I like geeking out on random subjects. A couple weeks ago I dedicated almost an entire day to learning about forex trading. I’ll likely never trade, I just wanted to learn more about it.

After that I became slightly obsessed with betting systems that could allegedly beat casino games. I learned a bunch of them, and also learned that they all fail in the long run for the most part. Certain betting strategies work really well in some casino games that players can either break even on or make a small profit if they are good and disciplined (blackjack and video poker, not much else). Read about the Labouchere system, it’s really interesting. Many people claim to beat roulette, the holy grail of games to beat, with the Labouchere strategy, although winning over the long haul in roulette is not possible. Interesting, nonetheless.

Anyway, during my gambling systems geek out sessions, I kept returning to the concept known as gambler’s fallacy.

According to Wikipedia, gambler’s fallacy is, “The belief that if deviations from expected behaviour are observed in repeated independent trials of some random process, future deviations in the opposite direction are then more likely.”

Let’s think of living in mediocrity as playing roulette. As gambling. You’re losing a whole lot, betting on black but hitting on red time and time again. Something good is bound to happen though, right? Putting up with all the losses has to mean a win is coming, right? Wrong.

That’s gambler’s fallacy. It’s the idea that, “If I can only just tough it out, things have to get better. Only so much bad can happen.” This doesn’t work. Luck doesn’t exist. Cause and effect does. The cause at this point is playing a game that cannot be won.

But we keep betting (living in mediocrity), relying on luck and hoping for the best. We stay at the roulette table, maintain a minimum level of comfort and never do anything challenging. We play the game. We win sometimes, but the losses eventually mount up again. That’s how a house edge works. The house always wins in the end.

Think about this: If you’re going to play a game, wouldn’t you rather play one where the odds aren’t against you? Wouldn’t you rather play one that’s difficult and scary at times, but you make your own odds?

The only way to actually beat the house is to leave the casino.

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I don’t think that most work is very difficult. Aside from a lot of manual labor, which can obviously be physically demanding, the type of work that many of us do now is pretty straightforward and quite honestly, easy. The pay scale doesn’t really indicate the difficulty of work in most situations. A lot of really dumb people get paid a lot to do work that almost anyone could do. You know it’s true. I know I’ve seen this a lot.

For the most part, my work consists of writing. That’s it. And it’s not difficult for me. In fact, it’s actually pretty easy. That doesn’t mean I’m great at it, it just happens without a lot of difficulty.

I used to work a data entry job, it was easy.

I’m beginning to think that the hardest part of doing good work is in the doing, not necessarily in the actual work itself.

And by ‘the doing’ I mean that with so many distractions available, it’s getting started and keeping focused that poses the greatest challenge.

For the most part, I’m just speaking about myself here and my day to day struggles with actually getting something done.

What do you think? Do you have more trouble with the actual activity that you are supposed to do or with getting started and staying focused when there are so many other things begging for your attention?

I think most people would answer yes to the second part.

The same concept applies to getting better at something too. Let’s say you want to get better at what you do for work or something entirely new.

For example, someone says, “I’d love to be a better basketball player.” I think the best approach would be to not really focus closely on skills, but to just play a ton of basketball.

Get good at being in the gym every day before you try to get good at a crossover dribble. Everything else follows that.

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Watch the video to learn about a campaign I backed on Kickstarter that I encourage you to get involved with too.

Click here to watch the video if you can’t see it.

Click here to check out Holly’s Kickstarter campaign.

If you do back Holly’s campaign, shoot me an email at natedammemail @ gmail.com or forward me the email you get from Kickstarter after you do. I’ll put you on a list to get a free PDF version of the book I’m working on a week before anyone else, with a couple of extra stories/chapters that were cut out in the final edit.

Get involved if you can! Let’s get this thing funded.

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So you want to learn more about something.

There are a couple ways you can go here.

First, you can jump around from resource to resource, learning the opinions of tons of different people.

This is important and I think it should be done, but only for a very short amount of time. If you keep hopping around from place to place, there’s little time for action.

I’ve learned that there is a lot of value in picking one, maybe two resources on a particular subject that you can trust and sticking with them. Try it out for a while, learn about the experiences other have had with it. Once you’ve done that, you’re done. Stick with it until things either change for the worse there or your needs change.

I’ve found that when you stop searching for the newest, greatest thing, it relieves a lot of pressure. You won’t be spreading your attention too thin over too many places. You trust in your people. You’ve put in the work to make sure they are good, so you’re really trusting in yourself too.

I understand this may be a bit vague, so here are a few examples from me.

For everything relating online business, my guys are Dan and Ian.

For travel stories/information it’s Jodi and Earl.

For fitness related stuff, Steve Kamb.

In those areas I don’t really stray far from those people. I trust them. I trust that if there’s something I should know, or something that will entertain me, I’ll learn about or see it there.

These are just a few random examples. I’ve picked one or two resources in various areas, and focus mainly on them. Occasionally I’ll scan through other websites and blogs, but pretty rarely will I spend more than a minute or so on them.

In the past I have tried to absorb as much information from as many places as possible, and it turned out very badly. I ended up learning a fair amount, but nothing happened. When you spend all your time/energy consuming you have less time/energy to create. It’s as simple as that.

I trust my people.

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If you haven’t heard about all the news regarding the pieces of legislation called SOPA and PIPA, then watch the video below to get a better understanding of them and how dangerous they could be if passed. The video explains the issues better than I can.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

This is serious stuff, and you can help keep the internet as awesome as it is right now, so it can continue to get more awesome in the future.

One little thing you can do is sign this petition on Google’s website. It takes a few seconds. You can also send a message to your representative here.

After that, do whatever you can to spread the word.

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A couple of days ago I went to check how the websites a friend and I have been working on together were ranking. I’m hoping to go into more detail regarding this business venture in the near future.

Anyway, to my dismay, I saw that two of our sites had been hacked with malware, and were redirecting to some sort of sweepstakes website. The Google listings for the sites were showing a warning, which if not fixed quickly could be a huge deal, as we’ve been working to get these sites ranking well for months.

It was hard not to panic, as I didn’t know how to fix the hacks, but I held it together pretty nicely.

I emailed my friend and told him what was up. He said he’d take a look around and try to figure it out. He’s much smarter than me with stuff like this.

After a few emails back and forth and far too much time Google searching for a solution, he took a deep look around and found the infected files, and got rid of them.

A sigh of relief, but, the problem was really only half solved.

How do we make sure that this doesn’t happen again? And if it does, what will we do next time so there are no questions, just quick actions to take and solve it quickly?

I don’t want my business partner to have to go into pages and pages of php and look for hidden snippets of code. Nobody likes to do that. It takes too much time and there are better things to do.

We needed a fix that was more systematic – an “Okay, man, ___ has been hacked. Did this and this, and we’re back and put in a site review request to Google. And here’s something I found that could be good for us to work on today…”

So I did some research about the easiest way to fix the issue (minus all the code digging and searching), talked with my friend and we set up a new system that would make things a breeze. We had neglected to do it before. Bad move. But now it’s fixed, and we learned.

Solving a problem the first time it happens is usually a pretty ugly business. You’ll feel better afterwards, but you really shouldn’t.

You should feel better when systems are put in place to make things go smoother the next time around — so you only have to deal with the pain in the ass once. That is real problem solving, I think. And I need to get better at doing things this way on a consistent basis.

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Last night I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube, then watched Entourage for a couple hours. It’s actually a very regular thing. Not every day, but pretty often.

My main focus right is to build things of value and make the world a better place. I do everything I can each day to get closer to where I want to be so I can have the impact I want to have.

So where is there time for stupid activities like that?

There’s all kinds of it.

If you’re honest with yourself, and not into doing half assed work, then you have time to goof off every day.

It’s simple: Do high level stuff when your mind is able to. I usually do my best work from 12-3 in the afternoon. So that’s when I do my most important stuff, whatever it might be that day.

In the mid-morning I do pretty good work too. So I do my medium level stuff then.

In the evening I’m completely and utterly useless. Creativity disappears, I’m easily distracted. I watch videos, TV shows and sometimes answer short emails that won’t take a lot of mental energy.

So I can either force it, or just let things happen the way they do and still get solid work done. Not really a tough choice.

When/how do you get your best work done?

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“When I was young, people would tell us anything is possible. I don’t really think it was true though back then. But now, for you, it really is. The opportunities you have now are amazing.”

My grandfather said this to me a while back. It was one of those moments where someone says something to you and you know you’ll never forget it.

It really struck me because he was right.

Back when my grandfather was my age, he had to work hard. Really hard. I’m not sure if we work less hard today (most older folks would probably say we do), but we certainly work differently. If you don’t want to spend your day doing manual labor, you simply don’t have to. You have choices, and lots of them.

Right now one of my good friends is sitting in Bali working on her laptop, doing work that she could do anytime from any place on the globe. She can do that. Do you know how amazing that is?

The world was smaller then. Written correspondence with someone, for the most part, took days or even weeks, now it takes mere seconds. To tell someone where you were you had to tell them directly. Our location can now be shared without us doing anything if we choose.

Social networks were drastically smaller. Today I could video chat with a friend in Asia while checking Twitter to see the photo of the view my friend in Ireland just posted from their morning run. This all happens as fast as you want it to. Nothing or nobody controls the speed and frequency of our interactions besides us.

Every time I hit publish on a blog post here, anyone can read it instantly. Anyone can share their thoughts today, on anything. There are no gatekeepers. You choose if you want to be heard.

And that’s what it’s really all about. Choices. When my grandfather said that to me he meant that the abundance of choices we have today is enough to make virtually nothing impossible.

These are exciting times, people. The opportunities out there for all of us are incredible. It’s important to not forget that (and act on it too).

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So that thing that you’re doing and enjoying right now, just do it. Even though you realize that someday you may not enjoy it. Stop being dumb.

I’m talking to myself here.

I have this weird anxiety about things like this. It’s ridiculous.

I like writing for this site and working on the book I’m writing. It’s fun.

But what will I do if I don’t like doing these things someday? Oh no!

So basically I’m letting this little voice (not a real voice, I’m crazy but not that crazy) in the back of my head make me concerned about what I’m doing now, even though I love it, because I know someday I might not. Like I should be using the energy I have right now to be finding THAT thing that will make me happy forever, instead of just enjoying my happiness right now.

The little voice, I think, is a reflex toward comfort. If I could only know what I’ll be getting up and doing every day for the rest of my life, and enjoying it each moment, then I’ll be happy. Right?

It’s this little voice and reflex that makes all this “find your passion” stuff sell so well. Like if you find your passion you’ll be happy forever. But passion is a moment to moment thing, not static like a lot of folks want to make you think. True story.

I struggle sometimes to remember that I like doing this now so I should just do it, well, now. This is super low level stuff. It’s embarrassing to me.

I really posted this so I can come back and read it from time to time.

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Warning: I’m not sure how much sense this makes due to my poor ability to articulate my thoughts, but bear with me.

A lot of people, many of them being extremely smart, like to act like they live by the idea of “no regrets,” like they do not regret anything they’ve done in life. I’ve heard a lot of really dumb people say this too, and it’s clearly just a way to try and make themselves feel better and appear (to themself or others) that they don’t care, when they actually do.

In theory the idea of no regrets is great. But I don’t think it can be true.

I have to be real – I regret all kinds of stuff. A friend recently asked me if I had any regrets, and I said that I had one. It was a major thing that came into my mind first. I’ve been thinking about this for about a week, and a lot of other things have come up.

Sure, I’m fine with how things have turned out. I’m very happy right now. It’s not like these regrets are paralyzing me. But damn, a few different choices here and there would have made things much easier along the way. I absolutely have regret regarding these things.

I guess I shouldn’t say that nobody lives without real regret. Maybe a small handful of people on the planet can. Only a very very very high level monk or philosopher would be capable of that. Maybe. I’m not there and you probably aren’t either.

There is a difference I see between these two things:

1) Learning from mistakes and being ok with them, but acknowledging (today) that if given a chance to go back in time, that present you would watch and quietly hope for a different decision from clueless back-in-the-past you who doesn’t know how things turn out. You have to be able to get really honest without yourself here.

I know that if I could watch past me reacting at the crossroads of certain decisions, I’d be cheering for a certain outcome that I know doesn’t lead me to crash and burn (aka the one I DIDN’T make before), regardless of how great things turn out in the end. That’s just me being real. Maybe I’m just curious about the path not taken, who knows?

There has got to be an event, or several of them, in your life that would fit here. If not, then you are really amazing and send me an email saying I’m wrong. But then I probably wouldn’t believe you. And we’d be right back here again.

And… 2) Not having regret at all (which pretty much nobody is capable of).

These are my thoughts today on this. Like anything, they could and probably will change. Maybe dramatically. This goes against about a million things I’ve read on this subject, but shit, I just don’t agree with all that right now. Saying, “I have no regrets” and actually meaning it waaaaaay deep down when you get brutally honest with yourself are very different things.

Maybe I’ll even regret writing this someday

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