I call shenanigans. That’s right… Shenanigans! Cubicles are not the enemy. Offices are not the enemy. Commutes are an enemy, but not The Enemy. Trading away the hours of your life for linearly related remuneration is the enemy. If you’re working by the hour, you’re limiting yourself. This post is about shifting from hourly billing to a value based approach. If you’re already convinced that hourly billing is evil stupid, feel free to skip down to the heading with the asterisk.

The rest of this post is for entrepreneurs and related variations. If you’re an employee, the concepts don’t directly apply unless you’re willing to essentially create your own position within an existing organization. That’s definitely possible, and I encourage it, but this post isn’t tailored specifically for that purpose.

The good news is that for once, changing everything is merely a matter of making a decision. By the end of this, you’ll have everything you need to increase (perhaps exponentially) your income and profit without changing anything but your mindset. Don’t let the fact that it’s free and easy prevent you from doing it. In fact, if that’s a problem for you, let me know and I’ll send you a bill. Also, if you’re not making any money, multiplying zero will yield you an improvement of zero. However, it’s not necessarily even that harsh; you may be able to get jobs that you wouldn’t have previously by shifting your thinking as recommended herein.

Despite everything, some of you won’t be convinced. That’s society messing with your head. Stop it. First, a few words for those who need more than proclamation…

The Freelance / Contractor Problem

First of all, as I’ve written before, stop calling yourself a freelancer or contractor. Freelance is a concept, not a title. What’s worse, the concept is fatally flawed. I don’t think ‘contractor’ is different enough to talk about the distinction.

The thrust of this post is to get you to stop thinking like a freelancer and start thinking like a business. ‘Freelance’ implies that you are an employee without a job. We can argue whether or not that’s fair, but you’re going to have to buy me drinks first. Fairness doesn’t matter anyway. Freelancers generally act as if they are employees without jobs. Working by the hour is the structural foundation.

This is a good time to invoke Marshall McLuhan. Question: If “the medium is the message”, what message does the freelance medium convey? Answer: It conveys the practitioner willingly submits to act as a subservient wage-slave. Further, it communicates this externally to the client and imprints it in the mind of the practitioner. Freelancing as an “extension of man” in this case only extends the limits placed upon employees to non-employees. That’s a dirty trick if I’ve ever seen one.

I really can’t think of anything good to say about freelancing. The standard claim is that you get to be your own boss. It actually means that you get a new boss on every project. An underlying concept here is that you need to think like an advisor who’s hired because someone else needs you. While this may not seem financially accurate, you need to absolutely convince yourself that you do not need them. That’s an issue that could fill volumes alone, but it really does inform the rest of what I’m talking about from a more psychological, less practical, level.

For employees aspiring to upgrade to something more, the promise of freelancing is merely the promise of more of the same, but with more administrative paperwork. That’s hardly an improvement, I’d recommend skipping it if at all possible.

The Plague: The Bass-Ackwards Fee Calculation

For an example of exactly what NOT to do, you can check out the Hourly Rate Calculator by FREELANCE SWITCH. It’s seductively efficient in that it figures out the hourly rate you should charge by adding your estimated expenses to the profit you want to make for the year and dividing that by the amount of available hours. Yes, it’s ridiculously useful for the purpose it was designed. Unfortunately, industrial age thinking shouldn’t form the basis of software any of us use. This end-around calculation strategy is horrible for a few reasons:

• Ignores the market pressures of available work and competition.
• Estimations are problematic at best. This applies to hours and expenses.
• Unexpected expenses are impossible to plan for by definition. This strategy results in an unexpected expenses cutting directly into a preset profit margin.
• Blocking out time a full year in advance assumes a magical balance between multiple clients’ deadlines, project timelines, overages, illnesses, et cetera to achieve the desired level of hours. Good luck with that!
• Planning to operate at high levels of time utilization results in a complete elimination of schedule flexibility. Have you ever tried to defragment your hard drive when it’s full? The blocks don’t have anywhere to go. And it’s worse with a time schedule because you can’t use empty blocks in the past.
• LIMITS PROFIT POTENTIAL! Way to go business wiz! Even if everything goes exactly according to plan, this pricing strategy results in the plan being the best case scenario. The numbers can get worse for any number of reasons, but they can’t get better… unless you invent more time or increase rates with new clients to make up for past shortcomings. For those familiar with trading or gambling psychology, you may recognize this from a related cognitive bias or two. In short, humans instinctively gravitate toward this strategy despite its inferior performance in the long run.
• Along with the main theme of everything in this post, it creates an inherent disconnect between value to the client and the calculated rate.

The Medieval Surgery Tactic that Actually Kills

Time-Tracking Software. Remember how one of the worst things about having a job is having a manager? Remember that the worst kinds of managers are micromanagers?

Well, for a monthly fee, you can purchase software that allows you to micromanage yourself! What a deal! Okay, maybe you can even get this service for free. Lucky you.

The Immorality of Billing by the Hour

Let’s just make this simple… Billing by the hour is a conflict of interest. It is in the client’s best interest to get as much value as possible for the money they spend. It is in our best interest to maximize profit for the work we perform. Billing by the hour constructs a de facto barrier between price, value, and profit.

The only way to increase the client’s value in this system would be a qualitative measure of the work performed within each hour. Since an hour is quantitative by definition, its use for this purpose is patently absurd.

pros⋅ti⋅tute
[pros-ti-toot, -tyoot] noun, verb, -tut⋅ed, -tut⋅ing.
–noun

1. a woman who engages in sexual intercourse for money; whore; harlot.
2. man who engages in sexual acts for money.
3. a person who willingly uses his or her talent or ability in a base and unworthy way, usually for money.

The only way for us to increase our profit margin is to decrease the qualitative input per hour. The only way to increase nominal profit is to increase the number of hours billed. Even if these billed hours are billed honestly, there is incentive to find, discover, or invent tasks that are of relatively low value. It is easy to rationalize them as providing some benefit to the client or the project, but each hour does not yield the same value as the pricing structure would indicate.

Examples

• Scope Creep – Expanding the goals of the project
• Feature Creep – Expanding the features needed to achieve the goals
• Slow-playing (intentional or unintentional) – Working at different intensities during different periods of time.
• Estimation – Is 7.5 hours billed as 8? Is 1 hour and 15 minutes billed as 1.5 hours? We could play the infinite reduction game forever, but at some point there’s a breaking point between accuracy and the absurdity of tracking smaller increments.

Even if you manage to convince yourself that every billed hour is completely justified (the psychological biases are too strong for you to even bother trying to convince me) , you’re not doing yourself any favors. You’re compromising yourself on a more basic level. You’re imposing stultifying time regulations on yourself. We have a term for this… masochism.

The key to the above definition for a prostitute is “in a base and unworthy way“. I suppose that an inherent conflict of interest qualifies billing by the hour as “base”. I’ll let you decide whether it’s “unworthy” as well.

The Myth of Industry Standard

This construct is the reason I felt the need to write this article. I get it. Most industries do have “industry standard” practices and billing practices are almost always part of this. Some clients are used to dealing with certain industries in certain ways.

One thing to keep in mind is that resistance along these lines is often an issue with a human resource department, billing department, or accounting department. It is very important to understand that these departments only exist to support the core business. It is easy for people inside organizations to lose this perspective. If you are working on anything related to the core business, it will be possible for them to adapt. If you run into an absolute wall of inflexible resistance, I would make the educated guess that you shouldn’t be working with that particular organization.
The more important consideration is that the industry standard rules are the rules the average players play by. The elite recognize their own value and communicate that value. This relates back to the mental distinction between freelancer types and businesses. The inability to become exceptional while following industry standard practices involving hourly billing will become clearer when we discuss the math of things.

The Math Is Simple and It’s Bad

For capitalism to function, the person holding the cash must be able to answer the following question: Is the value of the service greater than or equal to the purchase price? Any reasonable expectation of creating maximum value for both parties requires an easy path to this question’s answer. The variables become too abstract for clients when hours enter into the equation. I promise that this abstraction lowers your profit potential… and that is in the best case. In the worst case, you will simply lose deals. The rub: often the others offered to do the same thing you would have done for a lot more money.

The moment you willingly participate in any conversation about hourly rates, you have lost. As soon as a client hears an hourly number, their mind immediately shifts to the hourly rates of things they’re familiar with. If their first job out of college paid them $11/hour, bias creeps in. If they pay their attorney $150/hour bias creeps in. This relative quantification is a death knell. It ranks you in relative position to everyone they’ve dealt with on an hourly basis. There is no way to predictably win this game. Perhaps you provide a lower number than your competitors. Sure, maybe you’ll seem like a better relative deal, but it’s more likely that you’ll seem low quality. Perhaps you’ll provide a higher number than your competitors. Sure, you’ll avoid the low quality perception, but it’s more likely that you’ll seem overpriced.

“Wait a second Andrew? How can you suggest that I’ll lose if I price something lower than everyone AND higher than everyone? Is there a Goldilocks sweet spot that you’re going to talk about next?”

Nope. It’s not a mistake. There is no way to predictably win this game. The game is rigged. The game is rigged because there is a disconnect when you try to answer the fundamental question of capitalism using the abstract representation of hours as value. It’s a lose-lose proposition. Good luck with that!

It’s simple math; With rates based on hours, the only way to increase income and profit is to work more hours. Since the number of hours at your disposal is limited, your income and profit are limited.

My final note on the math may be its most damning. Billing by the hour guarantees that money will be left on the table in every project (that’s honestly estimated/billed). Because of the capitalist question discussed above, any acceptance based on an hourly abstraction would have been more powerful if the discussion was conducted in pure cost and value terms.

To be fair, there is one exception… If your hourly rate is higher than the value you’re capable of delivering. But if that’s the case, well…

Friction Points and Temptations to Avoid

There are a few exceptions that I don’t want to dwell on in this post, but are worth mentioning and discussing.

What About My Employees? The entire economic system declines rapidly if employees are removed from the mix. There are compelling and valid reasons to be an employee. Short-term risk exposure is one thing that comes to mind. The unrecognized genius of employees is that they have effectively outsourced management. This has negatives as well, but it’s actually kind of brilliant. It’s definitely a good strategy for some.

Supply and Demand. I mentioned this briefly before, but I think it needs to be highlighted again. Hourly pricing strategies are generally biased to discount the importance of supply and demand in relation to the market and competition.

When you’re creating a demand, there is no curve. The reversal to the previous point is that creating and/or demonstrating a need in a company negates the need to pay attention to supply and demand.

“Am I getting billed for this”? When billing by the hour, clients are forced to make a cost-benefit analysis every time they think about you. In a sense, it’s very prostitute-esque. This results in potential work getting delayed or ignored because you never get a chance to intervene in the sales process happening in their brain. This may sound insignificant, but it’s devastatingly powerful and will impact your business.

Pricing by project. Another way to think about this might be when the practitioner makes an estimate of time a project will take, does a bunch of calculations, and slaps a price tag on it. This may be pitched to the client along with a list of deliverables. It’s then generally understood that the work will be done for a fixed price with the practitioner taking on risks of overages. This is essentially an hourly billing scenario masquerading as something else with the added negative of increased risk exposure. Pricing by project itself isn’t a bad concept, but the figure should be calculated with the methods below rather than the time-based methods discussed above.

The outsourcing loophole. Whether we’re talking about outsourcing piecework to the design office next door, or a programmer on the other side of the planet, this can break down when dealing with anyone you’re hiring (including employees). There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that more up-front investment is required to execute the methods below. This results in an efficiency nightmare that increases geometrically as the project or job in question gets smaller. I’m sure you can imagine this so I’m not going to flesh it all out now.

*The Required Paradigm Shift

While this is most directly applicable to things like web development companies, consultants, and designers… it has far-reaching implications. The same approach can be adapted to products and services.. even prepackaged services.

So far, I’ve basically been discussing the negatives in terms of time. Now I’m going to switch things up on you without a ton of explanation and hope you stick with me. We’re not really talking about time and billing by the hours. What we’re really talking about is the relationship between inputs and outputs. Time is simply the most obvious input to discuss.

Here is the paradigm shift (in terms of pricing): Disconnect all relationships between inputs and outputs in your mind. From this moment forward, only think about inputs.

This is important, so let me rephrase it another zillion ways…

• Inputs are not related to outputs.
• The amount of work you perform has absolutely no bearing on its value.
• How hard you work has no relationship to output value.
• How long you work has no relationship to value.
• Output is the only thing that has value.
• Value is easy to put a price tag on.

(Things like “rush jobs” are in a different category. Artificially compressed timeframes with serious deadlines imply an increased value to the client. Mandated speed is different than nominal hours.)

Any attempt to pass input costs to clients is arrogance. Reverse calculating your rates based on your wants is a de facto personal charge passed along to the client. Your needs are important, but they are only important to you, and are not connected to the value you deliver in any way. I hope I make myself clear on this point. It should never be ignored that your success should be important to your clients. If they don’t want you to win, don’t work with them or fire them.

The reversal to the preceding paragraph is that if you charge based on value, your margin should be high enough that wants and needs never comes into question… and that is the ultimate point.

Clarification: Inputs such as raw materials and hired labor may be billed directly to clients, but this is a separate conversation completely.

Back to the Question of Capitalism

As I said above, this is the important question to answer: Is the value of the service greater than or equal to the purchase price? Any reasonable expectation of creating maximum value for both parties requires an easy path to this question’s answer.

Here is the actionable principle in its simplest form: Once you determine the value of something you’re offering, the only question is the balance between what the client is willing to pay and what you are willing to accept to deliver that value.

Example: If the value (to the client) of a marketing initiative is agreed to be $500,000 over 2 years, what is the dollar figure agreeable to both parties for you to deliver that value? The only real question is what that number is between 0 and 500,000. If you agree to $100,000, there are questions of terms, interest, et cetera. However, these are more math and budget questions than conceptual questions.

If you can reliably deliver the client $500,000 worth of value, they will not begrudge you for making $2,731 per hour after the fact. For one thing, you no longer talk about inputs, so it shouldn’t even come up.

On the other hand, go to a client and attempt to negotiate a contract for $2,731 per hour. I dare you! Please… By all means… Film it and share! First, try to do this with a straight face. If you do, you will be the only one in the room not laughing. Deadlines notwithstanding, clients DO NOT CARE how much time it takes you to complete a project, but they get weird when talking about hourly rates… especially when they’re large (the rates, not the clients). It’s not logical, it just is. This doesn’t seem to change a whole lot between average folks and mult-millionaires. I haven’t had the conversation with any billionaires… yet.

Loose Ends and a Note for the Aspiring Rockstars

Answering the question of value is not always easy. It varies widely by industry and market. There isn’t a shortcut to solving for X in this case. It will likely take some level of expertise in your field. In lieu of expertise, there’s always research.

I will admit that implementing these things requires a degree of confidence. Often, confidence comes easily with examples. In this case, it might help to think about all of those sensational celebrity news stories that talk about how much Oprah and Bill Gates make per hour. Those numbers are in no way connected to quantitative inputs in comparison to coal miners or deep sea fisherman. Oprah and Bill Gates get paid on the value they deliver.

For an dose of validation directed at consulting specifically, Value-Based Fees by Alan Weissis a great resource. It greatly clarified my thinking on the topic and informs much of what I’ve written here.

Aspiring Rockstars! If you’re charging by the hour, you have no idea what it’s like to be a rockstar. Act like a rockstar, not a barista who happens to also be in a band.

Requirements

As I mentioned way back up at the top, the requirements for this are very small. You have to take the paradigm shift seriously, then you have to apply it. If you do, Congratulations! You are thinking like a business, not an employee.

Have you ever imagined jumping off a building? How about jumping out a window? As you think about jumping, what height feels comfortable without a significant fear of being injured? How far do you think you could jump before it would kill you?

I’d be sort of okay with jumping from a second story window and think I’d be fine as long as I landed right. When I startled an intruder in my living room, he jumped out through a second story window and almost hit the ground running. Then again, I was holding a gun AND he landed on grass… maybe that’s not the best example.

The fear Nazis out there are fond of making declarations of fearlessness in the face of any danger. Most people roll their eyes at such claims, brushing them off as misguided attempts to display courage. And for the most part, people who claim not to have any fear are just showing off. However, it may be true that some people have relatively low instances of fear. They’re rather rare for one simple reason… The genes of people with no fear get weeded out by evolution.

The rest of us have genes that give us a relatively healthy level of fear. Unfortunately, many of our fears are antiquated. Sure, they may still have some value, but the level of fear we have for various things is not correlated with the things most likely to cause us harm in our modern world.

Most Common Fears

From Forbes.com (in no particular order):

• Heights
• Speaking In Public
• Bugs (especially Spiders, Scorpions, Bees)
• Water
• Snakes
• Bridges
• Mice
• Bats
• Public Transportation
• Storms
• Closed Spaces
• Tunnels
• Crowds

Heights

Let’s think about heights again. What’s the real fear? There’s a cliched quip about a fear of heights that’s something like, “I’m not afraid of heights, I’m afraid of falling”. This is an attempt to get at the underlying cause, but it can be deconstructed even farther. We’re not really afraid of falling or we’d never learn to walk. The root of the fear is high-speed impact with immovable objects.

Most people would experience some fear responses if perched on the ledge of a tall building. Hitting the ground from a 19 story fall is roughly equivalent to smashing into a solid brick wall while driving 75 mph. Compare that to the impact speed of jumping from the roof of a 2 story building at about 25 mph. To put that in perspective, the highest recorded speed for a human is 29.8 mph. So, while jumping off a building of that height may cause serious injury or death, it is a human scale measurement that our evolutionary ancestors would have been comfortable with.

The important thing is this: We experience a fear of heights because of the implied speed of impact, but we really do fear heights because of the context of height. For the vast majority of people, 75 mph is a comfortable driving speed. The consequences of impact are similar to the fall. However, most of us would keep on driving happily, but back up from a ledge.

This can be examined on an even deeper level by comparing the sensation and reaction of riding in a modern, well-sealed car compared to a motorcycle. Is it really high wind that we’re afraid of? Maybe the higher noise levels in an unsealed environment?

We didn’t experience speed in our evolutionary past. For our tribal ancestors, the only way to achieve high-speeds was to fall from great heights. Unfortunately, this was not an experience one could repeatedly experiment with. There was no way to feel rapid acceleration or deceleration either. Therefore, we never had an opportunity to evolve a rational fear of speed based on speed itself. We instead evolved a fear of ledges and vertical distances.

The Holy Trinity of Fear

Rational fears generally evolved in response to one of thee following three negative forces. Comparing them to the list above does result in a mixture of various combinations. And of course it will vary by person.

• Death
• Social Degradation
• Unpredictability

It’s easy to see why people (and other animals) would involve a fear of things that can kill us. The other two are intuitive from our experiences, but not quite so easy to explain.

The fear of negative social feedback includes layers of avoiding the punishment of violating social rules (including physical punishment and death). It also has reproductive implications as the potential to lower group status increases linearly with the size of the group. Further, the communication of social foibles to those not in attendance increases geometrically with the size of the group. Social status is a huge factor in attracting high value mates so this concern can be amplified. Even the most seasoned speakers and performers talk about being nervous in the initial moments of interacting with a new group.

The unpredictability factor functions as an amplifier of any existing negative potential. Unidentified creatures moving unpredictably messes with our threat analysis systems. Identified threats moving unpredictably amplify our threat analysis systems. Group dynamics also implies an increased level of unpredictability. There are other nuances, but understanding that unpredictability is the root cause of fear is probably going far enough.

Don’t Be a Crazy Person (WARNING: This may be a a little too close to self-development pap)

Crazy people are dominated by the disconnect between their behaviors in relation to inputs. In this sense, our antiquated minds have the potential to make us all crazy within the modern context. We may react strongly to things that were persistent threats to our ancestors, but are no longer threats today. Standing against a glass wall looking down 100 stories may induce a fear response (or vertigo) despite the relative safety. Driving at high speeds may feel perfectly safe despite traffic fatality statistics being much more serious than accidentally falling out of your apartment statistics.

I’m not going to analyze each fear in its modern context for you. But for every fear you know you have a tendency to experience and every fear you experience in the future, thinking about whether or not your response is rational in modern times is worthwhile.

Other People Are Crazy

This is also extremely useful in examining fears implied or communicated by others. Fear spreads easily. Fear is so well known to cause reactions in people AND so well studied, that fear easy for others to employ it as a method of applying stultifying control.

Is it rational for a mother to fear terrorists are going to harm her child in rural South Dakota?

It’s also useful to examine the converse.

Is it rational for an employee in a company to feel job security? Is the wall of information between company owners and employees eerily soothing?

Some people let fear completely dominate their lives. Others let fear impact them in more subtle ways. Since our brains are flawed by effective anachronism, it makes sense to bend the rules of fear to our advantage.

Side question: Why is self-indulgence supposedly a bad thing?

Of course, the ultimate goal for any neurotic is to get someone to pay to be their therapist. Patience Andrew… Patience. Woody Allen has long been a mentor. Don’t tell him that though; it may push him over the edge. So… light up your pipe while I get comfortable. It’s direct access to Andrew’s brain time.

I hate false dichotomies with a passion. I don’t want one or the other. I want it all. The lifestyle design myth of the day is the employee vs. entrepreneur conundrum. This is a false dichotomy for two reasons:

1. Working as an employee and working as an entrepreneur are not opposites.
2. Working as an employee or entrepreneur are not the only options.

I’m only going to address #2 today.

Admittedly, entrepreneur doesn’t define exactly what I’m talking about. There is a general tendency to frame employees as mindless drones motivated only by the hope of experiencing bliss in an afterlife cogs in a machine and entrepreneurs as gunslingers in the Wild West vanquishing foes and slaying the dragons of mediocrity. It’s the strict solo/DIY mentality that I’m rejecting. And I have news for you: Dragon scales are impervious to bullets.

Back to Andrew’s Neuroses

In “Entrepreneur: Insecure Avoidance“, I wrote about some potential psychological issues that may contribute to our tendency to, not merely run toward the romanticism of entrepreneurialism, but also run away screaming in fear from being an employee . In a nutshell… Being an employee subjects us to all sorts of hierarchical indignities.

A friend used to try to convince me that I was good at everything I tried. Granted… She’s hot and, during the dips in the manic depression curve that comes with being an entrepreneur, I run exclusively on coffee and delusions of grandeur. So… I didn’t exactly go out of my way to prove her wrong.

There are very significant things that my personality is not suited for. These things have prevented me from being as successful as I aspire to be. It may very well be that I have $7,438,559,217 worth of valuable ideas in my head that will never be realized because I’m working with $2 worth of focus and a grossly overpriced procrastination circuit. I’d be better off if I only had $531,668,139 worth of ideas so I wasn’t distracted by trying to develop the other $6,906,891,078 worth at the same time. Newsflash: With the way the math works out in that scenario, I’d end up with $2.

So here’s what I’m working with in the “issues” department (non-exhaustive list):

• Easily Distracted by Tangential Thoughts
• Easily Distracted by Details / Perfectionism
• Acute Procrastination Skills
• Resistance to Arrival at Creative/Productive Mental State
• Blatant Disregard for Authority
• Inability to Relinquish Control
• Inability to Establish Lasting Relationships with Cannibals
• Contempt for Celery

Now here’s the thing… I can play the “self-development” game until I’m dead, but I don’t wanna. (I absolutely refuse to add stubborn to the list) For the most part, there are differing levels of desirable energies and side-effects to each of those items. Distraction + Obsessive Attention to Detail + Procrastination is the Holy Trinity of creativity. Disregard for Authority is rooted in my skepticism… which is a defining characteristic of me as a human. That isn’t to say that those things are all good, but quashing them through regimented training and faux enlightenment just feels wrong.

Project Mayhem: Part Deux

I call shenanigans on the utopian “lone wolf” ideal of entrepreneurs. It isn’t enough to show us anecdotal success stories. If there even is a pure example of this do everything entrepreneur to begin with, I’d be shocked. If this mythical beast was also successful by some measure, I’d still suggest that the success would be greater with some sort of collaboration. Sorry. I don’t always play fair.

It is generally better to own 50 percent of a million dollar business than it is to own 100 percent of a $100,000 business. -Alan Weiss

Within the huge number of super-smart, ultra-capable people we come into contact every day I intuit zillions of lost revenue. The predominant desire to be at the top of the pyramid or singlehandedly fighting the good fight results in piles of cash left on the table.

Therefore, on whatever the date is that you’re reading this… Let’s call it “today”… I pass the following edict: Find one or two or three amazing people who fill gaps in your personality and build an alliance or partnership or cult or whatever.

Who’s with me?

I mean… In spirit and principle at least. Naturally, I must assume that everyone who reads this blog is exactly like me and we would therefore result in a 100% duplication of talent.

Have you seen the show Trust Me? It has that one dude from “Will & Grace” and that other dude from “Ed”. They’re an ad agency creative team (in this case: Copywriter and Creative Director). It was cancelled after one season so you may not find it alluring, but there’s something about a great dynamic-duo that the writers captured pretty well. I’ve (not so secretly) yearned (hate that word) for similar symbiosis. After having enough conversations with one’s self to engender self-diagnosed multiple personality disorder, this is merely a logical next step.

As neurotics seeking free therapy tend to do… My recommendations here are a mixture of rad advice about the way you should do things and a simultaneous projection of what I’m thinking. Maybe we should send each other bills. Have I written enough for you to prescribe me some Adderall®, or shall I add more symptoms to the list above?

I’ve done as much time in Purgatory as I care to. My entrepreneurial soul has been purified by the torment of having absolute control for long enough. P.S. Don’t mistake that for willingness to donate equity at random.

So now the questions you’re asking are: “Okay Andrew, if nobody listened to Freud, how did he go on to become the titan of psychology we know him as today? Why have I seen him over and over in the disputed black and white photographs?”

Evolutionary Psychology

Wait… You thought we’ve been talking about Freud? Silly rabbit… Most of Freud’s theories have since been debunked. Let’s not mention his name again please. The mad genius who attempted to destroy the realities of everyone based on his new understanding of human psychology was Charles Darwin. That’s right… He tried to pull off the ultimate and change the entire understanding of humanity… twice. The guy who had already destroyed everyone’s reality by publishing The Origin of Species in 1859, sought to do it again with The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. We’ve been watching religion squirm to adapt ever since.

If put to the task, you could roughly sum up Darwin’s famous work in four words: “Survival of the Fittest”. Despite Darwin obliterating the foundations of culture and religion in this work, the idea was adopted rapidly in the scientific community. It was one of those ideas that a scientist could look at, relate experiences to, intuit, and successfully test. It resonated. It clicked. However, it wasn’t good enough for Darwin. Despite shifting paradigms and proving it, he couldn’t get peacock feathers out of his head.

When most people talk about evolution the conversation tends to focus on survival related issues, otherwise known as natural selection. Diagrams of primates hunched over a little less over time are tossed about to illustrate the point. However, this is only one of the two main components Darwin espoused. The other biggie was organisms’ focus on reproduction, otherwise known as sexual selection. In The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin laid the foundation for explaining sexual selection in a little less than a thousand pages. To him, it was his most important work ever because it explained the formation of the mind. When I say the mind, I’m not talking about why gray matter is gray. I’m talking about the mechanisms in the brain that do the thinking. Darwin tackled the explanation of why a peacock’s feathers came to be in terms of brains evolving to select sexual partners on the basis of sexual fitness rather than the simple natural selection of utilitarian fitness.

One way we might describe Darwin’s (second) masterpiece in just four words is “reproduction of the sexiest.” Sure, the strong survive, but it’s the sexy that reproduce. And yes, those often overlap.

Athlete

So let’s get back to the question posed in the title. Survival of the fittest style natural selection describes why your girlfriend wants to cheat on you with an athlete to a large degree. However, in the strictest sense, it doesn’t explain the thought process involved in choosing to mate with someone with visually recognizable survival cues. Natural selection stops short by basically saying that an unhealthy mate would be dead before they have a chance to reproduce in sufficient numbers. This is where Darwin and sexual selection come in. Brains evolved thought processes to recognize cues for reproductive fitness to allow mate selection to occur on an active evolutionary scale. Your girlfriend wants to cheat on you with an athlete because her brain is evolved to recognize cues that indicate an athlete has favorable advantages in both survival and reproduction. Reproductive selection doesn’t stop at offspring. It also involves the ability to enable the offspring to survive.

The point here isn’t to scientifically prove evolutionary psychology. The point is to introduce you to my new favorite science by answering the question in the title. Because of that, I’ll just go ahead and admit that the athlete in the title was a bit of a red herring. No, I’m not saying that athletes have the personalities of fishes. Stop reading so far between the lines.

Musician

This is where things get less obvious. What do guitars, vocal chords, and standing on a stage a few feet higher than the crowd have do do with natural selection or reproductive fitness?

The lack of an obvious and rational connection between women’s affinity for musicians and any sort of evolutionary benefit makes it easy for guys to pass off passing comments and crushes as innocent flirtation. To compound the matter, these guys really are totally the opposite of what she’s looking for in a relationship. So when you call her on it, she’ll think you’re overreacting and claim that she’s honestly into you and would never even want a relationship with a guy like that. And that’s the sticky part… She’s telling you the truth. However, there are two or three days every month that she’s not going to joke about it.

The answer to the zillion dollar question is the answer that plagued Darwin after releasing The Origin of Species. What about the peacock feathers!? Peacock feathers don’t help them survive. Not only is there no survival benefit, they make it more difficult to survive. They make their owners easier targets for predation. They require the exertion of extra energy to maintain them. Carrying them around requires extra energy. Growing them requires extra energy. All of these things are exactly contrary to natural selection. Darwin was a mess.

As it turns out, the line between a peacock’s feathers and the outlandish hair, clothing, and tattoos of musicians is short and direct. Both are tactics specifically designed to fly a middle finger at natural selection. Thorstein Veblen coined the term “conspicuous consumption” to describe ostentatious displays of wealth, but didn’t get around to explaining it to its fundamental levels. Just as conspicuous consumption defies tact and reason by displays of wealth merely as demonstrations of financial wealth, peacock feathers defy natural selection by demonstrating the surplus wealth of a bird’s genes. Only the individuals capable of wasting energy on the growth of cumbersome, easily recognizable feathers could afford to taunt the economy required by strict natural selection. The females (the peahens that nobody ever talks about) don’t have flamboyant feathers. They don’t need them. The females use the feathers of the males to select them as mates. The males don’t have a choice. All they have to do is look pretty and be chosen. See, I told you to forget everything you know about culture and society.

With rockstar level musicians, the peacock type of selection works in an external conspicuous consumption level as well. With increased success comes increased wealth that allows for visible displays far beyond the average individual’s capabilities. I’m not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince you of this. You tell me… How many seasons of “Celebrity Cribs” have aired so far?

But that’s not the end of the story. If it was, the dude with the rad hair and tattoos making your latte would have a less surly demeanor and a lot longer line out the door. To understand the rest of it, you’re going to have to swallow the pill that Darwin’s contemporaries couldn’t. That was in a different millennium, I think you’re ready.

Darwin didn’t stop at physical traits. He included another affront to religion by surgically removing the necessity for God as a foundation for morality. The rejection of his new theories by science was unfortunate, but predictable. Unlike natural selection, reproductive selection rendered large swaths of other sciences irrelevant by suggesting that our thoughts and behaviors are genetically evolved and optimized to perform tasks related to identifying a myriad of cues relating to reproductive fitness.

One of the biggest ideas to come from this is the concept of social proof. Many species have evolved shortcuts to determining the value of mates through social cues. Just like the peacock’s feathers are a shortcut to determining the reproductive fitness of a bird, the rockstar guitar player’s legions of adoring fans are a shortcut to determining his reproductive fitness via the social realm.

In the 1,600,000 years or so of hominid evolution before recorded history, most human interaction took place in small groups and tribes. Under this social framework, brains evolved based on selections within these groups. Genetic and archeological evidence points to an environment in which fewer males had access to females for reproduction. Before language, the easiest way to know what someone was thinking was to watch their actions. If you were a female and saw that multiple females chose a certain male for sex, it was easier to assume they knew something you didn’t. This is especially important because a female’s investment in the reproductive process is significant. A male can get away with a few minutes of investment, but a woman’s investment is measured in terms of years.

The behavior of selecting males based on the mating habits of other females within the species has been observed and documented in a wide range of species including many non-primates.

The importance here is that these shortcuts are selected by minds. The concept of a mind as a determining component of selection explains the rapid growth and current size of human brains much more convincingly than accidental natural selection. The notion of hard-wired social circuitry is also what makes it tough for social scientists to stomach evolutionary psychology despite evidence.

One of the other factors at play with rockstars is that men giving attention to other men is also a useful cue for selection. In the human evolutionary framework, multiple men consistently giving attention to one man in particular tended to indicate leadership and dominance. Women are even more attracted to rockstars that garner attention from both males and females. Predictably, women are less attracted to rockstars in bands that are primarily followed by only men.

Your girlfriend wants to cheat on you with a musician because he stands out in his personal appearance, displays wealth by external conspicuous consumption, and must truly be great because everyone else thinks he’s great.

There’s one other characteristic that applies to some musicians more than others, but it fits more appropriately in the next section.

Artist

Yes, artists sometimes embody many of the characteristics discussed above. Stop being so technical so we can get back to the stereotypes and generalizations.

The defining characteristic of the artist is the creativity that springs from individuality. This is a more advanced characteristic of sexual selection because it involves the mind selecting others based largely on others’ minds. This sort of selection can rapidly spread through species. Humans do mind-based selection better than any other animal.

Artistic creativity and expression also serves as survival cues in ways similar to those above. Creativity isn’t a direct requirement for reproductive fitness, but an indicator of the reproductive fitness of the individual. Creativity also implies problem solving ability that is helpful in natural selection and the resource sharing dynamics of reproduction.

From another angle, art represents an external reflection of the mind of the artist. While the rockstar seeks to proclaim uniqueness through personal adornment and external displays of wealth, the artist makes a de facto declaration of intellectual uniqueness with each piece of art produced. As we’ll see in the next section, uniqueness for the sake of uniqueness is an underlying them in evolutionary psychology. The mind has adapted selection preferences based on uniqueness cues to proliferate DNA diversity.

The value derived from the assertion of individual difference varies greatly within the realm of the artist. Picasso created an entire category of painting, attracted legions of women, and died with an estate valued in the billions. On the other hand, Bob Ross attempted to show how easy it was for anyone to duplicate the art he produced and his enduring legacy is his hair. The Artist’s allure comes from the implicit assertion that he is creating something nobody else can create.

Your girlfriend wants to cheat on you with an artist because he proves he can produce something no other man is capable of producing.

Me

“How does an average guy like me become the number one lover-man in his particular postal district?” Rob Gordon (played by John Cusack) in “High Fidelity”

If you’ve been paying close attention, you’ll no doubt deduce that the only category left for me to boldly insert myself into is that of the guy with the foreign accent. Most of my readers probably have the same accent, in which case that alone is a stretch. The important thing here is that it’s all relative. When I lived in Alaska, I was the kid from Seattle. When I moved to Oregon, I was the kid from Alaska. When I moved back to Seattle, I was the kid from Oregon. When I moved to Austin, I was the guy from Seattle. When I moved to Panama, I was the guy from Seattle again. When I sail into your town, there’s only one certainty… I’ll be the guy that’s new to everyone… If I’m in the right mood that will equate to novelty. Don’t worry, I’m not there to steal your girl.

Differences in accents imply genetic variance through outside groups. This made complete sense in the living conditions of our ancestors. In the small groups of people that people saw every day and even the tribes with upper limits around 150, inbreeding was a problem by default. Any indicator of genetic variance is hugely valuable. Language, eye color, skin color, and hair color all come into play. The specifics aren’t as important as the overall cue of standing out.

The answer to the High Fidelity quote above is difficult to answer correctly and difficult to reproduce. It’s much easier to become the number one lover-man in someone else’s particular postal district.

Your girlfriend wants to cheat on you with me because nomadic strangers represent the ultimate opportunity for genetic diversity.

No offense to Antonio Banderas, but your girlfriend doesn’t have a crush on him for his accent or his looks per se. Her mind is biologically compelled to provide selection preference to men with genes that vary significantly from hers for reproductive success. Don’t feel bad about it… It’s nothing personal… It’s for the children. Unfortunately, they might be someone else’s.

Why She Won’t Tell You About It

I briefly discussed this above, but I’ll recap it again. If you think your girl is amazing and adorable and madly in love with you, she probably is. Her emotional attachment to you and conscious appreciation of you aren’t in question. I mean sure, if there are problems in your relationship, all of these scenarios are much more likely to occur. They’re also much more likely to occur if you’re not attractive.

The things I’m talking about are impulse level reactions. She doesn’t have an evolved, runaway train necessity to cheat on you. However, she is genetically predisposed to not only reproduce, but also to reproduce with the highest quality DNA possessing male she can get her… um… hands… on.

Here’s another potentially related issue (Translation – another rub): The man with the best DNA is not always the same as the man best suited to contribute resources and/or invest time and resources into raising children. These cases can get tricky because in this case, it’s in the best interest of her DNA to reproduce with someone different than the person she’s in a relationship. Yes, this is code for… If she cheats on you, it may be in her best interest for you not to find out.

Your girlfriend won’t tell you she wants to cheat on you because she doesn’t consciously want to cheat on you and/or if she does cheat on you, she still wants to utilize the dependability and resources you provide.

Yes, the “but” that follows “I ain’t sayin’ she’s a gold digger,” is sometimes a big one.

So What? Who Cares?

As it pertains to my aims on this site, the implications of environmental psychology (EP) run deep. In this introductory expose on my new-found crush for evolutionary psychology, I picked something that all guys feel and wonder about directly. I asked the question from the man’s perspective in large part because there is no real equivalent to Cosmopoliltian and its ilk for men. Wait… did I just call Cosmo a good thing? That wasn’t my intent. The point is that it’s culturally acceptable for women to have public conversations about guys all day long, but guys are supposed to talk about everything in secret.

Did you know that most murders are committed by men in circumstances surrounding reproductive selection (sex)? As it turns out, murder is also an evolved psychological response to sexual selection. Seriously… this stuff goes deep, involves serious subjects, and connects everything.

The more immediate implications are that morals, culture, and society are artificial layers painted over our true nature. Whether that’s good or bad is a matter of perspective. Lifestyle design is about constructing the life that best allows you to express your best self. If you’re stifled by cultural assumptions, socialization, and a framework of rules based on the brushed on facade of society, your personal lifestyle design project will fail.

I stumbled on EP in research following up my articles about The Bigotry of Nationalism and The Curious Virtuosity of Ignorance. Since then I’ve been reading books on it at the exclusion of almost everything else. That has lead to a zillion little questions that have been rattling around in the bank of my mind being answered and explained. It has seriously re-framed my view of the world. As someone who’s pretty diligent about examining all the options, that wasn’t something I expected.

Related Stuff I’m Working On

I’ve been noticing quite a few other people and even entire genres that draw much of their underlying theories from EP. I’m working on articles about:

• How Neil Strauss, Author of The Game; Erik von Markovik (a.k.a. Mystery), creator/star of VH1′s “The Pickup Artist” and author of The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed; and the rest of the “pickup community” base almost all of their techniques on evolutionary psychology.
• The Steve Pavlina – Evolutionary Psychology connection

In addition, I’m working on pushing evolutionary psychology farther into the applied areas of:

• Branding (expanding understanding of branding concepts I wrote about in Forget About Building a Brand. 7 Steps to Building a Religion.
• Sales: The Overdue and Actual Death of Used Car Salesmen Tactics
• New Business Pipeline Strategy
• Website Content Development

If you made it this far you have to be looking for an angle on lifestyle design that’s far from the all too common “5 Ways to Conquer Your Fear of the Dark” style blogs out there. Here’s where to Get Free Updates. Since you probably took the musician section above seriously and now refuse to pay attention to anyone without fans, here’s what some respectable people have said about/to me:

• “Lifestyle designers, entrepreneurs: Follow [Andrew] & read his blog… It’s seriously smart.” -David Walsh of muselife.com
• “I really, really, really like (non-sexually) this guy = @rulesoptional check Andrew’s blog.” -Derek Johanson (Also listed me in his Favorite Blogs of the Moment)
• “Why you should check this blog out: Andrew livesaboard a sailboat, runs an ad agency and is on a quest to explore moreof planet earth than anyone in history using only human, wind, andsolar power.” -Corbett Barr (from 44 Creative and Adventurous Bloggers You Should Know)
• “My fiance doesn’t want me to hang out with you anymore.” -An Ex-Girlfriend

August 27, 2004 was my last day working at a job I didn’t invent. I recently wrote a 4 part series of posts describing a few of the things I’ve been working on since then. While writing it, a few principles became clear(er) to me… Principles I’ve more-or-less lived by for some time, but maybe haven’t consciously contemplated. Since I’m working on year 6 of lifestyle design, that series consists of about five zillion words. I’ve retroactively distilled some of the thoughts here. Some of these things get talked about regularly. Even if I believe something cerebrally, I don’t always believe it until I prove it to myself or see someone else prove it. You’re welcome.

Rules I’ve Opted-Out Of

Education (Formal): Formal education is not necessary. I did not say it is not valuable (in some cases). Yes, it is necessary in some specialized professions, but they are exceptions to the rule. The rule is that you can learn everything you need to know at the library.

Note: Read more books than blogs. The blog world tends to be an echo chamber; bad ideas start to look good when a lot of people repeat them.

Reverence for Position: I spent (wasted) too much time assuming that people who had certain positions were either inherently better than me, or they had acquired a level of specialized skill. After achieving success in creative fields (advertising and writing), sales, management, technical, entrepreneurial, et cetera… I’ve convinced myself that the phrase “anything you can do, I can do better” is true enough. Maybe it isn’t literally true, but it’s true e.n.o.u.g.h.

Experience (Needing It): Sometimes general intelligence and the ability to learn (and figure things out) trumps having already done something.

Experience (Trusting Others’): Beware the conflation of experience and expertise. Practice does not make perfect. Incompetent people can amass years… decades… of experience being average or inferior. The rub: Others will naturally assume they are good. Resist this assumption.

Only Talking About Accomplishments: There are a lot of overachiever types out there saying you shouldn’t talk about things you want or plan to do, but only things you have actually done. I’ve found that publicizing things I have yet to do makes me more likely to do them. People generally seek congruence between their words and actions.

Comfort and Dignity: I’m kind of a snob. I like designer furniture. I like owning art. I’ve been known to equate kitchen stores to porn (in a good way). I like to surround myself with particular things. I have slept on a tile floor for months only to wake up with a stupid grin on my face every day.

Job Descriptions: Don’t limit yourself to the list of tasks ascribed to your position within a company. When I was an Internet Marketing Director and didn’t want to come to the office every day, I found the manual to the company’s phone system and reprogrammed it to allow my calls to be routed elsewhere. I also fixed some problems that were nagging other employees. It’s hard to look bad when you take initiative and make improvements without being required to. Also, people tend to forgive you faster when you stop coming into the office everyday.

The Most Powerful Two-Word Combo

“My Business”. Seriously, these two words have magical power. People treat you differently when you approach them as a business owner. This is nearly universal. I’ve personally experienced it withh immigration officials, businesses, potential employers, potential business partners, women, potential employees, and complete strangers.

I chose those two words for a reason. “Freelance” does not work the same way. “Self-employed” does not work the same way. You are not employed, you are the employer. “My own boss” is just lame. Having a boss lowers your value (in a relative/subjugated manner) so much that it sounds bad even when you use it self-reflexively. What’s the use of becoming an entrepreneur if you’re going to maintain the employee mindset?

Instead of Looking for a Job…

Make one up. I’m not even talking about starting your own business (for once).

Rather than combing through ads and applying for jobs with tons of competition, figure out what you want to do, what you’re capable of, and who needs you. There’s no rule that says you can’t pitch jobs that don’t exist to companies that stand to benefit from whatever it is that you do. I’ve done it successfully… twice.

Reversal

Despite occasional appearances, I am not a minimalist. Do not confuse willingness to make great sacrifices for an ism. Consumerist consumption is an enemy, but there are things I like.

If You Don’t Have a Compelling Story

Get one. Go. Now.

Once you realize that 2 of the 3 on this list are from Philly, you may wonder if the underlying motive is to incite an east coast / west coast rivalry in the lifestyle design blogging community. Was I that transparent? Don’t get all technical and say, “But Andrew… what about the fact that the east coast / west coast analogy breaks down when multiple continents are added into the mix?” I don’t know the ins and outs of rivalry ethics. Write a fremium eBook about it and I’ll get back to you.

The blogs on this list are here because they meet all of the following Criteria:
• Their authors are characters who write frankly and with a clear voice
• Their content always entertains and/or informs
• They always agree with me make me think
• They inspire me to step up my game

Muse Life

(David Walsh) – “Muse creation, personal outsourcing, ultramobility and the new rich lifestyle.”

MuseLife.com

“Muselife focuses on providing resources for creating streams of passive income to support a more liberated lifestyle.”

If you want to take the muse concept to the next level, read as much of David’s stuff as possible. He’s so focused and to the point, the writer of the next blog on the list seems to have a mild fear of him. While I’ve yet to develop a fear of David, I did experience a mild bit of anxiety when he didn’t post anything for the 55 days between 08.29.09 and 10.23.09. I mean… Not like I was paying attention or anything.

Here’s some of David’s content you should check out immediately:
• Lifestyle design needs an intervention
• His ridiculously valuable outsourcing eBook Source Control
• Video post featuring (the also recommended) @robgranholm and @shosko talking about outsourcing your new business pipeline among other things.

Live Uncomfortably

(Derek Johanson) – “Self-Improvement, Lifestyle Design, Travel”

LiveUncomfortably.com

“This is my blog and “live uncomfortably” is my motto. These simple words are what I now base my life and everyday decisions around.”

Did Derek include this blog in his My Favorite Blogs (At The Moment) list? Sure. Did that influence my decision to include him in this list? Not even a little. Derek’s content is such a refreshing break from the norm that I’m hard pressed to figure out what to recommend.

Edit: I meant to include that in the first version, but got distracted by Photoshop. The entire reason I decided to write this post when I did was because of something directly related to Derek’s blog. I haven’t posted on my Adventure Travel Blog for about six weeks. One huge reason for that… I’ve since realized that I hate when people shift from writing posts with useful information to just writing about where they are. That always comes across as clinical and yawn inducing. It’s helpful for people traveling to that place, but not much else. Derek’s posts about places are on a completely different experiential level.

Try these for starters:
• My Life Is Threatened In Colombia (2 of 2)
• Biking The Pacific Coast Route (Video Journal)

The Middle Finger Project

(Ashley Ambirge) – “Rejecting the Status Quo & Rebelling Against Mediocrity”

TheMiddleFingerProject.org

“In essence, The Middle Finger Project is about flipping a cordial bird to the shoulds.”

Um… Ashey’s blog has been online for less than two weeks and she has more stellar posts than most blogs that have been online for two years. Sure, some of her writing is a direct look into her Freudian obession with me, but is that really so hard to understand? She’ll probably have five more posts up before I finish writing this, so I’ll hurry…

• Tell-Tale Signs You’re a Closet Lifestyle Designer.
• Become An American Overnight Without a Visa

Get moving people… You’ve got some reading to do. Oh hey… before you go, link me up to some of your faves below.

Considering that humanity spans at least five thousand years (yes, I’m being inclusive for the moment), the social changes we’ve seen in the last two hundred years are remarkable. The changes over the last five decades are even more remarkable. Culture has seen the status quo shift from generally intolerant to generally tolerant. Slavery has shifted from commonplace to anathema. Women have been released from the farm and often dominate in business and academics. Where gays and lesbians were once forced to remain in the closet, those who disapprove are now apt to keep their hate in the closet. Racism has been transformed from rallying cry to a pejorative breeding instant defensiveness.

There are exceptions to everything I’m writing here. None of these things are “solved”. Some of the exceptions are glaring and grotesque. Some places are better than others. Some people are better than others. However, the topic of discussion is the way things are talked about and looked at by society in general, not whether or not things happen. Excepting brute force, things don’t change until society changes. During significant shifts, the behavior of a culture may lag behind the sentiment of the culture, but it will follow. Disclaimers aside, behavior has improved significantly as well. Religious tolerance is still problematic in practice, but public discrimination along religious lines is less tolerated.

For all the progress culture has made in its subjugation of racism, sexism, religious division, and discrimination based on sexual orientation, one bastion of bigotry remains. Nationalism (or its romanticized twin patriotism) is the only remaining source of comfortable revelry for bigotry in culture. Not only does nationalism get a pass in its foment of hatred and discrimination, it is championed. Patriotism is cultivated and worn as badge of honor. Why does nationalism get away with its openly divisive tendencies? Why is it’s negative influence blindly accepted? Why is there no discourse aimed at abolishing the scourge of patriotism? Does the construct of nations provide an inherent benefit that warrants saving it?

Why Do We Have Nations?

All of the Isms and related discriminations are rooted in division. The conflict ultimately lies in the distinction between the self and the other. The need to belong isn’t obvious when we’re limited to consideration of only ourselves. Have you ever been walking a path alone in a remote location and happened upon someone walking toward you from the opposite direction? If you have, you have felt a twinge of evolutionary instinct kick into gear. The mind immediately kicks into an evaluation of the situation and an evaluation of the other…. “If I’m attacked in this location, nobody will be able to assist me. Not only will nobody assist me, but nobody will witness the event. There is a high likelihood that the other person could kill me and completely get away with it. What is this person doing here? What is the intent of the other? How do I proceed?” Of course, these thoughts are jumbled together at lightning speed and accelerate as the distance closes. But without more information, we can’t make an informed decision.

The scenario above is some insight into the root of division. It does not fully explain it, but it is an insight. As we increase the number of people in the scenario, the dynamic changes. How do we proceed if there are three of us walking toward one person. How do I respond if there are three others walking toward me? How do we respond if there are three of us and three of them?

I don’t want to make this into an academic treatise on describing human behavior. I simply want to illustrate how culture has evolved to the point where nationalism is pervasive, accepted, and encouraged.

What we see historically is that groups initially form to solve the problem of survival. The smallest group we see is that of the family. The family unit is inherently familiar. If we see our mother walking towards us on the path, our thought process is completely different than the scenarios above. This group structure is so deeply rooted that the family is often considered sacred and immune to questioning. At the same time, nepotism is frowned upon culturally, so this assumption is not as clean as it may appear.

Increases in population density result in the family unit being absorbed by clan or tribe structures. The group is still arranged around familiarity for the purpose of survival in an unknown world. History shows that battles between groups scale with the size of the groups. The individual survival instinct is expanded to the family survival instinct which is expanded to the tribal survival instinct which is expanded to the city survival instinct which is expanded to the state survival instinct which is expanded to the national survival instinct. In all of these groups, conflict with other groups is rooted in survival. It’s reinforced by familiarity and lines are drawn between us and the others.

The terms we use to describe these groups are reflective of our true feelings of them. The “family unit” and the military “unit” are quite similar. Our “circle of friends” and “social circle” illustrate the closed nature of the groups.

Nationalism embodies the largest groups possible until the aliens attack. City-states did not  envelop the entire planet. Huge gaps could be found between them. Unclaimed territory was abundant. Unlike cities and states, if the nations we have were all absorbed into two nations, the construct would look similar.

Not only were there gaps in territorial rule, there were huge gaps in knowledge before the rise of nations. Before every inch of earth was claimed, maps were incomplete. Groups had no idea how many people were over the river or mountains or ocean. This distinction is important because the unknown is difficult to plan for. In instances where two tribes were in close proximity, they could jointly reason that they should join together because there might be a larger group just over the horizon. The rise of nations in parallel with the expansion of human knowledge allowed nations to take undue credit for advantages brought by knowledge.

The entire surface of the earth has now been mapped. We know to a high degree of certainty how many people make up any number of groups. The rationale of two groups joining together to prepare for an unknown group no longer exists. The only real variable in terms of numbers is whether or not alliances will form. However, this question of group dynamics occurs in all groups regardless of size, so it can’t be said that the nation construct solves this problem.

The other rationale for group distinctions is in terms of survival. Up until this point, I have only mentioned conflict with others as the thrust of survival. However, survival in the face of weather, predatory animals, nourishment, et cetera are all just as important.

Relevance of Nations

The purpose of the group structure can be roughly summed up as follows:

1. Survival against aggressive “others”
2. Survival against the unknown
3. Survival against nature

How does the construct of nations fit within the group structure in terms of necessity?

1. Survival against aggressive other. Nations FAIL! Now that society has determined distinctions against other races, religions, and the myriad of other groups to be unethical and detrimental, nations themselves are the only remaining line of distinction. That’s right, the argument for nations from a defense standpoint is circular because it relies on the existence of national distinction to maintain relevance.
2. Survival against the unknown. Nations FAIL! Since there is nothing unknown on the planet that is better challenged as individual nations, the national construct has zero relevance.
3. Survival against nature. Nations FAIL! Even if we discount the absolutely massive amount of resources squandered on the circular argument of defense, we have enough resources to feed and protect everyone on earth. Nations actually make matters worse by preventing the distribution of resources as needed. Nations are the only thing preventing us from ending starvation and other maladies.

Just because the concept of nations is irrelevant, that doesn’t mean it’s bad, right? Yes, relevance is not a requirement for existence. However, if something is not relevant, and is also harmful, it should be dismantled.

Negative Impact of Nations

From an efficiency (or business) standpoint, the existence of nations ensures bureaucratic redundancies on many levels. The administration of the government itself is duplicated in every nation. The administration of government provided programs is duplicated in every nation. The internal judiciary system is duplicated in every nation. The legal system surrounding international interaction is duplicated in every nation. The administrative costs of health care, fire departments, police, military, education, et cetera are all duplicated and are all very resource intensive. Not only are the administrative and management functions of all of these duplicated in a redundant manner, the mechanisms determining which systems should exist and how they should operate are also redundant.

Nations ensure astronomical military expenditures. All of these resources could be freed up for positive use in the absence of the national construct.

Nations ensure taxation for international exchange negatively impact purchasing power. All of these resources could be freed up for positive use in the absence of the national construct.

Nations restrict the flow of resources including food, water, medicine, and resources from locations of abundance to locations of shortage.

Nations restrict the ability of people to freely travel and enjoy all of this planet.

Nationalism Is Bigotry

Some bigots are drawn to nationalism as an outlet for their bigoted tendencies. It’s very easy to hide religious intolerance and racism under the thin veil of nationalism. It’s also quite possible to hide the bigotry of sexism, intolerance toward sexual orientation, and any number of other social issues under the guise of nationalism. Just as turning the social current against bigotry in these other forms has diminished the discrimination resulting from them, turning the social current against nationalism can have similar effects on the harms nationalism causes.

Don’t get hung up on potential underlying prejudices that may present as nationalism. Nationalism is not a determining factor in diagnosing any other prejudice. Nationalism is bigotry in and of itself. There are economic excuses that explain the continued existence of nationalism. Aside from that, it’s amazing that something so arbitrary is so pervasive, so destructive, and yet so wholly unquestioned. Think about it. Seriously. Does the geographic location of your birth have anything to do with you as a person? Nationalism has the thinnest foundation of nearly any prejudice, yet it remains a monolithic stalwart.

Nations are irrelevant and do exponentially more harm than good. The construct should be dismantled immediately. Hurry please. Renewing passports, visas, border crossings, and customs are all annoying.

Of course, that’s meaningless from an economic level. Our surrounding realities are our surrounding realities. In the words of Fred Armisten playing Joy Behar…. “So What? Who cares?

Well… The people around you… your troops… care. In any economic downturn that is talked about enough to reach meme level, the tendency to participate is strong. When these situations arise, the leaders of all companies have a choice of which direction to take. Unfortunately, many choose to participate by employing an insidious tactic. We regularly see this participational tactic in headline grabbing remarks by CEO’s.

Here are generic examples of common forms:

• “Economic Downturn Leads to 8.5% Drop in Sales”
• “Economic Pressures Result in 23% Decline in Stock Price”

During a recession or depression or whatever, it’s as though companies line up to offload all of their bad news as fast as possible. Sure, sometimes economic problems cause real problems for companies. However, the gusto with which some of these claims are made throws up red flags in my head. It’s simply too easy to trick people by intentionally confusing correlation with causation.

For a specific example, let’s look quickly at the U.S. auto industry. They have been making inferior products for years that lead to massive erosion of brand image. The problem was so bad that the brands continued to suffer despite improving quality. I can’t find the report at the moment, but a study was done before the recession with actual new models of cars. The experiment was simple: replace all of the emblems on each car with the emblems of another manufacturer and measure consumer responses. Long-story short, people preferred the U.S. brands with logos of Japanese automakers.

So along comes an economic downturn that hits credit markets especially hard. Automakers rely on credit to sell their product. On paper, anyone can see that yes, this is a problem for automakers. However, it is not the problem. In a flurry of PR, all of their previous sins were effectively forgiven to the point of the public barely batting an eye when they were compelled to contribute tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars to these companies because they were hapless victims of an economy.

In this example, the U.S. automakers have succeeded in shifting public opinion in their favor to a significant degree. They effectively leveraged confused economic seas in a way that absolved them from real scrutiny. They played the victim card and it worked.

Recessions typically serve as a healthy form of corporate Darwinism. Previously weak companies are pushed over the edge of cliffs they’ve been teetering on for years.

When evaluating reports of companies framing themselves as victims of a big, bad, mean world, think twice before accepting claims of causative relationships.

When leaders of small companies are quick to seek absolution from bad situations, question whether they might be the problem.

The word ‘narcissism’ is nefarious. It is a weapon in a similar vein as the word ‘racism’. It is the same in that it is essentially an epithetical hit-and-run weapon to which there is really no defense. I say it’s only similar because, when used accurately and not as a weapon, the concept of racism is as bad as the word suggests. In this regard narcissism is the opposite. Even if we were to use it in non-weapon-grade form, it is almost always used hyperbolically or in place of milder, more accurate words.

Why should we care?

Narcissism is batted around constantly to decry the value of blogs, twitter, social media, and pretty much everything else without the critic having to do any real analysis. These things are de facto outlets for our thoughts. Pelting people with stifling negative accusations amounts to socially influenced censorship. Whether it prevents someone from participating in them altogether or merely colors the voice or any other aspect of writers, it’s a bad thing.

The Unbearable Lightness of Meaning

Narcissism is generally used to mean: fascination with oneself; self-love; vanity. Before moving on, think about that. When you think of the literal definition of narcissism, does the italicized description above accurately describe it? I admit that much of my point depends on answering yes to that, but even if you answer no, there’s still some value here. When I first look at that definition, it does hold some negative connotations because of the repetitive ‘self’ aspect. However, when I make myself consciously aware of the social conditioning attached to the word self and analyze it again, the opposite happens. Fascination with oneself is fundamentally positive. It’s laudable! Self-love is also a very healthy positive emotion. Don’t get puritanical on me and try to use it as a euphemism for masturbation. I don’t want to have to spend the rest of this article convincing you that masturbation is a good thing. Okay, vanity goes a little farther than the first two, but I’m not convinced that vanity is a great evil. The Bible makes it out to be way worse than a psychologist would. All in all, we have two overwhelmingly positive emotions tempered by one questionably negative emotion. That’s not so bad. Now remember… We’re trying to compare what you think about the definition to the dictionary definition.

The actual definition of narcissism is very similar, but i left out two important words. The full dictionary definition is: inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity. Adding inordinate and excessive makes it semantically negative on balance. It precludes us from considering a healthy level of fascination with oneself or a healthy level of vanity.

But I Don’t Believe In Mythology

Have you heard the phrase “the map is not the territory”? It’s invoked as an analogy for multiple purposes. One of its uses is to illustrate the point that maps are never able to provide as much detail as reality. This is a problem because humans tend to make assumptions about missing details. This tendency is pronounced even when we’re aware that we’re only looking at a map, but it’s much worse without that knowledge.

So when I tell you that the map is not the territory in reference to narcissism, you will be tempted to assume that you’re missing some details. Yield to the temptation and rest assured that your assumption is rooted firmly in reality. However, in this case, we have another problem. The map simultaneously has too little information and introduces information not present in the literal meaning of narcissism. We have a map that is overly detailed… with misinformation.

The misinformation in this case is the mythology. How much emotion and feeling did you get a few paragraphs back when I recited the “clinical” definition of narcissism? Now.. the story of Narcissus involves a quest for revenge by an unrequited lover who doesn’t get what he wants from Narcissus and commits suicide because his own emotional needs aren’t met by him. As hes dying from self-inflicted wounds, he prays to the gods to teach Narcissus a lesson which leads to Nemesis tricking Narcissus into spending his life staring at his own reflection in a pool of water until he too commits suicide. How much more powerful is the story than the definition?

In the snippet version of the Narcissus mythology, there are a lot of very important details missing. It is in fact the other guy, not Narcissus who is the most selfish. He doesn’t get what he wants so he whines and orchestrates the gods ruining Narcissus’ life because of his own issues. In contemplation for the sadness of the situation and his own repentance, Narcissus sacrifices himself in a misguided act of martyrdom.

But who cares that the gross oversimplifications that Narcissus was merely self-absorbed to the extent of ignoring everything else completely changes the meaning? Who cares that he wasn’t even the most selfish person in the story? Who cares that implying that people expressing their thoughts and sharing them with everyone is the same as staring into a pool to the point of excluding all input and output is patently absurd?

For the part of the story that Narcissus gets his bad rap, he contributes nothing and considers nothing. Expressing oneself through writing can never be paralleled to the Narcissus myth because it is a contribution whether the contribution is appreciated or not. This difference is devastatingly significant and cannot be overstated. Factor in that nearly everyone who writes anything is exposing themselves to input from others and the inanity of the comparison is amplified.

Beware the critic who accuses someone… anyone else of being narcissistic. According to the story, that person has a gaping hole in their psychology and would rather mess up your life so bad that you commit suicide than deal with their own shortcomings.

If you’re reading this in anything less than your Sunday-best underwear, you will go to Hell. So roll whoever you dragged home from the club last night out of the way, dig around under the covers until you find them (Hint: check between the mattress and footboard), put them back on, and show some respect… this is a Holy Place.

How do we, as a community cult congregation, deal with non-believers? (Yes, if you’re reading this, you’re one of us… sorry and you’re welcome.) Every time someone asks “What do you do?” from this day forward, you will (was I supposed to hypnotize you first?)… you will think of this post and crack a wry, understanding smile. Sure, this will creep out the person who was previously interested in talking to you to the point of terror. But your own amusement is the reason you do this in the first place. Right? Right.

Did you go to school with Jesus freaks? Were you ever a Jesus freak? Then you’ve felt the awkward moment that arises when someone goes into attempt to convert someone mode. Maybe they invite you to their church for some sort of social event that starts with a snack and a movie and ends with bowed heads and talking to invisible superheroes in hushed tones with great conviction. I mean sure, if the preacher’s daughter who invited you was adorable and you ended up going and making out with her between the seven layer dip and the asking of forgiveness part, I’m not going to judge you. After all, that’s why the asking of forgiveness comes at the very end. Side Note: MacPherson translates to “son of the parson”, so I am allowed to make these jokes as an insider. Steal my material at your own risk.

Have you ever had someone slip you a religious text and apply some subtle persuasion techniques to get you to read it? I’ve been given Bibles, The Book of Mormon,  a Jehovah’s Witness book or two, and piles of pamphlets. When I think back about each of these encounters, the feeling that sets in is what I imagine hot baristas experience after being hit on by the five hundredth boring guy in a day.

I feel a lot of weird things when discussing “what I do” or when the urge to share something with a non-believer washes over me. After reading The 4-Hour Workweek, I tried to introduce the teachings of the Apostle Timothy to friends through sharing the written word. Despite these people being friends, I found myself on the wrong side of the “why should I care” facial expressions. Sure, they complied after we’d mixed a cocktail of my insistence and their willingness for me to shut up about it, but I distinctly remember feeling like an evangelist. Yes, I experienced worse persecution after trying to have conversations with some of my overachiever, workaholic friends. But I’m always down for a lively debate, so that was preferable to the feeling of convincing people they should be interested in something that they knew nothing about.

As many of us have experienced, proselytizing lifestyle design is often a thankless business. This probably shouldn’t be surprising. Every time we try to introduce our superior enlightened concepts to someone new, we’re implying that they’re doing something wrong. We are evangelists. There’s really no way to avoid it. Possessing ideas you think can improve the quality of someone’s life leaves us straddling the line between selfish information hoarding and experiocentric (there are only 2 google results for that word. I call dibs.) arrogance. The reluctance to judge, even if completely indirectly, is intertwined with the responsibility to help and the excitement we feel about paths we’ve discovered.

When faced with such dilemmas, it’s easy to let our social conditioning take over and mind our own business keep our knowledge locked in our own minds. If you’re ever in that position, think back to this post. I, Andrew MacPherson, hereby grant you the permission and responsibility to call people out on their mundane lives. I mean sure, you may want to rephrase the message, but you know what I mean.

There’s a lot of hope. I don’t want to sound all… “Tim Ferris is like a god to me”. Sure, his book brought a lot of us out of the closet and that’s rad. And you’re right, I can’t wait to get my hands on the updated and expanded version. But tons of people are taking their own ideas to amazing places and expanding the knowledge base and community. That’s the exciting evolution I’ve seen over the last couple years. I love it when new people get excited about lifestyle design and start blogs and ask questions and spin things in ways that makes me think (and laugh at whichever LCD panel I happen to be gazing into at the time).

For the moment, a Twitter account, “WordPress” somewhere in the footer of our websites, and a love/hate feeling every time we have to correct someone when they say ‘AdWords’ instead of ‘AdSense’ may be the iconic white shirt, black tie, and bicycle combo that outs us as lifestyle design practitioners… but I’m cool with that.

“Trust in your muse with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge process design, and residual income will make your paths straight.” -Andrew 3:16