Merlin Mann: Scared Shitless
You can be scared and still do it anyway. Regardless of whatever it is.
-Merlin Mann
Merlin Mann gave a talk at Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand in February that has been sweeping around the blogosphere in various ways. It was titled “Scared Shitless.” I first heard about it during his excellent podcast with Dan Benjamin, Back to Work, but couldn’t find the time to listen to it. I did today, and it’s a wonderful message that everyone should take in if they can afford the time (only 30 minutes long).
Merlin’s talk is about fear, which has been coming up more and more for me. A part of it is that I have a feeling that I am attracting these ideas to help encourage me with my own ventures. It is scary not having a regular job and not knowing where your next cheque may come from or whether it will be enough. There have been plenty of times when I have been scared myself that I have highlighted a bit in previous posts. Here were my biggest fears that happened at the end of 2009, moving into 2010:
- I quit a well-paying, well-liked job where I had been for 3.5 years.
- I moved away from a community that I liked a lot and went to a place where I knew nothing.
- I was about to become a father.
Having one of those things happen is scary enough. Having all three happen within a month of each other?
That’s really fucking scary.
I don’t want to focus on myself too much, mainly because I’m not in the mood to do so at this point. What I do want to write about is how fear and overcoming fear is turning into a big thing. Let’s call it what it is:
Fear is to the 2010′s what Passion was to the 2000′s.
Makes sense. Once you discover your passion, the next step is overcoming you fear of taking the next step. Boat loads of people are overcoming those fears recently and doing amazing work. If you don’t believe me, read through the archives of Ashley‘s series Fear, Exposed (the latest features Tricia Karp). Those stories will help you realize that your fears are really nothing to be scared of. Everything can be solved and made better.
As Merlin Mann said so brilliantly in his presentation, quoting Bob Parsons of GoDaddy, “They can’t eat you.“
Of course, there are different kinds of fear. The one kind I see most often, and I do myself, is fear of the Publish button. Everyone tends to write something, hit Save Draft, and then never come back to it again. Or they will read something and trash it completely. Everyone wants to write epic shit.
But that puts an extreme amount of pressure on you as a writer. Words flow better if they are written out right away. Lots of editing does not improve the quality of the piece (sometimes it does), but it does take away a lot of the human aspect of writing. It is one of the reasons why I despise people who re-write their blog posts to improve the SEO quality of them.
People should be writing for people, not machines and search engines.
Justin Williams wrote about publishing right away in his piece, Let the Fear Out. On a similar vein, Corbett Barr wrote about Do It Now, Do It Live.
Corbett asks a great question, “Isn’t blogging supposed to be a flexible, creative, experimental way to connect with other people?”
I have always tried to be a bit more experimental in the subjects I cover here, how I write about it, and even try to push boundaries at times to see what happens (ie Gaming the System, which got my account suspended from Triberr – my Twitter feed is now free).
Everytime I log onto my WordPress Dashboard, I look up at the top-right and see a little form to QuickPress. How many of us actually use it, though?
WordPress also has a bookmarklet to QuickPress a link. But I bet most of us don’t utilize it very often.
I think I will try a bit of a 30 Day experiment for myself, and focus on writing short pieces using either one of those tools without any heavy editing and see what happens.
No images, no videos, no linking.
Just words.
Does that scare me? Of course, but I’ll do it.
Does working as a freelancer scare me? It does, but I’m doing it.
Does being a father scare me? Absolutely. But I’m still doing it.
There are a lot of fears to be conquered. Be like Ev Bogue and create your own Scared Shitless Manifesto and start living again.
re: Gaming the System
As I mentioned in my comments on that post, experimenting is generally a good thing. I love SCIENCE! (said with Bill Nye the Science guy’s enthusiasm)
But there’s a fine line. And your attitude counts. You pushed the boundaries in a disrespectful, irresponsible and adolescent spirit.
You acted without any shred of compassion, caring and responsibility. If you fear repeating the same mistake, you should be afraid. Not of fear itself. But of your self. [grin]
So you got me wondering if you can distinguish the difference between SCIENCE! and malicious pranks of curiosity (Zuckerburging). BTW, Marky Zuckerburg is not trying to be an asshole. He just *is* an asshole. (Ref to the movie)
Oh- I misspelled his name intentionally.
And don’t gloat on how your Twitter feed is now supposedly spam-free. In fact, your present feed is infinitely poorer thereby.
Yeah, this is tough love, my friend. But I have to call it like I see it.
They can’t eat you, but they can ignore you. And as I mentioned in my blog post, How to Succeed in The Thank You Economy, obscurity may be worse than death. http://wp.me/pbg0R-8N
Last but not least, your Zuckerburging was doomed before you started the blog post. Because the design was preposterous. You can’t make a meme with 20 tweets (auto or otherwise). My best guess is that you’d need about 500 tweets/retweets by influencers including at least 20 of the top influencers. In other words, DUDE, you don’t have a clue about social media dynamics.
But that’s ok, James. I know you’re still figuring things out. But you don’t have to learn by crashing through like a bull in a china shop.
I was fully aware of what I was doing. I even mentioned in my post the possibility of being suspended from Triberr. My message got out, people became aware of what was happening, and put the kabosh on things rather quickly.
I don’t need a lesson in social media and how things become a meme and go viral. I’ve been using the internet for 15+ years and understand how things get passed along. Have I created something that has gone viral? No, but I choose not to participate in those games. I know it takes more than 20 people sharing a link to create a meme. It was a joke. Simple as that.
Obscurity is only worse than death if your aim is to get your message heard and you thrive on becoming a celebrity or A-lister blogger.
My blogs have been in obscurity since Day 1 when I started my first one on LiveJournal years ago. I don’t care about having a million Twitter followers or having my posts retweeted 100 times.
There are millions of blogs out there, and according to Alexa, I’m in the top 400,000. That’s quite an achievement for me considering that I’m not commenting on hundreds of blogs a day, or taking out Facebook ads, etc.
If obscurity is worse than death, than that also means that there are millions of bloggers and billions of people who are living a life worse than death.
As far as I’m concerned, you’re beating a dead horse. I’ve been removed from Triberr, and perhaps I have been ignored by people, but I will keep pumping out my content and let the Internet decide my fate.
Oh, and my Twitter feed is spam-free in the sense that all the content on there is of my own choosing. With your feed, the majority of the posts are from Triberr. Have you read and approved of them all? Why hasn’t your Tribe started posting comments on all your blog posts? Have you asked yourself why you interact on their blogs but there is little in return for your own?
I don’t appreciate being called down as if I’m a clueless buffoon just doing things in hopes of making them work. I understand how the system works, and am choosing to play by different rules. I prefer to be a lone wolf than a sheep in the herd.
Let’s just agree to drop this whole issue.
Thanks for getting me to see the Merlin video. Honestly, I didn’t like his presentation style. But Merlin’s message was interesting and true.
You scored some points with me for that recommendation. Prolly that doesn’t mean much to you. I have no idea as I can’t read your mind. But that’s something you want to keep doing. Scoring points.
The presentation from Merlin is a bit different from his previous presentations, mainly because he was scared about doing this one. All that sniffling? He was actually crying. He talks about it in the podcast he does with Dan Benjamin. In a lot ways, doing presentations is similar to being an actor on stage, as they take on a different persona to sell their message more. I don’t believe Merlin was acting in this presentation, making it a little more genuine.
It does matter that I “score points” with people. That’s the whole aim of my writing is to open people up to new ideas and people they may not be aware of. I hope more people watch this video to put a better perspective on their own lives.