Are you Arkansas or Alabama? (On Beating Resistance)

Confession time.

I like following losers on Twitter.

Specifically, the Arkansas football team. Each year the Arkansas Razorbacks are college football cellar dwellers. I find joy watching their official Twitter page spin lukewarm positives from abysmal losing seasons.​

Each offseason, Arkansas Twitter buzzes with hope. Recruits are welcomed with splashy graphics. Slick videos show grueling spring workouts and rowdy pep talks on the warrior’s mindset. Coaches give rousing speeches paired with dramatic music that peaks at just the right moment. Inspirational stuff. By August I’m convinced it's Arkansas’s year. Here’s their past three seasons:​

Not very good!

Alabama is the opposite of Arkansas. The University of Alabama is the powerhouse of the past decade. Their coach, Nicholas Saban, coaches football how Magnus Carlsen plays chess or Meryl Streep conquers a new role. He’s simply the best. They've won five national championships since 2009 (meaning they finished #1 out of 130 teams). Check out Alabama’s past three seasons:​

The funny thing is, the states of Alabama and Arkansas are in the same part of the country. They have access to the same potential recruits. Both schools have fancy facilities and wealthy donors. So, what gives? Why is Arkansas impressively bad, while Alabama carves their place in history?​

It comes down to choices. And hands.​

Look at your hands, right now. Saban’s orders. On your left hand is something you really want to do, but you know you shouldn’t. Can you keep yourself from doing it? On your right hand is something you really don’t want to do, but you know you need to. Can you make yourself do it?​

That’s it. Five titles. 157 wins. Hundreds of games, thousands of practices. All simplified down to Saban’s rule: remember the two hands, and choose your right hand every time. Even when it’s inconvenient. Even when you don’t want to. Hour after day after week after year. Alabama players don’t dream of winning titles. Instead, they aim to win each drill, lift, and play. Win enough little moments and find yourself with a trophy.

Slacking through practice or skipping leg day makes you Arkansas. Thousands of painful, correct choices make you a champion.
​

Beating Resistance

We can apply the hands test widely: exercising when you feel tired, turning off Netflix when it’s getting late, reading a book while your phone begs for swipes. But one area proves most difficult for me: overcoming Resistance and producing creative output.​

What’s this Resistance, with a capital R? It’s an idea from Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art. Pressfield uses Resistance to label that internal force that discourages creative output:

“It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”

Every time I start to write, every time I’m about to press send, Resistance arrives. Doubt. Insecurity. Procrastination. “This isn’t good enough, Will. It’s not ready. Just a few more edits”. “Nobody’s going to read this. It’s lame. What if no one likes your Tweet? What if people unsubscribe?”​

These worries always appear. Sometimes I win, sometimes Resistance wins. It’s a constant struggle. It’s so much easier not to publish. Just concede to Resistance and stay as you were.

I’ve wanted to create for years. I’ve had ideas for blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels. I would dream about my coming achievements and share grand plans with friends and family. When it came time to produce, I looked at my hands. On the right hand, hard work. On the left hand, comfortable delay. Each time I failed the Saban test and chose to postpone. For years I created nothing.

As I planned my year this past January, I declared my intention for 2020: “Dismantle my ego through action.” I launched Future Glance shortly after. With each new issue I punch Resistance square in the jaw. Each tweet, blog post, and newsletter steps me away from Arkansas, toward Alabama.​

Creating something in spite of Resistance is a radical act of self-worth. It’s believing you have something to say, and keeping that belief as your ego hurls excuses and fears. It’s trusting you have a unique flavor others should hear. It’s putting words on the damn page as visions of ridicule boogie through your skull.

I’m not walking this path only for myself. I hope to encourage others to smash their ego and produce creative work. We consume content voraciously, but those who create remain a relative few. Bright minds brim with unshared brilliance. Whether consciously or not, Resistance keeps them quiet.​

Our digital world provides endless opportunity to publish. Past bottlenecks of distribution and audience growth melted with Wifi and 4G. Broadcast has been democratized. Hitting send flings your ideas around the planet, 186,000 miles per second. If it’s good, people will find it and read it.

The last bottleneck lies between your ears. In the age of abundance, your ego is your only barrier. Resistance is your final hurdle. I will continue to chronicle my weekly bouts with Resistance. If you feel called to make something, I encourage you to join the fight. Overcoming mental obstacles is simple, but not easy. Look at your hands. You know what to do.

This article is adapted from my weekly newsletter, Future Glance, where I share writing and ideas about how technology is transforming media, education, and governance. Plus, cool stuff I find on Twitter. Click here to subscribe.

1990 vs. 2020

Imagine it’s 1990.

You’re driving to work in your Acura Legend when suddenly a brilliant idea pops into your head. You just can’t shake it. You want to share your blistering insight with as many people as possible. What are your options? You can: ​

• Tell your friends and family

• Speak at an event

• Call a reporter or news station

• Write a letter to the editor

• Submit an article to a local or national publication

• Use connections to earn a TV or radio appearance

If you’re really committed, you can take it a step further. No one wants to publish your article? You can pool resources and start your own magazine. You can make a VHS tape of yourself speaking and mail it to people. You can burn a CD of yourself talking and pass it out on the street. You can rent a billboard.

The point is, your options were limited.

Fast-forward 30 years, to 2020. You’re driving to work, and BAM! A brilliant insight hits you. An absolute must-share. What are your options? You can:​

• Fire off a Tweet

• Make a YouTube video

• Share a Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn post

• Comment on Reddit

• Publish a blog article​

With even a modest following you’ll soon make a few hundred impressions. If your idea has legs that number quickly jumps to the thousands. And while uncommon, your truly brilliant thought could potentially reach a million of people by the time you’re home for dinner. ​

The world we live in today is fundamentally different from the world of 1990. Software and the Internet carried us from a world of information scarcity to one of information abundance.

As a result, the bottleneck has moved. The old constraints were reach and distribution. Look at those 1990 examples again. Back then you had two forces working against you: most actions carried a marginal cost, and each method of sharing had a gatekeeper. Spreading information was expensive and required permission.

Now look at the 2020 examples. You get to share your idea instantly. Each additional click on YouTube or Twitter costs you nothing. There’s no marginal cost per additional view. And you control the terms of what you share, when. ​

Software and the Internet have democratized the ability to broadcast.

What does that mean for writing online? In 1990, when spreading ideas was costly, messages had to be thoroughly planned before they were shared. Newspaper and magazine editors made sure only the sharpest product was shipped. Space was limited, and every page counted.

Today, you can publish as much as you want on the Internet, for free. This flips how you should approach the creative process. Instead of perfecting your message, you should publish your writing early and often. Use the collective feedback of the Internet to refine your views. Continue to develop your thinking through consistent publishing. As David Perell puts it in the Write of Passage podcast:

“When the cost of failure is high, you plan first and act second. But when the cost of failure is low, it’s better to act first and plan second.”​

Sharing your ideas online has almost no downside and potentially limitless upside. Ship early and often, and tap into the global idea marketplace.

This article is adapted from my weekly newsletter, Future Glance, where I share writing and ideas about how technology is transforming media, education, and governance. Plus, cool stuff I find on Twitter. Click here to subscribe.

Life in the Time of Corona

Someday, they'll wonder​.

They’ll read about the history: the choices we made; the hardship we faced; the strength we showed as good people suffered. They’ll learn the numbers. They’ll watch the news clips. They’ll recognize timeless pictures yet to be taken — our Dust Bowl mother, our troops at Iowa Jima.

Graphs will show them the staggering economic decline and gradual rebuild. They’ll learn how politics changed, how culture refocused, how stores closed and daily life went digital. But still, our future grandkids will wonder: What was it like living in the time of corona?

Someday we’ll answer them. But what will we say?​

A few weeks ago the world was normal. A world of likes and clicks and TikTok views, a world focused on Biden and the Bachelor. We heard rumblings of an outbreak in China, but didn’t even stop to read the link. There were the early signs — an occasional mask, a news report, a handful of cases in the US. We felt the slow crescendo of rising concern: cancellations, conversations, speculation. Disagreements with friends about how bad things actually were. A feeling of surprise as the first few businesses shut down. Then came the week the world changed.

Sports canceled. Schools closed. Economy in free fall. The sudden, alarming realization that this is a Big Deal.​

Difficult times lie ahead. We can already feel it — concern for family members, disbelief at it the newest headline, our oddly deliberate breathing while falling asleep.

Someday we’ll share this with our children’s children. We’ll explain how life changed. How virtual socializing felt awkward and experimental at first, but soon became normal, even fun. We’ll explain how we missed our friends but grew closer to our families. We’ll explain how we passed the time. We’ll say we faced each day with courage. We’ll talk about feeling bored. But no matter what we say, they won’t fully get it. How could they understand, without living these heavy days firsthand?

​In three short weeks, history has happened.

Before this month, history was for other people. “Who won the debate?” “What did Trump do?” “Did you hear about Iran?” Faraway morsels of medium consequence, perfect to read about, Tweet about, even argue about with friends. While the news churned on, life itself stayed central.

But suddenly, without warning, news and life have become one. In hospitals and supermarkets, history unfolds each day. We’ve lost our typical buffers of time and space.

When separated by time, history is comfortable. A hobby. A trivia answer. When was Pearl Harbor, or which beaches did we storm at Normandy. When you inhale it with every breath, history feels different. It’s both boring and inescapable. We don’t get to close the book or finish the movie. All we can do is go eat lunch, wait another day, and wonder what comes next.​

That’s what I notice most about living in history: the raw uncertainty. A distinct sense of just not knowing what will happen. A taste of the unknown stronger than I’ve ever felt before. A black cloud of maybe tumbles around in my mind and spills out in conversation. “Who knows what’s coming.” “I wonder how long until...?” “We’ll have to wait and see.” Books and documentaries tell you what happened in the past, but they fail to mention the giant question mark that parks itself permanently in the future.​

Now I understand why picnickers watched the first battle of Bull Run, and World War I troops promised to be home by Christmas. These stories seem silly in hindsight, but in the present, who knew? Uncertainty doesn’t make the final cut of history. Read all you want about the Battle of Britain, but you’ll never know how it felt to endure the summer of 1940 in London: sleeping in subway stations, bombs falling overhead, unsure if you would survive, or if your country would even exist next year.​

So we’re left with our own questions, questions with answers that will seem obvious decades from now:​

What will life look like in three months? Six months? One year? Will we celebrate the Fourth of July? Will they play football this fall? Will we find drugs that make people better? Will all flights be grounded? Will states close their borders? Will this all seem overblown? What will be the final, terrible number? What will happen to the election? What will China do? What else might go wrong? When can we go to a concert without feeling concerned? When will gyms and barbershops and restaurants reopen? When will kids return to school? When will life feel normal once more?

For now, no one knows. The answers don’t yet exist. But one day, they will, and we’ll share what happens with future generations. They won’t understand how it felt staring into an unknown future with indefinite timelines. But just as we’re blind to past fears, that’s not for them to know. Instead, they’ll learn something far more important: they’ll hear how we pressed on, stayed hopeful, and eventually recovered. They’ll read stories of warriors in scrubs and lab coats, bravely fighting the front lines. They’ll forever remember names of heroes who finally found the cure.

This article is adapted from my weekly newsletter, Future Glance, where I share writing and ideas about how technology is transforming media, education, and governance. Plus, cool stuff I find on Twitter. Click here to subscribe.

Overcoming Loneliness in our Suddenly Virtual World

“It feels good to talk with you guys. It’s been lonely at home.”

On Saturday morning, a group of Write of Passage students gathered for our weekly live writing workshop. One of our best students, Lindsay, shared this positive thought before we began. This type of virtual connection is suddenly common in our strange new reality.

The world has moved online.

A years-long process of digital migration has been compressed into a week. Around the country and the world, companies and schools are dealing with logistical challenges and concerns as the world migrates to the internet.

Few saw this crisis coming. We’re not sure what’s next. But amid a sea of challenges, perhaps there’s an opportunity to develop solutions for the cultural atomization that spread throughout the past decade.​

It's clear that technology has changed our social fabric in recent years. Since 2010, in-person socializing has dropped across all age groups. High school students spend far less time socializing in person. Americans host fewer dinner parties than 20 years ago. With a digital universe available at your fingertips, the outside world holds less of a draw.

Jonah Bennett outlines this phenomenon in an excellent recent essay. He labels this the “atomization problem”, a fragmentation of society that is a byproduct our all-too-addictive machines. Bennett explains that despite our best efforts to limit screen time, individuals are “radically inadequate” to beat the pull of machines on our own. Rather than more willpower or another self-control app on your iPhone, he calls for a new set of social technologies to “reinvigorate a decaying social fabric.” Rather than offering a tidy solution, Bennett explains that this is a hard problem, and that any new solution will look “extremely strange to the rest of society.” Wishfully hoping new app or platform is too limited. The world craves new myths, metaphors and norms around technology that highlight their "very real potential for accelerating spiritual and physical decay.”

I read Bennett’s article last Saturday. In the past week, the world has seen a sharp, dramatic shift toward the digital. In response to the threatening coronavirus, online communication has absorbed business and education systems. With each new closing and cancellation, the in-person world retreats and the virtual world advances. Meetings and classrooms are shifting online at a pace we couldn’t have imagined just weeks ago. Teachers, students, and employees are getting acquainted with the norms of videoconferencing and virtual meetings.

As the western world shuts down, it becomes likely that weeks of social distancing will give way to months. No one knows how long the crisis will last. Eventually, mandatory isolation will ease, businesses will reopen, markets will recover and sports will resume. But the world we return to will not be the same.

COVID-19 is shuffling society like an Etch A Sketch. Millions of people are stepping into a fully online world. Along with the suffering that awaits in the days ahead, there will also be opportunity. People are resilient and will adapt to new virtual conditions. Innovations will arise. New ways of meeting, socializing, and establishing meaningful connections will arrive. When we emerge from our quarantines and isolations, perhaps we’ll find a world that’s less atomized and more equipped to be social in the digital age. Perhaps beating coronavirus will lead to a more vibrant social fabric, newly unified and less lonely, thanks to necessary shifts in our relationship with technology and each other.

Note: This article is adapted from my weekly newsletter, Future Glance, where I share writing and ideas about how technology is transforming media, education, and governance. Plus, cool stuff I find on Twitter. Click here to subscribe.

The Dirty Little Secret of Online Courses

Write of Passage Cohort 4 officially kicked off Wednesday night! After a wind-sprint of marketing launch events we rounded out Cohort 4 with over 190 students. That includes 130 students joining us for the first time, and more than 60 WOP Premium members returning for another round.

We had 120 people on our opening call. Students joined from Argentina, Panama, Ireland, Russia, Germany, India, the UK, South Korea, Japan, Nigeria, Canada, Singapore...the list goes on. People in Europe and Africa braved 2am start times. Of course we also had people from dozens of cities in the US. This set a record for Write of Passage live session attendance (previous high was 99, first session of Cohort 3).

Earlier today one of our new students texted me with a question. He noticed that only 120 students showed up for the live session when nearly 200 paid for the class. Where was everyone else? This was my response: ​​

Then I told him the “dirty little secret” of online courses: ​

Most people don't finish them.​

At last count, the completion rate for MOOCs (massive open online courses) hovers between 5-15%. Other course platforms (Coursera, MasterClass) also post fairly low numbers. If online learning is the future, why are platforms struggling to keep students around?​

Author and marketing guru Seth Godin explains this topic better than anyone else I’ve found. As the creator of the thriving AltMBA program, he has authority to speak here. Seth explains:​

In order to become educated, you first must become incompetent. You first must become ignorant. Because that’s what education is, confronting something you don’t know. And in the face of “I don’t know that”, that’s scary.
​And you’re about to have to do work, which is also scary. And if there isn’t a prize at the end (degree, job), you say “I don’t want to do work, I don’t want to be afraid. See ya.” As soon as MOOC courses get hard, people disappear.

Seth frames it well: true learning always requires you to feel uncomfortable as you face the unknown. To become smarter, you must first feel uncertain, confused, even dumb. Not a pleasant feeling. What happens when you combine these challenges with no compliance requirement, no diploma, and no peer group? People start to quit. When feeling stuck, it’s so easy just to close your laptop. ​

David and I have thought about this problem since we started prepping for Cohort 3 last October. Despite having 100+ students enrolled each time, average attendance in Cohorts 1 and 2 kicked around the 50s and 40s before settling in the mid-30s. Cohort 3 improved to ~65 live participants for the first three weeks, and closer to 45 students per session after Thanksgiving break. ​
​

That number should be higher. Lately we’ve been obsessed with improving student retention throughout the five weeks of Write of Passage. People won’t grow from the course if they’re not present. But as outlined above, it’s not an easy problem to solve. Attending eleven classes at 90 minutes each is no small ask. So what’s the solution? ​

Our answer: build a stronger community.

We believe people quit when they’re anonymous. It’s easy to stop showing up when nobody knows you’re gone. That’s why we’re so focused on making students feel welcome. Last month we outlined an eight-point plan to improve the sense of community in Cohort 4. I’ve already talked about rolling out feedback groups. Other changes include a new course forum, an “Initiation Week”, and forming an alumni mentor team. You can see a complete list of changes in our Write of Passage version notes.

Better community also requires a mindset shift. When I first started helping with Write of Passage, David’s favorite word was “scale”. He wanted all of our work to be streamlined and repeatable with an eye toward growth. Maximum efficiency and effectiveness with minimum effort. Then, we found this video.

In the clip, 31-year-old billionaire Patrick Collison talks about founding Stripe, the titanic virtual payment platform. Collison agrees that conventional wisdom says to scale. He then calls that approach “completely and utterly misguided.” Instead of pursuing scale in the early days, Stripe focused exclusively on maximizing customer happiness. They manually built complicated products for single clients. They hand-wrote thank-you notes for thousands of customers. For their first few years, every customer support email went to every employees’ inbox. ​

Collison’s speech changed our mindset. Rather than pursuing scale above all else, we shifted to maximizing student happiness. Our community-building changes align with this goal. But we also added one final piece to the mix: intro calls. ​

During Cohort 3 I held over 70 intro Zoom calls with new students. I asked about their background, their goals for the course, and answered any questions they had. For Cohort 4 my goal is to hold a 15 minute intro call with all 130 new students. I’m at 27 so far. They’re fun, since I get to talk with fascinating people from around the globe. They’re helpful, too, as we get to learn about our students and clarify any questions. But most importantly, intro calls show that we care. We make students feel welcome, rather than anonymous, in the early weeks. It's our bet that combining these calls with our community-building efforts will create strong enough ties to keep people active and learning through the March 25th finish line.

Here’s to beating the “dirty little secret” one friendship, feedback group, and phone call at a time.

Making Friends on the Internet

“What makes people feel human in the inhuman context of the internet?”

Write of Passage Cohort 4 kicks off in less than two weeks. We’re making plenty of improvements, but lately I’ve been focused on one particular area. A recent Tweet by Jeff Weinstein, a product lead at Stripe, provides some guidance:

My problem #1 to solve for Write of Passage is strengthening the student community. 

Write of Passage attracts an impressive group. In Cohort 3 (November - December) we had 178 students from 28 different countries. People of all ages and industries joined together for five weeks of online writing. Given the quality of our students, I know that future friends, coauthors, even business partners are just a few conversations away. As course manager, it’s my job to help make those connections happen. 

Right now, the way students meet isn’t good enough. 

Students currently connect in a few places. We hold class (via Zoom video conferencing) on Monday and Wednesday evenings, US time. During the 90 minute sessions you can meet fellow classmates through breakout rooms, which are small group chats of 2-4 students that are assigned randomly each class. We also encourage students to chat in the community forum. In Cohort 3 the forum was well-used for submitting weekly assignments, but the “General Discussion” section was noticeably quiet. We used software called Discourse to host our platform which has a clunky user interface. Students had more success talking on Twitter, but not everyone in the class is an active tweeter. 

Our post-course survey and feedback calls had a clear theme. Students found the course valuable, but they want more chances to meet other classmates. Sure, David and I encourage people to reach out directly after breakout rooms, or when someone’s article really resonates. But we’re still in the early days of online communities. Virtual outreach can feel awkward and uncomfortable, even if you’ve already talked briefly. 

We expect up to 200 students in Cohort 4. There’s no way to get to know that many people in five weeks. When that many students post their intros or article drafts on the public forum, there’s far too many for any one student to read.  In the past, new Write of Passage students have felt anonymous amongst a group of strangers scattered around the world. While students did build stronger relationships as the course went on, we want to compress the get-to-know-you phase from five weeks to five days. We want people to feel welcome quickly.  

So what’s the answer? How will we design the course in Cohort 4 to improve student interactions? Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a plan. It started with five items, then eight, now nine. I won’t address everything here, but one key idea is to make a big class feel small. 

Enter feedback groups. 

In Cohort 4, instead of submitting your article drafts to a public section of the forum, you’ll share it with a small private group (~10 students). This will be your tribe, the team that you stick with through all five weeks of the course. Writing feedback and assignment submission will happen at the group level. Members will have the chance to get to know their group personally, through critiquing each others’ work, and chatting in a special small-group section of our new forum. 

Specific ideas to spark digital friendships include: post a 100-200 word introduction the first day; attend a feedback group Zoom call during “Initiation Week”; share your writing and publishing goals. Another idea is to ask returning alumni to share a photo of themselves from outside of class. Hopefully others will then follow their lead. Sharing a picture of family, a pet, or a favorite hobby could help classmates to see each others’ human side, and maybe discover overlapping interests. It’s a difficult balance, because we don’t want exercises to feel silly or forced, like a bad first day at summer camp. We want to push people just the right amount, and let relationships build naturally the rest of the way. 

Building real camaraderie online is challenging.  Everyone knows how to bond with someone in person. The ritual of a handshake and opening chitchat (Where are you from? And what do you do?) are beyond familiar. We start to absorb these social patterns as kids, and begin performing them ourselves as young teenagers. 

The same norms don’t exist for online courses. There may be common practices on forums or Reddit threads, but many of our students don’t spend time in those places. We have tech folks enroll, but also digital novice Boomers. Most students are taking their first online course. Most have never started a friendship on the internet. I’ve talked with Hannah, a past student who is helping build the WOP community in a part-time role, about how to bring out the human element to overcome these obstacles. We think small private communities will help. 

Feedback groups are important, but they’re just one of nine changes we’re introducing. I’ll share more about other parts of the plan in the coming weeks. There are no easy fixes here. Building a tight-knit student body over fiber wires and copper cables is a new challenge, and we’ll continue to learn as we go. But making a big class small through feedback groups is a good start. 

Why I Skipped Sunday Football

Thoughts on my new role as Course Manager at Forte Labs

A lot changed for me in 2019. Specifically, my job. Twice.

In May, I left Oracle to sell software for Darktrace, a growing AI cybersecurity company. In December I resigned from Darktrace. There were no hard feelings -- I liked the people and the product. I left to serve as the first full-time employee at Forte Labs, an online school working to reinvent education.

The backstory:

In 2019 I decided to start writing. I began with a UCLA extension class, which went well enough. In April I enrolled in the first-ever cohort of Write of Passage, an online class created by a writer and podcaster named David Perell. David and I had grabbed dinner when he visited LA in December 2018, which is where I first heard about his idea to teach people online writing.

When I joined the first class (via Zoom video conference) on May 1st, I found myself in an enthusiastic virtual “classroom” with seventy-five students from around the world. People hailed from London, Dubai, India, Peru, Nigeria, Hungary...the list goes on. I quickly realized this was a special group, joined together in a virtual course unlike any of its kind. I felt like a pioneer in a digital covered wagon, racing across the frontier of online education.

The class consisted of eleven 90-minute live video calls over five weeks, during which I created a website and wrote two articles. Towards the end of the class I lost steam. I fell behind on my assignments and even skipped two sessions. Around the same time I left Oracle and found myself with some time off. I spent two weeks traveling through Dubai and Italy with a few close friends. The trips were unforgettable, but in reflective moments I would kick myself for squandering my opportunity with Write of Passage.

As a “premium” member, I later learned I had lifetime access to future rounds of the course. Cohort Two started in late August. I took this second attempt more seriously, staying late after work to attend class each Monday and Wednesday. I completed all the assignments and poured hours into my writing. I finished with several pieces I was proud of, some new friends, and newfound confidence that I could reliably finish something I started.

Before our last session I offered David a few suggestions for how to improve the course. He liked the ideas, and asked me to help him make changes for the upcoming cohort. 

For the final three months of the year I worked hard to sell cybersecurity software. Each week I traveled throughout the southwestern US, attending conferences, speaking at events, and meeting with customers. Then, when the weekend arrived, I shifted my focus. I’m a lifelong football fan, but I hardly watched an NFL snap all fall. I was quiet during water cooler fantasy football talk at work, because for the first time since 2005, I didn’t have a team. I dedicated every minute of my weekends this fall to Write of Passage. 

For five straight Saturdays and Sundays, I met virtually with past students, revamped the curriculum, built an onboarding process, and overhauled the course forum. Write of Passage Cohort 3 launched in November with 178 students from 28 countries. Just as before, I was able to meet people from around the globe, holding more than 70 intro calls for new students. I also attended most classes as course manager, ran our weekend feedback calls, and helped prepare lesson plans each week.

The long weekends and lack of football paid off. Toward the end of the year, I received a call from Tiago Forte, the founder of Forte Labs (the platform that hosts Write of Passage -- Tiago helped create Write of Passage and runs the flagship Forte Labs course, Building a Second Brain). He offered me a full-time position as Course Manager for all Forte Labs classes. I resigned from my job on December 16th and flew to Mexico City the next morning for a week-long planning session with Tiago and David. On January 1st, my tenure as Course Manager officially began.

We have a long list of projects to implement before the next Write of Passage cohort starts on February 19th. I’m responsible for improving the Student Experience and Operations for our courses, which will allow Tiago and David to focus on selling and marketing. Tiago is currently based in Mexico City and David lives in New York, so I’ll be working remotely from LA. I’m beyond excited to see what this year will bring.

Starting on this new chapter was a leap of faith. Familiar cadences of office life -- morning chitchat, lunch with coworkers -- have been replaced by Zoom calls and coffee shops. The distinction between work and life has merged, so that sometimes it feels like my work is my life. With the freedom of remote work comes the feeling that your work is never really done -- when your home is your office, there’s always another task to complete. But the long hours are worth it. Early in the morning or late at night, sometimes I reflect and feel grateful. I feel the satisfaction of helping, in my own small way, to shape the future of online education. 

Note: This article is adapted from my weekly newsletter, Future Glance, where I share writing and ideas about how technology is transforming media, education, and governance. Plus, cool stuff I find on Twitter. Click here to subscribe.

The Forte Labs team on our final night in Mexico City.

The Great Curation

“After the 2016 election, all my conversations now end with ‘It’s going to be...interesting’ ”. 

I love watching stand-up at The Comedy Store in Hollywood. Shortly after the 2016 election, comedian Mark Maron often told this slick one-liner. And he was right – things have been “interesting”. And then some. Outrageous tweets and articles scream from our phones each morning. Tribal warfare rages on Twitter and Facebook feeds. Cable channels stir political spats up into national frenzies

The internet has dramatically flipped our information ecology. In the past, the spread of information was limited by physical realities -- newspaper routes, cable bandwidths, radio frequencies. In an online world, anyone can distribute ideas at no cost with just a few clicks. We’ve transitioned from information scarcity to information abundance in just over two decades. At first this information wave spread slowly -- blogs, YouTube and social media sites were seen as the turf of the young. Even as these services spread, mainstream life remained fairly normal. 

The 2016 election changed everything. 

Donald Trump’s stunning victory shocked mainstream America like an ALS ice bucket. “Algorithm”, “tribalism” and “fake news” became household terms. The internet’s information glut broke through to Main Street. 

Three years later, the shock of his victory has largely worn off. We’ve become numb to the bizarre headlines and petty squabbles. When I talk with friends about the 2020 election, they often point to candidates like Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, traditional choices they hope will bring things “back to normal.”  My response has two parts:

1. Things are never going “back to normal”

2. Things are going to change exponentially more quickly moving forward

I believe most people underestimate the magnitude of the information revolution reshaping society. They see new technology and media as a five-foot waves of change -- voice-enabled devices, helpful apps, new ways to share videos with friends -- when in fact we’re being inundated by a Laird Hamilton-esque tsunami of information abundance. And before this wall of water completes its deluge, we will be hit by another monster swell. Then another. AR, VR, blockchain, drones, automation of jobs. A train of tsunamis loom in the coming decades. 

In his piece What the Hell is Going On, David Perell identifies the dramatic ways in which the shift from information scarcity to information abundance has upended commerce, education, and politics. Building off of David’s work, I will focus on the tremendous opportunity information abundance presents curious, ambitious learners. With clear thinking, we can capture powerful trends that are tearing society apart and harness them for good.

Perell outlines how and why information abundance is reshaping different realms of daily life.  His final line offers a note of hope: Until we understand and adapt to our digital environment, we will not be able to reap its fruits. I believe the digital fruits to be picked are plentiful and thrilling to consider. We just need to see them clearly. 

Kinks in the Hose

About once a month, I wash my car.

I drag the long green hose from my front yard out to my driveway. I fill a bucket with soapy suds and get to work. Once I’ve scrubbed my Toyota clean, it’s time to rinse. But all too often, when I first squeeze the hose nozzle, expecting a geyser of water, I’m met with only a trickle.  Frustrated, I look back at the long, looping green rubber tube and spot the problem: kinks. Often several of them. The long hose folds back on itself and creates multiple choke points that prevent water from flowing, and me from rinsing my car. I must shake out the kinks before the water flows at its full potential. 

More good ideas exist than ever before. Around the US, and the world, individuals are thinking elevated thoughts, imagining bold solutions to our challenges, and envisioning a brighter future. 

But like water in my hose, most of these ideas are stuck.  

Thought-provoking ideas about the future are scattered and decentralized. I’ll prove it: pull up any podcast with ideas that make your heart sing. Click “See Available Episodes” or “View All”.  Then scroll to the earliest recorded show. What year do you arrive at, 2017? 2015? Look at the caliber of guest - likely the same phenomenal quality as today. And then imagine the number of listens that early episode has received in 2019. A hundred? A few dozen? Likely not many.  

A wealth of knowledge lies dormant in old podcast interviews. Scintillating conversations about our changing world have been recorded and promptly forgotten. 

And podcasts are a brand new medium!  Imagine the volume of wisdom resting undisturbed in forgotten books. Consider the powerful ideas swirling inside bright minds across the globe, trapped between their ears for lack of encouragement or opportunity to share.  Intellectual capital and human capital suffer from severe kinks that prevent world-shaking ideas from inspiring curious minds across the globe. 

Digital Cartographers

Our commercial, educational, and media ecosystems are being dramatically upended by the abundant information of the internet age. Not a soul alive today knows where these trends lead, because future outcomes are undetermined. The coming world is malleable, not set in stone. Our collective choices will determine the world we create. 

The quality of our choices will be determined by our ideas - our capacity to imagine new patterns of commerce, new paradigms of learning, and new forms of media. As Steve Jobs famously said :

“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.”

This sentiment rings truer today than ever before. The world needs lucid thinkers to continually process “what the hell is going on”, and propose bold ideas to maximize the positive impact of these trends while minimizing the negative. Peter Thiel convincingly points to sprawling “white spaces left on the map of human knowledge” that balloon ever larger as the information revolution continues.  We need legions of “digital cartographers”, as Perell coins it, to continually map our unfurling reality, to nudge us toward a bright, productive future. Innovative ideas are our guiding light; the cartographers’ paint and brush. The world craves bold thinking unshackled from decaying institutions and fading 20th century norms. 

The Great Curation

At present, digital cartographers largely work alone or in small groups. Mapping of our digital future occurs in scattered locations: discussions of niche books, old podcast interviews, Discourse forums, and the emerging “Twitter-Blogo-sphere”. Great ideas bubble up and are kicked around these fringe idea markets. Perell writes that forbidden truths about the 21st century “are shared in whispers, not shouts.” At any given time, a “digital cartographer” only has a partial understanding of the broader map emerging. Other pieces of the whole lay dormant in hidden outlets, or trapped within other people’s heads. 

Novelist Anthony Doerr described the human mind as “one wet kilogram within which spin universes.” What if there were a way to bring together the brilliant, rich minds of “digital cartographers” together, making them more productive and effective at generating understanding and ideas about the world to come? What if we could induce collaboration between digital cartographers, encouraging each other to map our changing society emboldening them to produce bold new methods of harnessing the information age tsunami for good? I believe we can. And it starts with a Great Curation. 

Tyler Cowen is an endlessly curious economist and generalist who views the world through fascinating lenses. His podcast interviews and article topics run the gamut of ideas and disciplines. He has recorded about 80 hours worth of podcast interviews, known as “Conversations With Tyler”, since 2015. How many people have a) closely listened to all of these episodes, b) taken detailed notes on each episodes, and c) identified key themes and bold ideas from the collection of episodes, and d) shared these ideas with the public? 

My guess is zero. No one has ever done this.  

This is likely true for other thinkers, writers, podcasters, YouTube essayists...the list continues. There is such a rich wealth of content available for curious minds to be almost overwhelming. The process of developing “digital cartographers” begins with bright minds amassing and curating valuable, hidden information sources such as “Conversations With Tyler” and sharing it with the public. Different individuals should pick whatever topics make them feel alive. As they sift through silt and emerge with intellectual gold, then share this gold, they will become “idea antennas”, like a magnet for motivated thinkers with similar interests. As lucid thinkers congregate around different virtual stockpiles of curated ideas, a virtuous cycle will emerge:

Curation → Sharing → Collaboration → Production → Curation → etc. etc. 

Enthusiastic learners, with or without credentials, have a tremendous opportunity to break free of “Old Guard” thinking and boldly charge ahead into our brave new future. With tools like Slack, Discourse, and Zoom, we are equipped with unparalleled opportunities to trade ideas with bright minds from around the world. We’re no longer limited by location. Further, we have unprecedented tools and methods to retain and synthesize ideas (Evernote, Airtable, Instapaper), which will only continue to improve over time. This constellation of factors leaves us with exponential potential for the growth of ideas and a transformation of learning and idea generation in the 21st century. How this will change education and learning more broadly in decades to come remains unknown. But it will all begin with a Great Curation.  

Your Infinity Machine

Can you do the bridge?  

You know, the bridge. That card shuffle move where you cut the deck, overlap the edges, and pffffffffffffft, two halves gracefully cascade into one. 

A smooth bridge will always impress the room. But before you deal your next hand, pause to look at your newly sorted deck:

Congrats, you just made history.

Your shuffle arranged the cards in an order that has never before existed. That’s right: the unique, specific order you’ve just shuffled your cards into has never before occurred in the history of playing cards. No matter how often you do the bridge, you create a never-before-seen order every time. 

You’re skeptical. There’s no way! People have been playing cards for hundreds of years. Surely two decks have lined up at least once. Right?

In fact, there’s never been an identical shuffle and it’s not even close. The number of possible order combinations for a standard deck of playing cards is 52!, or 52 x 51 x 50 …… x 3 x 2 x 1. That number looks like this: 

80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000

Roughly 8.06 x 10^67.

 What?! Our brains aren’t wired to process numbers that large. 

Let’s try anyway. Take a look at our cosmic neighborhood:

If you shuffle your deck once for every single atom in the solar system, you’d still only reach 10^57 possible arrangements. You’d have perform 10^57 separate shuffles more than 10 billion times to reach the total combinations possible in your deck of cards.

For context, a single grain of salt contains roughly one quintillion atoms (1,000,000,000,000,000,000). From there, imagine how many atoms make up a tree or your house, not to mention the sun (!). And still that number can’t touch your deck’s potential.

10^67 is a large, large number. 

Unique Expression

Understanding the dizzying possibilities in a card deck not only stuns me -- it also makes me consider the infinite combination of ideas we’re capable of generating.

If rearranging fifty-two laminate rectangles creates more than 10^67 unique flavors, what can we each do with 100 billion neurons?!

I believe we’re all capable of expressing our interests in infinitely specific and rewarding ways. We all have some particular combination of ideas and pursuits that will make us feel alive, even if we’re not yet aware of our one-of-a-kind blend.

It’s easy to forget the staggering potential hiding between our ears. Calling your brain the “world’s greatest supercomputer” falls flat with overuse. Instead, choose to view your brain as an infinity machine. You can generate an endless stream of ideas and connections depending on what you decide think about. If a card deck holds 10^67  options, the number of ideas your brain can produce is functionally limitless. 

Information abundance allows you to develop and share your never-before-seen flavor in ways that would make your ancestors jealous. And yet -- I think we shortchange ourselves by focusing on the wrong things.

What You Focus On

The internet gives us new ways to learn about niche topics and share ideas with like-minded thinkers. We’re no longer limited to one-size-fits-all media -- thousands of YouTube channels and podcast interviews encourage deep exploration of subjects outside the mainstream. Tools like Zoom and Discourse make worldwide discussion of off-the-wall ideas easier than ever. We’re in the early stages of a Cambrian Explosion of content that can align with your beautiful mix of interests.

Let’s say you listen to economist Tyler Cowen’s riveting podcast interview with neurosurgeon Ed Boyden. That episode inspires you to read more about machine-brain linkages. A Google search then takes you to Tim Urban’s post on Elon Musk’s foray into brain stimulus research. From there you might bounce around Elon’s other bold ideas (hyperloops, terraforming Mars), or maybe you explore Tim’s full body of work. Either choice could engage your curious mind for weeks.

Instead, most of us are hideously addicted to steady dopamine pricks, delivered via memes and clickbait. I’ve fallen prey countless times. Consistently poor inputs lead to shallow thoughts. Our conversations default to tepid opinions on consumption habits (food, shows) or small grievances. These uninspiring topics severely limit our infinity machines. Your brain needs grilled chicken and broccoli inputs to build unique ideas -- not a Cheetos buffet. 

So next time you’re hanging with friends and conversation turns shallow, don’t be afraid to shuffle things up. Share those thrilling frontiers of neuroscience you heard about on Tyler’s podcast. Ponder Elon’s latest projects. Let these energizing ideas become your world. 

Your Infinite Self 

Media consumption habits don’t change overnight. The magnetic combinations of couch and remote, or phone and thumb, are strong. Sharing eccentric interests that fall outside the mainstream might be uncomfortable or awkward at times. But when your favorite ideas click with others, your conversations will sizzle with an urgency and excitement usually missing from Netflix shows or tzatziki sauce. As C.S. Lewis says,“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What, you too? I thought I was the only one!’” 

A rich life is filled with these moments. 

It’s easy to forget about our unique potential while living day to day. But you can remind yourself. Next time you look at the stars, picture the same universe reaching endlessly within you. Ask yourself what distinct interests light you up. Find out which conversations leave you feeling exhilarated and alive. Then make those ideas and subjects the stuff of your life. 

In a distracted age, you must consciously choose to lift your attention toward ideas that fill you with wonder, rather than bland and chummy chatter. We’re all capable of unique expression. We can all marvel with wonder at the world. We can all choose to arrange ideas in endless combinations, but only if we learn to recognize our own infinite selves. Don’t forget to shuffle the deck. 

What's Going On, and the Ambition/Credential Gap

In his piece What the Hell is Going On, David Perell identifies the dramatic ways in which the shift from information scarcity to information abundance has upended commerce, education, and politics. Building off of David’s work, I will focus on the tremendous opportunity information abundance presents curious, ambitious learners. With clear thinking, we can capture powerful trends that are tearing society apart and harness them for good.

What’s Happening? 

Perell’s essay What the Hell is Going On clearly outlines how the Information Age is reshaping society. It’s also over 13,000 words long. Below I’ve done my best to distill the core arguments:

In the 20th century, information was scarce. This led to monopolies of power and influence in commerce, education, and politics

• Big brands, universities, and media outlets benefited from the 20th century’s cohesive structure, which stemmed from information scarcity

  • Brands benefitted from consumers’ lack of information by monopolizing trust

  • Universities benefitted from limited information by controlling access to accreditation and institutional network effects

  • Traditional media outlets benefitted from limited information by creating cohesive yet incomplete narratives that matched their worldview and coordinated societal thinking

    • This gave media outlets significant influence over political and policy conversations

• The internet has flipped society from information-scarce to information-abundant

  • Information is now exponential, and can be created/distributed by anyone

  • Since authority comes from information scarcity, information-abundance is rapidly undermining traditional authorities 

  • Previously admired institutions are now “slow, stodgy, bland, and inefficient”

• The exchange of information is now two-way, rather than one-way

  • Average people now actively create and distribute content at no cost 

  • Mass Media’s power and influence has been undercut

• Cohesive societal narratives have fragmented as traditional “truth arbiters” (media, institutions) have fragmented

  • People feel empowered to “uncover and distribute” truth as they see it

  • Truth is shifting to “a collective endeavor”. This is a messy process that we’re just starting to recognize and figure out

  • Content is now filtered after distribution, rather than before publication

• 20th century systems [institutions, media outlets, bureaucratic structures] “won’t work in the internet age”

• Most people don’t recognize the shifting information environment, so discourse devolves to “anger, anxiety, and rage” as we drown in an “information vortex”

• We must talk about our transforming media environment, because “the shape of media environments determines the structure of society”

The Ambition/Credential Gap

For years we’ve relied on institutions to map society and direct us forward. Businesses, universities, and media conglomerates guided us through the contours of the 20th century. Toward the end of the century, brash Bay Area upstarts began to disrupt the existing order with new gadgets and services. Change rumbled beneath the surface. But the structures of our old information ecosystems endured. 

Perell calls Donanld Trump’s election in 2016 our “waking up moment”.  Trump exposed the weakness of 20th century pillars - traditional media and political parties. His campaign harnessed the information tsunami before most of the “old guard” of media and political power players were aware it existed. In the years since, massive cracks in the old structure have been laid bare. It’s time to chart a new course. 

Where are the new idea-smiths, standing ready to chart our course into the 21st century?  Most visionary thinkers will require a certain level of education to produce ideas that move the world. Educational patterns from our information-scarce past have pushed the bulk of our brightest minds into a narrow subset of universities and industries -- think the Ivy League, banking, consulting. Credentials were so valued in the 20th century that top minds primarily chased status signals, with real learning as an ancillary benefit. 

Ideas are the currency of the 21st century. Thanks to new technologies and free distribution, clear thinking can spread without institutions or credentials. Ironically, however, individuals with the talent to understand our changing world are often disincentivized from recognizing the magnitude of change due to their placement within the institutional structure that’s being undermined. Those in positions of authority often suffer from major blind spots. People can be strikingly myopic when incentivized not to see things clearly. 

Credentialed gatekeeping made sense in the past. In an information-scarce world, mechanisms were required to sift through job applicants and find talented people, or at least the perception of talent. Moving forward, vestiges of this system create blind spots that may prevent credentialed individuals from seeing the full implication of the information age.  

Conversely, those without credentials often lack ambition or vision to recognize and respond to the transforming information age. Presented with nearly limitless entertainment options, people give dozens of hours a week to television and social media. Perell quotes sociologist Elise Boulding in another piece saying “If one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy left for imagining the future.”  Large portions of Americans spend much of this time in this category.

As a result - an Ambition/Credential Gap has emerged: 

• Those with the ambition to map societal change are often blinded by their credentials and institutional standing

• Those not blinded by credentials often lack the ambition to map societal change

The Ambition/Credential Gap is widespread but not absolute. Independent thinkers, whether credentialed or not, are charting our digital future in scattered locations: Discourse forums, YouTube channels, podcast interviews, book notes. A Great Curation will begin to bring them together, changing how bold thinkers learn and generate ideas in the 21st century. 

The Gift You Give Yourself

Remember that Christmas morning feeling? The joy of sprinting downstairs and tearing into your presents, discovering what new toys, movies and video games would captivate you that year? 

I say “remember” because Christmas morning presents are no longer the highlight of my year. Far from it. The thrill of opening presents has faded. I love Christmas for new reasons: gratitude, giving, quality time with family. But the intense child-like excitement is gone. 

A little sad, right? The joy of my first Gameboy Color, Christmas ‘02, will never be matched. Unless -- what if you could recapture the youthful joy of Christmas morning, daily? What if you reframed your notion of presents from something you received to something you deliberately give yourself? 

Our Most Valuable Resource

“Time is the most valuable thing we have.” We all “know” this. But few live our lives as if this statement were capital-T True. We bleed away precious minutes on digital autopilot: browsing our newsfeed, ingesting the latest political spat, skimming clickbait puff. We stream endless television. We text lazily.

We’re addicted to passive consumption. And it’s not entirely our fault! All 7.7 billion of us are living through an unprecedented media transformation. Information used to trickle to us like a gurgling mountain brook; it now gushes like Niagara Falls. We’ve been swept away in the deluge -- at best we’ve just broken the surface in this flash flood of clicks and content. Disoriented, we gasp for breath and desperately tread water, looking for a shore to swim toward. 

My life is a good case study. The iPhone debuted my freshman year of high school, right on the heels of Facebook. Snapchat and Instagram arrived my freshman year of college. My class was among the first students to take the plunge into an ocean of infinite information. Then as now, social platforms and websites preyed on our amygdalas in ways that should require a Surgeon General’s warning. The allure of bite-sized blog posts and endless friends’ pictures washed me away. For years I was a full-blown digital addict. 

I had little respect for my time. I would casually surf between dozens of tabs, my mind flitting between tempting headlines and haphazard Google searches. I had trouble focusing. I sacrificed sleep, grades, and my well-being to the screen-gods I unknowingly worshipped. 

After years tumbling downstream, I finally snatched the shoreline. In February 2016, I quit Facebook cold-turkey. I never made an Instagram to begin with. Do I get questioned about why I’m not on these platforms? Plenty. But three-and-a-half years later, I feel joy thinking about the precious hours I’ve rescued from these temporal tree shredders. Instead of endlessly swiping my thumb upward on glass, I’ve harnessed that time reading books, studying a language, and learning to play an instrument. I still waste time online - the flow of information is relentless, and sometimes I find it irresistible. But I’m proud to have spent much of my time on activities that align with my values, not Facebook’s.  Which brings me back to presents. 

The Gift You Give Yourself

Recently I thought about that kid-on-Chrismas-morning feeling. As sweet as it was, it feels limited when viewed through my adult lens. It only came once a year, twice if you count your birthday. And despite what the mall Santa told you, you had no final say about what you got. The ultimate decision was up to your parents. 

But the excitement was real. The anticipation, the joy, the overflowing enthusiasm. What could generate similar feelings in me today? And then I thought about leverage. 

There’s two categories of time usage: low-leverage and high-leverage. Low-leverage activities are obvious: cruising your newsfeed, binging Netflix, reading the comments. This type of passive media consumption treats your time like burning oil -- it pollutes your mental landscape and you never get it back. It’s a dopamine prick and then...nothing. It leaves you feeling vaguely anxious and dissatisfied. 

High-leverage activities treat your time like renewable energy. When you write a post or create a video, you induce a flow-state throughout the process of creation, so you feel great in the moment. But your time also now serves you in perpetuity.  Your article might be read thousands of times in the years to come. Your video could hit a million views.  As Naval Ravikant says, “An army of robots is freely available - it's just packed in data centers. Use it.” Server farms are powerful levers.  

High-leverage isn’t limited to the digital. You may struggle for three hours mastering a new guitar song. But once you’ve learned it, you can play it as often as you’d like, perhaps even for the rest of your life. Through focused struggle, you’ve given yourself a gift. You’ve transformed your precious time into a new skill that enriches your life. Same for media you create, or software code that you produce. In each case you’ve given yourself a gift whose dividend you reap each day going forward. Work hard, and suddenly your time works for you. 

As we rush down the river of the Information Age, it’s easy to be sucked under by the turbulent current. Much of our time is washed away by screens and swipes, never to be heard from again. Instead, I aim for high-leverage activities. I recapture and redirect the enthusiasm of childhood Christmas mornings toward gifts produced by the thoughtful use of my time.