The Wall

What I Did:

Today I asked my publisher to share this letter to Steven Bartlett, the host of The Diary of a CEO, to be on his podcast.

Dear Steven,

I want to share a moment with you from 2019, when I first discovered your podcast. The interviews were great, but when I went back and listened to your first few episodes, that’s when I became a fan. Your first episode was a monologue that went viral, and your second episode described your euphoric feeling of success.

You then built an empire on top of that moment. But that moment, before the empire, is what I wanted to talk to you about. Because I share that feeling.

I started a YouTube series called 100 Days of Rejection Therapy a decade ago. One video went viral, which not only blew up my channel but built a movement of Rejection Therapy that hundreds of creators have replicated on TikTok and YouTube. I have since given a TED Talk with 11M+ views and written a book that’s sold 160,000+ copies across 15+ languages.

But none of that is the conversation I want to have.

Your audience wants that breakthrough - the moment they feel they’ve found their purpose and calling, the sense that they’re genuinely connected to the universe. But very, very few people get to experience that. Why? Because before the moment of glory was endless, lonely, wandering paths of darkness. Self-doubt and rejection, self-loathing and failure. Most give up before they get to the breakthrough.

My new book - Easy Discipline: An Unconventional Way to Achieve Ambitious Things (Simon & Schuster, 7/14/2026), is a love letter to those people. I want to have a conversation with you on:

• The science behind why discipline feels hard and impossible

• Why the “grind harder” advice is wrong for high-stakes and long-term goals

• What 100 days of public rejection taught me about chasing impossible things

• Why most people quit before the breakthrough, and the one thing that makes them stay

That’s the conversation I want to have with you - the dark middle before the breakthrough.

The listeners would love it.

Jia Jiang

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE – Making Art

When most people pitch a product (in my case, my book), they lead with features and benefits. But I lead with story and connection - the reason I’m pitching them in the first place. Yes, I want to be on Steven’s show. Who doesn’t? But I want him to know that me being there isn’t just because his platform is huge and beneficial to me, but because it’s genuinely an opportunity for us to co-create art through a conversation.

Most people see life as a series of goals and transactions. I see it as a continuous journey to create moments, highlights, and art.

In fact, writing, sending, and sharing this letter is rewarding regardless of the outcome. Even if I get rejected by Steven and his producers, my action is a piece of art, at least in my own memory.

When I was a little kid in China, people called me 爱折腾, which roughly translates to “the kid is always cooking up something.” The things I cooked up were always trouble - climbing towers, dancing in the rain, making jokes in class.

As I got older, I found it to be one of my biggest strengths, not because of what I came up with, but because the cooking up itself was fun and artistic. I love being a professional chef, not with food, but with words and actions.

For You

Do you want to pitch something to someone but are afraid to write the letter? Here’s my suggestion: write it in a way that satisfies you, and send it. Don’t worry about the result. The writing and the sending are the goal. The response is just a bonus.

If you want, share with me what you’re cooking up.

THE WALL

We are into week 3 of the 100 Days. We have, let me check… 229 copies.

25% of me is questioning why I am putting myself through the public humiliation, while the other 75% is telling me how exciting the 84 Days to 9,771 Copies Project is.

But I am going to tell the 25% to shut up and let the 75% do its thing.

What I Did:

Last week was speaking week. This week is podcast week. I’m reaching out to my favorite podcasters to pitch myself on their shows.

I am a huge listener of interview podcasts. My phone is loaded with Tim Ferriss, The Diary of a CEO, The Prof G Pod, and Mel Robbins episodes. I rotate through them and their guests to get inspiration and outside perspectives. I’ve also bought many books after listening to an episode where the interviewee is an author.

(Speaking of which, let me check my Audible… I have 347 books. Wow, I’ve bought more books than people have bought of mine - 347 vs. 229. That’s embarrassing.)

Now it’s my turn to get on podcasts so I can sell more books. Here is my dream list. There are 38 of them. Will I get on any of them? I hope so. My baseline is 5. My stretch goal is 10. Anything beyond that would be nirvana.

To give myself a chance, I need to reach out to them. Moreover, pitching is fun! How can I miss this opportunity to be my best self and the artist I am?

In the following days, I will share my letters to some of my favorite podcasters. I’m hoping they will be my best writing. But I’ll let you give me feedback.

Why am I excited about this when most authors dread it? Because of an Easy Discipline principle I lean on hard:

Easy Discipline Principle - Manufacturing Quests

I don’t see life as a series of goals to be accomplished. I see it as a platform to have fun and make art.

Before I was 30, I was a video game addict, because video games provided me with worlds of fantasy and accomplishment that I couldn’t have in the real world. But as soon as I started vlogging, I never touched a video game again. The real world became way more fun and engaging. I no longer needed to take on fake quests, because my whole life became one exciting quest after another.

Excitement is such an underrated factor of success.

The Lord of the Rings is about a quest to destroy the ring. The Pursuit of Happyness is about a quest for a broke guy to become a stockbroker. Avengers: Endgame is about a quest to beat an unbeatable intergalactic villain and resurrect half of the population.

We often only see these quests on a screen, never imagining ourselves being part of them.

But the truth is, we can start amazing quests and tie them to our own goals.

These 100 days are my manufactured quest, and the 10,000 books goal is to make the quest more exciting. This week’s level is pitching to my dream podcasts.

How can I let this opportunity go?

For You

Hey, how’s your life, job, or career? Is it boring or exciting? If you feel you’re in a rut, how about building a quest with insane goals, then giving your all to obtain it? You don’t need luck to have excitement happen to you. You can create thrill, memories, and miracles with your own decision and effort, starting today.

THE WALL

What I Did

Today I am in Charlotte, still speaking on stage. I recorded the following, and had a room full of people raising their hands to buy my book. It’s an improvement from yesterday.

I’m headed to Houston for another event tomorrow. I don’t know what to do yet… maybe karaoke on stage? Do a split for the audience in exchange for a book purchase (and possibly a visit to the ER)? I have no idea.

Now, I’m not going to bore you with my next speech, but I do want to share my thoughts on public speaking itself.

Lots of people ask me how I became good at speaking.

In this article, I talk about how to use weird thoughts to generate humor in public speaking. Today, I want to share another principle of Easy Discipline: Find Your Power.

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE - Find Your Power

If you told 16-year-old Jia, or 30-year-old Jia, that one day he’d make most of his money being a keynote speaker, he would have said: “What’s a Keynote Speaker? Is that another iPhone app?”

Let’s be honest - a Chinese immigrant who stutters and speaks with an accent isn’t exactly what screams “professional speaker.” In fact, I bet the next conference your company hosts, your keynote speaker will not look like me or sound like me… unless it’s me, of course.

I didn’t even know that could be a thing. But when Rejection Therapy became a trend, people started inviting me to talk to their groups and tell them my story. My first speaking event was in a chiropractor’s office lobby, and the upper half of my face was blue due to a broken projector. I was rambling, stuttering, and went way too long. If my current speech is a Lamborghini, that first speech was a Honda Civic with a plastic bag on the window.

But… people loved it! No one cared about my terrible delivery. They loved my story! In fact, it was because of the rawness of my talk that people knew I was real and authentic.

But more importantly, I LOVED IT! Telling stories and inspiring people is so fun. I discovered a hidden talent I didn’t even know I had - I could move people with my words, all because I said YES to my first invite and performed with sincerity.

Then I kept getting invited from one event to another. I kept getting better and better, more polished, more insightful, funnier. To prepare for my first big stage, I even practiced speeches on the street to strangers.

Then came the real discovery. One realtor offered me $500 to speak at her event. That was the moment it dawned on me: I could possibly make a living off this someday, because I was providing real value to people who needed it.

In the famous book Ikigai, author Héctor García writes about finding your purpose at the center of four circles - what you LOVE, what you are GOOD AT, what you can be PAID FOR, and what the world NEEDS. Finding the center of those four circles is called Ikigai.

10+ years later, I’ve spoken at 400+ events. Now I’m a master speaker and storyteller, traveling around the world and inspiring people with words. I’m about to launch my second book, and I’m working on my third.

I found my power - my Ikigai, because I was willing to try things, say YES to opportunities when they presented themselves, give my best, and get better.

Now, do you have any hidden talents - things that come to you naturally, that you just haven’t sincerely explored? If you do, let me know in the comments. I’ll chat with you on how to possibly create opportunities for yourself.

And if you don’t, it’s time to find one. Try new things. Say yes to opportunities that make you uncomfortable. Because EVERYONE has hidden talent. You just haven’t dug hard enough yet.

THE WALL

One week in, I’m 7% into my 100 days. I now have 222 preorders, that’s 2.2% of the goal. I’m very behind. Am I concerned? On the surface, I’m a cool cucumber planted in zen soil, raised on Stoic philosophy and trained in the temple of Rejection Therapy.

But inside, I’m tearing up my emotional intestines.

Also, two supporters threw down 180 books for their organizations, which is saving my butt. I’m extremely grateful, but that’s not a long-term strategy.

Well, anxiety is not going to sell book #223. It’s time for work.

What I Did

Week 2 is here. This week, I’m doing a speaking tour, flying to Tampa, Charlotte, Houston and Philadelphia to pitch my book to live audiences on stage.

Now, I do speaking for a living, and these events were all pre-planned corporate audiences. For speaking, I’d rather just tell my story, get the love and bask in the applause. Asking them to buy my next book? That’s awkward. I don’t want to feel like a sleazy salesperson.

But here comes the Easy Discipline principle:

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE – Reward Yourself for the Action, Not the Result

To get over the discomfort, I told myself, “Dude, just focus on the action and don’t worry about the result. Just ask. If they boo, they boo. You live with it. And if you make the ask, I’ll take you to the world-famous Clearwater beach tonight.”

(I talk to myself like this all the time. Is it weird? Just ask Tracy. She went from getting freaked out to expecting it. It’s like she married two Jias, and one is always coaching the other.)

So I got on stage and gave my now-famous “What I Learned From 100 Days of Rejection Therapy” talk. It was a great crowd — people were laughing, applauding and cheering. It gave me tons of confidence, because if I had given them that much fun, I had earned some credibility for a (very) soft pitch.

When I was close to the end of my talk, I added: “I’m writing my second book. It comes out in July, it’s called Easy Discipline. I want to teach people how to have better discipline. Lots of people work hard and feel hard. What I found is people can work hard and feel easy. You can use easy feeling to fuel yourself long-term. I’m hoping all of you can buy my book.”

That’s it. Not a hard sell. Video below:

I did it! Was it smooth? Nah. But I did it. And that’s the first step. Let me show you my reward — a sunset at Clearwater Beach, followed by a huge meal at the oldest Spanish restaurant in America: The Columbia Restaurant.

Whatever you’ve been avoiding — do it today. Then give yourself a ridiculous reward tonight.

THE WALL

How do you set goals?

For a long time, I’ve been advocating setting action goals rather than outcome goals. The reason is simple – you can control your actions, you can’t control outcomes.

That’s why only 9% of New Year’s Resolutions succeed (losing 15 lbs, writing a book, getting promoted, starting a business, etc. are all outcome goals). They are more demoralizing than useful.

In fact, this is a sample of my 2026 New Year’s Resolutions. They were all input goals.

• Getting up by 6AM for 200 days

• Exercise for 200 hours

• 100 deep conversations

• 100 walks with my dad

• 200 hours of “magic time” with kids

However, there is one occasion where outcome goals are useful – when they are so impossible, the pursuit creates an epic story and unforgettable experience. When the journey itself becomes the reward.

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE – The Magic of Impossibility

When a goal is “ambitious but reasonable,” there are many ways to achieve it. In my case, trying to get 2,000 pre-orders would be a very good and reasonable goal. I can do drip-marketing. I can run Google Ads. I can focus on PR. I’ll get there.

Trying to get to 5,000 would be very hard. I would need to combine all of them, and hope everything works to perfection.

But 10,000… unless I’m Joe Rogan or Mel Robbins, that’s in the impossible territory. All the traditional, tried-and-true methods combined won’t work. (Trust me, I did the math. Unless I commit accounting fraud to appease my optimism, nothing works.)

So when traditional ways don’t work, I need to dig deep into the seldom-visited corners of my imagination and search for hidden treasures.

I came up with a combination of 14 weekly mini-goals composed of 7 tried-and-true safe methods + 7 moonshots. Think about a stock portfolio of half blue-chip stocks like Google, Nvidia, Amazon, and the other half made of early-stage startup bets sprinkled with crypto and maybe some penny stocks – most will go to zero, but one 50x return pays for all the losses and then some.

The 7 traditional tactics will give me a floor, so I don’t sell 0 books. And the 7 crazy moonshots, each with a 10% chance to succeed. Based on math, the chance of at least 1 of the 7 breaking through is 52.2%. That gives me a chance to hit 10,000 copies.

That’s why you are seeing the 10,000 Copies Wall – it’s modeled after the Million Dollar Homepage, a 2005 viral phenomenon. And you are going to see more crazy things I will try for the next 100 days, including poker and tennis. Stay tuned.

And the most important reason?

IT’S SO FREAKING FUN!!!!!

You have no idea how much of a good time we are having. Being scared, nervous, hopeful but creative at the same time? That’s priceless! It reminds me of the before-battle scene below from the Lord of the Rings.

An impossible goal turned book launch, something that most authors hate, into a 100-day journey of imagination and desperation (they come in pairs).

We have only one life to live – we can go the safe, boring, and steady routes. And for most things, you should – marriage, parenting, investment. In those departments, safe and boring pay long-term dividends.

But if you sprinkle in a few bouts of epic 100-day sprints to go after impossible goals, that’s the story you sit down and tell your grandkids.

And that’s the soul of Easy Discipline – creating stories out of thin air, turning the mundane into the epic, all ending up with achievements as by-products.

What’s your big goal? Whatever it is, how about 10x that goal, set a deadline, let your imagination run wild, and go nuts?

Are you having fun yet? I know I am.

THE WALL

Over the past few days, I have received so many emails from you showing me love and encouragement. One of them is from one of my best friends and spiritual mentor. He thought I was flying high and being so confident.

My reply: “I have a lot of fear I am battling every day. What if I don’t succeed? What if I land on 500 books instead of 10,000? I don’t have everything figured out. I suffer from these anxieties just like everyone else. Me doing this campaign publicly is just my way to cope.”

Writing this out makes me feel a lot better. So I want to share with all of you.

Especially the “Me doing this campaign publicly is just my way to cope” part.

Most people keep their biggest goals to themselves, mostly because if they don’t succeed, they can change course comfortably. There are also scientific reasons: the initial public feedback and support can reduce your brain’s desire to take the necessary actions.

That said, I take the opposite stance on this - you should shout your goal at the top of your lungs to everyone you care about. It’s an Easy Discipline principle called the Baby Shower Shout.

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE: The Baby Shower Shout

When I hit 30 and Tracy was pregnant, I thought my entrepreneurial dream was over. No way I could leave my cushy corporate job now with my new responsibilities.

Until I did this: at Tracy’s baby shower, when all our family and friends showed up for support, I publicly announced that I’m going to start my own company. Everyone was shocked, and no one knew what to say. Then it went into hesitant applause.

But I wasn’t there for their applause and support. I was there to burn my boat, publicly. I was there to create nuclear pressure and accountability for myself. I might fail, but there is no way I quit. Not in front of my in-laws, closest friends and colleagues.

So I went hair-on-fire. That type of desperation forced every ounce of creativity out of me, resulting in crazy ideas like 100 Days of Rejection Therapy.

I called that move The Baby Shower Shout - proclaiming your goal to the people who matter to you the most (the ones who care about you enough to come to your wedding or baby shower), if not the whole world.

In fact, 100 Days of Rejection Therapy was also a Baby Shower Shout - I told the world I was gonna do rejection for 100 days. And I did.

History is littered with Baby Shower Shouts like this:

• JFK said “We choose to go to the moon in this decade.”

• Muhammad Ali predicted he’d knock out Charlie Powell in the third round, and he did.

• Joe Namath famously made his guarantee: “We’re gonna win the game. I guarantee it,” before winning Super Bowl III.

Now, not all Baby Shower Shouts come true. Elon Musk (when he was still cool) was famous for announcing and missing impossible goals.

• In December 2015, he stated Tesla cars would be able to drive themselves in two years. FSD isn’t fully reliable until 2024.

• In 2016, he said SpaceX would land a capsule on Mars by 2018. Eight years later, we are still waiting.

He missed all his marks, but that’s not the point. He used the public pressure to force his companies to compress decades’ worth of progress into years, if not months.

Today Tesla is worth over 1 trillion dollars, and SpaceX is about to go public, possibly valued at 2 trillion dollars.

You shoot for the stars (or Mars) and land on the moon.

So this is my move - telling you and everyone I care about I’m going to sell 10,000 copies in 100 days.

Is this insane? Yes. Am I scared? Look at the sweat drop down my beautiful cheek... actually I just finished my Peloton.

This is the only way I know how to live. And this is how to make hard goals EASY.

What’s your future Baby Shower Shout? Let me hear it in the comments.

Today is day 3 of 100 Days to 10,000 Copies, my project to launch my new book - Easy Discipline.

Honestly, to sell 10,000 copies in 100 days is an insane goal. It’s my equivalent of landing on the moon. The thing is: you can’t achieve ambitious things without upgrading yourself, especially when you’re as flawed as me.

For me, my DNA should be called adhDNA. A simple notification can lead me to a 2-hour YouTube deep dive on the Spanish Civil War. The natural me would be lucky to sell 100 books, let alone 10,000.

In fact, my lack of natural discipline caused me to write this book.

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE – Getting In Character

However, there is an Easy Discipline principle I developed and frequently use to power up for a short period. It’s called Getting In Character – I don’t need to change to a disciplined person forever, like all the habit/discipline books teach you to. I can perform as one for the short-term – long enough to get the job done.

To do so, I need to have a temporary upgrade mentally, physically, environmentally, and spiritually.

For example: to write this book, I made four 2-week long trips to the mountain of Japan to perform the role as the solitary writer. My life was very simple:

• Get up at 5AM

• Write until 1PM

• Research until 3PM

• Work out until 5PM

• Big, fulfilling meal at 6PM

• Sleep at 8PM

No exception. I could get more things done in one week than I normally do in 2 months, no exaggeration. And when 2 weeks are up, I’m back with 4-months worth of work. It’s that simple.

However, this is a 100-day project, and I can’t go to Japan for that long, or Tracy might leave me.

That’s why I am going to extreme measures to power up at home. Here are the things I am doing for 100 days to simulate my Japan experience at home:

1. Charge my phone outside of the bedroom

2. Get up at 6AM every day with a routine –

   1. Spiritual devotion with Tracy

   2. Plan for the day

   3. Exercise

   4. Eat

3. Rent a cowork space for optimal work environment (deep work from 9-5)

4. Completely change my media diet

   1. Delete/block YouTube and Reddit (2 of my biggest time-wasters)

   2. Load my phone with curated audiobooks and podcast interviews

   3. If I have to get a dopamine fix, open Substack, which gives me long-form reading, not brainrotting.

5. Sleep at 10PM

6. Shave my head and get a tattoo that says “10,000 copies or die trying”

OK I made the last one up. But everything else is how I get in character as the ultimate disciplined, invincible author/marketer.

Do they sound hard? Oh yeah, if you are thinking about making permanent change or developing a habit.

But they are extremely doable and fun if you are performing a role for just 100 days. Again, when the finish line is in sight, you can do anything.

After that, I will be back to being your distracted, disorganized slob. (Or not)

But for 100 days, I am Superman.

WHAT I DID

Do you see the picture above? It’s a screenshot of this page - The 10,000 Copies Wall. There are 10,000 squares on this wall, representing the first 10,000 pre-order copies. Anytime anyone pre-orders Easy Discipline (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible), they can screenshot and upload the receipt, and have their name on the wall, permanently.

If Easy Discipline becomes a bestseller or a cultural phenomenon, their names will be forever marked as its first supporters.

Great idea right? Well, it was supposed to be my first week’s goal - Build the Wall. But it was built in 4 hours, by my dear partner in crime, and partner in life, Tracy!

Just you know, I spent 5+ years getting a Computer Science degree, 5+ years working in tech companies, and built two software startups myself.

But I can’t build this wall myself without help.

And Tracy, with 0 programming experience, rolled up her sleeves and got it done in 4 hours.

How is that possible? Three reasons:

1. Tracy is a force of nature. When she puts her mind on something, it’s done, with quality and speed. Being her partner is like living with Athena on keyboard.

2. AI is becoming terrifyingly powerful. You can vibe code with Claude to build things in an hour that takes an experienced programmer days if not weeks.

3. Well, here comes today’s main learning:

EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE - The Magic of “100 Days”

What do a company’s financial quarter, a nature’s season, and the length of time people talk about the start of a Presidential term have in common?

That’s right, they are all about 100 days.

And if you think about it, 100 days is the perfect time for you to take on a new project -long enough to make real impact on the world and changes in your life, and short enough that it’s gone before you know it.

100 days have certainly been magical for me. If you know me, you know 100 Days of Rejection Therapy changed my life and started the movement of Rejection Therapy.

And that’s why I am doing the book launch project for 100 days. Frankly, I finished writing my book 3 months ago, and I could have started the campaign earlier. But I knew if I did, I would get burnt out before the publication date.

So I waited until precisely 100 days before launch, so Tracy and I can go maximum full effort in an all-out sprint.

There is magic in going hair-on-fire, laser-focused, shot-out-of-a-cannon with no regard to fatigue and grind, because the finish line is just ahead.

The result is today - what we thought would take 1 week, we got done in 1 day.

So like I asked yesterday, what’s your big goal? Share with me. Don’t think about someday, the next five years, or even this year. Start today, then go nuts for 100 days.

You can do anything for 100 days.

PS. For those of you who pre-ordered right after yesterday’s email, THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart. Make sure you upload the receipt on the 10,000 Copies Wall and have your name celebrated and enshrined forever.

This is my project of selling 10,000 pre-order copies of my new book - Easy Discipline (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible) in 100 days, using the principles written in this book. I am documenting this process live, and share the principles and discoveries with you.

Week 1 - Launch

Day 1 - Announcement

Day 2 - Build the Wall, and Why 100 Days?

Day 3 - I Am Superman

Day 4 - Is Announcing My Goal a Good Idea?

Day 5 - The Magic of Impossibility

Day 6 - Rest Like a King

Day 7 - Travel to Tampa

Day 8 - Pitching From the Stage, Then Rewarding Myself

Day 9 - Using My Hidden Power and Finding Yours

Day 10 - Speaking in Houston

Day 11 - Speaking in Philadelphia

Day 12 - Flying Back

Day 13 - Rest Like a Pig (so tired)

Day 14 - Rest Like a Lion (better)

Day 15 - Pitching to Podcasts, and Manufacturing Quests

Day 16 - Writing to Steven Bartlett, and Making Art

I’ve been hesitant to do this publicly, and I’m somewhere in between being nervous and losing my mind, but I am going to do it anyway. Because that’s how I roll, how I get things done, and how I lived my life so far.

100 Days to 10,000 Copies

My book, Easy Discipline – An Unconventional Way to Achieve Ambitious Things, comes out in 100 days (July 14th). And I am going to sell 10,000 preorder copies before the book comes out.

And I am going to do it publicly, and document the journey here on this newsletter.

You might be asking: what’s the big deal? Don’t all books sell 10,000 copies?

Hardly. There are approximately 3 million books published every year. Most sell less than 300 copies. For traditionally published nonfiction books like Easy Discipline, the median lifetime sale is 7,100 copies. Only one in three ever reaches the 10,000 copy threshold.

And I’m trying to get to 10,000 preorders BEFORE the official publication date.

Without Oprah’s audience or James Clear’s newsletter empire, this goal lands somewhere between extremely tough and impossible.

But again, this is the type of challenge that turns me on.

So how will I do it?

Well, 100 days are about 14 weeks. So for the next 14 weeks, I will accomplish 14 audacious weekly goals to make the 10,000 copies happen. I will alternate between traditional book-marketing goals, like getting on a dream podcast, to non-traditional things and downright weird things like the World Series of Poker and standup comedy, using Easy Discipline principles for all of it.

The core idea of Easy Discipline is to turn audacious, ambitious, impossible goals into reality by turning the pursuit into play.

It teaches you how to make the journey the reward itself, so the resulting success becomes the by-product of your effort and play.

It helps you to build a floating giant dining table, so your pie-in-the-sky goals become edible and delicious. Or grow artificial swine-friendly wings, so pigs can really fly.

100 days for 10,000 copies is my pie-in-the-sky and pig-flying goal. And what better use for a book than selling the book itself?

So… why should you care?

To be honest, you probably shouldn’t. With how things are going, who knows what the world would be like in 100 days.

But:

1. If you want to take a break from doomscrolling, watching your friend Jia try to sell 10,000 copies might be an OK distraction.

2. I will be documenting daily on everything I do, everything I learn, and everything you can apply to pursuing your own goals.

3. Speaking of your own goals — do you have an audacious, ambitious, impossible goal you’ve been marinating for a long time? Maybe get promoted at work? Start a new business? Get in great shape for summer? Learn a new language?

   If you do, share your goal with me. And we can do it together in the next 100 days. We can be accountability buddies.

Sometimes we pay too much attention to the big world – the macro environment which we can’t control. Wars, economy, AI, all these trends that we can do nothing about. But we let them take over our emotions and attention.

We overlook there is so much we can try, so much we can control and so much we can accomplish in our micro-environments. And sometimes, all it takes is 100 days.

My main concern isn’t politics. Although a million “experts” are telling me this might be the end of the American empire and the start of WWIII. And I’m wondering if in 5 years, Brian will be drafted as the third military surge into Iran. (My mind can go to dark places if uncontrolled.)

It’s economics.

Namely, what if the world economy tanks or even collapses due to surging fuel prices, and the stock market crashes 1929 style? What should I do with my 401K and IRA? Should I sell everything and buy gold? Move to Greenland? (Well, I can’t think of one safe place on earth right now.)

Now as I mentioned, my mind goes to crazy places. But this is not about me, but you. Are you concerned about what’s going on in the world and your economic future? Are you thinking about building bunkers like in Blast from the Past?

Well, you are in luck! Two of the most prominent money experts and their ideas are here to help us. It’s Dave Ramsey (5 seed) vs Tony Robbins (12 seed).

Dave Ramsey

Dave Ramsey is what happens when a Southern Baptist preacher and a bankruptcy attorney have a baby and raise it on talk radio. Got his real estate license at 18, built a $4 million portfolio by 26, then lost it all. Filed for bankruptcy at 28 while his toddler played on the floor next to the paperwork. He found Jesus, found a microphone, and spent the next 35 years telling Americans to cut up their credit cards and eat rice and beans. His show reaches 18 million listeners a week. He carries two debit cards, a driver’s license, and a concealed-carry permit. No credit cards. He is your financially conservative uncle at Thanksgiving who won’t stop talking about compound interest, except this uncle has a media empire and will yell at you on live radio until you cry and say “I’m debt free.”

The Book: The Total Money Makeover (2003, updated 2024)

Thesis: Your money problem is a behavior problem, not a knowledge problem. You know you shouldn’t carry credit card debt. You know you should save. You don’t need more information, you need to change your behavior. The book is structured around his famous “Baby Steps”, a sequential, no-negotiation plan to get out of debt and build wealth.

Core Ideas:

• Debt is not a tool. Credit cards, car loans, student loans. Ramsey hates all of it. “The borrower is slave to the lender.”

• The debt snowball works because behavior beats math. Mathematically, you should pay off the highest-interest debt first. But Ramsey says pay off the smallest balance first because the quick wins build momentum and motivation.

• Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else. Sacrifice now (rice and beans, no vacations, sell the car) so that in 5-7 years you’re completely debt-free and building real wealth.

• A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. Every dollar gets a name and a job before the month begins.

• The 7 Baby Steps:

1. Save $1,000 for a starter emergency fund.

2. Pay off all non-mortgage debt using the “debt snowball” (smallest balance first, regardless of interest rate).

3. Save 3-6 months of expenses as a full emergency fund.

4. Invest 15% of household income into retirement.

5. Save for your children’s college.

6. Pay off your mortgage early.

7. Build wealth and give generously.

Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins is a 6’7” motivational tornado who grew up poor, left home at 17 to work as a janitor, and somehow turned firewalking into a billion-dollar industry. Never went to college. Started holding seminars in the ’80s, and by the ’90s was on every infomercial in America at 2am promising to awaken the giant within. He’s coached four US presidents, made Oprah walk on fire, and has a net worth of $600 million. Then around 2014, he decided he wanted to be a money guy too. So he called up 50 of the world’s greatest investors (Ray Dalio, Warren Buffett, Jack Bogle), interviewed all of them, and wrote two financial books like he’d been in finance his whole life. Neither made anyone forget he’s a motivational speaker, not a financial advisor. But when the guy who made you walk on hot coals tells you not to panic-sell your 401k, you somehow listen.

The Book: Money: Master the Game (2014)

Thesis: the financial game is rigged against ordinary people. Hidden fees, conflicted advisors, and a system designed to keep Wall Street rich and you confused. But you can still win if you understand the rules. Robbins distills everything he learned from interviewing the world’s greatest investors.

Core Ideas:

• The game is rigged but winnable. Hidden fees, actively managed funds, and conflicted advisors are silently stealing your retirement. A 1% fee difference can confiscate up to 70% of your lifetime returns.

• Index funds beat almost everything. Most actively managed funds underperform simple index funds. Stop trying to outsmart the market and own the whole thing.

• Market crashes are seasonal, not fatal. 30+ corrections in 30 years. The people who get rich don’t panic. The people who get poor sell at the bottom.

• Asset allocation matters more than stock picking. How you divide your money determines 90%+ of your returns. Ray Dalio’s All Weather Portfolio is designed to perform in any economic environment.

• Your biggest enemy is you. Fear makes you sell at the bottom, greed makes you buy at the top. Master your emotions or they’ll master your portfolio.

What They Would Say About Today

Tony Robbins would say:

Don’t you dare sell. (He’d say this while standing 6’7” on a stage with lasers behind him, somehow making index funds feel like the climax of a Marvel movie.) There have been 30+ corrections in the past 30 years. Every single time, the market recovered. Every. Single. Time. The people who sold in panic locked in their losses. The people who stayed in came out ahead. The Iran war feels like the end of the world. So did 2008. So did Covid. So did 9/11. The market dropped after all of them. It recovered after all of them. Stay invested. Don’t watch the news. Don’t check your portfolio every day. Buy more if you can. Winter is here, and winter always ends. (This is basically the financial version of “everything works out in the end” from every movie you’ve ever seen, and he’s right, which is annoying.)

Dave Ramsey would say:

The complete opposite energy. He wouldn’t even acknowledge the market exists. He’d look at you the way your dad looked at you when you crashed his car and say: “You’re worried about Iran crashing the economy? Do you have credit card debt? Do you have a car payment? Do you have an emergency fund? If the answer is yes, yes, and no, Iran isn’t your problem. YOU are your problem. You’re watching CNN worried about global collapse when you owe Visa $14,000 at 22% interest. That’s your Iran.”

Then he’d tell you to turn off the news, get on a budget tonight, list every debt smallest to largest, cut up the credit cards, sell the car you can’t afford, and eat rice and beans until your grandchildren get tired of hearing about it. The people who survive economic chaos aren’t the ones with the best investment strategy. They’re the ones with no debt and six months of cash in the bank.

Robbins says your money problem is a psychology problem. Master your emotions and the market will make you wealthy despite wars and pandemics.

Ramsey says your money problem is a behavior problem. Stop buying things you can’t afford and no crisis can touch you.

Robbins wants you to be unshakeable in the storm. Ramsey wants you to build the shelter before the storm arrives.

Which idea helps you more? Your vote:

For Me

To me, the answer is pretty simple: Tony Robbins, because he is directly calming my urge to sell my investments right now. “Time in the market beats timing the market.” I get it, Tony, thank you!

That said, I am also taking one more piece of advice from Robbins: diversification. For a long time, I’ve been primarily a stock investor. In fact, I used to write a blog called Loved Investor, investing in stocks of companies whose products I love. Now with geopolitical uncertainty, ranging from short-term pain, to long-term recession, to missiles flying overhead, I need to study and learn more about other investments: gold, real estate, foreign currency, and even Pokémon cards (my sons would approve, but Dave Ramsey would slap me). I need to understand them more and de-risk from what’s going on.

Plus, I hate how much Ramsey talks about rice and beans. I love rice but hate beans (what do you expect from a Chinese dude?). But today I just got my blood drawn and my fasting glucose is 109. Now I hate rice too.

My vote goes to Tony Robbins.

Since you can’t just return the house with Amazon Prime, now you have to fix it. There are two choices:

Choice one: get yourself a handyman (or a handywoman in this case). She came out of a pickup truck carrying a huge machine that looked to be either cleaning your pipes or opening a portal to another dimension. Her vest has enough tools to build the Trump wall.

After you show her all your house’s problems, she muttered “alright” and got to work. One hour of patching, 30 minutes of supergluing, and an hour and a half of sandpapering, she tells you “you are good.” And you are. In the meantime, she hardly spoke to you and her eyebrow never moved.

Choice two: you called a Feng Shui Master. She drives a Toyota Prius but is dressed in a silk robe with a golden dragon sewn on it. You know she’s not doing Kung Fu, but she’s doing something. She came into your house, not saying a word, and definitely not paying attention to your eager explanation of all your leaks and breaks. She surveyed your living room, then walked up and down the stairs a few times, did some Eastern meditation and chants, and finally said, “The entire house’s chi is wrong. The dragon chi can’t flow, the money chi is leaking. You don’t need patches, you need a remodeling to correct the feng shui and vibe.”

Now, if you use the troubled house as an analogy for your mental state (your fear, your anxiety, your negative thinking), then these two fixers represent our two authors’ methods today. The handywoman is Julie Smith (the 16th seed), and the Feng Shui Master is Brené Brown (the 1 seed). The former has all the tools to fix your problems, the other has one tool to reshape your inner core.

Let’s dive in on each.

Brené Brown

Human psychology research professor at University of Houston. She spent two decades studying one thing: shame. Honestly, that’s like a doctor specializing in hemorrhoids, or a marine biologist studying sea cucumber feces. However, her work produced astonishing results. Her 2010 TEDxHouston talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” is one of the five most-viewed TED talks ever. It turned her from an academic nobody into a cultural phenomenon, with #1 NYT bestsellers, Netflix special, HBO Max documentary, two podcasts, and the Vulnera perfume brand.

I made the last one up, but speaking of brand, her personal story is part of the brand. She’s a self-described perfectionist fifth-generation Texan who had a breakdown during her own research when she realized the data was telling her she needed to be more vulnerable. That honesty about her own struggle is what makes her credible.

Daring Greatly (2012)

Title comes from Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the Arena” speech. More than 2 million copies sold. The thesis: vulnerability is not weakness, it’s the most accurate measure of courage. We live in a culture of scarcity (never enough, never good enough), and the antidote is what she calls “wholehearted living,” engaging with the world from a place of worthiness rather than shame.

Core Ideas:

• Vulnerability is courage, not weakness. Showing up when you can’t control the outcome is vulnerability. Avoiding it is what actually makes you weak.

• Shame is the real enemy. Shame says “I am bad.” Guilt says “I did something bad.” Learning to recognize the difference is a survival skill.

• The armor we wear costs us. Perfectionism, numbing, cynicism. These are shields against vulnerability. But when you numb pain, you also numb joy.

• Wholehearted living. People with a deep sense of worthiness let go of what people think, embrace imperfection, and believe they are enough.

• The arena matters more than the critics. If you’re not in the arena getting your ass kicked, Brown doesn’t want your feedback.

Julie Smith

English clinical psychologist. She started posting short mental health videos on TikTok in 2019. During Covid, her audience exploded, hitting 3.5 million followers in under two years. Her videos have racked up half a billion views across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. I can see why: she looks like Jennifer Aniston performing as a psychologist with a British accent.

Her path is essentially: real therapist → realizes most people can’t afford or access therapy → starts giving away therapy tools for free on social media → becomes one of the most followed mental health professionals on earth → writes a book that became the bestselling nonfiction book in the UK in 2022.

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? (2022)

The thesis: you don’t need a diagnosis or a therapist’s couch to benefit from the tools clinical psychologists use every day. This is a toolkit. Practical, evidence-based strategies for the everyday mental health struggles everyone faces.

The book is structured in short, bite-sized chapters organized around specific challenges, so you can flip to whatever you’re dealing with right now.

Core Ideas:

• Thoughts are not facts. They’re suggestions your brain offers to make sense of the world. You don’t have to believe every one.

• Emotions are information, not commands. Feeling anxious doesn’t mean you’re in danger. Learn to read your emotions without being ruled by them.

• Know your cognitive distortions. Catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, emotional reasoning. Your brain falls into these patterns automatically. Recognizing them is half the battle.

• Small actions change big feelings. In a low mood spiral, you disengage from things you enjoy, which makes it worse. One tiny change (even just getting outside) starts reversing it.

• You don’t need to be in crisis to work on your mental health. This is preventative medicine for the mind. Have tools ready before the crisis hits.

So whose idea do you like better? The shame master who wants to change your mental feng shui, or the handywoman who has a tool for every leak you have?

Brown wants to tear down the walls and rebuild from the foundation. Smith wants to fix the leak, unclog the drain, and sand the floor. One takes six months. The other takes an afternoon.

Vote here:

For Me

Now I don’t vote based on who I think should win. The #1 seed with 70M TED views, 6 bestsellers, and Netflix/HBO series should crush the #16 seed TikToker with a list of little tools.

But I vote based on this single question: “Whose idea helped me more?”

To me the answer is simple: the tool lady. Why? Because I am already overflowing with vulnerability. Two days ago I had a little quarrel with Tracy. I spent the night thinking about it, and the next day came up with a fear list and 2x2 analysis to show her my mindset.

If I get more vulnerable, I’ll overdose and be hospitalized at TED Regional Hospital.

But the tools, they are nice and practical. Here’s one of her tools that has been helpful for me: Square Breathing. Navy SEALs use it in combat. I use it to lower my blood pressure every morning when I measure it.

My vote goes to the under-underdog with a tool vest: Julie Smith!

Whatever it is, hold it in your mind. Feel it.

Now, two ideas. Just read and react.

Idea 1: You are afraid because you care about the wrong thing. You think you’re afraid of failure. You’re not. You’re afraid of what failure will say about you. You’ve fused your identity with the outcome. If the project fails, I’m a failure. If I don’t perform, I’m a fraud. That’s not fear. That’s a values problem. You’ve chosen to measure your worth by results you can’t fully control. Swap the metric. Measure yourself by what you’re willing to struggle for, not by whether you win. The fear doesn’t go away, but it stops meaning something about who you are.

Idea 2: You are afraid because you won’t shut up about it. You’ve been rehearsing your own failure for weeks. Playing the movie of everything going wrong, over and over, in a theater with an audience of one. You. And every screening makes you smaller. Here’s the thing: that fear isn’t a prediction. It’s just self-talk. And self-talk is not reality. You are not your thoughts. You are what you do. So do something. Anything. Send the email. Write the page. Make the call. Action is the only thing that shuts up the voice in your head. Not because the fear disappears, but because you’re too busy to listen to it.

Idea 1 is from Mark Manson. Idea 2 is from Gary John Bishop.

Which one hit harder? If you already feel it, you can vote now.

If not, keep reading. And come back later.

Mark Manson

Born in Austin, Texas and later moved to Boston, he was a dating coach before he was a self-help author. His first book was literally called “Models: Attract Women Through Honesty” (2011, self-published). He started blogging about relationships and life advice in 2008, built the blog to 2 million monthly readers by 2016, and in 2015 wrote a blog post called “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” that became the basis for the book.

His philosophical influences are unusually serious for a guy with swear words on his covers. Existentialists like Nietzsche and Sartre, Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, Stoicism. The Sunday Times described his writing as “like the local drunk who spent too much time in the philosophy section of the bookstore.” He took it as a compliment.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016)

Most-read nonfiction book worldwide in 2017 according to Amazon Charts. The thesis is anti-positivity. Stop trying to feel good all the time. Life involves suffering, so the question isn’t how to avoid it but how to choose suffering that’s meaningful to you. It’s not that you shouldn’t care about anything. It’s that you have a limited number of things you can care about, so choose wisely. Stop giving a f*ck about the things that don’t matter so you can give a f*ck about the things that do.

Core Ideas:

• Not giving a f*ck doesn’t mean being indifferent. It means choosing what to care about carefully and letting everything else go.

• Happiness isn’t a destination. Problems never go away. They just get upgraded. Happy people don’t have fewer problems. They have better ones.

• You are not special. Accepting your ordinariness is liberating. It frees you from performing a life you don’t have.

• Choose your suffering. What pain are you willing to sustain? That answer determines your life more than what pleasures you chase.

• You are always choosing. Even when you feel stuck, you’re choosing to stay. Responsibility isn’t blame. It’s power.

Gary John Bishop

Born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland. That’s about all the personal backstory you get from him. He’s not a memoir guy. He became a Senior Program Director for one of the world’s biggest personal development organizations, and took that training background and developed what he calls “urban philosophy.” Tough-love personal development stripped of all the soft, inspirational fluff. Think of a Glaswegian bartender who also happens to have world-class coaching credentials telling you to get your shit together.

Unfu*k Yourself (2017)

The thesis is brutally simple: the only thing standing between you and the life you want is you. Not your circumstances. Not other people. Not your past. You. Specifically, your self-talk. The constant internal monologue that’s either building you up or tearing you down. Bishop structures the book around seven “power assertions”. Phrases you tell yourself to override the negative loop.

Core Ideas:

• You have the life you’re willing to put up with. If it’s not what you want, you’ve been tolerating it. Stop tolerating.

• Self-talk is everything. Change the conversation in your head, change your life.

• You are not your thoughts. You don’t control what you think. You control what you do. Action defines you.

• Take 100% responsibility. Things happened that weren’t your fault. What you do next is always on you. No exceptions.

• Expect nothing, accept everything. Expectations are pre-planned disappointments. Let go of “should” and work with what is.

Comparison

I made it at the top. Go back to vote!

For Me

I really enjoy Manson’s writing. The fact that he chose to feature cuss words in life philosophy is genuinely bold, and it started a trend in the late 2010s with authors swearing up and down. Thankfully, that trend has died down by now.

But for me, Bishop’s core idea helped more. You might think I have all things figured out. This guy who writes and speaks for a career, builds a family he loves, must be living his dream life. His mind must be an inspiration buffet plus positivity symphony.

Nah, the opposite is true. I talk garbage to myself all the time. I let my biggest fears run through my mind nonstop, making me catastrophize every little setback into self-indictment.

The fears I wrote at the top of this article? That’s me. Right now.

That’s why having this Scottish guy yell at me, even cuss me out, is helpful. Sometimes you need a gentle coach who hugs you with encouragement. And sometimes you need a good verbal slap.

My vote goes to Gary John Bishop.

Slaps hurt. But once in a while, it can feel good.

Failure.

Something we all face.

But what do you do when you fail?

Today’s two books, Lean Startup and Lean In, try to give you the answers. They both came out of Silicon Valley in the 2010s. They both started world-changing movements, and redefined the cultures of businesses, careers, and lives. And they did so from completely opposite angles.

I’ve been looking forward to this battle for a long time. Because this is not just observational, but personal. In fact, I built my business around one of these books’ philosophies and lived to tell the tale.

Let’s get our “Battle of the Leans” started.

Eric Ries

A software engineer who cofounded a Silicon Valley company and failed miserably, because he spent months building features nobody wanted, and launched to a world that didn’t care. So instead of stress-eating Korean hot chili noodles (my #1 go-to), he started a blog (my #2 go-to), and documented his learning from failure. The blog became a book, a movement, a rewiring of an entire generation of startup founders’ brains.

The Lean Startup (2011)

This book thinks your business plan is a fantasy. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how good your idea sounds. Until real customers touch your product, you’re just guessing. Ries argues that every startup is essentially a series of experiments, not the execution of a master plan. The goal isn’t to build the perfect product. It’s to learn what customers actually want as fast and cheaply as possible, then iterate. The companies that win aren’t the ones with the best ideas. They’re the ones that learn the fastest.

Core Ideas:

• Build-Measure-Learn. This is the core loop. Build a minimum viable product, measure how customers respond with real data, learn, then repeat. Speed of learning is everything.

• Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Don’t build the full thing. Build the smallest and cheapest possible version that lets you test your core assumption.

• Validated learning over vanity metrics. Likes, page views, and total signups feel good but tell you nothing. The only metrics that matter are the ones that prove customers will actually pay for, use, and come back to your product.

• Pivot or persevere. When the data says your idea isn’t working, you have two choices: pivot (change direction based on what you learned) or persevere (stay the course because the data is promising).

• Innovation accounting. Traditional accounting measures revenue and profit. Startups need a different scorecard: learning velocity. Are you getting closer to product-market fit? Are your experiments producing clearer answers?

This book became Bible in Silicon Valley in the 2010s. Before this book, “lean” was a term reserved for the Costco meat section. After it, it became a goal for every startup. Its ideas (especially the terms “MVP,” “pivoting,” “product-market fit”) are so overused that the book feels dated today, kind of like watching the 1995 movie The Net (starring Sandra Bullock) in 2026.

Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg was the kind of overachiever that makes all overachievers feel like failures. Harvard undergrad then MBA, Chief of Staff at the US Treasury Department, VP at Google where she built the ad sales team, then COO of Facebook where she turned a zero-revenue startup into one of the most profitable companies in history. She was one of the most powerful women in corporate America, but noticed that there weren’t many other women in the room with her. That observation became the book.

Lean In (2013)

This book thinks women are being held back by two forces: external barriers that everyone acknowledges and internal barriers that nobody talks about. Sandberg argues that women pull back from their ambitions before they need to, don’t negotiate hard enough, don’t raise their hands, and shrink themselves in rooms full of men. The solution: lean in. Take the seat at the table. Raise your hand. Don’t leave before you leave.

Core Ideas:

• Sit at the table. Women routinely take peripheral seats in meetings, defer to others, and diminish their own contributions. Sandberg says be there, speak up, and act like you belong, because you do.

• Don’t leave before you leave. Women start pulling back from their careers in anticipation of having kids by turning down promotions and stopping raising their hands years before necessary. By the time the baby arrives, they have voluntarily opted out of crucial opportunities.

• Make your partner a real partner. Equal careers require equal partnerships at home. Negotiating the home workload is as important as negotiating your salary.

• Seek mentors, but don’t make it weird. Mentorship happens naturally through excellent work and relationship building. Earn it, don’t ask for it.

• Own your success. Women attribute their achievements to luck, help from others, or timing. Men attribute theirs to skill. Sandberg says stop apologizing for being good at what you do.

The book started as a cultural earthquake but drew massive backlash in the #MeToo and anti-grind era. People said a billionaire telling regular women to just try harder was tone-deaf to the systemic problems of childcare, pay gaps, and workplace discrimination that individual ambition can’t fix.

Comparison

They both have “Lean” in the title and mean the complete opposite thing by it.

Eric Ries says: don’t commit. Test. Hedge. Build the smallest possible version of your idea, measure whether anyone cares, and be ready to pivot the moment the data says you’re wrong. Your instincts are probably wrong. Your passion for your idea is a liability. Kill your ego and listen to the customer.

Sheryl Sandberg says: stop hedging. Commit. Lean in. Raise your hand. Your problem isn’t that your idea is wrong. It’s that you’re not backing yourself hard enough. Self-doubt is the enemy. The data you need is already inside you. You’re just too afraid to act on it.

Ries says your conviction will get you killed.

Sandberg says your hesitation already is.

Are you failing because you’re not testing enough or because you’re not believing in yourself enough? Do you need less ego or more? Should you listen to the market or listen to yourself?

And the beautiful irony: Ries built his framework after his company failed because he was too committed to his original vision. Sandberg built hers after watching women fail because they weren’t committed enough to their own ambitions. They both diagnosed the same symptom (people not succeeding) and prescribed opposite medicine.

Whose idea helped you more? The vote is yours!

My Vote

As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, this battle is personal. In 2012, I read Lean Startup and decided to quit my job and start my company, because with this manual, there was no way I could fail.

Well fail I did. I followed the book step-by-step, but nothing worked. Looking back, the idea that you can iterate your way out of any bad idea was not only intoxicating, it was damaging.

It made me and my team doubt every decision. Anything that didn’t go our way was a signal that we made a bad assumption. Every idea was half-baked and ended with conversations of “let’s test them out.”

Our lives became daily throwing-shit-against-the-wall-and-see-what-data-say. We usually had no data. And in rare cases that we did, the data always said “shit #1, shit #2, and shit #3 were all shit.”

And this way of running a business even spread into my personal life. I became a hedging maniac. Couldn’t commit to anything and looked to A/B test everything, including ways to wipe with toilet paper. It was an agonizing way to live, sometimes literally.

It wasn’t until I decided to take on the 100 Days of Rejection project that I made a mental shift. The idea of doing things for “100 days” regardless of what data might say was liberating, because the inherent commitment of that 100 days pushed me through all the doubts and hedging tendencies. When I had no results or “data” at the beginning, I couldn’t care less because I had 97 more days to go. Better get on it.

Today, my life philosophy can be summed up in three words:

Convictions with a Deadline.

I think through and carefully design my projects, execute with 100% intensity, then move on when it’s over. No daily pivoting.

I am not criticizing Lean Startup. It has made a lot of successful founders. But because I’ve personally witnessed its mental side effect, and because I live a very different life now, I can’t in good conscience vote for the book.

My vote goes to Lean In.

But if you’ve lived through Lean In and were traumatized, let me know.

If a 21-year-old comes to you for career and life advice, what would you say?

“Find your passion?”

“Try hard and try everything?”

“Don’t buy grocery store sushi?”

After a weekend of diarrhea, I’m going with the third one.

What about you?

If you ask around, you’ll see a million self-help authors giving you advice. And today, let me introduce two of the biggest ones, with millions of copies sold.

Just know, they’re not going to get along at a dinner table.

Héctor García

Born in Spain. Worked as a software engineer at CERN, the place where the World Wide Web was invented. Then he visited Japan and never left. Twenty-two years now. As a ramen addict, I don’t blame him at all. He went from software engineer to blogger to author to self-described “aspiring philosopher.” (Not a foodie. What a waste.)

His blog about Japanese culture became his first bestseller, A Geek in Japan. He then co-wrote Ikigai, which has been translated into 70 languages, making it the most translated book ever originally written in Spanish.

Interestingly, he’s the hardest to locate March MINDness author. There is a CPA named Hector Garcia with more YouTube views than him. Philosophers aren’t the online type.

The Book: Ikigai (2016)

The thesis: the people who live longest and happiest, like the centenarians in Okinawa, have found their ikigai, a Japanese word meaning “a reason to live” or “a reason to jump out of bed in the morning.”

Ikigai sits at the intersection of four things: what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. That’s your reason for being. The Japanese don’t really have a concept of retirement. They keep working at what they enjoy because they’ve found ikigai, the happiness of always being busy.

Core Ideas:

• Everyone has an ikigai. Your reason for existing. You just have to find it, big or small.

• Stay active, don’t retire. The centenarians in Okinawa never stopped working. Staying engaged and purposeful is what keeps you alive.

• Slow down and focus. Don’t multitask. The Japanese approach of giving full attention to one task produces better work and more satisfaction. Flow state over hustle.

• Community sustains you. Strong social bonds, the moai (social groups) of Okinawa, are as important as diet and exercise. Loneliness kills. Connection heals.

• Follow your curiosity. García himself embodies this. CERN to Japan to photography to philosophy to writing. The journey to finding your ikigai is itself part of the ikigai.

Gary Keller

Born in Texas, both parents were schoolteachers. Originally wanted to be a professional musician but fell in love with real estate. In 1983, he co-founded Keller Williams Realty from a single office in Austin. Built it into the largest real estate company in the world by agent count, over 180,000 agents worldwide.

He now has his own band and owns two music venues. The guy wanted to be a musician, became a real estate mogul, and found a way to be both.

If you watch his interviews and talks, he looks like Colonel Sanders dressed like Steve Jobs.

The Book: The ONE Thing (2013)

The thesis is aggressively simple: extraordinary results come from narrowing your focus to one thing. Not five priorities. Not three. One.

The book builds on Pareto’s principle (20% of effort produces 80% of results) but takes it further. Keller says keep narrowing. Find the 20% of the 20%. Find the one domino that knocks over everything else. Then give it four hours of your day, every day.

Core Ideas:

• The Focusing Question. “What’s the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” Apply it to your career, health, relationships, finances, everything.

• Multitasking is a lie. You’re not doing two things at once. You’re doing two things poorly in rapid succession. Focus on one thing at a time.

• Not everything matters equally. Most to-do lists are survival lists, not success lists. Find the thing that actually moves the needle and ignore the rest.

• Willpower is finite. It’s not always available on demand. Do your most important work early in the day when willpower is highest. Don’t waste it on decisions that don’t matter.

• “Work is a rubber ball.” It bounces back if you drop it. Family, health, friends, and integrity are glass balls. Drop one and it shatters. So protect those and be ruthless about your work focus.

Comparison

García looks at your life and sees an intersection with four circles. If any circle is empty, you’re out of balance. The goal is harmony. Find where all four overlap and plant yourself there.

Keller looks at your life and sees a to-do list with 47 items on it. He wants to cross out 46. The goal isn’t balance, it’s clarity. Find the one thing that matters most right now, and give it everything. Everything else is a distraction disguised as responsibility.

García would tell that 21-year-old: explore. Travel. Try things. Follow your curiosity across disciplines and cultures. Your ikigai will reveal itself at the intersection of your passions, skills, needs, and income. There’s no rush.

Keller would tell that same kid: stop exploring and start focusing. Ask yourself one question every morning. “What’s the ONE thing I can do today such that everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?” Give it four hours before you check your phone. The people who “explore” for a decade end up 31 with a great Instagram and no direction or momentum.

García would point you to Okinawa, the island with the most centenarians, to see people with purpose, harmony, and balance.

Keller would show you 180,000 agents building real estate empires as examples of intensity and accomplishment.

García would recommend the best sushi and sake in Tokyo.

Keller would take you to Salt Lick BBQ in Austin.

(If you ever need a food recommendation in either Tokyo or Austin, hit me up.)

Their contrast is one of the oldest debates in philosophy. Eastern vs Western, fulfillment vs achievement, harmonic balance vs intense singularity.

Who do you vote for?

My Vote

I enjoy the core ideas of both of these books, and I share García’s affinity for Japan. In fact, to write my own book, I went to Japan specifically for philosophical dust. Staring at Mt. Fuji and walking around Lake Kawaguchi gave me the inspiration to title my book Easy Discipline. I even wrote a chapter based on another Japanese concept, Ichigo Ichie.

That said, I’m putting my foot down and voting against Ikigai. For two reasons:

1. The four circles thing is a personal version of the Hedgehog Concept Jim Collins made famous in Good to Great, which advises companies to find what sits at the intersection of what you’re deeply passionate about, what you can be the best in the world at, and what drives your economic engine. That’s the same as “what you love, what you’re good at, what you can be paid for.” It doesn’t feel very original.

2. If you ask a Japanese person, they know what ikigai is, but they wouldn’t know what the famous Venn diagram is all about. It feels like putting a pie chart on Plato’s Republic, or a 2x2 matrix for Buddha’s teaching. I’m not a fan of McKinseyfying philosophies.

For that reason, I am voting for The ONE Thing.

This is #5 vs #12 seed in the Stronger region of March MINDness, a self-help bracket tournament. If you don’t know these books, I’ll read them for you below.

My son Brian is 13 years old. He’s been training and playing tennis for four years. Here are two things:

1. He hasn’t been good. Just like me at his age, athletic stuff didn’t come naturally. When he first started, his frustration would boil over during matches and he would fight himself more than the opponent. His first coach was hesitant to take him on. For us, seeing him not melt down was a moral victory, because the real ones weren’t coming.

2. He doesn’t want to quit. Most kids who tried something and got beaten over and over would have quit long ago. But for Brian, he says he loves tennis and just keeps going.

For me and Tracy, we have vowed to support him as long as he wants to play tennis. But is it a wise idea? Should we gently encourage him to pivot to something that he can win more? Should the time and money go toward something with higher long-term ROI, like AI training, public speaking, robotics, or even a Roth IRA?

And you? Maybe you have a Brian. Maybe you are a Brian. Should you “follow your passion” or “find your strength”? This battle has been raging in the personal development world for 20 years.

At the center of this debate are two authors: Angela Duckworth and Cal Newport. Let’s hear what they have to say about Brian, and you.

Angela Duckworth

Born 1970 to Chinese immigrants, she looks like my cousin after taking the “limitless pill.” Her father was a chemist at DuPont who told her she was “no genius”, a line that became her career origin story. She went to Harvard, Oxford, Jedi Academy (just kidding), then got a PhD at Penn where she became a professor and won the 2013 MacArthur “Genius Grant.” (I wonder how that conversation with her dad went. But I know (and I am a) Chinese parent. It probably went “Where is Nobel?”)

Before the academic track, she did something unusual, leaving a consulting job at McKinsey to teach math in New York City public schools. That’s where she noticed something: the kids who succeeded weren’t necessarily the smartest. They were the ones who kept going. That observation became her life’s work.

Grit (2016)

Stayed on the NYT bestseller list for 21 weeks. The thesis: talent is overrated. The real predictor of success, across West Point cadets, spelling bee champions, salespeople, teachers in tough schools, is grit, which she defines as passion plus perseverance for long-term goals. Not short-term intensity. Long-term consistency.

Core Ideas:

• Effort counts twice. Her key formula: talent × effort = skill, then skill × effort = achievement. Without effort, talent is just unrealized potential.

• Grit is passion plus perseverance. Not passion as in falling in love with something for a weekend. Passion as in staying committed to the same top-level goal for years and years. Consistency of direction, not intensity of feeling.

• Interest → Practice → Purpose → Hope. That’s the progression. First you discover genuine interest. Then you commit to deliberate practice (targeting weaknesses, not just doing reps). Then you connect your work to a larger purpose beyond yourself. Then hope sustains you through setbacks.

• Grit can be grown. It’s not fixed at birth. Your grit score changes over time. Environment, parenting, coaching, culture, all of it can build or erode grit.

• The hierarchy of goals matters. Gritty people have a clear top-level goal that organizes everything beneath it. They’re flexible on low-level tactics but stubborn on the ultimate direction.

Cal Newport

Newport was the grandson of a Baptist minister and theologian. He was a prodigy of a different kind - signing his first book deal with Random House before he turned 21 while still an undergrad at Dartmouth. He’s now a full professor of computer science at Georgetown.

This is the unusual part: he’s a legit academic computer scientist, but people know him for his influence on productivity and career advice. (David Epstein would be proud of him.) He famously has never had a social media account, which is either the most authentic or most annoying thing about him, depending on who you ask.

He has two great books. The famous one is Deep Work (2016), but I am choosing to highlight So Good They Can’t Ignore You.

So Good They Can’t Ignore You (2012)

“Follow your passion” is bad advice. Preexisting passions are rare, and the people who love their work didn’t find a job that matched a passion. They got really good at something valuable, which then generated passion. Build “career capital” (rare and valuable skills), then cash it in for autonomy and meaning. The title comes from Steve Martin’s advice to aspiring entertainers. Four rules: don’t follow your passion, be so good they can’t ignore you, turn down a promotion, think small and act big.

Core Ideas:

• “Follow your passion” is dangerous. Passion doesn’t lead to great work. Great work leads to passion. Get good first, love comes later.

• Career capital theory. Rare and valuable skills are the currency of a great career. Accumulate them, then trade them for autonomy and meaning.

• Craftsman mindset beats passion mindset. Stop asking “what can the world offer me?” Start asking “what can I offer the world?”

• Control requires capital. Want more freedom? Earn it first. Autonomy without valuable skills to back it up leads to broke.

• Think small, act big. Don’t wait for a grand vision. Build skills, make small bets, and let your mission emerge from mastery, not before it.

Comparison

These two professors would both see Brian and shake their heads, but for the opposite reasons.

Duckworth would say “What a remarkable example of grit! Four years of training, with very little positive reinforcement from results. Yet he keeps going!”

Newport would say “Parents should encourage kids to not chase passion, but talent. If the kid finds something he’d excel at quickly, he can find real passion through victory.”

Duckworth would say “The grit Brian is developing through tennis will spill into other parts of his life. He will be successful at anything he does. Think about how much better of an executive he will be with this tennis grit!”

Newport would say “The kid could be building rare, valuable skills on top of natural talent. Grit would come along for the ride. Think about how great of an executive he can be if he’s practicing public speaking right now!”

If you have to choose one piece of advice for someone like Brian, or your own version of him, which one would you go for? Develop grit or skills? Follow your passion or talent? Tennis or no tennis?

Cast your vote below.

My Vote

So why aren’t we directing Brian to something that’s not tennis? The reason is simple: I read Duckworth’s book. And I want to instill every ounce of grit into Brian’s character through tennis.

And my 13-year-old is inspiring us every day with his own action.

When I contemplate giving up after frustration and failures, I don’t get inspiration from Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, or Rudy Ruettiger. I think about Brian.

When I think about my proudest moment as a dad, it’s not him hoisting trophies. It’s him saying “I want to keep going” after crying over a lost match.

When I see his future, I don’t just see a tennis champion, but a life champion.

Cal Newport might be right about the money ROI. But happiness and moments like this past weekend have the highest life ROI.

This past Saturday, Brian just had his breakout performance, splitting the first two sets with an opponent ranked much higher than him. In the third deciding set, a 10-point tiebreak, he was down 2-8. He didn’t give up and clawed back point after point. He won the set (and the match) 12-10. His coach, and of course us, were blown away.

That hug afterward is not something money can buy. That’s what being a dad is all about.

In my opinion, grit is a talent in itself. And for that, Brian is a child prodigy.

My vote goes to Angela Duckworth and my son Brian.

This is #4 vs #13 seed in the Richer region of March MINDness. If you don’t know these books, I’ll read them for you beloew.

If you’ve played or watched sports, you know the eternal debate: is it the X’s and O’s or the Jimmys and Joes? Great schemes or great players? And does the same question apply to your career: better strategy or more effort? Two of the loudest voices in the get-rich space have completely opposite answers.

Grant Cardone

Grant Cardone lost his father at 10, then his brother a decade later, then lost himself with three drug overdoses between the ages of 16 and 25. By 23, all he had was “drugs, a few bucks, and a dog he could barely take care of.” He got clean, his uncle told him to sell cars, and he thought he’d puke. He did it anyway. Claims he was in the top 1% of car salespeople within two years. That car lot hustle became the foundation of a sales training empire, a real estate portfolio worth over $4 billion, 11 books, 15 million social media followers, and stadium-sized conferences where people pay up to $20,000 a ticket to hear him yell at them.

The 10X Rule:

The 10X Rule is a book that thinks your problem is simple: you’re not doing enough. Whatever goal you have, multiply it by ten. Whatever effort you think that goal requires, multiply that by ten too. Cardone says there are four levels of action: do nothing, retreat, normal action, and massive action, and almost everyone is stuck in the middle two, wondering why life feels like a treadmill. This book has zero interest in strategy, optimization, or working smarter. It wants overwhelming force. Set targets so big they scare you, then drown them in activity until something breaks through.

Core Ideas:

• Success is a duty, not a wish. It’s not something you hope for. It’s something you owe, to yourself, your family, everyone. Treating it as optional is how people stay average.

• The biggest mistake is thinking too small. Most people don’t fail because they aimed high and missed. They fail because they aimed low and hit.

• Massive action is the only level that counts. Normal effort gets normal results. Only 10X effort, the kind that makes people call you crazy, produces anything worth having.

• Never reduce a target. Falling short? Increase activity. The goal is sacred. Your effort is the variable.

• Dominate, don’t compete. Competition means you’re playing someone else’s game at their speed. Domination means flooding your space with so much presence that comparison becomes irrelevant.

Alex Hormozi

Alex Hormozi’s dad fled Iran, built a medical practice, and wanted his son to do the same. Alex did the safe thing: graduating early, getting a consulting job. He hated it so much he thought about dying. So he quit. His family disowned him. He opened a gym at 23 with no money, nearly went bankrupt, and slept on the floor. But he figured out how to fill that gym, then six gyms. Then he started teaching other gym owners how to do it. Sold that company for $46 million at 32. Now he and his wife Leila run Acquisition.com, a portfolio doing over $200 million a year. He gives away virtually everything he knows for free on YouTube as lead generation for his portfolio. He’s a gym bro who quotes Ozymandias.

$100M Offers:

This book is the opposite of the 10X Rule. It says your problem isn’t effort. It’s your offer. You could be the hardest worker in the room and still lose because what you’re selling isn’t compelling. Hormozi lays out a formula he calls the Value Equation (see below). The best companies in the world like Amazon don’t just promise bigger results. They make things faster, easier, and more certain. The book is a system for engineering an offer so good that people feel stupid saying no. Not because you hustled harder, but because you designed better.

• Your offer matters more than your effort. You can 10X your activity and still lose if what you’re selling doesn’t make people’s pupils dilate. The offer is the game.

• The Value Equation. Value = (Dream Outcome × Perceived Likelihood of Achievement) ÷ (Time Delay × Effort & Sacrifice). Increase the top, decrease the bottom. That’s it.

• Amateurs inflate promises. Pros reduce friction. Making bigger claims is easy and lazy, and anyone can do it. The best companies obsess over making things faster, easier, and more certain.

• Find a starving crowd. The right market beats the right message every time. Massive pain, purchasing power, easy to target, and growing. Pick wrong and no offer saves you.

• Price on value, not on cost. If your thing is worth $100,000 to someone, charging $10,000 isn’t expensive. It’s a steal. The goal is to make the gap between price and value so wide that the decision makes itself.

Comparison

On the surface, these are two social-media savvy guys trying to grab your attention. But their philosophical debate is one of the oldest in human history - work harder vs work smarter.

Cardone is all about Jimmys and Joes. He believes that if you think bigger and you will succeed. He’s a modern reincarnation of Napoleon Hill and Norman Vincent Peale.

Hormozi is more X’s and O’s. He thinks the system, or in this case, a formula and an offer, are all that matters. He’s a business version of Moneyball.

Cardone wants you to work harder. He embodies this scene in The Pursuit of Happyness - no hanging up after the phone, no drinking water during the day, and dial from the top.

Hormozi looks at all the hustle and says that’s nonsense. He would show you this scene from The Wolf of Wall Street - it’s about what you say and what you offer, not how many people you talk to.

Cardone wants you to look in the mirror and see the sales version of the Incredible Hulk, with strength and determination to crush the competition.

Hormozi wants you to turn into the entrepreneurial Iron Man, with tools and smarts that make your offer irresistible.

So who draws you in? Your vote!

My Vote

I remember meeting a college student at a Las Vegas music festival. She told me her mom was a lifelong card dealer, so she’d probably do the same - just ride it out. The words “ride it out” haunted me. She didn’t see life as an adventure or an opportunity. Just a process to get through. I wanted to say something useful. But I knew what she didn’t need was some guy at a music festival telling her to optimize her career. She needed someone like Cardone, someone to develop the ambition first.

But for me, ambition was never a problem, systems were. So give me Hormozi any day. In my 20s, I tried so hard to succeed, but felt like a mouse in a maze, just lost and hitting the wall nonstop. It wasn’t until I figured out my own system, one that put me on a path to success - vlogging, speaking, writing, and more importantly, turning pursuit into play, that anything actually worked.

My vote goes to Hormozi.

This is #2 vs #15 seed in the Happier region of March MINDness. If you don’t know these books, you can find their core ideas here.

This is me:

Getting up in the morning, seeing my side of the bed is a total mess. There’s stuff on my nightstand that was last used in the Obama administration, and I don’t remember for what. Walking into my study trying to write, and saw letters piling up from the last six months. Yeah I’ve dealt with the most important ones... kinda, maybe, probably not. Well maybe someday the IRS/DMV/local humane society will arrest me, and I’ll hire a lawyer then. But what does this say about me? Cluttered space is a cluttered mind. It’s time to search Roomba for Brain on Amazon.

Then I’m writing this article. But... “Who is this for? Me, my readers? The universe? What are the metrics of success? Funmaxxing? Going viral? Inviting God to talk to me? What if no one cares? What if everyone cares? I don’t care what anyone else thinks. But if I have to say that to myself, that means I care right?” All these thoughts just constantly bomb my brain like it’s inside an Iranian bunker.

Let’s see what these two bestselling authors of decluttering can help me.

Marie Kondo

A Japanese organizing consultant who turned the act of folding your underwear into a global spiritual movement. She was five years old when she looked at her mother’s house and thought — not clean enough. While other kids played during PE, she ran into the classroom to organize bookshelves. At 15, she was tidying so obsessively she passed out for two hours. When she woke up, she heard a voice telling her to “look at things more closely.”

She spent five years as a Shinto shrine maiden, started a consulting business at 19, and turned her tidying method into a book that sold 14 million copies, a Netflix show streamed in 190 countries, and a two-word phrase, “spark joy” that entered the English language.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Your house is a mess because you’ve been asking the wrong question. Instead of “what should I throw away,” ask “what do I want to keep?” Hold each item. If it sparks joy, it stays. If not, thank it and let it go. It sounds like a book about folding socks. It’s actually a book about deciding who you are now and letting go of who you used to be.

Core Ideas:

Spark joy is the only criterion. Not “is it useful” or “did I pay a lot.” Does holding it make your heart flutter? Your body knows before your brain does. This is Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 at work.

• Category, not location. Don’t clean room by room. Pile ALL your clothes first, then books, then papers, then sentimental items last. Easy decisions first.

• One massive purge. No “a little each day.” Half-measures are why you’ve cleaned your closet twelve times.

• Every item has a home. Clutter isn’t a stuff problem. It’s a homeless stuff problem.

• Thank it before you toss it. Say thank you to objects before throwing them away.

• If you read her book, you’ll be amazed by how matter-of-fact she makes everything sound. No philosophizing, no trying to provide rationale. Just go ahead and throw away.

Brianna Wiest

A Thought Catalog blogger who accidentally wrote the manual of the therapy generation. She had anxiety, OCD, and depression as a teenager, and started writing because she needed to read something that made her feel less broken. One of her articles got shared 8 million times. (Don’t you just hate that?) In 2020 she self-published The Mountain Is You. Nothing happened. Then TikTok found it. One quote went viral, three million copies sold. She has no psychology degree, no therapy license, no clinical anything. Everything she’s ever written is a letter to her younger self. Turns out a lot of people needed that letter too.

The Mountain Is You

You keep getting in your own way and can’t figure out why. You set goals, make plans, then somehow blow them up. Wiest’s argument: that’s not laziness. It’s self-sabotage, and self-sabotage is a misfired protection system. Your brain decided at some point that staying stuck was safer than moving forward. The mountain between you and the life you want isn’t circumstances or bad luck. It’s you. Sounds harsh. It’s actually the most hopeful thing in the book. Because if you’re the problem, you’re also the solution.

• Self-sabotage is self-protection. Your brain learned staying small was safest. It’s still running that program.

• Conflicting needs create the mountain. You want success but subconsciously fear what it costs.

• Uncomfortable doesn’t mean wrong. That’s unfamiliarity, not danger.

• Microshifts over breakthroughs. Tiny conscious choices rebuild your life the same way tiny unconscious ones wrecked it.

Future self as compass. Ask “what would they do right now?” and do that.

Comparison

If both Marie Kondo and Brianna Wiest came to my house, and I asked them how they could help me, they would both say: “Declutter!” and high-five each other. But after that, all hell would break loose. Because they would agree on nothing.

Kondo would say “Your room is a mess and so are you. Dealing with all your letters will give you the best workspace and cleanest mind.”

Wiest would say “Your room isn’t the problem. Your thoughts are. You aren’t dealing with your letters because you think not knowing the content is safer than knowing.”

Kondo would say “Hug your items and see if they spark joy.”

Wiest would say “Examine your thoughts and see if they cause havoc.”

Kondo cleans from the outside in. Wiest cleans from the inside out.

And you?

What’s your situation? Vote here. And tell me who helped you more in the comments. Please vote yourself and don’t let my thoughts impact you.

For me.

One day Tracy read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Two hours later, she put all our old clothes in a bag and donated it to Goodwill. I went into my closet and found my clothes had been cut by two-thirds — the polo from my teenage years, the company shirt my colleagues signed on my last day, the school shirt I wore on our first date, all gone. I let out a scream so loud my sons thought I lost a game of Minecraft. But now, I don’t miss any of those items. In fact, I wish Tracy would read that book every day.

But today, I am decluttering my thoughts the way Wiest is suggesting. So far, I’ve packed up and donated these thoughts to the Goodwill of consciousness:

“What if no one votes.”

“What if my fingers fall off.”

“What if everyone sees through me.”

“What if everyone unsubscribes.”

Instead, I’m picking up:

“Let’s make these authors’ thoughts help me as much as possible.”

“And let them help my readers even more than me.”

“Let’s have the most fun.”

My vote goes to Brianna Wiest for the upset.

It’s probably just because I’m always go for EASY. Cleaning stuff requires labor. Cleansing my thoughts requires the actions below, and an occasional Amber Ale. I go for the easy stuff.

This is #1 vs #16 seed in the Smarter region of March MINDness. For those of you who aren’t familiar with a 64-entry bracket, this is usually the most lopsided match. The #1 seed is supposed to crush #16. In fact, in the NCAA basketball tournament history, a #16 seed has upset a #1 seed only 2 out of 160+ times.

It’s David vs Goliath. Or in this case, it’s literally David (Epstein) vs the Goliath of smart people.

By the way, due to the current news, I need to emphasize here, it’s David Epstein, the author of Range, not Jeffrey. I for one am so glad there isn’t a Jiang file somewhere. Otherwise I might have to put out a disclaimer every time I write something.

Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

He’s the #1 seed and I’m gonna go slow on this one.

A Lithuanian Jew growing up in WWII France, Kahneman was seven when the Nazis took over. One day, he was walking down the street with a Star of David on his sweater, a German SS soldier walked toward him. Kahneman thought he might die right there, but the soldier hugged him and showed him a photo of his own son and gave him money.

It was that moment that made Kahneman realize human beings are way more complicated than he originally thought. He spent the rest of his life pursuing one question as a psychologist staring down the field of economics — are people rational or not when making decisions?

That one question and thousands of studies laid the foundation of Behavioral Economics, and influenced so many popular authors like Richard Thaler (Nudge), Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational), Robert Cialdini (Influence), Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan), The Heath Brothers (Made to Stick), Carol Dweck (Mindset) and Angela Duckworth (Grit), many of whom are in this bracket.

And for the book, it’s funny that it’s the best of 40 years of Kahneman’s research, and it was published AFTER so many of the popular authors listed above who took most of his ideas and wrote their own books already. Yet, Thinking, Fast and Slow still became a mega bestseller. It goes to show, if you’re good enough, no need to be first to market.

Summary:

Your brain has two systems. System 1 is the intuition that runs on fast autopilot. It’s the part that flinches at a loud noise, decides you don’t like someone within three seconds, and picks a fight with your spouse before you even know why you’re mad. System 2 is the slow one — the part you think of as “you,” the rational and logical engine.

Kahneman’s big argument is that the fast brain is actually in charge, and the slow brain is basically like the White House spokesperson or corporate PR whose job is to come up with justifications for decisions that were already made.

Other Core Ideas:

• Loss aversion: Losing $100 feels twice as bad as finding $100 feels good. This is why you’ll stay in a bad job longer than you’ll chase a great one.

• Anchoring: The first number you hear hijacks your brain. This is why whoever throws out a salary number first usually wins the negotiation.

• WYSIATI: Your brain builds the best story from whatever’s in front of it and never asks “what am I missing?” You don’t feel ignorant. You feel confident. That’s the trap.

• Planning fallacy: You estimate based on best case, not base rate. This is why every renovation goes over budget and every author misses their deadline.

• Focusing illusion: Whatever you’re obsessing over right now feels like everything. Get the promotion, move to California, buy the car. Then you get there and you’re the same person with better weather.

– Range

David (again, David) is a science journalist, investigative reporter, and former track athlete.

His career goes like this: NCAA athlete who held the 800-meter record. Arctic ecology researcher. Geology and astronomy in the Sonoran Desert. Worked on a seismic vessel that had been attacked by pirates. Senior writer at Sports Illustrated who helped break A-Rod’s steroid story. Investigative reporter at ProPublica. Podcast host at Slate. Sushi chef who built a restaurant chain. Massage therapist who won the Golden Moan Award.

No I made up the last two. But still, you wouldn’t have noticed. This guy is allergic to settling down and specializing in one field.

And guess what, he wrote a book about that topic. It’s so well written that Daniel Kahneman - the opponent David Epstein is up against in this matchup, reached out for lunch. Now that’s respect.

Summary:

The world keeps telling you to specialize early, pick your lane, and go deep. Epstein’s argument is: not so fast (or so deep). The people who end up the most successful and the most creative are the generalists who sampled widely, took detours, quit things that weren’t working, and connected ideas across fields that don’t normally talk to each other.

Other Core Ideas:

• Kind vs wicked environments — Kind environments like chess and golf have clear rules and defined outcomes, so specializing early works. Almost everything else in real life doesn’t, so specializing late is better.

• Match quality over grit — Quitting isn’t failure, it’s data. Switching paths isn’t lack of grit, it’s finding better fit.

• Analogical thinking — The biggest breakthroughs come from importing solutions across unrelated fields. You can’t connect dots you’ve never visited.

• Desirable difficulty — The training that feels the most frustrating sticks the deepest. If it went down easy, it probably didn’t last.

Comparison

The paths that produced these books are the complete opposite. Thinking, Fast and Slow is the culmination of 40 years of focused research from an academic. Range is the result of a journalist sampling different fields and connecting weird angles.

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a mile deep. Range is a mile wide. In a way, the contrast itself is the thesis of Range.

Kahneman’s framework is a defense system - here’s how your brain tricks you, here’s why you shouldn’t trust your instincts, here’s what to watch for. Epstein’s is an offense system - go try stuff, quit things, import ideas from weird places, stop optimizing and start exploring.

One teaches you to think correctly. The other teaches you to think widely. Kahneman wants you to slow down before you screw up. Epstein wants you to speed up before you miss out.

Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize and set up an entire academic field. David Epstein… didn’t.

You decide.

My Vote

OK, everyone, please, please don’t do what I am about to do, and make your own judgment. Because I am about to let my System 1 take over and commit intellectual heresy.

I’M VOTING FOR DAVID EPSTEIN!

Before I get arrested by the Nobel committee, let me explain.

The idea of Range speaks to me deeply (or I should say widely). I started out my career wanting to be a computer programmer, then went into marketing, then built apps, then made my name in writing, vlogging, and speaking, then went back to building apps, and eventually built systems for undisciplined people like myself. Every piece of my career, failed or successful, contributed to who I am today. This weird self-help tournament is a product of connecting all kinds of hobbies — sports, self-help, hosting competition, writing. I am very much a believer and living example of Range.

Now, I also looooved Behavioral Economics. But I found it has a dark side - it makes me feel smart but hesitant. Ever since I got into this field, I started overanalyzing everything. I focused on optimizing my decisions, calculating my ROIs, and analyzing my fallacies. For a moment, I became a smart but safe guy.

But in the end, my heart wants to be the wild, hungry, and foolish guy. Trying and failing at everything, but then connecting all my failures into something successful and fun. That’s my life.

My vote goes to David Epstein.

But please, don’t vote like me. Or we will all get hit by lightning from smart heaven.

This is the first round of March MINDness, a bracket tournament for self-help authors and books. Happier Region: 8th seed vs 9th seed. If you haven’t read the books, no worries. I’m reading it for you.

As the story goes, Alexander the Great’s empire stretched from Eastern Europe to Northern Africa to India, equivalent to the size of the United States. But when he died, he asked for his hands to dangle outside the coffin during his funeral, showing that even the conqueror of the world left with nothing. He came empty-handed and left empty-handed.

Cool story. And it has major modern implications on how you see your life purpose and relationship with money.

Some would say what a great life! He came to the world and built an amazing empire and left a legacy that lasted over 2,000 years. And others would say I’m not so sure about that. I’d rather travel the world without the bloodshed, enjoy different cuisines, dance during the sunset, and let my Chase Ultimate Rewards points pay for everything.

What is life? To build and conquer, or to savor and remember? Should you make a lot of money or spend all the money? When you see those junk mail advertisement that shows couples in infinity pools over a tropical island, do you think that’s the ultimate form of enrichment or the utmost waste of time?

Well, let’s hear some wisdom from two (very) rich guys.

Peter Thiel – Zero to One

The German-born chess player, Stanford philosophy graduate who later co-founded both PayPal and Palantir and also invested in Facebook. He’s an openly gay Christian conservative libertarian who backed Trump, funded the lawsuit that killed Gawker, and thinks most people are wrong about everything. If you argue against him about money, he’ll show you his $25B net worth.

When you listen to him talk, you don’t know if you should be inspired, confused, or scared. He seems to be always just out of a meeting to either save the world or destroy it.

If Thiel’s existence isn’t weird enough for you, read his book. A Stanford student took his class about startups in 2012 and posted it online and it instantly went viral. Instead of zapping that student with his private Terminator, Thiel wrote this book.

Core Ideas:

• 0 to 1 vs 1 to N. Copying what works is 1 to N. Creating something new is 0 to 1. Only 0 to 1 moves the world forward.

• Competition is for losers. It destroys profits and forces sameness. The goal is monopoly, by being so good no one can substitute you.

• Start small, dominate, then scale. Don’t capture 1% of a huge market. Capture 100% of a tiny one.

• A bad plan beats no plan. Having a concrete vision beats keeping your options open. Options without direction are just drift.

• There are still secrets left. Every great company was built on a truth most people missed or dismissed.

These ideas were pretty revolutionary in 2014, but have become the standard talking language in the Silicon Valley startup world. He wrote this book for a specific person - a Stanford graduate with access to venture capital, or ambitious young person doing whatever it takes to become one. In Thiel’s world, life is all about building, thinking and accomplishing. And when you die, there might be no friends showing up at your funeral, but there will be a billion users visiting your app.

Bill Perkins – Die With Zero

An electrical engineer turned energy trader who made over a billion dollars for his hedge fund, then became a film producer and professional poker player with $5 million in tournament winnings. He’s worth $400 million, which is F U money to you and me but wouldn’t get an invite to Peter Thiel’s AI poodle’s birthday party.

When Perkins was 22 making $18K a year, he proudly told his boss he’d saved $1,000. His boss called him a “f***ing idiot.” The logic? You’re 22 and broke, but you’re on a path to be rich. That $1,000 means everything to you right now and nothing to your future self who’ll be making 20 times more. You’re stealing from the version of you who needs it most and giving it to the version of you who’ll barely notice it.

Core Ideas:

• Your life is the sum of your experiences, not your bank balance. Money is life energy. If you die with money left over, you wasted the hours it took to earn it.

• Memory dividends. A trip with friends at 25 pays dividends for 50 years. The same trip at 65 pays for 15. Experiences compound. Start early.

• Time buckets. Don’t have a bucket list. Have time buckets. Backpack Southeast Asia in your 20s, not your 70s. Your body has an expiration date. Your money doesn’t.

• Give with a warm hand. $50K to your kid at 25 for a house changes their life. The same money inherited at 55 is just a nice bonus. Stop waiting to be generous.

• Your peak net worth should not be the day you die. Most people’s wealth peaks at death. That’s insane. Spend it down. The goal is zero.

By the way, if you have 15 minutes, watch this funny interview between Perkins and two FIRE guys (young aggressive savers who want to retire by 40). Perkins talking about maximizing experiences, while the FIRE bros brag about eating other restaurants’ leftovers to save a penny. You can see Perkins going back and forth from being amused to wanting to strangle them.

The Comparison

Thiel thinks about how to build the next monopoly for AI chip memory, Perkins asks you to build the next best life memory.

Thiel is your ultra-wealthy uncle staring into your eyes and pointing at his own head whispering — everything you need, it’s all in here. Now go conquer the world. Perkins is your college roommate 10 years later telling you duuuuude, stop slaving and start living! Iceland is the minimum. Laucala is the threshold.

But let me be real for a moment, these people are more similar than you think. Namely, they are both rich out of their minds. Thiel is a billionaire (or 25-billionaire), and Perkins is a half-billionaire ($400M). Like any rich people (and you’ll see this throughout the Richer region), they see the world from the view of a made man, not from a starter.

They tell you to dream about becoming a butterfly, without walking through the grind inside the cocoon. They ask you to follow your passion, without teaching you to be barely useful. If all you do is go from zero to one, odds are you are left with zero. If all you care about is dying with zero, you might hit zero long before dying. And if you don’t have health insurance, you might even “die by zero.”

So take their wisdom about the world from the mountaintop, but don’t delete your boring Google Map for your own climb just yet.

Now make your own judgment with the vote.

My Vote

I am voting for the first big upset of the tournament and going with Bill Perkins. For two reasons:

1. There is one thing Perkins wrote that really resonated with me - be generous to your kids when they need it the most. My family helped me with college tuition, so I wasn’t saddled with crippling debt. They could have taught me a lesson to be on my own, but I would not be where I am today.

2. I actually tried a Zero to One strategy for 10 years. The go-big-or-go-home mentality made me think everything I did needed to be world-changing, which eliminated lots of awesome incremental opportunities that could eventually compound into the One. In fact, nowadays I need to actively cleanse my Zero to One thoughts and embrace the everyday improvement.

My life philosophy no longer revolves around the end goal of flipping the world upside down, but the everyday pursuit of enjoyable play, and thus Easy Ambition, the title of this newsletter.

My vote goes to Bill Perkins for the upset.

Hey, maybe my ceiling is only $400M, not $25B. I’ll cry in my room now. Leave me alone.