In Stephen King’s Kindle-only novella UR, a college English teacher buys an Amazon Kindle in order to spite his ex-girlfriend by appearing tech-savvy. Horror ensues.

Yeah, I know, you probably don’t have a Kindle. But this isn’t about that book. This is about ditching technology as we age. They say that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Maybe you can, but often the dog doesn’t want to learn them.

A few years ago I took an online test that tells you what generation you belong to. (Here’s one generation test, though not the same one.)

The one I took had me right at the border of Gen X and Gen Y. It all came down to whether I had a Facebook account or not. I didn’t, so I was classified as Gen X. Now I have one, but I don’t use it. Does that make me Gen Y?

It’s not that I can’t use Facebook, I just don’t want to. I say it’s because it’s a waste of time, but does that make me the same as the people who won’t learn how to use email?

Why do we stop trying new things as we get older?

Is it because we have less time to play around?
Is it because we lose our energy and curiosity with age?
Is it because we’ve had enough time to settle into our patterns?
Is it because we think we’ve done enough by then?

Is this a problem?

Someone gave me a bottle of this Japanese soft drink called Ramune. I didn’t know what it tasted like, and looking at the bottle didn’t offer any clues. It had pictures of a pig, a pumpkin, a watermelon, a fan, a flower, a life preserver, and a UFO.

But the weirdest part didn’t come until I tried to open it. I tore off the wrap around the top, removed this green plastic piece, and tried twisting the top. But it just wasn’t twisting off.

I read the label to see if it said anything about opening it, and it did:

WARNING

• DO NOT SWALLOW THE PLUNGER. Throw it away immediately after opening.
• Adults should open the bottle for small children and supervise drinking.
• Do not try to remove the marble from the bottle to avoid injury.
• Do not freeze the bottle or store it in direct sunlight.
• Do not consume if the marble is broken, missing, or descended before opening.

Plunger? Oh, that must be that green plastic piece. Good thing I hadn’t thrown it away. After breaking the connectors that attached the inside to the outside, the green thing became a plunger that you could press your thumb on to apply the force to a smaller area.

Marble? The bottle looked like it had a marble stuck in it, but I thought that was part of the top. But no, there really was a marble stuck in it, and to open the bottle you have to push the marble inside.

So I put the plunger on top, and pushed with my thumb. The marble wasn’t going down, and my thumb was getting bent out of shape. Was I doing it wrong?

I checked online, and found that opening a bottle of Ramune is something of a rite of passage. At least for some people, who use everything from hammers to headbutts to get the darn thing open. Then there are others who say it’s not that big a deal, you just push with your thumb. I fell into the former category.

After wearing my thumb out with no luck, I tried using the heel of my hand. Although I wouldn’t be able to push as deep this way, I could exert much more force, and it would hurt a lot less. But after a few failed attempts, I had dug a deep ring into my hand, and drawn a trickle of blood.

Was this supposed to be another Kobayashi Maru?

I decided to bring out the big guns. My hammer was packed away, but my screwdriver was easy to get to and would work just as well. I put the bottle on the counter (so it would absorb the full impact instead of being pushed away), on top of a cork oven pad (so the counter wouldn’t get scratched).

Then I pounded the bottle several times with the base of the screwdriver, well aware that I was just as likely to break the bottle as I was to push the marble in.

The marble looked like it had moved some, so I went back to pushing my thumb on the plunger, and the marble went it, stopping a couple inches down where the bottle narrows.

The bottle then adds insult to injury because even after opening it, the marble blocks the flow when you try to drink it. But with the right angle, I finally enjoyed the pig/pumpkin/UFO-flavored drink known as Ramune. (It actually tastes something like Sprite).

Just yesterday, I was reading something about attacking problems from a non-obvious direction after reaching a mental dead end. This comes from Whole Brain Thinking: Working from Both Sides of the Brain to Achieve Peak Job Performance:

“Visualize the extreme opposite of the situation. Example: If you are trying to invent a gadget to open bottles, pretend you are trying to bond the bottle cap permanently to make it impenetrable. It will thus be easier to discover the weaknesses inherent in the current bottle caps and a way to get the substances that are inside, out–without resorting to the typical removable cap. You might invent a syringelike contraption that extracts the contents rather than beheading the package.”

I have to wonder if the authors wrote this after an encounter with Ramune. (By the way, this is an example of lateral thinking, just one of many crucial concepts covered in Marelisa Fabrega’s ebook How to Be More Creative – A Handbook for Alchemists).

Any usability engineer would go into conniptions about the bottle design. Yet the challenge of opening it is what gives Ramune its mystique and its fan base. I want to get another bottle, not so much to drink it, but just so I can try opening it again (hopefully doing a better job next time).

If a soft drink can teach patience, persistence, and lateral thinking, then what other learning experiences might be hiding in plain sight, disguised as problems?

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Got hurt feelings, but don’t know what to do about them?

Wonder no more. Just fill out this Hurt Feelings Report (link from Breanne Potter’s MBTI blog). It appears to be a form used by the Army “to assist whiners in documenting hurt feelings.”

To complete the form, you answer questions such as “which ear were the words of hurtfulness spoken into?” and “did you require a tissue for your tears?”

Most people will find it funny, while some will find it insensitive. What do you think about it?

To be sure, filling out a form to report hurt feelings is absurd. Not because it’s not a valid concern, but because you won’t fix the problem by reporting it.

What I find funny is that many people will laugh at how ridiculous it is to report hurt feelings, but then they’ll fill out a form to complain that they were overcharged by $1 (yes, I know someone who did this). Somehow, incidents are only supposed to matter when you can put a dollar amount on them.

But whatever the problem, whether feelings or dollars or something else, maybe it’s best to either ignore it or face it head on, instead of filling out forms.

You may have heard of blogger and life coach Alex Fayle, also known as the “Someday Syndrome” guy. Someday Syndrome is the affliction that people suffer from when they know their life isn’t what they want, and they stare off into space thinking “someday my ship will come in.”

What Alex does is help people uncover hidden patterns so they can break their procrastination habit and start living the life they desire. He’s certainly done that in his own life, overcoming his procrastination to move to Spain and follow his dreams such as becoming a fiction author. In his new ebook Someday My Ship Will Come In: A Practical Guide to Finding Your Dreams, he shows you how to do the same.

I had a chance to read a draft of this ebook. When Alex asked me specifically what I thought it would do for people, I said the lessons and exercises would help them get clear about their dreams now versus never thinking about them and leaving them to chance. Because the biggest reason that people fail to achieve their dreams isn’t so much that they try and fail, but they put them off to a “someday” that never arrives.

Whatever your dreams are, you can’t just wait for them to come to you. You have to identify them, focus on them, take the first few steps, and get the ball rolling. That’s what it takes to cure your Someday Syndrome. Let Alex show you how in Someday My Ship Will Come In.

One of the books I’m reading now is Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. I’m just reading a little bit here and there, but I’ll definitely be reviewing it when I’m done.

So far, it’s about how success is less dependent on talent and hard work than we think. Yes, it still takes a lot of hard work (according to the 10,000 hour rule) and a good amount of talent. However, one critical factor is often ignored – the environment that made you who you are. It turns out that random factors such as your birth date can be hugely important.

But my review will come later. For now, I just want to talk about what success means.

In What Malcolm Gladwell Should Have Told You In ‘Outliers,’ Glen Allsopp says that while he’s a huge fan of Outliers, he has one problem with it. Namely, that Gladwell tends to define success as a large bank balance or some form of status. Glen says:

“While Bill Gates spent years behind a computer screen, people his age where going to parties, sunning on the beach, meeting new people and making the most of life…yet he has made it.

While kids were playing the violin for hours every week, their friends were playing in the park, running through fields and making the most of their childhood. Yet now the violinists are professional or well known…they’ve made it.”

I agree, people who are considered successful have paid an enormous price to get there. If you’re willing to accept being “average” or “good” instead of “off the charts,” you can free up massive amounts of time for other things.

Someone who’s OK with being a little overweight might be a lot happier than a gym rat who works out several hours a day. Someone who’s OK with being a little uninformed might be a lot happier than a Jeopardy champion. It’s much, much easier to be average than an outlier.

Still, the book is about success, not happiness. To learn about success, it makes sense to study Bill Gates and world class violinists. On the other hand, we don’t need to read a book to learn how to go to parties and play in the park. If you want to do those things, you’re free to just do them.

Which brings me to this question: Is success important?

That may sound like a strange question, but it has to do with how you think of success. A lot of people think success is the ultimate measure of your life. Either you’re successful and you’ve had a good life, or you’re unsuccessful and you’ve had a bad life.

I don’t see it that way. To me, success simply means what the traditional definition says. For now, let’s just use this dictionary definition: the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence.

Is there more to life than the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence? Of course! I’ve written about a lot of things that are important to me, but which have absolutely nothing to do with wealth, favor, or eminence.

Some people want to be successful. Some people want to be happy. Some people want to be in good shape. Some people want to travel. Some people want to learn. Some people want lots of friends. These are all different things, none of which is the be all, end all of life. We all value different things.

And guess what? It’s OK if you don’t want to be successful!

But wait, if you’re not successful, does that make you unsuccessful, a failure, a bad person? Not at all. I can’t play the violin, but I wouldn’t consider myself a failed violinist. The violin just isn’t important to me, so it’s not how I judge myself.

Likewise, I wouldn’t consider Barack Obama a failed dentist, or Mohandas Gandhi a failed football player. Maybe they’re not good at those particular things, but they have different objectives.

When you walk past a homeless person, your first thought probably isn’t “Wow, look how successful he is!” Because face it, success, as defined by society, means money. After all, money is what society invented as a store of value. On the other hand, no one needs to feel threatened by this, because you don’t need to make money a priority if you don’t want to.

If you want to live the life of the Mexican fisherman, fine. But don’t redefine “success” to mean “happiness” just because it’s much easier to achieve, and you have this false idea that all good people are required to be successful. It’s perfectly fine to decide that success – or if you prefer, “traditional success” – isn’t important to you.

Some people are meant to chase success, but most aren’t. Not everyone can be in the richest 1%, or the healthiest 1%, or the most educated 1%, or the happiest 1%, or the friendliest 1%, and so on. We have to decide on our priorities.

I once met a homeless woman who was doing exactly what she wanted with her life: enjoying the weather, scenery, and tourists outside the White House while protesting nuclear weapons. No sane person would consider her successful, and she wouldn’t be the subject of a book like Outliers, but she was doing what she wanted to do.

And in the end, isn’t that what we should all be striving for?

Oh, regarding the post title – is success for suckers? Yes, but only if you spend your life chasing it at the cost of things that are more important to you. However, if success is important to you, then we have something in common. There’s room for both types.

Photo by aloshbennett

Randy Pausch’s autographed photo of Captain Kirk, on which William Shatner wrote “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.”

In Star Trek, the Kobayashi Maru is a test that puts you up against a no-win scenario.

In this simulation, a civilian ship named the Kobayashi Maru has been disabled by a gravitic mine and is losing life support. If you don’t intervene, the Kobayashi’s 400 passengers will die.

Unfortunately, the Kobayashi lies in the Klingon Neutral Zone. If you attempt a rescue, you’ll be in violation of the treaty, which will cause the Klingons to take hostile action.

If you try to save the Kobayashi, three Klingon ships move in on you. They refuse to communicate, and they start firing. You’re outnumbered, and the computer is allowed to cheat, so there is no option but to lose.

The point of the test is not to win, but to behave well in the face of certain destruction.

How do you face a situation that you know you can’t win?

There’s a psychological concept known as “learned helplessness.” It refers to when a person or an animal learns that it’s helpless, so it stops trying, even after the situation changes.

In a 1960s experiment that I hope to God would be illegal today, learned helplessness was observed in dogs by subjecting them to electric shocks.

Two dogs were kept in separate rooms, but wired to the same electrical circuit. When the electricity was turned on, the first dog was able to press a lever that would turn it off for both dogs. The second dog didn’t have access to the lever, and from his perspective the shocks just stopped at a random time (since he didn’t know the first dog controlled it).

Although both dogs experienced the exact same electrical shocks, the first dog learned that he had the power to stop them, while the second dog learned that he was helpless. The dog in control quickly recovered, while the helpless dog become chronically depressed. In further experiments, the dogs that had learned helplessness were subjected to shocks that they were free to run away from, but they didn’t try.

But wait, it gets worse. It’s somewhat understandable for the dogs to think that because they couldn’t stop the shocks in the first experiment, they couldn’t stop them in the second. But in another set of experiments, dogs were temporarily paralyzed with a drug before being shocked. Obviously, they couldn’t even try to escape the shocks. By the time they regained their mobility, they had learned they were helpless. They didn’t try to escape the shocks, even though they had never tried before.

Here’s the silver lining: not all dogs acted this way. A third of them, the optimistic ones, did not become helpless. They still tried to escape the shocks and did, despite having failed before.

I’m not sure how the Star Trek cadets were supposed to behave in the Kobayashi Maru simulation, but I guess it was along the lines of staying focused and trying everything possible. And some cadets tried some unexpected solutions, with varying degrees of success.

- On his third attempt, James T. Kirk cheated by reprogramming the simulator to make it possible to rescue the Kobayashi, saying he didn’t believe in the no-win scenario. (In one movie he was awarded a commendation for original thinking, but in another he was put on trial for cheating.)

- Chekov evacuated his ship before crashing it into the three Klingon ships. (However, this meant that the Kobayashi was not saved.)

- Sulu realized it was a trap, and didn’t cross into the Neutral Zone. (Again, this meant the Kobayashi was not saved.)

- Scotty used a bunch of crazy tactics that let him bypass the Klingon shields and beam destructive items to them. While this worked at first, the simulator kept adding more and more Klingon ships, finally beating Scotty with 15 ships. (Because Scotty knew that his techniques would work in the simulator but not the real world, he was judged unsuitable for command track and reassigned to engineering.)

- Piper used a bunch of unorthodox commands that tricked the computer into fighting itself, which ended up crashing the simulator. (Her instructors acknowledged that it might have worked in the real world.)

- Peter David made the bizarre move of destroying the Kobayashi, figuring that (1) a rescue attempt could not succeed, (2) destroying the Kobayashi was more humane than letting the crew be captured and tortured, and (3) the Kobayashi may actually have been a setup planted by the enemy.

- Peter Kirk (James’ nephew) faced a different version of the simulation, in which the enemies were the Romulans instead of the Klingons. He invoked an obscure Romulan law that allowed him to challenge the Romulan commander to a one-on-one fight to the death, during which all ships must cease fire. Before beaming over for the duel, he told his people to beam aboard the Kobayashi survivors and escape, leaving him to die. (The instructor stopped the simulation at this point, but Peter was credited with a nearly perfect outcome, sacrificing himself but saving the Kobayashi and his own ship. The simulator was reprogrammed to prevent this solution from being used again.)

Every now and then, you may face a situation that seems unwinnable. And maybe it is. But don’t give more power to it than you have to. Don’t be too quick to declare it as unwinnable, when there may be a solution you haven’t thought of yet.

And if you really can’t win, doing your best anyway will keep you away from the trap of learned helplessness for the future. Besides, you can always change your definition of “winning.”

I’ve never been much of a Star Trek fan, but I went to see it because everyone seems to like it. Yes, it’s good. And in addition to being good sci-fi, it also carries some important life lessons. (Contains spoilers.)

1. Being different isn’t a bad thing.

The young Spock, being half human and half Vulcan, is a child of two worlds, and doesn’t appear to belong in either one. He’s not accepted by the other kids, and even adults speak of his heritage as a disadvantage. In time though, he makes his own path, finding a huge asset in the combination of Vulcan logic and human emotion.

Do you ever assume that being different is a bad thing?

2. Find a balance between the extremes.

At first, Kirk overindulges his reckless nature with nearly disastrous results, while Spock completely shuts off his emotions and follows the rules to a life he doesn’t want. Eventually, they settle on more moderate personalities. Not exactly in the middle, but at a point where they can avoid most of the consequences of the extremes while still being themselves.

Do you have a tendency to be too extreme in any aspect of your personality?

3. Anyone can be worth listening to.

As the fleet responded to a Vulcan distress call, Kirk connected the dots and realized it was a trap. He tried to warn the crew, who wouldn’t even hear him out at first. After all, he had been suspended, and he was regarded as a loose cannon. Still, he was the only one who knew all the relevant information, and because the crew finally decided to listen, they were prepared for the trap.

Do you ever ignore potentially good advice because of your personal bias?

4. Anyone can make a difference.

George Kirk was captain of the U.S.S. Kelvin for only 12 minutes. But he spent those 12 minutes evacuating the crew and sacrificing himself to save 800 lives.

Are you capable of doing more than you give yourself credit for?

5. Revenge is a dish best not served at all.

The saying “revenge is a dish best served cold” is said to be a Klingon proverb. It means that revenge is more likely to succeed when carefully planned out (cold-blooded) as opposed to being hasty and emotional (hot-blooded).

That might be true, but why not skip revenge altogether? It rarely works out to your benefit. Did Captain Nero really need to sit around doing nothing for 20 years, waiting for Spock to emerge from the black hole? That’s a long time to stay mad at someone, especially someone who didn’t intentionally do anything wrong.

Are there any grudges you can drop today?

6. Don’t play with red matter.

Red matter is a substance that ignites to create a black hole. Spock used it to contain a supernova that would have destroyed the galaxy, so this is dangerous stuff. Apparently, Nero forgot that part when he fired on Spock’s ship. Metaphorically, playing with red matter is doing something that can potentially work, but isn’t worth the risk.

Do you ever try to succeed at any cost, regardless of the consequences?

7. Extreme situations call for extreme measures.

When the Enterprise’s engines weren’t powerful enough to escape from the black hole’s gravitational field, Kirk went with Scotty’s idea of ejecting the warp drive reactor cores and exploding them to propel the ship forward. It was a risk – they could have blown themselves up, or the explosion could have done nothing but destroy their warp capability. But since full speed ahead wasn’t enough, they had to try something.

Have you ever ruled out a risky but feasible option, while clinging to something that wasn’t working?

8. There’s no such thing as a no-win scenario.

Kirk took a test that was designed to be a no-win scenario. It’s a simulation in which no matter what you do, your ship is destroyed. The point of the test is to judge your response to the fear of certain death.

On his third attempt, Kirk beat the no-win scenario by altering the simulator’s programming. He was accused of cheating and missing the whole point of the test, to which he responded that he doesn’t believe in the no-win scenario.

The no-win scenario really doesn’t exist, although you may have to reconsider your definition of “winning.”

Are you facing any scenarios you consider to be “no-win?” Are you sure that’s an accurate perception?

(Randy Pausch, a life-long Star Trek fan, received an autographed picture of William Shatner, on which Shatner wrote “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.” Randy makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo appearance early in the movie as a crew member on the Kelvin, with the line “Captain, we have a visual.”)

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

- Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

I’ve always loved that quote, but I don’t think he took it quite far enough. Let’s try again:

“A human being should be able to make six figures online, write an enthralling novel, design a relational database, mix a perfect margarita, calculate a stock’s annualized return, juggle five balls in the lotus position, nail every shift point in a drag race, throw a murderous left hook, solve Rubik’s Cube while discussing the latest tax laws, do heavy squats without a back brace, stand with their legs straight and touch their palms to the floor, identify a stranger’s Myers-Briggs type, separate fact from fiction in the law of attraction, make a baby feel safe, make a child laugh, make an elderly person feel respected, be one of the guys, and give a girl multiple orgasms. Specialization is for insects.”

That’s better!

In 11th grade, I took a class called American Civilization, which was English and history combined. Officially, my schedule showed that I had English class with one teacher, followed by history class with another teacher. But the two classrooms were right next to each other, so they took down the divider and made it into one big classroom. Both teachers taught both subjects, blending them together as if they were the same thing.

The idea was that you can’t fully understand literature without understanding the history of the time it was written. And history doesn’t come alive until you read the literature from that time. The teachers said it really didn’t make any sense to separate these subjects. In college, I remember thinking that if I became a professor, I’d like to teach a class that combined differential equations and art history, because I didn’t see any reason to separate them.

What other things does it make sense to mix? When is generalization a better idea than specialization?

Before we get into this, let’s acknowledge that this is a really huge question, and a complete answer could easily fill a book. For one thing, where do you draw the line between specialization and generalization?

Is Jack Bauer a specialist? He’s really good at catching bad guys, and it’s hard to imagine him in any other job. But when it comes to that job, he brings the full package. He’s a weapons expert, unarmed combat expert, interrogation expert, and operations expert. He’s the best field agent, the best tactical leader, and he was director of CTU. He easily goes undercover with criminal overlords, and somehow forms a personal relationship with every U.S. president (well, except for the evil one).

When the bad guys are trying to beat information out of him, he doesn’t have the luxury of saying “Sorry, but withstanding torture isn’t really my thing. Let me get the guy who does that.” He needs to be CTU’s one-stop shop for all their counter-terrorist needs. Whatever the job, he gets it done. The only thing he really can’t do is computer hacking, but he effectively outsources that to Chloe O’Brian, a specialist. (Or is she?)

I was talking to spiritual coach Akemi Gaines about this, and Henry Ford was one of the names that came up. I called him a specialist, and Akemi said:

“I don’t think Henry Ford is a specialist. Sure, he knew a lot about automobile, but what his greatness is that he gathered people (specialists) and made a modern assembly line style manufacturing company. He is well known for what he said in the trial (!) — ‘I don’t know the answer for that, but I can get someone who does.’ (something like that).”

I agree about what his greatness was, but I didn’t consider his specialty to be the automobile. For all I know, he didn’t know what a steering wheel was. I considered his specialty to be leadership in manufacturing. So depending on how you look at him, you could see either a specialist or a generalist. Was Einstein a specialist because he just did physics, or the ultimate generalist because he worked on a theory to explain the entire universe?

Furthermore, isn’t it possible to wear different hats at different times? Can’t you be a great web designer to one set of customers, a great travel agent to a different set, and a great spouse to someone else?

Anyway, specialization vs. generalization is a really big topic, but I can tackle part of it with a few posts. In this post, I’m going to come off as pro-generalist. Next time, I’ll be pro-specialist. (Does that style count as specialization or generalization?)

Can you combine seemingly unrelated career paths? Sure, why not? See if you can identify these people who eschewed specialization. Surely they were complete failures in the eyes of society, if they couldn’t even pick a niche.

Nicheless man #1: His tombstone lists what he considered his three greatest achievements, and being President of the United States didn’t make the cut. He was a distinguished architect, naturalist, linguist, horticulturist, statesman, archaeologist, and inventor.

Nicheless man #2: Although most of his work was in the field of Bible interpretation, he made tremendous contributions to many branches of science. In fact, he wrote one of the most influential books in the history of science, and invented calculus.

Nicheless man #3: He was an architect, poet, and engineer, but you don’t know him for these things. He created some of the most famous paintings in history, despite having a low opinion of painting. He’s mainly known for something else today. While still alive, he was called Il Divino, meaning “the divine one.”

Did you identify these nicheless slackers? They’re Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton, and Michelangelo. Boy, imagine what Isaac Newton could have accomplished, if only he had stuck with Bible study!

Now let’s look at the archetypal Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci. He was a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and writer, among other things. How many short-sighted people do you think told him to pick a niche and stick with it?

If he had stuck with one thing, he might have been a little better at that thing, but much of his talent would have been wasted. Should he have advanced the field of hydrodynamics a bit further, at the cost of not painting the Mona Lisa? Ridiculous.

Much of his ability must have come from natural talent. Much of it came from his apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio starting at age 14, where he learned drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics, carpentry, drawing, painting, sculpting, and modeling.

But another part of it was his ability to learn holistically, and transfer skills from one discipline to another instead of treating them separately. For example, his paintings the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Virgin of the Rocks are considered masterpieces not just because of his artistic techniques, but because of his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany, geology, and the way people show emotion.

This is a critical point, because you don’t have time to learn everything from scratch. Details will vary, but principles stay the same. Master the principles, and the details will surrender themselves to you.

Steve Pavlina claims that all successful personal growth efforts come down to bringing yourself into greater alignment with just three core principles: truth, love, and power. He makes his articles interesting by finding common threads between personal development and seemingly unrelated topics, such as software, chess, or Star Trek.

In The Joy of Solving Problems, he describes a technique he used to solve a problem without having extensive knowledge in that field:

“One morning my physics teacher walked up to me at my locker before school and asked me to step inside his classroom. He presented me with a physics problem that he couldn’t seem to solve. I solved it easily, not because I was better than him at physics but because I’d been exposed to such an enormous variety of problems that my mind just saw the solution. That physics problem fit the pattern of a class of problems I already knew how to solve. My solution was unusual for a physics problem, but it wasn’t that unusual for a math problem…It was only later in life that I realized how helpful it is to generalize this attitude beyond math, science, and logic problems and into the realm of practical daily existence.”

In my high school chemistry class, our teacher gave us a problem and forgot to give us the relevant formula. The person next to me was completely paralyzed without the formula, because he didn’t know what to do other than plug in numbers like a blind gorilla. What did I do? I just used common sense, because the problem was conceptually simple. This strategy won’t always work, but when problems get more complicated, you’d better understand the concept even if you have the formula.

In college physics, I had a really boring teacher with a thick accent that made him very hard to understand, so I rarely went to class. On one test, there was a problem that I had no idea how to solve the way he wanted us to, but I figured it out knowing that physics is big on “conservation of stuff.” Fortunately I didn’t have to show how I arrived at the answer, and this wouldn’t always work. But when you know the principles, you’re that much more effective when you study the details.

Back when the computer game Doom was all the rage for its immersive 3D graphics, my friend saw me having a good time with it, and wanted to play. She did not have a good time with it. She couldn’t find her way out of mazes, she overlooked important items in the rooms, she didn’t see the monsters sneaking up on her, and she couldn’t use the space around her to dodge enemy blasts while staying focused on her target. As Marty McFly might say, she had a problem thinking 3rd dimensionally.

When we tried another similar game, she wondered why I picked it up right away, while she struggled again. It was because I had developed a general skill that she hadn’t: spatial perception. After learning that skill, I could apply it to any of these games. I can also apply it to a wide array of other situations, from juggling to geometric constructions to sweeping a building for terrorists (which hopefully I’ll never have to do). It’s all the same.

Conversely, I was very ineffective at a number of tasks she excelled at, because she had learned one general skill that I hadn’t: networking. Because she was good at that, she could easily drum up support for any cause, acquire business contacts, and get invited to things other people couldn’t. It’s all the same.

Recently I’ve heard a few people say that Tim Ferriss is all over the place in his range of topics. This surprised me, because I thought he had a pretty clear focus. He’s the 4-Hour Workweek guy. He’s the lifestyle design guy. (And if they think he’s all over the place, then they must think I choose topics with a random number generator!)

Skellie clarified this in Escaping Niches, a really nice post, although I disagree with this particular part. She said that Tim’s blog “jumps all over the place, from road-testing supercars to extreme weight loss to travel tips to nutritional science. The range of topics is so broad that no one person could be interested in all of them.”

I just don’t see it that way. Someone who ends up at his blog after a Google search for the Audi R8 might not be interested in extreme weight loss. But Tim’s not writing for people who want to look up the horsepower of the Audi R8. He’s writing for people who are interested in what he’s all about – deconstructing, streamlining, and remapping any challenge. His ideal reader won’t mind that he doesn’t stay on the same narrow topic. Like me, they might not even notice.

I’ll point you to two great posts about generalization, which dispel the “jack of all trades, master of none” myth. First, Tim’s post The Top 5 Reasons to Be a Jack of All Trades. He has some great points about the superior success and life enjoyment of the generalist. For example, what do you call the top military guys? Generals! This is also where I came across one of my favorite phrases: “Be too complex to categorize.”

The other is Michael Martine’s Hiring Help for Your Blog – Why a Generalist is the Way to Go. It might not perfectly reflect the services he offers today (click his Blog Coaching and Consulting link for details), but it’s a fantastic explanation of why you don’t want to hire a guy who won the Nobel Prize for CSS without knowing a thing about SEO.

Mike at Four Pillars gave me some blogging advice the other day, in response to I Am Part Time Blogger, Hear Me Meow:

“Anyway, the reason your blog isn’t more successful in terms of RSS is quite simple (yes, I know the answer). Your posts are not main stream enough – you don’t talk about everyday, common items which most of the blogosphere can relate to. Your posts are all over the map in terms of topics, you write about confusing concepts and ideas!

Obviously this is not meant as criticism – it’s just an analysis based on factors that I think popular blogs share. Most of them cover things like saving money, investment, budgeting etc etc but they talk about things like cars, homes, cable bills etc. Most people can relate to those things. If you have a blog that usually covers common topics, has some focus (ie saving money, investing, baby stuff), you are a good writer, can promote the blog and work your ass off then you will probably have fairly successful blog in terms of RSS.”

I kind of agree and kind of disagree. It depends on whether you want to give people what they want, or give them what they need. I agree that niche blogs tend to be the most successful. Most blog readers seem to love them, but I have no idea why. The problem is that they’re often redundant. Most of the examples mentioned here have been done to death already, if there was ever anything to say in the first place.

Saving money? Why does anyone need to read about that? You save money by spending less. That’s all there is to it. Investing? It can potentially be very complicated, but investment blogs usually just tell people what they would already know if they read the newsletter that comes with their 401(k) statement. Budgeting? Yeah, it’s important, but I don’t see how you can get much fresh material on such a simple topic.

Of course, people read blogs for reasons other than getting information. Community, for one. So many of these blogs, even if they don’t really have anything new to say, can still be useful. But I’d rather find new things to say. Even if an exhausted topic can work, it’s not really something we need.

For me, doing a niche blog would be a terrible choice. First, I’d keep having to think up something else to say on that same topic even if there was nothing left to say. Scott Young noted that the purpose of his website is to lose its readers. He said that after you’ve read a blog for a while, “you move on, not because the ideas weren’t great, but because you’ve absorbed them fully enough that there isn’t anything left.”

Darren Rowse found that to be true on ProBlogger, his blog about blogging that’s targeted at beginner and intermediate level bloggers. He said that most of his readers tend to be regulars for a few months, then leave. It’s not because he’s not doing a good job. It’s because he’s doing such a good job that he quickly tells people everything they need to know about that topic. They graduate and move on.

Many times, the blogger gets sick of their own topic. After writing thousands of posts on the same topic, they’ve long since outgrown it, and they want out. Some people seem to think that the ultimate goal is to hand the reins over to someone else, so you can step away. But instead of that, why not create a blog you won’t outgrow, so you never want to step away?

The other problem with niche blogs is that any idea you have that doesn’t happen to fall within the boundaries of your specific topic is wasted. And I’m certainly not going to start a separate blog on every topic I write about. I’d end up with hundreds of blogs with just a few posts each.

Instead, I choose to write about any topic that fits with my general focus. I might have a hard time putting my general focus into words, but it’s there. It’s kind of like Seinfeld – you can say it’s about nothing, but it still has a general focus, and you have some idea of what to expect.

By not restricting myself to a narrow topic, I can write about some things that others can’t, because some things fall outside all of the traditional niches. And because I can switch things up, I don’t have to repeat myself a whole lot. But writing about high-level stuff is very different from combining unrelated niches. A blog about finance and gardening won’t work, because it’s targeting two completely different kinds of people. I’m targeting one kind of person.

Leo Babauta seems to advocate non-niche blogging now, judging from his post Shattering the Myth of Blog Niches: How to Grow a Huge Readership. (Although if I remember correctly, he once attributed his success partly to his unique focus on simple productivity. Can anyone confirm? Oh, and simplicity is another niche that I don’t get. If it’s so simple, why do you need to write thousands of posts about it?)

Now don’t go crazy with generalization, thinking that specialization is for suckers. I’ve got one or two posts coming about the benefits of specialization. Subscribe now, and don’t miss them!

But generalization is seriously underrated. Just ask Benjamin Franklin, Galileo Galilei, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gottfried Leibniz, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Archimedes, Cicero, John von Neumann, and countless other people who refused to be a job title, and insisted on being too complex to categorize.

I think Tim Ferriss has the second-best answer to the question “What do you do?” He sometimes just says “I’m a drug dealer” to end the conversation, because it takes too long to explain everything to someone who’s probably just making chit chat.

The best answer would be what escaped mental patient Billy Caufield said in The Dream Team: “What do I do? Well, it kinda depends on the circumstances.”

Photo by Annie Mole

In Boy Scouts, one of the most important things you do is work on earning your merit badges. And one of the most coveted merit badges, one required for becoming an Eagle Scout, is Emergency Preparedness.

To earn this merit badge, you need to demonstrate that you’re prepared for emergencies such as fires, explosions, car accidents, being trapped in the desert or a blizzard, food poisoning, flash floods, mountain accidents, boating accidents, gas leaks, tornadoes, hurricanes, avalanches, touching live electrical wires, carbon monoxide poisoning, and nuclear power plant emergencies (all of these are actually on the list).

I never earned this merit badge, but like everyone else, I’m still responsible for being prepared in the event of an emergency. And I experienced an emergency a couple of days ago, when my blog crashed.

To call this an emergency might sound like an exaggeration to some of you, but anyone who has a blog can imagine how it feels to first lose the ability to comment, and then lose the ability to log in. While I welcome technical challenges at work, it’s different when they strike where you live. I guess it’s like how a surgeon can operate on strangers with no problem, but not on their own kids.

And if something seems like an emergency to you, that’s how you’re going to treat it. Here’s a simple guide to dealing with emergencies (that aren’t really emergencies).

1. Freak out.

It’s not exactly constructive, but if you’re going to do it anyway, you might as well claim that you’re checking the first step off the list. Maybe the world really is coming to an end, and you need to react accordingly. Just get it out of your system, and then move on.

2. Realize that the problem is smaller than you.

You might overlook this truth, but your inner voice knows it. My inner voice told me that fixing my blog was not even remotely the biggest problem I’ve ever had to deal with. I said, “But I don’t know how to fix it.” My inner voice said, “But you know how to find out.”

3. Brainstorm solutions.

After you’ve calmed down a little, it’s time to actually do something. Determine specifically what the problem is, and come up with ideas of how to solve it.

4. Take action.

Pick the solution that seems most promising, and run with it. Repeat as needed.

5. Prepare for next time.

Once it’s over, decide what you’ll do to be better prepared next time. @bripblap said I inspired him to back up his blog that evening. We all know that regular backups are critical, but many of us don’t do enough of them.

John Hoff at WpBlogHost pointed me to the WordPress Exploit Scanner, a plugin that checks your blog for signs that it’s been hacked. I don’t know if I was hacked or not, but if it happens, I’ll sure want to know.

Are you prepared for emergencies?

The secret to success is very simple: practice. Although most people think that world class performance requires huge talent, research shows that 10 years (or 10,000 hours) of practice can make anyone a top performer in pretty much any field, from sports to music to business.

The talent myth is very easy to believe when you look at people at their peak. People forget that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, or that Abraham Lincoln lost numerous elections, or that Barbara Blackburn failed typing in high school (she went on to become the world’s fastest typist, with a peak of 212 wpm).

The good news is that practice makes perfect, so anyone has a chance. Just put in your 10,000 hours, and you’ll make it. But I’ve heard a lot of people citing this statistic lately, and they tend to miss one critical point: not all practice counts. Fortune Magazine reveals what it takes to be great:

“So greatness isn’t handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. Yet that isn’t enough, since many people work hard for decades without approaching greatness or even getting significantly better. What’s missing?

The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call ‘deliberate practice.’ It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.

For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day – that’s deliberate practice.”

So before punching your time card and starting to count your 10,000 hours, make sure you’re doing the right kind of practice. Undeliberate practice doesn’t count, which is why it’s possible to work in the same office for 30 years without becoming good at anything.

At my high school graduation, one of the speakers told us what it takes to become an expert. Just read about your topic of choice for an hour a day. After a year, you’ll be a national expert. After five years, you’ll be an international expert. And I heard someone say that reading six books on any subject will make you an expert.

These feats take far less time than the 10 years or 10,000 hours mentioned about, but I guess we’re talking about different levels of expertise.

The 10,000 hour rule comes from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success. I haven’t read it yet, and I haven’t found out exactly what the 10,000 hour rule applies to.

To be a great blogger, do you really need to blog for 10,000 hours? Or do you just need 10,000 hours of writing experience? Or 10,000 hours of experience in your subject matter? To be a great programmer, do you need 10,000 hours of experience with one particular language, or does all experience count? Does 10,000 hours of reading the news make you an expert of world events, or is that too broad?

Do you know? Do you have 10,000 hours of experience in anything?