to yourself why he wrote each word. He’s your mentor today."
Good idea. Unfortunately my favorite story is Lord of the Rings, which is too long to type, but I suppose I could type out a chapter. But for now I will be satisfied with a quote:
"If more of us valued food and cheer above hoarded gold, it would be a much merrier world."
Depends on how serious you are about learning to write well.
The Lord of the Rings is 473k words. [1] If you type it out at 50 wpm, that's 157 hours, or about four work-weeks of typing.
That's a lot if you're just fucking around. But if your goal is to write your own successful epic, burning a month or three on really thinking closely about each word is a reasonable investment against the 5 or so years you'd spend writing that epic.
Nope, that's from the Hobbit. And there's no "much" if memory serves right.
Thank you Marcus! I was wondering when someone would catch that. Funny story: when I wrote the comment, I really wanted the (from memory) "All they did was eat and rest and walk among the trees, and it was enough." (Which is from the Lothlorien chapter). However, I couldn't find the exact quote (still can't) so I didn't want to post a wrong quote. Which meant I searched for "tolkien quotes" and this one jumped out at me. Knowing it was from the Hobbit, I wondered if and who would correct me.
I feel like I should mail you a beer or something.
Right, spare time working 16 hours a day...
Also, you can't just reject your brain. It's not a tool, it is the boat in which YOU sail. If you treat it like the enemy, like a piece of shit you hate, you will be on the losing side, you will drown. The only way is to learn how it works and take control of it, slowly and methodically...
Fantastic if "reinvent yourself" is supposed to mean "become a doormat for investors and VCs".
It takes five years and a studied lack of passion to fake being good enough to make money from it. It takes a lifetime and genuine passion to be good enough to advance the state of your art.
The post could apply to any path you wish to undertake, not just the the ones that seem obvious to us.
Stereotypical judging of others and self-promotion does not equal a cheat sheet for reinventing yourself.
James Altucher is a badass
I'm as weary of motivational writing as the next person, but I thought this was unusually full of actual good ideas. As just one example, it offers a framework for understanding why I feel so frustrated: I'm only in year one.