Internet motivation and self-help

Can one realistically juggle all of this?

When I started college, I discovered self-help books.  At the time, it was a revelation. Suddenly, books appeared with solutions to every problem or issue I could possibly have. I soon learned the same thing most learn–once you’ve read a dozen self-help books, attrition kicks in. Once you’ve read a dozen, you’ve just about read them all. That said, it would be great if everyone could read those first dozen.

Self-help EXPLODES on the internet. I am barraged on a daily basis with advice from people I have never met. If you thought of our society as one huge tribe, it’s as though there are thousands of self-appointed wise men who dispense blanket advice through their blogs. It’s meant to be helpful. At some point, it only serves to remind us of all the things we’re not doing, why we have not yet attained perfection. Here is a good example, from Seth Godin:

1. Delete 120 minutes a day of ‘spare time’ from your life. This can include TV, reading the newspaper, commuting, wasting time in social networks and meetings. Up to you.
2. Spend the 120 minutes doing this instead:
0.    Exercise for thirty minutes.
0.    Read relevant non-fiction (trade magazines, journals, business books, blogs, etc.)
0.    Send three thank you notes.
0.    Learn new digital techniques (spreadsheet macros, Firefox shortcuts, productivity tools, graphic design, html coding)
0.    Volunteer.
0.    Blog for five minutes about something you learned.
0.    Give a speech once a month about something you don’t currently know a lot about.
3. Spend at least one weekend day doing absolutely nothing but being with people you love.
4. Only spend money, for one year, on things you absolutely need to get by. Save the rest, relentlessly.

Theoretically, this is all good advice, but why the seemingly arbitrary quantities (three months, one year, one weekend day, five minutes, thirty minutes)? When you realistically consider implementing this, isn’t it a little insane?

Here’s more. I read it at my pal David MacGregor’s blog.

The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School
by Michael McDonough

1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
Talent is important in any profession, but it is no guarantee of success. Hard work and luck are equally important. Hard work means self-discipline and sacrifice. Luck means, among other things, access to power, whether it is social contacts or money or timing. In fact, if you are not very talented, you can still succeed by emphasizing the other two. If you think I am wrong, just look around.

2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
Only 5 percent is actually, in some simplistic way, fun. In school that is what you focus on; it is 100 percent fun. Tick-tock. In real life, most of the time there is paper work, drafting boring stuff, fact-checking, negotiating, selling, collecting money, paying taxes, and so forth. If you don’t learn to love the boring, aggravating, and stupid parts of your profession and perform them with diligence and care, you will never succeed.

3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
You hear a lot about details, from “Don’t sweat the details” to “God is in the details.” Both are true, but with a very important explanation: hierarchy. You must decide what is important, and then attend to it first and foremost. Everything is important, yes. But not everything is equally important. A very successful real estate person taught me this. He told me, “Watch King Rat. You’ll get it.”

4. Don’t over-think a problem.
One time when I was in graduate school, the late, great Steven Izenour said to me, after only a week or so into a ten-week problem, “OK, you solved it. Now draw it up.” Every other critic I ever had always tried to complicate and prolong a problem when, in fact, it had already been solved. Designers are obsessive by nature. This was a revelation. Sometimes you just hit it. The thing is done. Move on.

5. Start with what you know; then remove the unknowns.

6. Don’t forget your goal.

7. When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance.

8. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; or, no good deed goes unpunished.

9. It all comes down to output.

10. The rest of the world counts.

This is all good advice, but #2 really stuck with me.”Any” creative profession? What credibility does he have in speaking for other creative professions, in other positions, in other disciplines, in other cultures? Also: “…or your will never succeed.” We learn that a writer must assume a tone of authority to win a reader’s confidence, but this seems a bit over-arching. How can he say this to people he has never met? 95%!? 95% of this relatively famous guy’s job is “shit work?” Why in God’s name is he spending 95% of his time on “shit work?” Where does this 95% figure come from?

My responses to this reminds me of a story about Gerry Spence, the famous trial lawyer, an excellent photographer, and author of some motivational books himself. I wrote him a blind email after seeing his book in the lobby of the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He looked like a hell of a guy, but I had no idea he was this ridiculously successful lawyer. I wrote asking if I go around with him in the West for a spell to absorb some landscape photography know-how and general life wisdom. He wrote back in a sentence, saying something like, “Sorry pal, no can do–the best mentor I ever had was myself.”

Like many people I know, I was positively addicted to this stuff for two or three years. But there’s a time when enough is enough, and it’s most prudent and wise to turn off the “wise men” and start listening to ourselves.