The Grind

It’s Sunday. I just heard someone say “ugh, back to the grind”, as they got up to leave. 

If you’re in America, after the big game is over tonight, you’re about 86% certain to hear someone say that same thing when they talk about what’s going on tomorrow. 

It’s very easy to automatically fear “The Grind” as a dreadfully negative thing. And it definitely can be. Studies suggest more than half of Americans feel this way.

I’ve been there, and I’m sure you have been too at some point. 

But what’s the answer then? Strive for the comfortable? Should we be looking for the career and life that throws the least resistance in our direction?

Maybe - I know a lot of people are looking for that. But that’s exactly how you stagnate.

Because if you’re not grinding, you’re not growing. 

Ask anyone successful, and most will tell you that The Grind isn’t just necessary, but responsible for a good part of their wins. 

It’s because grinding builds momentum. Even if the particular job, or project, or business never takes off quite like you hope, there’s just something about letting yourself get absorbed into your work - to care about it enough to endure frustration, self-doubt, ridicule, and failure. The universe seems to favor those bent on purposeful action. Beautiful things can happen in The Grind.

You could spend a year training for a marathon that you lose, but then find yourself in the best shape of your life. 

You could spend months of late nights coding a web app that never gets any traction, but in doing so, make yourself enormously valuable to someone with a better idea and less skill. 

You can push the limits of your craft, create something so unique that most people consider it ugly, but make yourself known as the only one that had the guts to try it. 

If you’re brave enough to risk your life and fortune in a treacherous journey into the unknown, you may not ever get to Asia, but you might stumble upon a little-known American continent. 

We shouldn’t be afraid of the Grind. We should look forward to it. Of course it sucks. It’s humbling, emotional, and downright unpleasant most of the time.

But you can love and hate it at the same time. I realize this every time someone asks me why I run so much. I just think…

I don’t love running. Sometimes I despise it. But I love having run. That love outweighs the dread of getting up and doing it in the freezing Boston morning.

My challenge to you (and to myself) is to make sure “The Grind” in life, whatever it is, is actually pushing you farther.

Genius is one-percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. - Thomas Edison

How a Website Became One of My Best Friends

Yes, I recognize the fact that I am a massive nerd for writing that title, but let me explain…

Aside from Facebook and Google products I can’t really think of a web application that I’ve willingly and actively used almost daily for over a year. Except one…

Ohlife. 

It’s so painfully simple, but so incredibly valuable to me and a handful of other people I know. 

Every day, I get an email at 8pm, asking “How was your day?”. I respond the email and it saves my response as a journal entry. 

I’m unashamed to honestly say that the app has become almost like a human friend. I tell it everything. Then it remembers. It tells me exactly what I was thinking a year ago, when I can’t even remember what I was thinking 3 days ago. 

I honestly don’t even know if the people that built it are still updating or maintaining it. It doesn’t seem to make any money, or have any other purpose than helping people like me actually maintain their journal every day. 

Since 8th grade I’ve tried to keep a journal. It’s sometimes been on paper, and sometimes in huge Word doc, but Ohlife has lasted longer than any of those notebooks or documents.

As web people, shouldn’t we be trying to build products as sticky as that?

Products that become friends - I’d love to figure out how to do that consistently. 

I think one of the secrets is that Ohlife doesn’t make me remember anything. I just have to reply.

That in itself takes away the stress and subsequent guilt that comes with trying (and then failing) to keep up with something important to me like journaling. 

It’s been a loyal ally to me, and I just wanted to share it with you in case you haven’t heard of it. 

6 Tactics for No-Fear Negotiation

In America, we have this deeply rooted fear of conflict that keeps us from fighting for what we want - especially things that are worth fighting for. I wrote about this in the context of arguing a few months ago, but today Iet’s talk about negotiating. 

To most of us (including me most of the time), negotiating anywhere outside of car dealerships, real estate offices, or Monopoly is a totally foreign concept, and absolutely terrifying. But what exactly do we fear? I think it usually falls into one of these buckets: 

• Awkwardness after rejection
• Fear of someone arguing/raising their voice. 
• Appearing cheap.
• Somehow messing up the long-term relationship if you actually get your way.

However, by letting anxiety over these short-term consequences block our judgement for the better long-term solution, we wind up with a win-lose outcome. One side is unhappy…

And it’s probably you. 

That’s obviously bad, but how do we avoid it? 

We negotiate EVERYTHING.

That’s right. Everything. We should look for for win-wins in every single area of life, in every transaction, no matter how big or small. Whether it’s a mattress, your salary, a contract, a car, a grade, or a cup of coffee that you think is too expensive, you and the other party both want to get the maximum value out of every encounter.

And here’s who we go about that big, hairy, ambitious goal…

1. Not negotiating is a negotiation tactic. 

Viewing every decision as a negotiation doesn’t mean arguing down prices all day. It’s about looking at the outcome, figuring out if it works for both sides, and weighing the cost of action to make the outcome more fair. Lots of the time, the free market does the work for us and we don’t have to say anything. I happily pay the Shawarma guy on the corner $7 for a sandwich.

2. Don’t play tic-tac-toe. 

In a game of tic-tac-toe, sometimes there’s a point when you realize you can’t win. So, naturally, your new goal is to make the other guy lose. It’s so easy to fall into this trap when you’re negotiating something. Most of the time, two parties have more to gain by figuring out how to increase the size of the whole pie, rather than trying to carve out the largest piece of a small pie. 

3. Put lots of cards on the table.

If I’m selling a computer for $1,500, and you want to pay $1,000, chances are, out of convenience and fairness, we’ll end up agreeing on $1,250. It’s a compromise. Usually, compromises are crappy outcomes for both sides. 

Instead of heading straight to the middle, find other ways you can add value to each other outside of the price point. For instance, maybe if I’m a business owner and you’re a web designer, we can find a way for each of us to win. If you offer build me a new website on top of the cash, I’d be willing to take $1,000 for the computer. Building the website only costs you time, and we both get the value we wanted. 

Compromising is apathy, and plain boring.

4. Negotiate from the same side of the table, literally.

I stole this one from Don Draper. Notice how whenever he gives a presentation in Mad Men, he’s usually standing behind the people he’s presenting to. 

If we’re talking about your new job and what your expectations are, how much better do you feel if I’m sitting next to you instead of across a big wooden desk?

Your position has a huge impact on the perception of the person you’re negotiating with. It’s a simple yet powerful way to let them know that you’re not interested in competition, but collaboration. 

5. Know your leverage. 

Your leverage is whatever you have in your pocket that’s for some reason valuable to the other person. A lot of times, we just consider our leverage the obvious (i.e. “I have programming skills”, “I have a car he wants”, “I have money to spend on this fancy suit”).

We can’t forget about the other, less obvious leverage beneath the surface (especially the leverage the other person has). Example: When you’re talking to a car salesman, what’s his incentive to sell you the car today instead of tomorrow? What’s the dollar amount? Or when you’re negotiating a contract for work, what else could this client lead to? More clients? A big account? Perks?

The key here is to just think things through beforehand and get a plan down on paper.

6. Don’t let a hardball tactic intimidate you. 

Unfortunately, when some people negotiate, they immediately resort to hardball - the “I will try to maximize my gain and minimize yours” mentality that ends up with a smaller pie. 

You have to be ready for it. One of the most common tactics is a high or low-ball offer right out of the gate. Even if you recognize it, it can cause you to doubt yourself and rethink your whole position.

Don’t let that happen. Hold your ground and ignore the mind games. 

In this case, the one thing you do have to be careful about is not revealing too much information. In a collaborative negotiation, more information is good, but in a competitive negotiation, revealing too much about yourself can come back to bite you. 

10 Things to Expect When You Learn to Code

When I decided to learn web development, it was for business reasons. I was sick of not knowing what I was talking about.

Now, I realize that it’s become much more than that. It goes beyond the new languages, concepts, and opportunities. Coding has changed the way I think - both for building applications and doing any other productive activity.

These 10 points are all things that I’ve experienced multiple times during my self-education, and based on my conversations with other developers, I think they’re fairly universal. Like the ebook I wrote for business students, this mostly speaks to the beginner, but I’d love to hear feedback from people that are more experienced than I am.

1. You will realize how smart you aren’t.

It’s easy to let it go to your head when someone tells you how “you’re such a bright guy.” All that goes out the window when you’re just getting started with a new language. Smooth talking and good grades can sometimes let us hide how lost we are. Coding’s not like that. It will slap you in the face when you’re wrong. It’s like a brutal cense that only excepts perfection.

2. You will run into walls that make you feel like giving up.

Learning how to code has a way of playing out like a video game. Every level seems to have a “mini boss” you have to defeat in order to progress. You can avoid that dragon/robot/giant octopus as long as you want and wander around the same level, but you’ll never improve. Facing a problem head on is painful at first, but when you eventually beat it, and then another, and another, you gradually build the confidence to take on almost anything. So, when you run into a problem that seems insurmountable, when you feel like throwing up your hands and closing the computer until “tomorrow”, take a deep breath and dive in headfirst. The pain of error messages goes away relatively quickly, but the looming knowledge in the back of your head about a battle you’re running away from will eat you up.

3. You will “waste” hours at a time doing something wrong.

I say waste, because that’s what it feels like sometimes. You spend an entire night creating a set of functions that you go to bed happy with, only to realize the next day that they’re totally inconsistent with the system as a whole, and you have to redo them. It feels like a waste, but it’s not. You’re always building the logical muscles, whether your code sees production or not. The key is to record what you did wrong and actually act upon your lesson the next time it comes up (as with anything in life).

4. You will find a deep respect for the masters.

After you’ve worked your way through some of the educational mud, it starts to dawn on you… those awkward looking nerdy programmer guys from high school are freaking geniuses. And what about this language I’m coding in… someone created it. And the teams of smart people that build the fast, effective, user-friendly apps we use every day and whine about when something doesn’t look right? It’s humbling on a whole new level.

5. You will stop BSing.

Coding forces you to get it right. You can’t skip things. People that go into non-technical college majors (particularly business) can usually find a way around the harder parts of an assignment. You can get pretty far with a killer opening paragraph, a sleek logo design, some financial “estimates” and lots of appendices. When you learn to code, everything becomes more black and white. There is a right and wrong (a true and false if you will). If you’re a marketer, I have to warn you, it will likely make you resent a lot of your own habits, especially when it comes to explaining how your idea will work. You’ll definitely be more direct, proof-driven, and effective, but the transition might be tough.

6. You will learn how to learn.

For the same reason that coding will push you away from bad BSing habits, it will teach you how to learn. That goes for everything - not just computer stuff. I never expected it, but coding changed the way I learn new songs on the piano and guitar. It also changed the way I write essays, and it helped me develop patience for instruction manuals and cooking recipes that I never had before.

7. You will learn the importance of creating systems.

Once you know your way around a new language, the best thing to do is build something. Of course, the first thing you build is never very good. Mine was a complete mess (NUFeed.Me: the dining hall menu reminder that sent its users about 120 emails one day because I didn’t close a loop). Messy habits are amplified exponentially in development. You can’t hide from sloppiness, because it comes back to bite you very quickly. So you eliminate it by necessity (which is more than I can say about my kitchen sometimes).

8. You will learn to know what you don’t know.

The biggest challenge of starting to learn to code isn’t syntax or problem sets… it’s the fear of the “blob”. The blob is the huge mass of indecipherable letters, numbers, and characters you see when you open up a new coding tutorial. It’s ugly and freaking scary. Why? Because you have no idea what you’re looking at. You don’t know where to start. It’s the same for almost everything else worth learning in life. There’s that moment when you think “holy crap, how is this possible?” What’s awesome is the moment you realize that breaking down the blob is a two-step process. First, you learn what you need to learn, then you learn it. That key step translates across life.

9. You will think about EVERYTHING differently.

I think people from non-technical backgrounds that go into technical fields share this crazy shift in perspective that comes only from radically transforming your thought process. Only now do I realize how illogically my thought patterns have developed without the pressure to form coherent operations in the form of code. One of my good friends that just made it through the javascript learning curve told me how he’s seeing software applications that don’t exist. That weird collision of perspectives is where I believe lots of great ideas can emerge.

10. You will wonder why you didn’t do this years ago.

I’m glad I learned to code in college, because it has made me realize that I can use software as a platform for creativity. I do question why I imagined coding would be a boring, monotonous activity for so long. Having worked in both marketing and technology now, I realize that your ability to be creative isn’t defined by your job title. It really just comes down to your desire to be creative and how much you care about the thing you’re building.

Did I miss anything?

On looking for problems to solve…

It’s now been almost 4 months since I got back from Africa, and there’s been a few things that have been constantly on my mind since then. One of them is this:

Everybody has problems, and everybody has their problem, regardless of external circumstances.

It can be really easy to come out of a 3rd-world nation and instantly say, “wow, we sure do have it great here. Why complain about anything?”

But the truth is that, as humans, we are constantly comparing our situation with the situation around us. Letting that get out of hand can drive you crazy, but even if it’s subconcious, you know if something is “bad” because it is less than the standard that you perceive around you.

A clogged toilet is really no big deal where I was (a flushing toilet, for that matter, was a HUGE deal). Here, a clogged toilet is a crime against humanity that must be fixed at once, or face the wrath of your roommates.

Here’s my point: We shouldn’t write off problems because someone else in the world “has it worse.”

There can be great opportunities hidden in what we don’t think is that big of a deal. You can really only discover it through talking to others and genuinely learning about their perception, and their world.

Don’t Waste Your Time Thinking

I’m very thankful to have a business mentor that is massively successful and eager to help me through the growing pains of starting up.

Recently, we had a phone call and I was rambling on about a vague future concern I had, which I knew wasn’t pressing at this very moment, but felt obligated to ask about anyway.

He stopped me mid-sentence and said this…

Stop. Don’t waste your time thinking about that.

For some reason, that hit me hard, and I had to pause.

At first, my instinct was to push back - “Of course I’m supposed to think about these things. I have to plan for it, right?”

Wrong. Thinking and stressing about a problem that doesn’t exist yet won’t make solving the problem easier down the road.

He wasn’t saying “don’t plan.” He was saying, “Stop and look around you. This is the moment - you need to win this battle before you start thinking about the other battles that may or may not come up, much less the war.”

Most of the time, passive thinking is probably a waste of time. I’m talking about the chatter that bounces around your head when you first wake up in the morning, or the cloudy feelings of doubt you have when you find yourself waiting too long for an important message to come.

Focusing and thinking in the moment creates real products, strong relationships, and real value. Thinking about the vague haunting of your self-doubt does nothing.

Getting Lucky

As a 22-year old, I probably don’t know enough people to make a fair assessment of this, simply because I haven’t been around long enough, but here it goes…

I’ve noticed that among all the people I’ve ever met that have “gotten lucky” in business, or their careers, they actually share some similar qualities:

• They have all put themselves in a position to get lucky.
• That means they have sacrificed security in some way and taken a serious risk to pursue something they felt strongly about.
• Before they were lucky, lots of people said that their time they could be using their talents more effectively somewhere else.
• They were ready to put in the work and succeed without the friendly hand of luck.

I’ve spent a significant amount of my short career hoping to get lucky like those people. But I wasn’t in the right position, I didn’t make a real sacrifice, I acted to quickly upon other peoples’ well-intentioned warnings, and was not ready to commit to a project in the absence of any success or recognition.

Then I decided to stop doing that (thanks for those tough words a while ago Josiah - not sure if you know how much that impacted me).

Maybe your path sounds similar to this:

• You dive in headfirst to project after project, only to get lured away by another one when it loses the “fire”.
• When you see articles or headlines about successful people, there’s an internal jealousy you try to cover up, but can’t seem to shake.
• Your conversations are filled with words like “maybe”, “hopefully”, or “someday”.

I read this scripture the other day that really hit home about this:

Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty. - Proverbs 28:19

Farms are hard work, but when you plant them, they grow and provide. Planting things in business (and life) like farms means you’re building on a solid foundation, with ongoing rewards from your sweat as your work grows with you.

Pursuing wisps of emotion every time you see a new face on a magazine cover, however, will wind up sapping your energy and leaving you empty. It just puts off the day when you realize you need to be building farms.

You can’t have a lucky harvest if you never plowed, planted, or cultivated in the first place.

Why We Got Rid of the Internet

A few weeks ago, my roommate Greg and I unplugged the Comcast internet box and stuffed it in the closet.

Why would we do such a thing?

I’m a web developer. He runs a marketing agency. How on earth can we function without the Internet?

Before I get to that, here’s why it had to go…

The Internet tricks us into thinking we’re busy when we’re really not.

Busy is an epidemic of our culture. We are exponentially more busy than we’ve ever been. But we’re not exponentially more productive.

When you’ve got a project to do on the computer, that block of time is when you’re “working”, but if you’re to be honest with yourself, how much of that time is spent reading articles, checking Facebook, linkedin, etc. I know it’s always quite a bit for me.

But it’s just a matter of self-control right?

Wrong. Human willpower is no match for infinite information (distraction) at your fingertips.

No matter how good you are at zen - I don’t care if you’re a Level 10 monk - you cannot focus on one thing for any length of time with so many other things so easily available.

It’s not because you’re weak. It’s not because you have ADD. It’s because you’re human.

We are naturally inclined towards the path of least resistance.

When you’re working on something worthwhile - writing, designing, coding, planning, studying - it’s hard. That’s why it’s worthwhile. How much easier is it to take a break and head over to skim the headlines? Or what about if an email has arrived in the last 15 minutes? Or, how many likes am I up to on that clever status?

When you hit a bump in the road in your work, you are hardwired to look for a different, smoother path. Enter Internet.

How do we solve this problem?

Take away the path.

I don’t think I would have made this decision if I didn’t go to Africa. When we lived at times without Internet for 2 or 3 days, I still found myself opening up my computer (as habit would demand) to go down the list (Gmail… Facebook… News) hoping I would have a connection.

After the “SERVER NOT FOUND” error message came for about the 30th time in a row, I started to realize how pathetically weak-willed I am when it comes to shutting out distraction.

High-speed internet turns distraction into an automatic super-charged demon elephant that stampedes over the best work you NEED to create and the best relationships you NEED to be fostering away from your desk.

Since unplugging (speaking for both me and Greg)…

• We’ve reconnected with people that we haven’t had real conversations with in years.
• We’ve gotten more exercise and generally done more stuff outside.
• We haven’t lost any productivity. Internet is always less than a 5-minute walk away when we need it.
• We’ve actually become more productive. There’s very little you absolutely need the Internet for. It’s usually a momentary thing that you can write down and do when you’re ready to get up and take a short walk. When you don’t have the convenient escape hatch for your focus, it’s much easier to focus.

Want to try?

To be honest, it was a scary decision. I’m half embarrassed to say that, but the other half of me knows that most people probably feel the same way.

If you really want to make positive changes in your life and work, just muster up a few seconds of courage and pull the plug. I promise, you will thank yourself later.

5 Reminders on How to Avoid the Post-Grad Freakout

Now that the dust has settled for the class of 2012, the race has started. Post-grad anxiety is a real thing, and it’s rising. In the noise, it’s easy to make quick, panicked decisions.

I find myself in a weird position these days…

Most of my non-Northeastern friends have just graduated college, but since my school is a 5-year school, I still have 6 months as a student.

As a result, I can feel this rising pressure that most of my peers are starting to experience, but I don’t really feel it, since I’m outside of that bubble for the time being.

Now, I can see first hand how people end up in jobs they don’t like. When you see your best friends, one by one, all announcing their new employment, it can be intimidating if you don’t know what you want.

If you’re unsure about what you want to do, the natural inclination is to feverishly search for something, ANYTHING to get rid of that painful -unemployed- label.

I’m feeling the strength of this nameless force (and I’m not even there yet), so I can only imagine what others my age are going through. Sometimes when there’s that much pressure, we can act irrationally, and get stuck in a situation that doesn’t maximize our abilities or ambition. Worse, we might just end up dreading work everyday. 

Here are 5 things to remember if your a 22ish-year old in this situation:

1. Getting dirty is not a bad thing.

We have this picture that’s been thrust upon us of what a sexy job is - you know the one I’m talking about. The one with the 20th story Manhattan corner office with the exposed brick walls, and oriental rug, and an espresso machine.

Or the one with the impressive LinkedIn title at the big name company that will impress everyone from high school about how you’re “going places”. Yes, everyone wants those jobs. But there are only so many of those spots reserved for people our age.

And THOUSANDS if not MILLIONS of people chasing them.

I’m not saying don’t go for sexy jobs like that. They’re cool for a reason. But remember, if I’m an employer and I have thousands of people gunning for the same job, I have infinitely more leverage than each one of those resumes in the enormous pile.

Don’t ignore the unsexy, or things that require you to get your college-educated hands dirty.

You could find the opportunity of a lifetime because nobody else thought to look there.

2. Facebook probably can’t help your job prospects. It WILL make you feel like crap though.

People are excited when good things happen, so Facebook gives our generation the outlet to announce. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The thing is, during this time of our lives, a lot of things are happening quickly, between jobs, engagements, weddings, etc., and when you see all the best things going on in someone else’s life, it only exacerbates the lack of that thing in your own life.

So, if you’re in this valley between “graduated” and “career”, take a break from the social network. Remember that your mood doesn’t need to be affected by what others are up to.

3. Getting mad at the economy and/or the government won’t help either.

Yes, jobs are hard to find now. Yes, the government is far from perfect. Yes, the media is deceptive. Yes, there is favoritism in our country. Yes, bankers still make a lot of money.

And you know what? We can’t really do anything about it for the time being. Excuses make your problem go away for about 5 seconds. You eventually have to deal with it, regardless of external circumstances. Might as well speed up the process and get out the rants of unfairness right now.

Then proceed to build your empire in spite of it.

4. You have your whole life for the dream house, car, boat, etc. But you have limited time with this degree of freedom.

We all want money, but most of us are not sure what we really want it for. We just know we’re supposed to get it, because once we have it, life will be good.

Over the last 2 weeks I must have heard this phrase about 6 or 7 times…

“Youth is wasted on the young.”

Since I’m still in that group, I don’t think I fully understand it yet. But what I’m thinking is that there is a lot we take for granted as 20-somethings because we never have experienced the real responsibility of a grown-up. But we think we have responsibilities that prevent us from doing the life-changing stuff we read about in books and watch in movies.

But then the real world hits us like a freight train and we realize our “responsibilities” were really nothing holding us back. They were just excuses. But now we’re stuck.

What am I saying? Avoid debt like it’s the devil breathing down your neck.

If you already have loans, get a cheap car if you need one and live as frugally as possible to pay them off ASAP.

We have more freedom than ever to go out and do crazy stuff because we want to. In 20 years, would you rather tell your kids about how you backpacked through Asia, how you failed gloriously at a business you put your heart into, how you moved out to LA to pursue your movie producer dreams, how you biked across the country one summer, or how you showed off your new BMW when all your friends had old Fords?

5. Seriously consider entrepreneurship as a Real Job.

It’s scary - actually terrifying. But almost every successful entrepreneur I’ve ever spoken with has said something along these lines…

“My only regret is that I didn’t start businesses earlier.”

Most of us are financially poor right now, and technically not in a great position to start something. But we are time-, freedom-, and imagination-rich. We have the skills to get something done, but still the childlike naivety to believe it can actually work.

If you have that idea, and you are ready to test it, market it, make it, and sell it with everything you have, what’s honestly the worst that could happen?

Creating a business is obviously not for everyone, because it’s stressful, painful, and forces you to make sacrifices that employees don’t need to make.

But as I’ve said before, we’re in a unique time in history when a kid fresh out of college can do A LOT with very few resources. Everyone can do this, even if you’re not starting or running a business.

At the end of the day, make good decisions. Not “OMG I NEED A JOB” decisions.

Argue More

Since getting back to America, I’ve been picking up on these little nuances we have; particularly the ones that are in stark contrast to Africa.

I’ve noticed, for instance, how afraid we are of arguing. I am terrified of it, but I didn’t even know.

When something isn’t right, if it’s a place or situation where you’re “not allowed to argue”, we’ll go to such lengths to shy away from conflict that we let situations balloon into monsters that end with blown up business transactions, broken relationships, and problems that nag us for years because we don’t have the cajones to face them.

Often, all you need is one good argument.

Take, for example, a roommate dispute in America. I’ve seen this happen lots of times. Both people avoid the room as much as possible, and when they’re in the room together, they don’t speak a word. This also holds true in the office and the classroom.

In Cameroon, when there’s a dispute, you can hear it in the street. It’s loud and emotional, but never violent. Tempers flare up and everything gets left out on the table. But you know what? In 15 minutes the dispute has a conclusion and the two parties can get back on with their lives. No need for talking behind the other’s back. No need for months of complaining. No cryptic Facebook statuses. The issue is settled.

This isn’t just about relationships either. When you’re in the market, argument is the means to fairness. When you want to buy something, the merchant often gives a price that’s 2 or 3 times what it should be (sometimes even 10x if you’re an American). It’s your job to argue it down - all the time. Otherwise, you end up getting screwed and not only do you lose money, but you’re going to feel taken advantage of.

Does that seem familiar? In the last day, how many people have you heard complaining about their jobs? That they’re not paid enough, that they can’t get off for a vacation, that the guy that sits next to them talks too loud, that they don’t have enough responsibility?

These are long-term consequences of not arguing. Consequences of fear. We back down enough times that we develop the backbone of a newt.

Thunderstorms are like arguments. They suddenly, powerfully, and violently even out differences in atmospheric pressure. They might be scary, but ultimately, they correct an imbalance.

If there’s pressure building up in your personal or professional life, is it because you’re afraid to put your stake in the ground and do battle?

Arguing is not mean.

You’re an adult and you know the difference. Arguments are not pleasant. They are messy. Willingly thrusting yourself into a mess goes against our nature. But one well-timed argument can prevent years of frustration.