Neil Strauss, Addendum
How I put myself in the position to spend 45 minutes with one of my favourite writers:
- Read The Game by Neil Strauss in 2007. Love it; re-read it several times. Buy a used copy from eBay and a new copy from a bookstore to lend to friends.
- Through Neil’s mailing list, receive information that Emergency, his new book, was due in March 2009.
- Email several people to find the Australian publisher of Emergency. (Answer: Text Publishing)
- Request a review copy of Emergency for FourThousand.
- Inadvertently receive two copies of Emergency from different publishers. (I’m still not sure how this happened.)
- Review Emergency for FourThousand.
- Send review link to Text Publishing to solidify that relationship.
- Through his mailing list, receive information of Neil’s forthcoming Australian book tour in June 2009.
- Contact Text Publishing to request an interview Neil on behalf of FourThousand. (This request was a near-certainty, given my relationship with the publisher.)
- Discover that Neil’s book tour omits Brisbane. Sadly, resign the interview to a 20 minute phone call.
- Meet with Nick Crocker on Sunday, June 21 2009. He suggests the unforeseen possibility of flying to Sydney to interview Neil in person. (Nick: “Since he’s such a massive influence, why don’t you spend a couple hundred dollars to fly down to make a better impression?” Andrew: “…” [stunned silence, having not considered this option at all])
- Later that night, book flights to Sydney to interview Neil in person.
- Fly to Sydney on Tuesday, June 23 2009.
- Meet Neil. Complete my biggest interview yet by having a conversation, instead of referring to questions point-by-point.
- Begin transcribing the conversation at Sydney Airport.
- Fly back to Brisbane, head full of inspiration.
- Per Neil’s advice, outsource the rest of the interview transcription; in this case, to Israel, to an excellent transcriptionist named Tamara Bentzur. (I found her by Googling “outsource transcriptions”.)
- Spend the next two-plus months pitching the interview feature to various magazines in an attempt to recoup the $300 airfares.
- Get rejected.
- Eventually post the entire interview - 8,000 words-plus - online, free.
Regrets? None.
Filed under Writing | Tags: emergency, fourthousand, inspiration, Interview, Journalism, Motivation, neil-strauss, nick-crocker, tamara-bentzur, text-publishing, the-game, transcription, Writing | Comments (6)On Productivity And Procrastination
If you spend a lot of time on Twitter each day, you start to feel a sense of vicarious productivity.
Discussing links, chatting with several people at once, managing followers: none of it really matters, and yet it’s easy to lose sight of this when you’re immersed in it.
You think you’re achieving things by commenting on and distributing content produced by others. But unless you’re being paid to manage your Twitter account, you’re really just engaged in a highly interactive distraction.
We’re only going to become more familiar with the presence of constant distractions. I have not a goddamn shred of research to back up this suggestion, so bear with me.
Regular internet users readily switch between dozens of social applications, interfaces and conversations every hour: email, instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook, et al.
Compare this constant multi-tasking to what our parents were familiar with: that is, concentrating on the task at hand - using the skills that you’ve chosen to build your career upon - before dealing with what’s ahead.
I might suck at explaining it, but the skills that a savvy internet user possesses are radically different from the previous generation. And I’m not one to give much thought to generational difference, but unless I’m much mistaken, we’re learning to think in a totally different way.
I’m aware that I’m extrapolating my own experience onto a wider demographic.
But I’ve found that instead of regularly focussing on one single task, my attention is divided across several mediums. It’s rare that I can concentrate on one task from start to finish.
Logically, this means that the quality of my creative output - be it a university assignment, a paid article, or an email to my family - is reduced, as I’m thin-slicing my thought contributions across hours or days.
That’s the rational explanation: reduced concentration on a singular pursuit results in a diminished outcome. But I’m not certain.
I’m still adjusting to this relatively new method of online productivity. But I’ve no doubt that individuals who can successfully navigate a web of procrastination pitfalls will end up miles ahead of their peers.
It’s like Tait Ischia said in my interview: “If all the kids these days spent the same amount of time writing blogs that they did on Facebook, then [the advertising] industry would be a hell of a lot more competitive.”
He’s talking specifically about writing, sure. Because he’s a writer. But apply his concept to your ideal pursuit: breakdancing, animation, video production; I don’t know, interior fucking design.
The reality is that if you don’t work at your passion, you don’t get any closer to realising it. It continues to sit out of reach. That passionate carrot that you just can’t be fucked working toward. It’s the difference between putting the majority of your energy into becoming a widely-read writer and just telling everyone you meet that you want to be a widely-read writer.
In this way, nothing about productivity has changed since humans started realising that they required more than just food, shelter and sex to live a satisfying life.
So I suppose that the internet, in the hands of the unmotivated, might just be a platform that has the potential to be a dense distraction. It’s the marbles, the skateboard, the comic books, the pool halls of previous generations, condensed into a single interface.
Except it’s inside, and you’re probably going to learn fewer skills when traversing the internet for extended periods. But even that statement is wrong; you’ll learn skills, but they’ll be completely different to what you’d learn in a pool hall or a skate bowl.
Historically, the people who are motivated toward an end have achieved things. They’re remembered. They won. And those who stood in the shadow of their achievements weren’t remembered. They didn’t win.
Simpler: the people who get things done win.
This post is a departure from the norm, because I clearly haven’t thought this through. But I’m okay with that. Stepping outside my comfort zone of pretending that I have the answers.
How do you spend your time online, and how do you deal with distraction? Do you think we’re learning to interact smarter?
Filed under Life, Web | Tags: achievement, Career, conversation, interaction, Internet, Life, Motivation, Online, passion, procrastination, productivity, pursuits, skills, tait-ischia, talents, twitter, vicarious-productivity, Web, Writing | Comments (5)Fear
You know, my biggest fear is mediocrity.
Waking up one day and realising that I embody all the traits that I dislike in other people.
Whether in mind - watching television, not reading, conducting conversations that revolve around inane interpersonal relationship bullshit.
Or in body - eating crap, binge drinking, not exercising.
Fear is healthy. Fear is a huge motivator.
It’d be easy to construct this as some huge deal, a struggle, a rage against mediocrity. But it’s not. Instead, it’s kind of easy.
One simple question, asked over and over: who do you want to be?
Filed under Life | Tags: Fear, Mediocrity, Motivation, People, Self | Comments (5)Condoleezza Rice: It’s your power, use it
Noel linked me to an inspiring speech recently given to students of Perth’s Mercedes College by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It’s well worth the read. I’ve picked out some key quotes below - bolding is mine.
I’d only have one suggestion, (to young people) which is when you go to college, don’t try to determine what job you’re going to have when you get out. Try to determine what your passion is. Try to figure out what it is you really love to do.
Finding your passion is the most important thing that you can do. My passion turned out to be the study of the Soviet Union. The first time I heard the Russian language, it was like falling in love.
Don’t worry if it’s something that seems a little odd because there is no reason that a black woman from Birmingham, Alabama, should have been interested in the Soviet Union. I just was. Don’t let anybody define for you what you should be interested in. Your horizons should be limitless at this point. You have to find that special combination of what you’re good at doing and what you love to do. And when you find that combination life is going to work out.
Just don’t let anybody put limits on it because you’re a woman or because you are from some particular ethnic group or because you’re Aboriginal or whatever you are. What you want to be and who you’re going to be is really up to you.
Filed under Life | Tags: Life, Motivation, Quotes | Comment (0)Most often people will underestimate your capabilities. The best way to deal with that is, be tough, be prepared to take on whatever questions come at you. And you’ll find that sooner or later, it won’t matter that much.
