Freakonomics » Nine Ways to Guarantee Success (And Failure)

This is a cross-post from James Altucher‘s blog Altucher Confidential. His previous appearances on the Freakonomics blog can be found here.

I really blew it and everyone knows it. I was even asked to speak at some conference about failure on I think June 13. I might’ve deluded myself into thinking I’m the keynote speaker. But I might just be on a panel. Hopefully I won’t fail at it. But if I do, I hope you can all come and watch it happen in slow motion. By the way, my favorite technique in public speaking is to slightly slur my words, but that’s another post.

I’m like Dr. Failure. I know exactly what you need to do if you want your wife to hate you, if you want to get thrown out of school, if you want to lose your investors $100 million. If you want to lose your home.

One-sixteenth of the time people are happy. The rest of the time they’re not. So if you start to avoid all the things that cause unhappiness then maybe there’s a small chance you can improve the ratio in your favor.

Claudia says, “Why are you writing about failure? Think positive!” What? Avoiding every possible way to fail is the most positive thing you can do to be happy and successful.

Here are the real reasons entrepreneurs fail. It’s not because of a bad programmer. Fire him and get a new one. It’s not because a client pulled out at the last minute. Get a new client, or anticipate it. It’s not because your girlfriend cheated on you. Kick her to the curb. It’s not because some guy sued you, or your employees delivered an unfinished product. We already know it’s your fault. Every failure boils down to these core reasons that come from the inside. Some might seem obvious but they really are the only reasons for failure. They are the core foundation of every failure. Pay attention please:

A) Sickness. This is obvious. If you’re sick all the time, you won’t be successful. When I was a venture capitalist I would never invest money with a guy hooked up to a ventilator. Or even if I suspected he was clinically depressed. Many people avoid second dates if they find out on the first date the girl has late-stage terminal cancer. This is sad but reality.

What does it mean for an entrepreneur? Put good things into your body. Exercise. Don’t drink. Sleep 8 hours a day. That’s it. Then you probably won’t get sick as much and you’ll have a lot of energy to do your business. If you’re sick in bed all the time, your business will fail.

Sometimes sickness might also be telling you something. When I worked for a private equity firm I once fell for no reason and could barely walk for a week or so afterwards. It wasn’t good for me to be there. I never went back. And later experiences proved me correct. Your body sometimes knows more than you do.

B) Inertia. I went out for dinner the other night with people who couldn’t stop talking, eating, and drinking. One person had business ideas. The other person wanted to write a novel. All night long: drinking, eating, talking about business ideas, talking about writing novels. Talking, eating, drinking, talking, walking, drinking again, talking more. Then you sleep. Wake up at eight. Bloated, sick, heavy.

Wake up at eight — then you’re too late. If you want to succeed you first have to get up and start. You can’t watch the shark tank, you have to be the shark. Don’t waste time. Start now. No more stuffing your face. No more parties at high-tech meetups with lots of social media experts. You know you only want to have sex with a social media expert. Stop lying about it. Start your business.

C) Doubts. You need to have a real passion behind the product you are creating. Would you use the product? Steve Jobs wanted an iPad, an iPod, an i-everything. Doubts will make you fail because you won’t be able to make critical design decisions. Decisions are the top of a pyramid. Beneath the top is the base built by your solid foundation: “This is the product I would use. This is the product I want!” Then all decisions come from that.

With stockpickr.com I was obsessed with putting in new features. But every single new feature was something that had worked successfully to make me a better trader. I had no doubts. I had the spreadsheets showing me those strategies worked. With Reset.com I only built websites that I would want to use.

D) Laziness. Everyone is lazy some of the time. If I’m bored with something I’m lazy. But with a startup, or if you are trying to move up in the corporate world, or if you are falling in love with a girl, you can’t be lazy. She wants to go tango dancing. You want to watch Jay Leno. You’re a lazy pig. She’ll find someone else to take her tango dancing. You have to be working at it all the time, except when you sleep and exercise and even then your subconscious is working at it. For jobs and startups, it’s a 12-hour day. There’s no avoiding it. Managing that time is a different story but that’s how you beat the 9-hour a day competitors.

E) Carelessness. If your programmers present you a final product, you still have to check every page, click on everything, click on everything fast and twice. Don’t forget a birthday or an anniversary. Don’t forget everything your boss told you or everything the client wanted. Be detail oriented. Persistent carelessness equals consistent failure.

F) Vacillating. Is this the right business? Or should I back up and start fresh with a new idea? Should I hire this person? I’ll hire this guy but then I’ll have doubts and won’t follow up. I’ll go out with this rich but maybe I really like that sexy girl who I met in an elevator. If you’re stuck in too many middles, you get sliced into bits. Your business implodes, your relationships have to start back at zero. You vacillated and ended up with nothing. Congratulations. (By the way, pick the sexy girl.)

G) No progress. You start your business. You launch your dating site. A few people sign up. But there’s no excitement. People stop signing up. Traffic stays a few dozen people a day. Ok, no progress. You buy some Google ads. They sort of work. No progress. By the way, failure is not a stigma. It’s OK to fail. It’s just that having “no progress” might be an indication that you need to move to another idea or business. I have a post coming about this other business I started where I was making no progress so I stopped and had to return money on the eve of raising it. I was shaking when I returned the money. I don’t like to give back $500,000 that had my name on it. I was a failure. But ultimately returning the money on the eve of failure created much goodwill and led to greater success later. This is not about the success of one business or failure. This is about the success of you.

H) Delusions. People start a business, then they think it’s the best geo-locator mobile dating discount app on the universe: “It’s called ‘6th Circle’ because it’s a play on Foursquare and the sixth circle of Dante’s Inferno. We’re going to do five deals with major sidewalk companies in China to get the word out. The market is $18 billion in profits because we get everyone in Shanghai to pay 10 cents a day.” Blah blah. Always look back and ask yourself: “Am I smoking crack?” Every day check the ashtray. Is there crack in there? Delusions will keep you from making progress. Then suddenly, no money, no friends, no  PR. It’s just you on your bed smoking your last piece of crack, hanging onto the lonely panties of the last hooker who left you alone. This is your mind on crack.

I) You Fall Backwards. You’re losing clients. Your best programmer quit. Your traffic is down. Your girlfriend isn’t returning your calls. Your boss promoted someone over you. Time to get creative. You need to think outside the box. Again, this is just an obstacle. Not a failure. Failures start off as obstacles. You want to overcome obstacles. You can’t make your girlfriend call you back. So maybe you get a new girlfriend who does call you back. Maybe you take a step back and build a new site. You start looking for a new job so you find people who value what you do. Falling backwards consistently will make you go to zero. So when you start to fall backwards, say, “OK, I have an obstacle. Now I need to think outside the box to get rid of this obstacle.” It’s not bad to have obstacles. You just have to overcome them. If you fall back too far, then you’re lying on the ground.

Consistently having any of the nine items above will make your business fail. And will make them succeed if you avoid all of them. I say “consistently.” Be vigilant. Every morning review the potential obstacles. Every afternoon. Every night. Catch yourself when you first hit the obstacle. If you can clean the obstacles out, you’ll have success. Guaranteed.

via freakonomics.com

Very interesting article, many are obvious, some less so, but still well worth reading.

Freakonomics » Nine Ways to Guarantee Success (And Failure)

This is a cross-post from James Altucher‘s blog Altucher Confidential. His previous appearances on the Freakonomics blog can be found here.

I really blew it and everyone knows it. I was even asked to speak at some conference about failure on I think June 13. I might’ve deluded myself into thinking I’m the keynote speaker. But I might just be on a panel. Hopefully I won’t fail at it. But if I do, I hope you can all come and watch it happen in slow motion. By the way, my favorite technique in public speaking is to slightly slur my words, but that’s another post.

I’m like Dr. Failure. I know exactly what you need to do if you want your wife to hate you, if you want to get thrown out of school, if you want to lose your investors $100 million. If you want to lose your home.

One-sixteenth of the time people are happy. The rest of the time they’re not. So if you start to avoid all the things that cause unhappiness then maybe there’s a small chance you can improve the ratio in your favor.

Claudia says, “Why are you writing about failure? Think positive!” What? Avoiding every possible way to fail is the most positive thing you can do to be happy and successful.

Here are the real reasons entrepreneurs fail. It’s not because of a bad programmer. Fire him and get a new one. It’s not because a client pulled out at the last minute. Get a new client, or anticipate it. It’s not because your girlfriend cheated on you. Kick her to the curb. It’s not because some guy sued you, or your employees delivered an unfinished product. We already know it’s your fault. Every failure boils down to these core reasons that come from the inside. Some might seem obvious but they really are the only reasons for failure. They are the core foundation of every failure. Pay attention please:

A) Sickness. This is obvious. If you’re sick all the time, you won’t be successful. When I was a venture capitalist I would never invest money with a guy hooked up to a ventilator. Or even if I suspected he was clinically depressed. Many people avoid second dates if they find out on the first date the girl has late-stage terminal cancer. This is sad but reality.

What does it mean for an entrepreneur? Put good things into your body. Exercise. Don’t drink. Sleep 8 hours a day. That’s it. Then you probably won’t get sick as much and you’ll have a lot of energy to do your business. If you’re sick in bed all the time, your business will fail.

Sometimes sickness might also be telling you something. When I worked for a private equity firm I once fell for no reason and could barely walk for a week or so afterwards. It wasn’t good for me to be there. I never went back. And later experiences proved me correct. Your body sometimes knows more than you do.

B) Inertia. I went out for dinner the other night with people who couldn’t stop talking, eating, and drinking. One person had business ideas. The other person wanted to write a novel. All night long: drinking, eating, talking about business ideas, talking about writing novels. Talking, eating, drinking, talking, walking, drinking again, talking more. Then you sleep. Wake up at eight. Bloated, sick, heavy.

Wake up at eight — then you’re too late. If you want to succeed you first have to get up and start. You can’t watch the shark tank, you have to be the shark. Don’t waste time. Start now. No more stuffing your face. No more parties at high-tech meetups with lots of social media experts. You know you only want to have sex with a social media expert. Stop lying about it. Start your business.

C) Doubts. You need to have a real passion behind the product you are creating. Would you use the product? Steve Jobs wanted an iPad, an iPod, an i-everything. Doubts will make you fail because you won’t be able to make critical design decisions. Decisions are the top of a pyramid. Beneath the top is the base built by your solid foundation: “This is the product I would use. This is the product I want!” Then all decisions come from that.

With stockpickr.com I was obsessed with putting in new features. But every single new feature was something that had worked successfully to make me a better trader. I had no doubts. I had the spreadsheets showing me those strategies worked. With Reset.com I only built websites that I would want to use.

D) Laziness. Everyone is lazy some of the time. If I’m bored with something I’m lazy. But with a startup, or if you are trying to move up in the corporate world, or if you are falling in love with a girl, you can’t be lazy. She wants to go tango dancing. You want to watch Jay Leno. You’re a lazy pig. She’ll find someone else to take her tango dancing. You have to be working at it all the time, except when you sleep and exercise and even then your subconscious is working at it. For jobs and startups, it’s a 12-hour day. There’s no avoiding it. Managing that time is a different story but that’s how you beat the 9-hour a day competitors.

E) Carelessness. If your programmers present you a final product, you still have to check every page, click on everything, click on everything fast and twice. Don’t forget a birthday or an anniversary. Don’t forget everything your boss told you or everything the client wanted. Be detail oriented. Persistent carelessness equals consistent failure.

F) Vacillating. Is this the right business? Or should I back up and start fresh with a new idea? Should I hire this person? I’ll hire this guy but then I’ll have doubts and won’t follow up. I’ll go out with this rich but maybe I really like that sexy girl who I met in an elevator. If you’re stuck in too many middles, you get sliced into bits. Your business implodes, your relationships have to start back at zero. You vacillated and ended up with nothing. Congratulations. (By the way, pick the sexy girl.)

G) No progress. You start your business. You launch your dating site. A few people sign up. But there’s no excitement. People stop signing up. Traffic stays a few dozen people a day. Ok, no progress. You buy some Google ads. They sort of work. No progress. By the way, failure is not a stigma. It’s OK to fail. It’s just that having “no progress” might be an indication that you need to move to another idea or business. I have a post coming about this other business I started where I was making no progress so I stopped and had to return money on the eve of raising it. I was shaking when I returned the money. I don’t like to give back $500,000 that had my name on it. I was a failure. But ultimately returning the money on the eve of failure created much goodwill and led to greater success later. This is not about the success of one business or failure. This is about the success of you.

H) Delusions. People start a business, then they think it’s the best geo-locator mobile dating discount app on the universe: “It’s called ‘6th Circle’ because it’s a play on Foursquare and the sixth circle of Dante’s Inferno. We’re going to do five deals with major sidewalk companies in China to get the word out. The market is $18 billion in profits because we get everyone in Shanghai to pay 10 cents a day.” Blah blah. Always look back and ask yourself: “Am I smoking crack?” Every day check the ashtray. Is there crack in there? Delusions will keep you from making progress. Then suddenly, no money, no friends, no  PR. It’s just you on your bed smoking your last piece of crack, hanging onto the lonely panties of the last hooker who left you alone. This is your mind on crack.

I) You Fall Backwards. You’re losing clients. Your best programmer quit. Your traffic is down. Your girlfriend isn’t returning your calls. Your boss promoted someone over you. Time to get creative. You need to think outside the box. Again, this is just an obstacle. Not a failure. Failures start off as obstacles. You want to overcome obstacles. You can’t make your girlfriend call you back. So maybe you get a new girlfriend who does call you back. Maybe you take a step back and build a new site. You start looking for a new job so you find people who value what you do. Falling backwards consistently will make you go to zero. So when you start to fall backwards, say, “OK, I have an obstacle. Now I need to think outside the box to get rid of this obstacle.” It’s not bad to have obstacles. You just have to overcome them. If you fall back too far, then you’re lying on the ground.

Consistently having any of the nine items above will make your business fail. And will make them succeed if you avoid all of them. I say “consistently.” Be vigilant. Every morning review the potential obstacles. Every afternoon. Every night. Catch yourself when you first hit the obstacle. If you can clean the obstacles out, you’ll have success. Guaranteed.

via freakonomics.com

Very interesting article, many are obvious, some less so, but still well worth reading.

Anglo-EU Translation Guide

Translated phrase-list jokes

May 21, 2011 @ 9:20 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Humor

« Saucily garbled blurb | -->

« previous post |

An amusing "Anglo-EU Translation Guide" has been circulating widely in recent weeks. This seems to come from the same source as an old Economist column ("I understand, up to a point", 9/2/2004; discussed here), which attributed the joke to "the Dutch, trying to do business with the British", and which also gave some examples from a list "written by British diplomats, as a guide to the language used by their French counterparts".

The recently-posted Anglo-EU Translation Guide shares 3 phrases with the 2004 Economist column (some expressive details aside), lacking 2 others and adding 12 more. So a combined Anglospeak phrase book would have 17 entries, as compiled below; no doubt there are many more candidates Out There.

What the British say What the British mean What others understand
I hear what you say I disagree and do not want to discuss it further He accepts my point of view
With the greatest respect… I think you are an idiot He is listening to me
That's not bad That's good That's poor
That is a very brave proposal You are insane He thinks I have courage
Quite good A bit disappointing Quite good
I would suggest… Do it or be prepared to justify yourself Think about the idea, but do what you like
Oh, incidentally/ by the way The primary purpose of our discussion is… That is not very important
I was a bit disappointed that I am annoyed that It really doesn't matter
Very interesting That is clearly nonsense They are impressed
I'll bear it in mind I've forgotten it already They will probably do it
I'm sure it's my fault It's your fault Why do they think it was their fault?
You must come for dinner It's not an invitation, I'm just being polite I will get an invitation soon
I almost agree I don't agree at all He's not far from agreement
I only have a few minor comments Please re-write completely He has found a few typos
Could we consider some other options I don't like your idea They have not yet decided
Correct me if I'm wrong I'm right, don't contradict me I may be wrong, please let me know
Up to a point Not in the slightest Partially

The Economist column gives only these three French phrases — does anyone have a longer list pinned to their wall?

French Phrase Literal Translation Idiomatic Translation
"je serai clair" "I will be clear" "I will be rude"
"Il faut la visibilité Européenne" "We need European visibility" "The EU must indulge in some pointless,
annoying and, with luck, damaging international grand-standing."
"Il faut trouver une solution pragmatique" "We must find a pragmatic solution" "Warning: I am about to propose a highly complex, theoretical, legalistic and unworkable way forward."

Or perhaps, for fairness, a list of translations (into English) of the English of Dutch diplomats?

These are examples of an old and widespread type of joke, which include phrasebooks for translating scientific and technical writing, for interpreting between the sexes or the generations, and so on.

Sturgeon's Law of course applies.

May 21, 2011 @ 9:20 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Humor

Permalink


via languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

This is great because it's true, and I have learned that these are phrases you have to use to avoid alienating yourself by being too blunt...

13 statements that will help me control my life | Andrew's Upstanding US Citizen Homepage

I hear a lot of my friends, co-workers and random people on the subway talk about their troubles in life. They complain, fret, struggle, dismiss and lament, but they hardly ever say anything inspirational or admirable. Sure, you figure any friend who turns to you and gives you some advice you can read about on a fortune cookie is not really on the level with you, but the overwhelming (or is it underwhelming?) mode that people are in when they talk with their fellows is that life sucks.

Life doesn't suck. In fact, life is awesome. I guess being an atheist, I'm very grateful to be alive and I never want it to end. I know it will some day and it won't matter anymore, but that's all the more reason to get the most out of it. I want to live better and be a better person. Today I compiled a short list of things that I will remind myself of every day so that I can improve and enjoy. These are inspirational, truthful and honest. I feel cheesey for this all, but hopefully someone will take it to heart.

1) Do what you love, but if you can't do that, at least love doing a good job.

2) Approach tasks as if you are the first and last defense against stupidity in every collaborative process. Chances are, you'll be the only one thinking that far ahead.

3) Other people aren't and shouldn't be interested in HOW things get done. All they are interested in is what happens, how long it takes and how much money it costs. Prepare ALL of your presentations, proposals and suggestions according to this.

4) Rich people don't fuck the little guys. The little guys fuck themselves by thinking that they do.

5) When you work your day job, you're not making yourself rich, you're making someone else rich. How do you fix this? Put your money into things that make you more money, not things that make you happy.

6) You can't win if you're afraid to lose. You just CAN'T. Nobody ever learned to win without losing many times first. Nothing significant is ever achieved without risk.

7) Fear is the root of evil, prejudice, missed opportunities and apprehension. Bravery and acceptance always makes you a better person.

8) If you blame your problem on something or somebody other than yourself, you'll spend a lifetime fixing the wrong things and you'll never get anything solved.

9) Depression is an investment opportunity. When your personal stock is low, it's a good time to prepare for growth.

10) Most people are rarely on the same wavelength as you, and that's a good thing. Learn from the different angle that they approach things. Relish their difference of opinion.

11) 15 years from now, you're going to wonder what the hell possessed you to wear that top you have on.

12) Once you get past the anxiety of a sales pitch, an exclusive offer, or a fashion statement, you'll find that your desire to buy something is not that pressing.

13) Don't depend on lists for wisdom. They're always created by someone who is better at talking than actually doing. Real winners write self-help books.

via andrewgonsalves.com

There is a lot of interesting and thought-provoking stuff on Andrew Gonsalves's site.
It's worth dipping into periodically too. He has some interesting things to say on atheism and sexuality.