How to Live an Unconventional Life

If you read the biographies of histories most interesting people, they are all mostly the same. No matter what it is; building products, taking over the world, creating art or playing a sport. Sure, they all have natural skill... but there is more than that. They grow their abilities, judgement, and luck with three techniques. Done over time, these work everywhere.

Vision, focus, and fun. That simple. Everyone great uses them. Vision is your map, focus is your engine, and fun is your secret sauce. The best part? The whole thing is impossible to plan and can only be achieved via ruthless experimentation.

This is what makes an unconventional life. Really it's about choosing you path and going after it until the wheels fall off.

However, all of us aren't naturally on our individual path. We're often sent down one by our environment, the people who care about us the most. Sometimes, it's a perfect fit. Like Mozart, who's father shoved a violin in his soft pudgy three year old hands and saw genius in the boy's ability to play. That was luck so great, we know about it hundreds of years later.

Other times it takes courage to venture off into your own life, and truly become the prodigal vs. a prodigy. The one who wandered their own path and came back, an individual.

Living an unconventional life isn't about traveling the world, volunteering in war zones or really anything. It's about living your life, the life you choose. Then refusing to sacrifice your limited time alive for those who aren't in your boat.

What you need to remember: three ingredients. Vision, Focus and Fun. Very simple to understand and very difficult to execute.

Vision

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Winston Churchill, Jay Z, Michael Jordan, Earnest Shackleton. They all had incredible vision. Each had the vision of where their path could take them. Even the Buddha claims that the moment you see, the question of belief disappears.

Vision is how you choose where to allocate your attention. At the end of the day, attention is all you need. Time doesn't matter if your attention is fractured. Vision is the roadmap you look at before you make the decisions that drive most of your life. Vision is the big choice. 

Most of us get overwhelmed with the menu at a restaurant, so how can we make choices when ***we have every opportunity life has made available to us***. That's a lot of decisions and judgement.******

Big choices become easier to make when you have a map. Vision is your map. It tells you the turns you must make. But what is your vision actually. Not this hoo haa bullshit.

Your vision is the one sentence description of your skills, scoreboard and timeline. skills are what you are good at. What you're good at, what you consider success, and how long you are willing to go before you quit

If you actively choose these three things, you'll be in a better position to make great decisions and move towards that vision. Things are tougher for longer than you think. It's a trope at this point, but we are all really impatient (thanks Zuck). Again: Expect things to take longer than you think.

Focus

Once you get started, focus is everything. Most of the work to get good at something really comes down to one secret trick. Show up every day, with intensity and a good attitude.

Focus is the intensity & consistency with which you do something. It is a verb, not an adjective. It means cutting the things that don't matter, and working on the task at hand. Short term focus is all about intensity. It's about the depth you can achieve on a subject in a short period of time.

Everyone thinks about short term focus, but what matters is in fact, long term focus. That's when you work on something for a little bit every day for a really long time. Most of the gains in life comes from the small compounding games of long term focus. The other word for this is patience.

All good things come from relationships built over time. Short term focus are intense experiences that bring us together with whatever we are wrangling with. Long term focus is choosing not to be affected by the ups and downs of things, and instead just showing up.

Fun

As you may remember (if not, you're missing the point bozo): it always takes longer than we expect. Climbing your mountain won't go as planned, because... life. You have to choose something you enjoy. Otherwise you and your very limited time will waste away. And you don't want to waste away, do you?

Napoleon smiled like a child with anticipation every time he saw his troops loading up their artillery and he heard his cannons go bang. Churchill screamed into a mirror every day for hours to get his enunciation just right. He loved every second of it. Nothing made Steve Jobs happier than seeing a beautiful product that came after months of work.

There are few things that you can become extraordinary in. The things you can practice certain things for hours each day and not feel time passing. Find those. Buy in to them. Double down.

No one can tell you what is fun for you. For some people it's running 100 mile races (I think those people are crazy). For others its making music. Follow that instinct, and you'll figure everything else out along the way. At the end you'll have knowledge no one can take away from you.

Good Distractions

What if I told you about someone who dropped out of college, took an art course, did a bunch of drugs and spent 6 months in a different part of the world learning a new religion?

Your first reaction is probably one of disgust and fear. How could they possibly do that? Next is oh my god, they're throwing everything away. Then maybe, just maybe, 20 years later you would realise that the story belongs to Steve Jobs and was a formative part of his development.

We talked a lot about being intentional with how you want to live your life. Choosing your path, and accepting whatever comes of that, because you own it. Now the key element. Getting distracted, and choosing your path.

Good distractions help you make connections between seemingly disparate ideas. They break you out of your day to day life and grant you the opportunity to look at your life or your problem or whatever, with a new lens.

Go make that rap album with your friend. Is your cousin going on a 10 week trip through southern Asia, and asking you to join? Do it. If you can afford it, fuck the job you complain about all the time. Do three guys you kind of like want to go drink beers and go bowling? Maybe skip this round.

Good distractions are great, at the right time and scale. Sometimes they are distractions. If you are on your path, forging on day by day; distractions are not your friend. BUT if you're on the search for a vision. Go get as distracted as you can. Learn about the things that you're curious about. Dive deep into whatever it is. Sometimes the only way to move forwards is to walk in a circle and wander.

The step by step guide

There are a few steps to living an unconventional life. They are extremely simple, and very hard.

Choose what you are going to do (vision). Do it a lot, without judgement (focus). Enjoy the process (fun).

Just based on my experience and reading a lot of biographies, it seems like the best thing to do is try things until you find your thing. Then practice a bunch and eventually go all in… but who knows. Don't judge yourself. Just do it and appreciate the flow.

Ok now for real the step by step guide. This is basically what every interesting person does. Some people do well without this… but they are usually successful in spite of that.

1. Try stuff

Expose yourself to new things, and don't judge what you enjoy.

2. Do it frequently for fun

Fun derisks everything. No one can judge you for having fun. The easiest way to learn is to enjoy doing it.

3. Do it a lot, even when it sucks

This is where you learn about the true texture of whatever it is you are doing. Many people quit here, because you've exited the honeymoon phase. If the thing is right, keep going. If it's not right, stop.

4. Build your life around it

If other people do something, there is a way you can build your life around it. You just have to figure out how

5. Try more stuff

Start from the top if it didn’t work. If it did, just keep doing it.

The End

My second grade teacher Ms. Slotnick told me never to end something with The End, therefore I'm doing just that.

When you look around, you realise that most things start small, and grow when they are ready. No, seriously. Michael Jordan spent the first 15 years of his career playing for free. The best companies are like this. The best artists did the same. Start, tend, cultivate.

Think about a garden. You don't plant a seed and dig it up after a few days to see if it is growing. That's an easy way to kill it. Instead take care of it and nurture it. Most of us do put seeds in the ground but either don't take care of them, or forget about them.

When I was 16, I moved in with my dad for the first time. I was as crazy as a 16 year old can be. One day he came home and said we have work for the weekend. You're going to plant a few trees. That meant digging a hole, placing a sappling, burying it and waiting. As my dad lounged in the shade and I dug in the red Georgia clay.

He told me it would take about five years for the trees to start sprouting figs. 5 years?! There was no way. I was concerned about my basketball game that week.

Every week for five years we took care of those trees. I'll never forget the first time I ate one of our figs. It clicked. Sometimes you just have to wait. And it always takes longer than you think.