13 Things I Got Wrong in My First Year of Writing

Problem: You can’t get everything right all of the time. Your beliefs and ideas will change over time as you become more informed.

Solution: Don’t hold onto outdated ideas just to maintain consistency. Admit your mistakes, fix them, and move on.

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Yesterday, Riskology.co turned one year old. On one hand, it’s hard for me to believe that a year’s gone by already. On the other, one year is still very much an infancy—we have so much further to go.

All the same, I’m amazed every day by the community that’s grown here and what we’ve accomplished together in just 365 days. Thank you for being a part of this!

Personally, I’ve made some tremendous progress, crossing a few big things off the list for the 1% Club, climbing four mountains, and making a number of lifestyle changes that have left me happier and better prepared to live the sometimes frightening and uncertain life I really want to.

Riskology.co, though, is also a constant work in progress. It’s a living document that records my ideas as they germinate. I’m just one person trying to make sense of the things I learn and put them in a format that’s useful for others.

Here’s a shocking revelation for you: Not every idea I have turns out to be a good one, and sometimes what I believe can change as I’m exposed to new information that challenges it.

It’s a foolish man who maintains his consistency only to save face. To hold an idea as sacred only because it entered your mind first is a dangerous and unchallenging way to live.

13 Things I Got Wrong in My First Year as a Writer

Today, I want to highlight a number of beliefs I’ve held over the last year that turned out to be flawed, misguided, or just flat out wrong.

I’m no longer scared to admit when I make a misstep. It took a long time to reach that point, but I’m glad it’s here now. Rather than hide from my mistakes, I prefer to fix them and move on. Don’t think of this as an opportunity to point fingers, laugh, or criticize. Instead, think of it as an opportunity to grow together and turn the page to the next chapter of our community here.

1. Everyone comes to a breaking point in life.

I used to think that every person who’s unhappy with their life, at some point in time, must come to a breaking point where they make the decision to either continue as normal and remain unhappy or change something to make it better.

This is too simplistic. The truth, I now believe, is that many people make it all the way through life without ever being confronted by a situation dire enough to challenge their way of living. If your tolerance for discomfort is high, whether by nature or conditioning, then you may never face a situation uncomfortable enough to force you to change.

What I still believe, though, is that the longer you remain in one state, the less likely you are to ever change, and if you feel generally unhappy about your life, the best solution is to manufacture your own “defining moment.”

Further reading: Take This Job & Shove It

2. My greatest successes are usually failures.

For a long time, I employed a goal setting system that went something like this: set a goal far higher than I believe I’m actually capable of and then work as hard as I can to achieve it. When I miss the target, I end up higher than if I’d set a “reasonable” goal.

In reality, I’ve started to see this system doesn’t work any better than other methods because my subconscious pre-determines what I’m able to achieve. To really perform better, I need to work harder at re-programming my subconscious—a much more difficult task.

Even more, setting a goal in this way can be so scary that it becomes impossible to convince myself to even start.

A better system, then, is to work on improving your inner critic by setting goals that are uncomfortable, but are actually believable. When you meet them, you naturally become more confident about the next one. So, my greatest successes are not actually failures at all. They’re successes.

Further reading: My Greatest Successes Are Usually Failures

3. You need a mentor.

Having someone who’s been there and done that to show you the ropes is nice. It’s helpful. It can accelerate your learning. But you don’t need one, and sometimes they can even be detrimental.

If you want, or for some reason need to go it alone, you’re going to be okay. You might even be better off because rather than learning how to do it someone else’s way, you’ll create your own.

Rather than find one personal mentor, study a lot of them and take what works from each.

Further reading: Recruiting Your Perfect Mentor

4. Balance is unnecessary.

This is more a matter of semantics, but I’ve been saying for awhile that balance in your life can actually cripple your ability to do your best work, and that you need to focus your attention at all costs on your most important tasks.

I still think this is true—if you let unimportant things take over your time and force the important things out, you’re screwed. But, there are a few areas of life that, when left neglected can also cripple your ability to do your important work, and they’re different for everyone.

More and more I’m beginning to realize that my productivity is more like a machine than any single part. There are a few vital pieces that I need to maintain in order to keep it running. If one of them breaks down, it makes it very difficult to focus on the rest.

Further reading: Balance is for the Uncoordinated

5. Throwing away your TV will automatically make your life better.

After I turned 18, I stopped watching TV. I went out and did things and my life got infinitely better. Then I started watching again when I got a job because it’s all I had the energy to do at the end of the day (that is, of course, a lie, but it’s what I told myself to justify it).

Then I stopped again. Then I started watching online. Throughout all these times, I’ve both watched TV and shunned it. and I’ve been happy and I’ve been frustrated. The glowing box, itself, has no correlation to how good my life is.

What’s really made a difference is the commitments I’ve made with the bulk of my time regardless of what else I do. When I actually get up and do things that are important to me, I enjoy life and, as a result, I don’t watch any TV. When I don’t, I hang out on the couch.

Getting rid of the TV can help, but what’s far more important is having something  to do that you actually care about once it’s gone.

Further reading: How to Instantly Add 8.2 Years and $133,369 to Your Life

6. There’s no such thing as luck.

This one is really simple: There definitely is such a thing as luck and it’s called The Lottery of Birth.

I can make the point all day long that those with good luck come upon it by working harder than everyone else and saying yes to new opportunities, but this all has to come with the understanding that it applies to a subset of the world where opportunities can be grasped by the less fortunate and there’s a safety net for those that don’t make it.

That subset is small, and there really are places where people, through no fault of their own, have to spend all of their energy looking for enough food and clean water just to stay alive long enough to do it again the next day.

For them, luck is absolutely real. And for us—the ones that won the lottery of birth—our responsibility is to work to make the drawing more fair.

Further reading: What Luck!

7. You can build a massive following in 15 minutes a day.

Yes, you can do it, but it’s not very likely. For most, it takes a lot more time and a hell of a lot of work. I certainly didn’t do it in 15 minutes a day. In fact, I probably work closer to 10 or 12 hours a day to make the progress I do, and fifteen minutes is what I spend on one tactic that wouldn’t work if all the other hours of work weren’t already in place.

The important message here is that yes, you can leverage your time to be more productive, but probably not until you’ve laid a solid foundation. If you want to build a following for your important cause, it’s probably going to take a lot of hard work.

Further reading: 1,000 Followers for Your Cause in 15 Minutes a Day & Guerrilla Influence Formula

8. Fear is always worse than reality.

Most of us don’t gpursue our big dreams because we overestimate how hard they’ll be to achieve. Some of us, though, take some really stupid risks because we comically underestimate them.

Neglecting your dreams because you’re afraid of how they might pan out is dangerous, but so is blindly charging off into a potentially dangerous situation without deliberately considering it.

Knowing how to feel afraid and do it anyway is admirable. Fearlessness, perhaps, is not.

Further reading: Fear is Always Worse Than Reality

9. Doing what you love is like a lifelong vacation.

More than a few times I’ve alluded to the idea that, when you love the work that you do, every day can feel like a vacation. I have to apologize for that reference because it simply isn’t true.

Nurturing a career doing work that you love is actually a lot like building a relationship—hard work. Most of the time, it’s great and the work always pays off, but there are certainly times when it feels like an immense burden, you don’t know if it’s working, and you have to fight to stay focused on what’s important.

In fact, it can be a real son of a bitch.

In the end, the good outweighs the bad and I don’t know anyone who regrets working hard to do what’s important to them, but to allude to the idea that every day is like sitting at the beach just isn’t accurate.

Further reading: The Lifelong Vacation

10. The best drug in the world is a smile.

This one is simple. I said it’s a smile. Obviously it’s LSD.

Further reading: The Best Drug in the World

11. Small steps are the only way to make progress.

I still think that taking small, simple steps is the best way to start when you’re trying to teach yourself something new, but I don’t necessarily think it’s the best way to finish anymore.

Lately, I’ve found myself taking bigger and bigger steps towards my goals. This is a result of the momentum I’ve built by starting small. Over time, I’ve gotten more comfortable with the idea of going bigger and bigger.

Small steps are great in the beginning, but if they work, don’t waste the momentum. Ramp things up and start going bigger. You should always be pushing yourself a little further than is comfortable. As you gain experience, that line will move further away. Don’t be afraid to move with it.

Further reading: A Little Guide to Making Better Guesses

12. You need to quit your job to be happy.

When I got fired and decided to become self employed, I was ecstatic about it. In fact, I still am. I’ve never been happier about the work I do. I also still believe that most people, given the opportunity, would find they feel the same way.

However, for me to say that entrepreneurship is the only path to happiness is just a bit lazy because it ignores the fact that happiness is a decision that anyone can make and employment status doesn’t have to play any role in it.

I’ve met some pretty amazing people doing work that brings them to life even though they get a paycheck from their boss. I’ve also met a few miserable self-proprietors who lament the world.

Further reading: 4 Simple Steps to the Best Job in the World

13. Your best work should be free.

Honestly, I’m still a bit torn on this one. I recently came right out and said that your best work that can help the most people should be free because that’s how you build a legacy.

I still believe it, but the truth is that many of the world’s greatest names didn’t work for free and giving your work away is only one of a number of strategies. In fact, given that logic, you could even argue that what you do isn’t very important if you have to give it away to get people to pay attention.

Suffice it to say that I still think it’s the right thing to do if you’re compelled to, but it’s not the only way.

Further reading: A Counter Intuitive Guide to Pricing Your Best Work

…And 19 Things I Got Right

Of course, there are a few things I think I got right in the last year, too. These are the ideas and philosophies that have shaped who I am over the last 12 months (or many more) and will continue to do so.

1. Fitting in is missing out.

“The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.” – Rita Mae Brown

Further reading: Fitting In is Missing Out

2. Strangers are the most important people you’ll ever talk to.

Everyone you’ve ever met was a stranger… until they weren’t. Never stop meeting new people or else risk stagnating.

Further reading: The Importance of Talking to Strangers

3. Value is measured in output, not input.

Nobody cares how much work you put into it, only how much value they’ll get out of it. You can spend your life building something worthless, or you can create something world changing in a few minutes.

Further reading: One Rule to Know Before Breaking All the Rules

4. Life is better with a secret mission.

The world is more exciting when you’ve got a trick up your sleeve. What are you secretly doing to make life better?

Further reading: What’s Your Secret Mission?

5. The odds are always against you.

If you want to do something even remotely interesting, you’re going to have to get used to the fact that most people think you’ll fail. Your only job is to do it anyway and prove them wrong.

Further Reading: Cultivating Ignorance: Save the World One Misconception at a Time

6. Compromise is a pre-requisite for a remarkable life.

Yes, you can have everything in life that you want, but as my friend Chris says, probably not all at once. At every moment, you must decide what is truly the most important thing to you and prioritize it over everything else.

Further reading: Warning: Your Perfect Life Requires Compromise

7. You don’t need to be an early riser to get things done.

Forget everything you’ve ever heard about having to be an early riser in order to accomplish anything important. The time that you wake up at has no bearing on your productivity.

Further reading: One Productivity Myth You Can Ignore

8. Quitting is essential for success.

No matter how hard I try to keep things simple, eventually, my life eventually gets filled with bad commitments again. Once I learned how to quit doing the things that don’t matter and don’t work, I got a lot better at getting done what I actually cared about.

Further reading: Quitting: An Essential Ingredient for Your Success

9. You can turn a terrible idea into a great one.

The difference between a good idea and a terrible one really isn’t very far apart. A few tweaks applied to the right places can turn pretty much any idea destined for failure into a viable solution.

Further reading: 5 Ways to Turn a Terrible Idea into a Great One

10. You can get a year of experience in much less than a year.

Most people are happy to put in as much work as they think is expected of them. If you want to excel at something faster than others, you need to work smarter, but you also need to work a lot harder. Twice as hard, actually.

Further reading: How to Get a Year of Experience in 6 Months

11. Investing in yourself pays the biggest dividends.

So long as you actually use the knowledge, an investment in your own self-development is guaranteed to pay the biggest dividends over time, and you’re the only one that determines how much. No Wall Street crook can steal it from you.

Further reading: An Investment You Can Never Lose

12. Every decision is life or death.

There are two truths about life: 1) We are all living, and 2) we are all dying. Every decision that you make every day, no matter how insignificant, contributes to which paradigm you’ll embrace. Choose carefully.

Further reading: Every Decision is Life or Death

13. Lasting influence can’t be purchased.

You can buy attention, but you can’t buy influence. If you want to change the hearts and minds of people, you have to actually give them something to believe in.

Further Reading: The Guerrilla Influence Formula

14. The real you is more compelling than who you think others want you to be.

Last year I tried a little experiment and gave people a list of truths about myself that might make them want to unsubscribe from AR. As the most commented on article so far on the site, I think it’s fair to say it backfired.

Just be you.

Further Reading: What Happens When you Reveal the Real You?

15. Nice guys finish first.

I don’t know about you, but I only make long-term friends and do business with people I like. Once in awhile I’ll be fooled by someone, but that only happens once. The longer you play the game, the more likely it is that the nice guy wins.

Further reading: How Nice Guys Finish First

16. A business can be launched risk free.

I used to think everything was a risk. Maybe it is to some extent, but the idea that you have to take a huge one that might ruin you to have any chance at succeeding in business is a long-held myth. There are lots of ways to get started and even thrive without having to bet the farm.

Further Reading: Risk Free Business

17. Minimalism is not the end all, be all.

I own very few things, but I’m not a minimalist. In fact, I think of myself more of a maximalist. Either way, both terms are just words—vehicles—to describe a way to get what you really want out of life. I choose more.

Further reading: Welcoming the Maximalist Movement

18. Charity is not just for the rich.

In my opinion, the idea that generosity ought to be reserved for the well-to-do is one of the biggest roadblocks to building a better world. That job rests on all of our shoulders and cultivating generosity does just as much good for you as it does for those it’s directed at.

Further reading: You’ve Won the Lottery. Didn’t You Get the Memo?

19. Success comes from making a lot of guesses.

As you can plainly see from this article, I get a lot of things wrong. In fact, I get more things wrong every day than I get right. But, I always make sure that the guesses I take and get wrong are small ones. I test my ideas with pennies. Then I build on them with dollars.

Further reading: A Little Guide to Making Better Guesses

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Now here’s a question for you: What’s something you’ve gotten wrong that changed how you see the world?

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Image by: williamhartz