A lot of people tend to write self-help books these days. My heart melts when I see so many accomplished gurus willing to selflessly help other people for as little as a lot of money.
Writing such material is a lucrative business and involves very little effort; it is as easy as copying and pasting some text from other books you can find on-line, websites, and social media throughout most of your book. And as difficult as some typing if the sources you get your, um, inspiration from are not available in digital format. Regardless of the path you choose, what makes such an endeavour so simple is the quality of your audience. In fact, the only challenge is to aim low enough to reach a vast mass of gullible idiots.
Here is how.
First, introduction. You cannot just jump in a book like this without a proper introduction. These are four to five easy pages, which is a lot in this case. Here you thank your life partner for stimulating your creative juices for optimal flow. You may also throw in some thanks for your parents, children, teacher or even your pet. Its silent but continuous and unconditional love, etcetera... It does not matter much who or what, if it stirs cheap emotion. Then, you thank your agent and publisher for the tremendous support they have provided. This is because you cannot really be honest and bastardize them for their fees and percentages, since they can see it before it goes to print. Also, you are buttering them to take mercy and publish your next treasure of wisdom, should you not get enough money from this one. However, a bit of genuine gratitude is due since they have published your garbage, which is quite an accomplishment for you. And testament for their greed and lack of standards.
Then you move on to the next introduction, in which you explain why you are giving away the secret of success. It is not about selling nonsense for twenty-nine to forty-nine dollars to a few thousand
losers too busy daydreaming about a scheme to get rich quickly that
they fail to see this is just your scheme to get rich quickly.
An easy approach is to mention a made-up event that changed your life, a dramatic turning point that defined your future, successful self. Like you were feeling stuck at work, you were struggling with your personal life, your friends seemed to distance themselves from you and you felt utterly lost. You seemed to be the only sad human left on Earth, struggling to breathe while people around you seemed happy and without a worry. Until one morning, after yet another sleepless night, and before a crucial event at work that day. Your job was on the line or maybe you already got fired. You felt your life was over and were contemplating jumping on the line and end it all as the subway was approaching. Or even jumping from the bridge, if you feel public transportation lacks gravitas. In which case, you may consider swapping the incoming subway with a silent, ice-cold, deep, grey river... It is at that exact point that you witnessed the revelation, the ray of sunshine in the rainy day (the ray of sunshine also works in the subway station, in this case it is a metaphor), the answer to all your questions, and how easy it was. This is what you want to share with your dear audience in the following section of the book. Keep it accessible, people of low intellect like to relate to such stories if they believe it could happen to them, too. It brings you closer to your audience and keeps them engaged enough not to think of a refund.
Once introduction is sorted, you need to get some content. This is about your story, your experiences. And your teachings, too; challenges that moulded you in the successful writer and leader and successful entrepreneur that you are today.
Luckily, the internet provides enough stories that might have happened to you. And it provides the teachings, too. If using a search engine sounds intimidating, get a Facebook or LinkedIn account and become friends people working in sales, marketing or as office managers (the politically-correct title for receptionist). Keep your eye on pictures of a seashore, possibly with a shell and definitely with some text in quotes. Focus on keywords like humbled, overwhelmed, awed, blessed, reverence and wonder. That is the title of your next chapter. And the content is one click away. In less than a week, you should have gathered more than enough material. Other gem indicators include pictures of famous people, also with a quote. If you want to take things to the next level, check out for posts which contain
pictures of airports, boardrooms with smiling people coming out of them and shaking hands,
or a man in a suit holding a pen at a desk. The more blurred the
background, the better the potential for insight. Or at least a tree in the window and sunshine flooding the room.
Since this is the lengthier part, here is another trick to maintain a good flow:
typeface and size. Quotes in Helvetica and Arial, and in smaller size,
are about darker experiences; use these first, to make the reader
appreciate more what already have but forgot they did. And as you
get progress towards the end, shift towards items in Comic Sans; they
are about optimism and positive outlook. The bigger the font, the
more uplifting the outcome. Which is a great technique to segue into the happy conclusion.
Yes, you are almost there. And at this point the reader is so enthralled that she will not even care you did not really explain that dramatic turning point you promised in the introduction and what exactly was your contribution.
All these elements can be combined in an uplifting pot-pourri of banalities that people who shared them on social media desperately need. Your book will not be reheated tea, it will be the elixir of wisdom which comes to reinforce what they already thought they knew when they shared that link. But now it is even better, it is in a book.
Once you gathered about a hundred and fifty pages of wisdom and "personal" examples, you can prepare for the ending. This would be the conclusion of everything you have shared so far, your recipe for their success. Hope for a better self and future. Hope for better life. Hope is priceless. And thirty dollars is a very reasonable price for that.
If this is not your first book and the previous one sold well, the price tag can go higher. Much higher. If only one is not enough, do not see that as a failure. Think of the next one as progress.
I know a guy who can barely read and wrote four in less than three years. Each more expensive than the previous. Because he is a famous athlete (he has nice abs and was cast in some French car ads in which he speaks about being successful), people keep on paying. Probably eating cake during reading, and dreaming about how they will be as lean and successful as he is. Starting from next Monday, definitely. In the mean-time, they can also enlist in his on-line ten-weeks personalised program.
Oh, and one more thing. The last bit of effort is for the last page, were some quotes and endorsements are due. Luckily, this is the publisher's job, and it boils down to making up some nice quotes from fictitious newspapers, like "I was torn to pieces" or "It truly changed the way I look at life". Pseudo-famous people like former Big Brother contestants or X-Factor panellists that have their own cooking show make great endorsers. Pretty much anyone who is on TV or in the newspapers and is not currently involved in a sex scandal will do. They have a very important role: to distract you for the price at the bottom.
18 February, 2018
11 February, 2018
Personaliy types. (A useless guide to superficial discrimination)
During a discussion to a colleague about another colleague that was not in the office I had some sincere comments about said absent colleague. The kind of comments that are considered annoying and make people uncomfortable mainly because they are, you know, based on facts and reality. The colleague that was present mentioned he noticed I have the tendency to point out things like a, b, and c repeatedly about the colleague that was not present. (To be clear, we were not debating letters in the alphabet, they are just placeholders for things the colleague -absent at that moment- does and which I notice to be relevant and worth mentioning.) In my defense, I justified this by mentioning that the absent colleague kept on doing things a, b, and c on a regular basis. And that I was being polite by not going through the entire list of other things worth making comments about, in which case the Latin alphabet could not provide enough letters that would allow me to enumerate each qualifying as relevant to the conversation. I was only pointing to the more frequent ones which were enough to prove my point. The colleague that was present mentioned this type of reasoning was quite typical for my type of personality. After a slight pause of a confused "Huh?" accompanied by raised shoulders on mine and a semi-smile on his side, my semi-silent demand for details was met with an acronym of four or five letters. At this point the colleague that was present... you know what, from now on I will refer to the present colleague as X and to the missing
colleague as Y. This should keep things shorter. So: at this point X had to take an urgent call and said he would send me a link, then left the office and the conversation was over. Hmm, this idea may have been more helpful earlier on than at the very end of the story involving X and Y. Alas, I will keep in
mind for another time when I recount events involving a present person
(X, see?) and a missing one (or Y, as you already know). Live and learn...
The link shortly arrived in my inbox and I put aside all the other things I was not doing at that moment, clicked, and landed a website with a personality test. Which I took promptly. And I did great. And then I repeated it some hours later during a meeting. And then again two more times during the following inactivity peaks. Each time with different results, but still great. It turns out I have at least four or five personalities. There were about sixteen of them in total, but it is only fair to assume the other ones are not so great. After all, there must be something available for the vast majority of the population, too.
About a week after this I discussed these tests with X (that is the colleague that was present, please keep up). He said the two* personality types I came up with are very similar, and that slight variations are to be expected based on mood, time of day, tiredness and so on. And that both were pretty much what he expected. Mainly because he had the same type. The only significant difference between us was that he is introvert and I am not. Based on this, my first conclusion was that he thought the same about Y (the colleague that... please stop, ok?), but he did not voice it. What I can only think of as his upcoming acknowledgement was interrupted by the appearance of Y, at which point the conversation was obviously hijacked to more exciting topics such as a, b, and c. My self-preservation mechanism automatically triggered: I put my noise-cancelling headphones on and pretended to focus on the screen and carried on with further conclusions, among which:
- Surgical precision is not the first thing I would think of to describe such tests. They tend to attach labels that are not always relevant, and in some cases quite way off. A bit like someone going through a stack of résumés when looking to hire someone. You cannot really put people in a box based on two sheets with things they (claim to) have done professionally or on how they have been answering to ambiguous questions for thirty-five minutes. (It only takes twenty, but I needed a fifteen minutes break to eat some apples and check another important email about a drone being attacked by a falcon.) Maybe you could, in some extreme situations. If one of their bullets on the list of computer skills is binge drinking and reckless gambling, you can decide right there and then if they will make to the short list for the interviewing round at your bank. Or if they mention a final solution for over-population based on eye color and skin pigment. But most of the times you cannot.
- If X was my girlfriend she would make sure to point out that my different personality types only mean I am unreliable, like that time when she said to wait her up until 11 because she had something important to tell me when she would return from going out with her friends. And I did not listen to her and went to bed at 1:30AM, before she returned.
- After all this intellectual effort I am getting peckish, and I should move my focus on what I would have for lunch. Also, I need to buy some apples on the way back from the restaurant.
*To be honest, I did not come up with four or five different personality types, but two. To be even more honest, I did not even get two. I only got one, because there is no way I would bother to take the test more than one time. Even once was draining enough. However, that would have led to a much shorter story and less thorough and useless guide. That would defeat the purpose of the explanation in the title
The link shortly arrived in my inbox and I put aside all the other things I was not doing at that moment, clicked, and landed a website with a personality test. Which I took promptly. And I did great. And then I repeated it some hours later during a meeting. And then again two more times during the following inactivity peaks. Each time with different results, but still great. It turns out I have at least four or five personalities. There were about sixteen of them in total, but it is only fair to assume the other ones are not so great. After all, there must be something available for the vast majority of the population, too.
About a week after this I discussed these tests with X (that is the colleague that was present, please keep up). He said the two* personality types I came up with are very similar, and that slight variations are to be expected based on mood, time of day, tiredness and so on. And that both were pretty much what he expected. Mainly because he had the same type. The only significant difference between us was that he is introvert and I am not. Based on this, my first conclusion was that he thought the same about Y (the colleague that... please stop, ok?), but he did not voice it. What I can only think of as his upcoming acknowledgement was interrupted by the appearance of Y, at which point the conversation was obviously hijacked to more exciting topics such as a, b, and c. My self-preservation mechanism automatically triggered: I put my noise-cancelling headphones on and pretended to focus on the screen and carried on with further conclusions, among which:
- Surgical precision is not the first thing I would think of to describe such tests. They tend to attach labels that are not always relevant, and in some cases quite way off. A bit like someone going through a stack of résumés when looking to hire someone. You cannot really put people in a box based on two sheets with things they (claim to) have done professionally or on how they have been answering to ambiguous questions for thirty-five minutes. (It only takes twenty, but I needed a fifteen minutes break to eat some apples and check another important email about a drone being attacked by a falcon.) Maybe you could, in some extreme situations. If one of their bullets on the list of computer skills is binge drinking and reckless gambling, you can decide right there and then if they will make to the short list for the interviewing round at your bank. Or if they mention a final solution for over-population based on eye color and skin pigment. But most of the times you cannot.
- If X was my girlfriend she would make sure to point out that my different personality types only mean I am unreliable, like that time when she said to wait her up until 11 because she had something important to tell me when she would return from going out with her friends. And I did not listen to her and went to bed at 1:30AM, before she returned.
- After all this intellectual effort I am getting peckish, and I should move my focus on what I would have for lunch. Also, I need to buy some apples on the way back from the restaurant.
*To be honest, I did not come up with four or five different personality types, but two. To be even more honest, I did not even get two. I only got one, because there is no way I would bother to take the test more than one time. Even once was draining enough. However, that would have led to a much shorter story and less thorough and useless guide. That would defeat the purpose of the explanation in the title
04 February, 2018
A useless guide to travelling light in a dark place
... or any place. I added dark in the title for comedic effect. You know,
contrast. Like blond ivory and every other race. Anyway, you are here now.
Moving on.
There are fewer things in life more entertaining than someone pulling a 16-ton suitcase on a gravel road somewhere down a hill. Except probably when they stop for a selfie. With either a tablet or a pink gold phone. All this on high heels, if that someone is a woman. I would say most of the time she is a woman, but I do not want to cause gender issues in this guide. So, to keep everybody happy, it could be a man on high heels. And yes, color is not important either. What is important is that you will not be laughing so hard two hours later when their armoire is crushing your leg during the bus trip to the next resort. For she will be sat next to you. (Or he. Or... Enough, I hope you got the point.) From the entire bus, she will pick you. If anything, you came together; she is -in reverse order of misfortune- your wife, your girlfriend, or your travel partner. Either way, you are stuck. And at the end of the ride you will be dragging your own shed-sized suitcase, limping on your crushed leg. Of course, you have a hernia-inducing suitcase, too. Maybe it is because she did not have enough room in hers, in which case there are 8 pairs of shoes packed tidily among the long dresses mandatory for the weekend (hers holds the make-up and the lighter things). Or maybe, if it is not her stuff, there are your three-piece suits with matching ties, shirts, socks, and belts. And the medicine. You never know when business opportunity knocks or polar mosquitoes might bite you with yellow fever. You are prepared for everything. And the price of not being able to climb those ruins or hike with the others at the top of the waterfall is not that big. You can guard the luggage at the bottom while she goes anyway, because nothing is more important than the background of a selfie. Particularly with that face and that body...
Regardless of whose barrel of moisturizer you are carrying, luggage -like misery- needs company.
Well, it does not have to be like this. All you need is a little planning.
Preparation for light traveling begins long before the journey and has nothing to do with what you are packing. A few days before the journey you should begin with emptying the fridge. As counterintuitive as it sounds, the shiny sticky ham goes great with wilted veggies (all of them) and sour soup. For desert, pair that moldy cheese with the 5-months-old yogurt and those wrinkled apples. Top with the rock-hard half-donut and wash with the bottle of wine you opened at Christmas that was too expensive to throw away. This works two-fold: you will not be stressed about food going bad while you are gone, and you will feel much better flying on an empty stomach. Oh, do not worry, it will be empty. And after about 40 hours of empty, you will appreciate better that airplane food.
With taken care of, it is time to plan your luggage. For three to four days, go for the small backpack. For more than that, get the other backpack (if you own more than two backpacks, you should fix those issues when you return). The golden rule is that you are already wearing half the things you need: trousers, socks, undies, shirt, shoes. All you need is two more undies, pairs of socks and shirts (one should be enough, but the unexpected might happen and you like to be prepared). At night you can wash whatever you wore during the day, and they will be dry and ready the next morning. If you need a jacket, wear one instead of packing one. If you are not going beyond the Arctic Circle, skip the puffy one that required 40 geese worth of feathers to fill; a vest or hoodie and a windbreaker will do. If it is a holiday vacation, add a swim suit and flip-flops. If you need a skirt -woman or not, I am not judging- wear trousers and pack the skirt. Skirts needs less space in the luggage. Besides that, after sitting 11 hours in a plane wearing a skirt, you will remember to wear trousers next time.
On top of that, basic toiletries (yes, they do have sun and mosquito cream in tropical countries), chargers and cables for the phone, camera, and whatever gadgets you might be taking. Think e-book reader or tablet instead of half a bookshelf or gaming laptop. An external battery to top things off and... and you are done. Yes, you are. Leave aside all the things that you need just in case for unexpected special occasions. I have not seen that many beach parties or mountain cabins that have a dress code for the barbecue.
Everything I listed above can fit in a backpack. With some room for souvenirs on the way back, too. Of course as long as you consider spices, fridge magnets or scarf instead of statue, whole leg of Jamón serrano or a big bottle of each weird drink with an exotic name you happened to gulp there. You will save a small fortune on checked luggage, you will be able to walk up- or downhill, you will have two hands available for better movement and for repelling insects or tchotchke merchants. If anything, you will be able to take selfies more easily. Unfortunately, I cannot help you with your face. Maybe a small bottle of moisturizer would have been better after all. Or a mask. Whichever is lighter.
One more tip, for people traveling with more people: if you live together, take out half their stuff from the suitcase the night before and hide it somewhere. If you do not live together, hide yourself shortly after you landed and make separate bookings if they show up with said 16-ton luggage. This will save you from between half a suitcase and a full suitcase and a troll.
There are fewer things in life more entertaining than someone pulling a 16-ton suitcase on a gravel road somewhere down a hill. Except probably when they stop for a selfie. With either a tablet or a pink gold phone. All this on high heels, if that someone is a woman. I would say most of the time she is a woman, but I do not want to cause gender issues in this guide. So, to keep everybody happy, it could be a man on high heels. And yes, color is not important either. What is important is that you will not be laughing so hard two hours later when their armoire is crushing your leg during the bus trip to the next resort. For she will be sat next to you. (Or he. Or... Enough, I hope you got the point.) From the entire bus, she will pick you. If anything, you came together; she is -in reverse order of misfortune- your wife, your girlfriend, or your travel partner. Either way, you are stuck. And at the end of the ride you will be dragging your own shed-sized suitcase, limping on your crushed leg. Of course, you have a hernia-inducing suitcase, too. Maybe it is because she did not have enough room in hers, in which case there are 8 pairs of shoes packed tidily among the long dresses mandatory for the weekend (hers holds the make-up and the lighter things). Or maybe, if it is not her stuff, there are your three-piece suits with matching ties, shirts, socks, and belts. And the medicine. You never know when business opportunity knocks or polar mosquitoes might bite you with yellow fever. You are prepared for everything. And the price of not being able to climb those ruins or hike with the others at the top of the waterfall is not that big. You can guard the luggage at the bottom while she goes anyway, because nothing is more important than the background of a selfie. Particularly with that face and that body...
Regardless of whose barrel of moisturizer you are carrying, luggage -like misery- needs company.
Well, it does not have to be like this. All you need is a little planning.
Preparation for light traveling begins long before the journey and has nothing to do with what you are packing. A few days before the journey you should begin with emptying the fridge. As counterintuitive as it sounds, the shiny sticky ham goes great with wilted veggies (all of them) and sour soup. For desert, pair that moldy cheese with the 5-months-old yogurt and those wrinkled apples. Top with the rock-hard half-donut and wash with the bottle of wine you opened at Christmas that was too expensive to throw away. This works two-fold: you will not be stressed about food going bad while you are gone, and you will feel much better flying on an empty stomach. Oh, do not worry, it will be empty. And after about 40 hours of empty, you will appreciate better that airplane food.
With taken care of, it is time to plan your luggage. For three to four days, go for the small backpack. For more than that, get the other backpack (if you own more than two backpacks, you should fix those issues when you return). The golden rule is that you are already wearing half the things you need: trousers, socks, undies, shirt, shoes. All you need is two more undies, pairs of socks and shirts (one should be enough, but the unexpected might happen and you like to be prepared). At night you can wash whatever you wore during the day, and they will be dry and ready the next morning. If you need a jacket, wear one instead of packing one. If you are not going beyond the Arctic Circle, skip the puffy one that required 40 geese worth of feathers to fill; a vest or hoodie and a windbreaker will do. If it is a holiday vacation, add a swim suit and flip-flops. If you need a skirt -woman or not, I am not judging- wear trousers and pack the skirt. Skirts needs less space in the luggage. Besides that, after sitting 11 hours in a plane wearing a skirt, you will remember to wear trousers next time.
On top of that, basic toiletries (yes, they do have sun and mosquito cream in tropical countries), chargers and cables for the phone, camera, and whatever gadgets you might be taking. Think e-book reader or tablet instead of half a bookshelf or gaming laptop. An external battery to top things off and... and you are done. Yes, you are. Leave aside all the things that you need just in case for unexpected special occasions. I have not seen that many beach parties or mountain cabins that have a dress code for the barbecue.
Everything I listed above can fit in a backpack. With some room for souvenirs on the way back, too. Of course as long as you consider spices, fridge magnets or scarf instead of statue, whole leg of Jamón serrano or a big bottle of each weird drink with an exotic name you happened to gulp there. You will save a small fortune on checked luggage, you will be able to walk up- or downhill, you will have two hands available for better movement and for repelling insects or tchotchke merchants. If anything, you will be able to take selfies more easily. Unfortunately, I cannot help you with your face. Maybe a small bottle of moisturizer would have been better after all. Or a mask. Whichever is lighter.
One more tip, for people traveling with more people: if you live together, take out half their stuff from the suitcase the night before and hide it somewhere. If you do not live together, hide yourself shortly after you landed and make separate bookings if they show up with said 16-ton luggage. This will save you from between half a suitcase and a full suitcase and a troll.
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