Steve Pavlina’s book Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth is still over a month away from its release. If you haven’t heard of this book yet, you can read my Personal Development for Smart People pre-review. The quick summary is that it’s about the seven core principles of personal development (truth, love, power, oneness, authority, courage, and intelligence), and how they form a holistic framework for solving any problem in your health, career, finances, relationships, etc.

As a little appetizer while we wait, Steve has released a free PDF containing the introduction and first chapter. He says that while the PDF lacks the formatting and page design of the printed book, the content is the same. (But I have to wonder if they fixed the typo in the first paragraph.)

The first part of the book (chapters 1-7) is about the theory of the principles, and the second part (chapters 8-13) is about their practical application. The free chapter in the PDF (chapter 1) is about truth, which is one of the seven core principles and also one of the three primary principles. He talks about the five key components of truth, the blocks that prevent alignment with truth, and how to become more truthful.

I found it very interesting, especially what he says about 7s (when you rate areas of your life from 1-10). And it ends with a great poem for people like me, who don’t like poems.

The free PDF is definitely worth a read. If you like it you can pre-order it now, and it will ship when it’s released on October 15th. The list price is $24.95, and the current price on Amazon is $16.47. If the price drops before it’s released, Amazon guarantees you the lowest price.

So what are you waiting for? Do you want to be aligned with truth or not?

Photo by Editor B

It’s supposed to cost 59 cents to mail a 6″ x 9″ envelope between 1 and 2 ounces. But every once in a while, one comes back to me for 20 cents of additional postage. So I take it to the post office and ask them to check it, and they weigh it, and they make sure it fits through this slot, and they check with their supervisor, and they can’t understand why it came back to me.

Every time this happened, I got annoyed that I had to waste time getting them to fix their mistake. Until one day, a different person was working there, and she said it’s an extra 20 cents because it doesn’t bend. I wasn’t unlucky the few times it came back, I was lucky all the times it didn’t.

1. Sometimes bad luck is good luck in disguise.

2. Is it any wonder that we debate the Akashic records when modern science is incapable of calculating postage?

###

For an interesting read, try Chris Brogan’s new free ebook Personal Branding for the Business Professional. It’s 15 pages and contains “everything from strategy advice to some considerations to over 100 tactics and ideas on what to do next.” Lots of ideas, more than you have time to implement, but it will definitely get you thinking.

And NunoXEI found a Scott McCloud comic that explains Google Chrome. Fun, but technical.

Image from Scarface (1983)

1. The world doesn’t really care where you came from.

Don’t think that you need to have a certain background to make it to the top. If you’re lucky enough to be born in a free country, or you’re able to make it to one, you have a shot. You can be a political refugee with an accent, a scar, no money, no skills, and no connections, but you’re free to decide at any point to not let it hold you back.

2. The world can be yours…

Using nothing but street smarts and determination, Tony Montana achieved his vision of the American Dream. He had money, power, respect…everything he always wanted.

3. …but it comes at a price.

On the other hand, he was lucky to even survive long enough to get to that point, and it ended up costing him everything. Before you pursue something, know what the price is, and decide whether you’re willing to pay it. And don’t envy someone until you know what they’ve been through to get to where there are.

4. Don’t underestimate the other guy’s greed.

This was lesson number one from Frank Lopez, and Tony ignored it. If you’re standing in the way of someone who will stop at nothing in their fanatical pursuit of power, you might want to watch out for them.

5. Don’t get high on your own supply.

This was lesson number two from Frank Lopez, and Tony ignored it as well. Of course, literally staying off drugs is always a good idea (as well as moderating your consumption of alcohol and caffeine). But beyond that, you don’t want to get so absorbed in what you’re doing that you forget who you are.

6. The guys that last are the guys who fly straight. Low-key, quiet. But the guys who want it all, chicas, champagne, flash…they don’t last.

(You know, if Tony listened to Frank once in a while, things would have turned out very differently.) Don’t obsess about the pie in the sky. Stay focused and don’t get greedy, and you’ll win in the long run.

7. When you get involved with the wrong people, sometimes no decision is the right one.

Tony sealed his doom when he refused to carry out a hit after the target’s wife and two kids unexpectedly got in the car. He had to choose between sacrificing three innocent people and sacrificing himself. This is why you don’t want to work with people whose values are different from yours. There will be a conflict of interests at some point, and possibly no way out.

8. All you have in this world is your balls and your word—don’t break them for anyone.

This isn’t literally true—you have much more than that—but the point is to live by your own code of ethics. If a criminal can do it, then we certainly can too.

9. Every day above ground is a good day.

Be gracious for what you have. Very often we take things for granted until they’re gone.

10. Don’t kill your best friend for no reason.

Kind of an obvious lesson, but important nonetheless. Relationships that take years to build can take an instant to destroy, so don’t act hastily.

11. When people want to play rough, you can either say “I give up” or “Say hello to my little friend!”

Everyone faces seemingly unwinnable showdowns at some point. Sometimes surrender is the best option, and sometimes it isn’t. But if you’re going to make a stand, then really do it.

12. Be careful when naming something after something else.

Oliver Stone named Tony Montana after his favorite football player, Joe Montana. The problem is that giving him a non-Cuban name destroys the illusion of the movie. He might as well have called him Tony Navratilova or Tony Abdul-Jabbar. Other people might not have the same attachment to your creation’s namesake that you do. Keep this in mind before calling your company something like Joe Montana Software, because all that matters is what other people think of it.

13. If the rose smells sweet enough, someone will be willing to snip off the thorns.

Editing Scarface for network TV presented some serious challenges, most notably finding someone willing to dub out 226 f-words. But someone decided it was worth doing, and got it done.

14. Have a contingency plan.

In the final shootout, Al Pacino badly burned his hand by grabbing his gun by the barrel, and had to sit out for a few weeks. Fortunately, they were able to use this time somewhat productively by shooting a lot of footage of the other people in this scene. It could have been a lot worse. You want to identify your high-risk areas, do what you can to mitigate the risk, and know what you’ll do if things fall through.

Rated R for brief cocaine-fueled maniacal machine gun / grenade launcher violence.

Related reading: The Criminally-Minded Approach for Achieving Goals by Al at 7P. Al reminded me that I had this draft post sitting around collecting dust since January. Apparently I wrote a list post! Who’da thunk it?

Photo by Gaetan Lee

“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.” - Ecclesiastes 1:9

I see a lot of people complaining that there’s nothing new out there.

True, since the big bang, all we’ve done is rearrange the same subatomic particles that have always existed. A new baby’s DNA is just a mix of its parents’. Any new words we make up just come from the same 26 letters. There are only so many different storylines in all the books and movies in the world. Anything you will ever do in your life has already been done by billions of people before you.

So what?

When you see a naked woman, do you complain that it’s nothing new? For the ladies, when you see diamonds and shoes, do you think, “Oh crap, more diamonds and shoes?”

Why isn’t it sufficient for things to be “new enough?” There’s a big middle ground between “never before seen since the dawn of time” and “rehashed tripe.” What’s wrong with a reminder of something we haven’t thought about in a long time, or seeing something presented in a different way, or just getting more of something we haven’t had enough of yet?

Have we really gotten bored with everything the universe has to offer already?

Photo by Danard Vincente

Somewhere out there in a parallel universe, Herman Melville was born in 1976. In 2008, he completed his novel Moby-Dick, and took it to someone who he hoped would publish it online.

“Hi, I’m Herman.”

“Hello, Herman. I’m Stan.”

“Well Stan, I’ve got a novel here that I’m really proud of. I wanted to see what you think of it.”

“Alright Herman, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Stan grabbed the manuscript and started reading: “Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”

“No, no, no. This won’t do at all.”

Melville’s heart sank. “What do you mean? This is my masterpiece! It’s a deeply symbolic exploration of obsession, religion, idealism versus pragmatism, revenge, racism, hierarchical relationships, and politics!”

“Yeah, that’s all well and good, but where the hell are your keywords?”

“Keywords?”

Stan let out a dejected sigh. “You’re one of those people, aren’t you? Let me see if I can explain this in words you understand,” he said with restrained sarcasm. “There’s this search engine called Google. You have to make Google happy or it won’t send you traffic. Without traffic, no one will ever find you, so it’s all that matters.”

“Yes, but…”

“I know what I’m doing here, Herman. Let me take a crack at the first few sentences and show you how it’s done.”

A few minutes later, Melville was reading the revised version: “Whales whaler make money whaling Alaska sperm whale blue whale humpback whale killer whale right whale beluga narwhal dolphin porpoise fish shark lobster crab blubber blowhole baleen plankton krill…”

“What have you done?”

“Do you like it? It’s optimized for every species of whale and all related sea creatures. And the keyword density is fantastic.”

“But it’s all wrong! You’ve drained its soul with your cheap hacks!”

“Oh, stop being so dramatic! Welcome to reality. You’ve got to include relevant keywords if you want to be found. No one is going to try to find you by searching on ‘Call me Ishmael.’”

“But some of these keywords aren’t even relevant. What’s with this ‘make money whaling Alaska’ bit? My book has nothing to do with making money or Alaska.”

“Well, it needs to. My keyword research revealed that ‘make money whaling Alaska’ gets plenty of searches and has surprisingly little competition. You’ll need to rewrite your entire book around that keyword so you get the #1 spot on Google.”

“But if we did what you say it takes to be found, no one would want to read it.”

“That’s OK, because you can make money from these AdSense ads. Take a look.”

Melville looked at the monitor and his jaw dropped.

Looking For Whales?
We have whales.
New and used.
Ebay.com

The Great Whaling Ebook
Make $250,000+ profit per whale.
Guaranteed. Fully automated.
TheGreatWhalingEbook.com

He left in disgust, and the Great American Novel never saw the light of day. Sad, isn’t it?

This might be a bit extreme, but writing for search engines often conflicts with writing for people.

Far too often, I see people coming up with a high-paying keyword first, and then deciding to create a site around it without considering much else. You can look up the keywords with the highest cost per click and decide that you want to start a site about “m__________ attorneys san diego” (I won’t spell out the m-word). But if you don’t care about m__________ or attorneys and you don’t live in San Diego, do you really think chasing that keyword is a good idea?

What if the best paying keyword has the most competition? What if the cost per click for your main keyword plunges after you put a lot of work into it? What if you’re not motivated to keep writing about it for the long haul? How many useless posts and Ezine spam articles will you clutter the web with? Won’t someone please think of the children?

It reminds me of that old salsa commercial where all the directors are sitting in a boardroom. The chairman asks, “Gentlemen, should we manufacture salsa [everyone on the left raises their hand]…or oven mitts? [everyone on the right raises their hand]”

“SEO is something I know I can do better, and I’m sure one day I will, but when I tried to write for keywords in my first few posts, I didn’t like the result. It felt about as natural as astroturf. So, now I just write. When I’m all finished, then I look to see if there are some keywords I can recognize. Weak, I know, but until the writing is as fluid as water, I don’t want to worry about SEO.”

- Writer Dad

<sarcasm>If you want to hire me for some graphic design work, I’m afraid that I’m booked solid for the next two years.</sarcasm>

On my post Introverts And Extraverts: Can’t We Just Get Along?, some people left comments saying they prefer not to label themselves as either an introvert or extravert. This is pretty common. Come up with a set of labels, and there are bound to be people who say they’re all of the above, none of the above, or free to change depending on the circumstances. Are labels useless? Do they do more harm than good, and should we just get rid of them?

I think labels can be harmful, but we definitely can’t get rid of them. If you’re vehemently anti-labeling, try seeing how awkward it is to communicate without them. You can’t call that furry thing a “dog” because it’s too constricting (after all, maybe he likes to meow once in a while). How do you discuss anything without labels?

But before I go all pro-labeling, let’s start with a situation where I don’t like to be labeled: politics. Whenever someone asks me if I’m a Democrat or a Republican, I have to say I’m neither. People don’t like this, and they think I’m just trying to be difficult. After all, it’s not a complicated question. There’s a continuum from the far left to the far right, and wherever you happen to fall, that determines what you are.

Democrat <————–|————–> Republican

The problem is, this left and right construct is completely artificial. The left holds an arbitrary set of unrelated beliefs, and the right holds a different arbitrary set of unrelated beliefs. How does this make sense? For example, why can’t someone hypothetically be in favor of gun control, against the separation of church and state, in favor of protecting the environment, and against the double taxation of dividends? Aren’t these issues all independent of each other?

Someone can take a test that says they’re more Democrat than Republican, but can they really call themselves a Democrat if they’re pro-life, in favor of drilling for oil in Alaska, and in favor of the Iraq war? Can these opinions really be overlooked just because they agree with the Democrats on a greater number of issues?

Furthermore, the definitions of left and right vary across countries and time periods. Abraham Lincoln was a “Republican,” but only because that’s what Democrats were called back then. So what does the label really mean?

I just don’t see why everyone should be expected to take one side or the other. In fact, slapping a political label on yourself can force you to believe in things you don’t want to. How many Republicans pretended to be in favor of the Iraq war just because they had to support their party?

But now, let’s look at a situation where a label makes perfect sense. Remember your high school chemistry? If a chemical solution has a pH of 7, it’s neutral. Lower and it’s an acid. Higher and it’s a base.

Acid <————–|————–> Base

If you want to test a solution to determine its pH, and we anthropomorphize that solution a bit, it might protest. It might say that it’s too complex to categorize, or it behaves differently in different situations, or it doesn’t need you to tell it what to do. It can flat out refuse to take the test. But that doesn’t change the fact that logically, it has to appear somewhere on this continuum. It’s either an acid, a base, or neutral, and it’s perfectly appropriate to label it as such.

Still, we can’t attach more meaning to this label than what we really know. If we know that a solution is acidic, we know that its pH is less than 7. We also know certain properties that it has, or is likely to have. But we don’t know everything about it just from this label. Milk is technically an acid, but it’s very different from 10M sulfuric acid.

So what about the labels of introvert and extravert? Are they OK?

Extravert <————–|————–> Introvert

(I’m talking about these terms as defined by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, not in layman’s terms. Be sure to read The Introverts Strike Back for more on this. Also, people are still telling me I’m spelling extravert wrong–try looking it up before complaining!)

If a pure extravert gets 100% of their energy from the external world, and a pure introvert gets 100% of their energy from the internal world, then logically, everyone falls somewhere on this continuum. I know you’re a complex human being, a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma. That doesn’t change the fact that logically speaking, you must fall somewhere on this line.

And the MBTI says you have to pick one side or the other–there is no neutral. Just like when flipping a coin, it’s theoretically possible that it will land on its edge and be neither heads nor tails, but in practice it doesn’t.

Maybe this will help. Instead of calling someone an introvert, technically you’re supposed to say that they prefer introversion. Meaning that while everyone uses both introversion and extraversion, they prefer one over the other. Calling someone an introvert is simply shorthand for saying they prefer introversion to either a small or large degree, not to say that they don’t use extraversion at all.

So why don’t people want to label themselves as an introvert or extravert? I think it’s mainly because the word introvert has been tarnished in popular usage. Since introverts are outnumbered 3-1 by their more vocal counterparts, they’ve gotten the short end of the stick. The scale is often assumed to look like this:

Extravert (Party Animal) <————–|————–> Introvert (Loser)

A positive association is used for the extraverts, while a negative association is used for the introverts. So if someone’s not a party animal, they conclude that they must be a loser, and they’re told that the word for that is introvert.

But what if it were flipped?

Extravert (Airhead) <————–|————–> Introvert (Genius)

Now it’s using a positive association for the introverts and a negative association for the extraverts. If someone’s not a genius, they regretfully admit that they must therefore be an airhead, and they’re told that the word for that is extravert.

This shows how damaging labels can be, when you give people a false choice and force them to pick one. One of my main goals in writing The Introverts Strike Back was to avoid a false choice by clarifying what introvert and extravert meant in their original sense. After all, the following scale is perfectly fair and shouldn’t offend anyone.

Extravert	<———–|———–>	Introvert
(gets their energy from other people)		(gets their energy from themselves)

Another way that labels can be harmful is when you jump to conclusions. Like I said before, we have to be careful about inferring too much from a label. If a solution is acidic, we know that its pH is less than 7, but we don’t know that it will react violently with sodium hydroxide. If someone is an introvert, we know that they generally prefer introversion, but we don’t know that they’re not a successful entertainer. And I’m sure I don’t need to explain that you can’t say “Well, you’re a woman, so that means you’re good at _________ and _________, and bad at ____________.”

Labels only give us part of the picture. Whenever you meet someone, what’s the first thing they ask? Invariably, it’s “What do you do?” Somehow, in Western culture someone’s job is taken as their identity, and the rest doesn’t really matter. Yes, I work as a software developer, but that’s not important enough to go on my tombstone. Thomas Jefferson’s job as President apparently wasn’t important enough to go on his tombstone either (it reads: “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia”). Tim Ferriss sometimes tells people he’s a drug dealer if he just wants to avoid this question that really doesn’t matter.

Well-balanced people don’t necessarily want to be told that they are their job, or they are their religion, or they are their ethnicity, etc. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using labels for the right reason, but don’t expect people to be thrilled if you reduce their entire identity to one.

I think the key with using labels is not to avoid them, but to take care in applying and interpreting them. And if you really insist on not being labeled, that’s OK. We can always call you by whistling instead.

In 1969, John Rendall and Anthony “Ace” Berg went to the exotic animals department at Harrod’s, a London department store. They decided they had to check it out after their friend had walked in, declared that she wanted a camel, and the manager asked, “One hump or two, madam?”

To their amazement, John and Ace found a lion cub. He didn’t look happy, and they wanted to do something about that. They took him home, but Christian the lion quickly became too big for them to keep. They decided that…well, the video explains everything:

OK, the music is a bit ridiculous, but it’s an endearing video, don’t you think? It’s interesting how affectionate a partly wild lion can be, when a house cat won’t give you the time of day.

Disney has been criticized for making movies like The Lion King that lead kids to believe that certain animals are much friendlier than they really are. So make sure your kids don’t try this at home, as John and Ace were taking a big risk. Still, it’s nice to know that even a wild lion can remember old friends. Can you?

For more information and pictures, read Christian, the lion who lived in my London living room.

By the way, how does a lion get married?

Steve Pavlina has just written his first book: Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth, and it’s already reached the Amazon top 100 bestseller list. Not bad for a book that hasn’t even gone to the printer yet.

The scheduled release date is October 15, 2008, and if you order it now, they’ll ship it to you when it’s ready. The retail price is $24.95, and it’s currently selling for $16.47 on Amazon. If the price changes between now and the release date, Amazon will give you the lowest price.

If you hadn’t heard of Steve Pavlina before, you heard about him in my post yesterday, Overnight Success. Steve got to where he is by having lots of fantastic original ideas about personal development. So when he says he’s come out with something he’s really proud of, that gets my attention.

In Steve’s previous attempt to write a book, he did a ton of research and wrote 30,000 words before realizing that it just wasn’t deep enough. He scrapped the book idea, and put it on hold for more than three years before he knew what he was really supposed to write about.

What he wanted to do was come up with a holistic approach to personal development. He wanted to reduce all the concepts of personal growth to a set of core principles that covers everything without being redundant.

For example, computers represent colors with the RGB (red, green, blue) model. You start with the primary colors of red, green, and blue, and by mixing them in various combinations, you can create any of the 16 million other colors. Technically, red, green, and blue didn’t have to be chosen as the primary colors, but you do need three primaries. With only two primary colors, there would be some colors you couldn’t derive. And with four primary colors, one of them would be redundant, since you could derive any color without it. So you can say the entire color spectrum can be reduced to the three primary colors of red, green, and blue.

What Steve does in his book is apply this concept to personal development. There are all kinds of ways in which people can grow, but if you were to distill everything down to a core set of principles, what would you have? Steve defines the three primary principles as truth, love, and power. He defines four secondary principles of oneness, authority, courage, and intelligence. The secondary principles can be derived from the primary principles as follows:

• Oneness = Truth + Love
• Authority = Truth + Power
• Courage = Love + Power
• Intelligence = Truth + Love + Power

This diagram shows the relationship of the seven core principles:

So apparently, all we need is truth, love, power, and the derived principles to reach the highest level of consciousness. Using the seven core principles, you can solve any problem in your life. Steve says he combines theory and practice, uses left-brained and right-brained presentation, and makes it all very deep while also being easy to understand (though I’m sure you still have to be smart). Here’s what’s inside:

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Fundamental Principles

Chapter 1: Truth

Chapter 2: Love

Chapter 3: Power

Chapter 4: Oneness

Chapter 5: Authority

Chapter 6: Courage

Chapter 7: Intelligence

Part II: Practical Application

Chapter 8: Habits

Chapter 9: Career

Chapter 10: Money

Chapter 11: Health

Chapter 12: Relationships

Chapter 13: Spirituality

Afterword

About the Author

Resources

---

I’ve really been looking forward to this book for a while, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to wait three more months before it’s released. If you want to understand personal development as only Steve Pavlina can explain it, be sure to pre-order Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth.

Photo by Jason Gulledge

Personal development blogger Steve Pavlina is considered by many people to be a great example of an overnight success. His blog achieved an income of $40,000 per month after only two years. But most people who create blogs fail to make any profit at all, and give up in frustration. Why?

In his article titled Skill, Steve gave what I think is the best answer to that question:

“There are several ways to answer this, but perhaps the most obvious answer is that most new bloggers give up within the first six months. The web is littered with abandoned blogs. But six months is nothing. It takes six months just to get your bearings in the blogosphere.”

In his first 6 months, he made $167, which by his estimates works out to 17 cents per hour. If you don’t have a blog, you probably think 17 cents per hour doesn’t sound like much, but believe me, it’s way above average! And it grew exponentially from there, reaching extraordinary levels after two years.

But many people don’t realize that it actually took Steve far longer than two years to get to that point. Before he started his blog, he read 700 personal development books. He also had experience with writing articles (some paid, some unpaid). He also had ten years of experience in running a computer games business, where he learned many valuable lessons in entrepreneurship after turning $20,000 in cash to $150,000 in debt. These were the dues he paid before he earned the privilege of making 17 cents an hour.

Compare this to an anonymous blogger I heard about last September. This person had written to Darren Rowse at ProBlogger with some questions about his make money online blog, and Darren replied with a video post. The anonymous blogger’s letter went something like this:

“Darren, thanks for your great blog. I’m amazed at how much money you’ve made from blogging, and I’ve decided to do the same. I’ve just started my own blog on how to make money online, and I’ll have some really great tips. I have some questions though, because this is my first blog. How do I set it up? How do I find advertisers and make money quickly? And what tips should I write about?”

Amazingly, Darren almost managed to keep a straight face in his video reply, something I sure couldn’t have done. Coming from nowhere, this person is starting a blog in an overcrowded niche, with no experience in the subject, and asking how to be an overnight success when he doesn’t even know what to write about.

Let’s look at this in a more visual format:

	Steve Pavlina	Anonymous blogger
Number of relevant books read before starting blog	700	0
Years of relevant experience before starting blog	13	0
Money spent gaining the experience	At least $170,000	$0
Knows what to blog about	Yes	No
Income for first 6 months	$0.17/hour	Probably $0
Income after 2 years	$40,000/month	Hasn’t made it 2 years yet, will probably quit well before then
Continues to work hard	Yes	Never did in the first place

Given the difference in the dues each blogger paid, is the difference in their results unexpected, or unfair?

In the Fortune Magazine article What it takes to be great, Geoffrey Colvin points to research indicating that hard work is far more important than natural talent. This applies to sports, music, chess, business, and pretty much every other field. People don’t become an overnight success just because they stumble into a field they were born for.

“Reinforcing that no-free-lunch finding is vast evidence that even the most accomplished people need around ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule…And as John Horn of the University of Southern California and Hiromi Masunaga of California State University observe, ‘The ten-year rule represents a very rough estimate, and most researchers regard it as a minimum, not an average.’ In many fields (music, literature) elite performers need 20 or 30 years’ experience before hitting their zenith.”

When people reach the highest levels of success at a young age, we might think they were an overnight success, when really they just started early. Bobby Fischer became a chess grandmaster when he was only 16, but after 9 years of practice. Tiger Woods won the U.S. Amateur Championship when he was only 18, but after 15 years of practice.

The article went into more detail about the link between practice and performance:

“Evidence crosses a remarkable range of fields. In a study of 20-year-old violinists by Ericsson and colleagues, the best group (judged by conservatory teachers) averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over their lives; the next-best averaged 7,500 hours; and the next, 5,000. It’s the same story in surgery, insurance sales, and virtually every sport. More deliberate practice equals better performance. Tons of it equals great performance.”

How are you reacting to hearing this? Are you disappointed that you can kiss your chances of overnight success goodbye? Or are you inspired to know that there’s no reason you can’t reach any level of success you desire if you’re willing to put in the work?

I have some American friends who are staying in Japan for a year, and I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to visit them. I went there from April 15 – 24, 2008, staying mainly in Kyoto, with a couple days in Tokyo.

I found Japan exotic in some ways, like with all the castles and Geisha and beckoning cats. But in other ways, it seemed they were just using common sense. I wish the U.S. could pick up some aspects of Japan.

Upon reading my eBook about Japan, Akemi Gaines at Yes to Me suggested a joint writing project. So here we go. When you’re done with this part, you can read the second half of the discussion, Comparing America and Japan, Part 2, on her blog.

Akemi: I am originally from Nagoya, Japan, and have been in the U.S. since 1995. I’m glad you liked my home country, Hunter.

Hunter: Here are some things I specifically like about Japan:

Food

Hunter:

American restaurants seem to keep making portions bigger and bigger. Do we really need Outback’s 2,900-calorie Aussie Cheese Fries appetizer? OK, that’s a bit extreme, but many Americans consume what should be almost a full day’s worth of calories in one meal. And it’s normal to us, so we don’t realize it’s excessive. We feel like we’re getting a good deal when we say “Supersize me!” The emphasis is usually on the quantity of food, instead of the quality.

I was concerned that I’d get to Japan and not be able to find any food I could eat. Boy, were those fears unfounded! The food was incredible everywhere. There was only one place where I found the food merely OK (it was basically just fried food on a stick), but other than that, it was amazing. And I don’t even like seafood, so why is sushi so good? I don’t know, but it is. And even though they’ve got all this great food, they’re not fat. I’m not sure why, though portion size is a part of it.

Akemi:

Well, there is a secret . . . I could have written the book “Japanese women don’t get fat” I guess

When I came to the US, food was one of the biggest issues, so I know what you mean. The problem is Americans just don’t pay attention to taste. All they care, it seems to me, is the numbers, like calorie and price. And this is the main reason of obesity in the US, I believe. We want to get satisfaction, so if we don’t get it from taste, we substitute it with quantity, the sheer sensation of fullness. When the food tastes good, small amount is more satisfying and we don’t need to pig out.

When more Americans become discerning to taste, restaurants will have to make good foods to win the competition. But currently, people who pay attention are called “foodie” in the U.S.

Hunter:

Yeah, foodies are really a different kind of person here. I recently attended a Guerilla Cuisine dinner in Charleston, SC, where a group of people get together for food prepared by local chefs, and the theme, menu, and location are announced at the last minute. The people were all great, but they were different…hippies and “arteests” and…well, I don’t even know the words to describe them. It seems that your typical person is not really interested in food, and that will have to change before restaurants feel pressure to improve. Even the Japanese restaurant near me doesn’t have food that tastes similar to actual Japanese food.

Akemi:

Exactly. It’s a process that takes some time. Japanese didn’t become gourmet overnight. When Americans were traveling to the West in wagons, Japanese already had restaurants and cookbooks

We really need to treat foods with more respect, rather than treating it like fuel. We are humans, not automobiles. We are entitled to enjoy foods!

Crime

Hunter:

I didn’t feel great about having to carry around a bunch of cash (since most places don’t take credit cards), but my friends said that crime is ridiculously low in Japan. When I looked it up, I saw that they weren’t kidding. Japan’s robbery rate is less than 1% of what it is in America!

They’ve done a good job of getting rid of guns, and not many people have the guts to rob someone without a gun. When I went to Tokyo Disneyland, the handout said tattoos weren’t allowed (tattoos are a sign of some criminal organizations). I guess they had a problem with the Japanese mafia hanging out on the teacups ride. But the point is that the laws and rules they’ve put in place seem to be working, though there’s some loss of individual liberty.

Akemi:

Allow me to correct one thing you said . . . Japan didn’t get rid of guns. The vast majority of Japanese never had guns. The samurais had swords, but not guns. You need a special license to carry a gun in Japan.

I agree the crime rate is so much lower in Japan. When I was in Japan, as a young woman ^_^, I usually carried more than 10,000 yen ($100) in my wallet without much thought to it. My first job in the U.S. was for a bank, and I learned we could get killed for a few hundred dollars here. Now I pay everything by credit card.

Having said this, there is a dark side in Japanese society. For example, domestic violence, including parent killing their child or vice versa, is often reported in the news, and there are probably far more hidden violence than we know. There is a culture of not releasing family shame to outsiders. Hidden violence at school is also a problem.

Hunter:

That’s funny that you’re making what I guess is a manga smiley (^_^)!

We have hidden violence and a dark side here too, sometimes in places you’d never suspect. There was a typical “all-American kid” who once lived just down the street from me, named Danny Petrole (he was all over the national news). No one had any idea that he was the head of a huge drug ring until a fellow dealer, who is now on death row, hired someone to kill him.

I have a friend who stupidly decided to intimidate someone who cut him off in traffic. They turned out to be members of a triad, and they followed him home and threatened him with knives and bumper jacks. When the cops came, they arrested my friend despite what all the witnesses were saying, because apparently the cops are afraid of the triad. And this is all happening in a quiet suburb. It’s scary to think about how much stuff is going on that we don’t know about.

Akemi:

Wow. I’ll be more careful then. I never suspected my good neighbors. . .

Kaizen

Hunter:

Kaizen simply means “improvement,” but they take it very seriously. They know that continuous incremental improvements over time lead to massive results, so they encourage experimenting with new ideas and measuring the outcome.

U.S. auto makers were slow to notice that times were changing and consumers wanted smaller cars. They kept cranking out full-size sedans because that’s what they had always done. Meanwhile, the people at Toyota responded to what consumers were saying, and by changing a little here and a little there, they became the industry leader.

I’ve worked at some companies where I saw obvious opportunities for improvement, but no one wanted to hear it. I worked at one company where they actually asked for suggestions, and people would suggest things like “stop paying millions of dollars to fired executives,” but I don’t know if any of the suggestions were even considered.

Akemi:

That’s interesting. I thought Americans were more open to accept everyone’s opinions. Why do you think American management is so closed minded?

Hunter:

I don’t know if there’s any single answer. I’ve seen higher ups not understanding technical details, or not having respect for the employees, or just wanting to do things their way, or thinking that what worked in the past would always be the best option, or being so focused on tight deadlines that there was no time to rethink things. And sometimes you might convince your boss, but they don’t want to take the idea to their boss. It can be hard to get your ideas in front of the right people.

To be fair, a lot of people will adamantly demand changes without fully understanding the reasons for the current way. But I think instead of just saying “no,” management should explain why these suggestions might not be feasible and encourage further suggestions. That builds respect and cooperation instead of resentment.

Akemi:

I agree. I think Kaizen started in the post WWII collective spirit that Japan must catch up to compete against well-established “foreign” industries. All the major cities, including their factories and transportation systems, were burned down in the war, and it was clear we had to work hard.

Now that Japanese industries are well-established themselves, I think they face the same challenge you described, “We’ve always done it this way.” thinking . . . while Americans learn the Kaizen.

Living within their means

Hunter:

I’m not sure about the current statistics, but the average savings rate is very high in Japan and basically nothing in the U.S. The U.S. as a country and many American families are practically bankrupt, yet they keep wasting more and more money. The government can bail out the irresponsible spenders, but who will bail out the government when other countries decide to stop lending us money? The Japanese are among the highest savers in the world. Why can’t we save even a fraction of what they do?

Akemi:

I’d be cautious to compare two countries’ statistics. It is very possible we may not be comparing apples to apples. Having said this, I agree U.S. economy has serious problems, and by now, many Americans are aware of this.

Japanese love saving, to the point it can be a problem. They have issues enjoying life. I think our hope lies somewhere between the American and Japanese ways of living – in the big Pacific ocean – to enjoy life while being sensible to spending. Not all good things come with price tags, you know.

Hunter:

Americans have issues enjoying life too. Someone might put on a happy face, but beyond that and their big house and their fancy car, they’re feeling the great stress of keeping up with the Joneses. I agree that moderation is good here. If you can keep your wants reasonable, it’s not so hard to afford what you need while saving for a rainy day.

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Akemi, I want to thank you for suggesting this joint writing project and taking the time to do it with me. I think it’s interesting to compare the perspectives of people from two very different backgrounds.

I also want to make sure my readers continue to Comparing America and Japan, Part 2 to read our discussion on Housing, Education, Freedom and Opportunities. Don’t miss it!