17 Questions That Changed My Life
17 Questions That Changed My Life
17
17 QUESTIONS
THAT CHANGED MY LIFE
TIM FER R I S S
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
— Mark Twain
If you stress-test the boundaries and experiment with the “impossibles,” you’ll quickly discover
that most limitations are a fragile collection of socially reinforced rules you can choose to break
at any time.
What follows are 17 questions that have dramatically changed my life. Each one is time stamped,
as they entered the picture at precise moments.
#1
60
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#3
I heard one word repeatedly: blogs. They were apparently both very powerful and
under-appreciated. My first question was “What the hell is a blog?” My next questions were
“How are people currently trying to reach bloggers?” and “What’s the least crowded channel?”
The people pitching bloggers were generally using email first and phone second. Even though
those were my strengths, I decided to experiment with in-person meetings at conferences.
Why? Because I felt my odds would be better as one out of five people in a lounge than one
email out of 500 emails in an overflowing inbox. I packed my bags and headed to Las Vegas for
the Consumer Electronics Show in January, which had more than 150,000 attendees in 2005. It’s
like the Super Bowl of technology releases, where all the geeks get to play with new toys. I never
even walked in the front door. I parked myself at the offsite Seagate-sponsored BlogHaus lounge,
where bloggers were invited to relax, recharge their laptops, and drink free booze. I sipped
alcohol, asked a lot of dumb questions, and never overtly pitched. I only mentioned the book if
someone asked me why I was there (answer: “I just finished my first book, and I’m really nervous
about the launch. I’m here to learn more about blogs and technology.”). Famous tech blogger
Robert Scoble later described my intricate marketing plan as “get drunk with bloggers.” It
worked surprisingly well.
#8
For months, friends pressured me to rent it, emphasizing how I was flushing money down the
toilet otherwise. I eventually buckled and followed their advice. Even with a property
management company, regular headaches and paperwork ensued. Regret followed. One
introspective night, I had some wine and asked myself: “Do I really need to make money back
the same way I’m losing it?” If you lose $1,000 at the blackjack table, should you try to recoup it
there? Probably not. If I’m “losing” money via the mortgage payments on an empty house, do I
really need to cover it by renting the house itself? No, I decided. I could much more easily create
income elsewhere (e.g., speaking gigs, consulting, etc.) to put me in the black. Humans are very
vulnerable to a cognitive bias called “anchoring,” whether in real estate, stocks, or otherwise. I am
no exception. I made a study of this (a lot of good investors recommend Think Twice by Michael
Mauboussin) and shortly thereafter sold my San Jose house at a large loss. Once my attention
and mind-space were freed up, I quickly made my money back elsewhere.
#11
A B
#12
For the last five years, I’ve asked myself, in effect, “What can I put in place so that I can go
completely off the grid for 4 to 8 weeks?” To entrepreneurs who are feeling burned out, this is
also the question I pose most often. Two weeks isn’t enough, as you can let fires erupt and then
attempt to repair things when you return. Four to eight weeks (or more) doesn’t allow you to be
a firefighter. It forces you to put systems and policies in place, ditch ad-hoc email-based triage,
empower other people with rules and tools, separate the critical few from the trivial many, and
otherwise create a machine that doesn’t require you to be behind the driver’s wheel 24/7.
Here’s the most important point: The systems far outlive the vacation, and when you come
home, you’ll realize that you’ve taken your business (and life) to the next level. This is only possible
if you work on your business instead of in your business, as Michael Gerber might say.
#13
Newt Gingrich is one of the most successful political leaders of our time. Yes, we disagreed
with virtually everything he did, but this is a book about strategy, not ideology. And we’ve got
to give Newt his due. His strategic ability—his relentless focus on capturing the House of
Representatives for the Republicans—led to one of the biggest political landslides in
American history.
Now that he’s in the private sector, Newt uses a brilliant illustration to explain the need to
focus on the big things and let the little stuff slide: the analogy of the field mice and the
antelope. A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out
that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion
that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death. A lion can’t live
on field mice. A lion needs antelope. Antelope are big animals. They take more speed and
strength to capture and kill, and once killed, they provide a feast for the lion and her pride. A
lion can live a long and happy life on a diet of antelope. The distinction is important. Are you
spending all your time and exhausting all your energy catching field mice? In the short term
it might give you a nice, rewarding feeling. But in the long run you’re going to die. So ask
yourself at the end of the day, “Did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?”
Another way I often approach this is to look at my to-do list and ask: “Which one of these, if done,
would render all the rest either easier or completely irrelevant?”
#14
N o h u r ry, n o p ause .
This isn’t a question—it’s a fundamental reset. “No hurry, no pause” was introduced to me by
Jenny Sauer-Klein (jennysauerklein.com), who, along with Jason Nemer (page 46 of Tools of
Titans), co-created AcroYoga. The expression is one of the “9 Principles of Harmony” from
Breema, a form of bodywork she studied for many years. I routinely write “No hurry, no pause”
at the top of my notebooks as a daily reminder. In effect, it’s shorthand for Derek Sivers’s story
of the 45-minute versus 43-minute bike ride (page 190 in Tools of Titans)—you don’t need to go
through life huffing and puffing, straining and red-faced; you can get 95% of the results you
want by calmly putting one foot in front of the other. One former Navy SEAL friend recently
texted me a principle used in their training: “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.”
Perhaps I’m just getting old, but my definition of luxury has changed over time. Now, it’s not
about owning a lot of stuff. Luxury, to me, is feeling unrushed. No hurry, no pause.
So, kids, those are my questions. May you find and create many of your own.
If the answer isn’t simple, it’s probably not the right answer.