The Nerdiest Place on Earth

Author: Napoleon Hill
Published: 1937

They say some advice should be taken with a grain of salt. When I was reading Think and Grow Rich, I was eating it by the handful. You see, the author believes in telepathy and he bases the whole book on that idea. Telepathy! But if you can ignore the whole telepathy thing, Mr. Hill is making a solid case underneath that. It’s kind of like if someone told you gravity is caused by the devil. I wouldn’t buy that explanation but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in gravity. More on the telepathy later—let’s get to the main point.

My understanding of what the author is trying to say is this, and it’s pretty down-to-earth: If you fixate your mind on a certain goal, to the point where the goal is the only thing you care about and it’s an all-consuming obsession, and you work toward that goal with persistence, you will eventually achieve that goal. That doesn’t sound too far-fetched, does it?

For example, if you want to climb Mt. Everest and you spend every hour of every day thinking about climbing Mt. Everest and you practice climbing bigger and bigger mountains and you try over and over again to climb Mt. Everest, how could you not eventually reach your goal? (Of course, you could die trying, but there are safer goals a person could choose.) Here’s a passage that sums up my understanding of the book’s message quite nicely:

Wishing will not bring riches. But desiring riches with a state of mind that becomes an obsession, then planning definite ways and means to acquire riches, and backing those plans with persistence which does not recognize failure, will bring riches.

Desiring riches to the point of obsession. Planning definite ways to aquire riches. Backing those plans with persistence. The words “desire” and “persistence” appear so many times in this book. The idea is that you need to have desire backed with persistence. If you want to get something, you have to really want it, and you have to keep trying until you get it. Desire backed with persistence. That’s the main message of the book. They could have cut this book down from 300 pages to four words and you would still get the idea.

I’ll tell you something that’s not much of a secret to people who know me: I hate jobs. I think it’s bullshit that somebody else gets to tell me how to spend most of my prime waking hours. I refuse to work 40 hours every week until I’m 60 years old. I don’t want to wait until the end of my life to start living. You might think that sounds lazy but I think it’s even lazier to just show up at work every day without even trying to come up with a way to make a better living. You might think my attitude is futile and I’d better just get over it. Thomas Edison might not agree because he said, “Discontent is the first necessity of progress.” I don’t want to have a job and I want to do something about it! Why do you think I picked up this book?

Did Think and Grow Rich help me? I’m not a millionaire yet, so maybe the answer is no. But you can bet that my goal is much clearer and more present now that I’ve read the author’s ideas. I think about my goal every day. Before I read this book, I had just one idea for how to make money. After I read this book, I started keeping a list of money-making ideas. I tried hard almost every day to think of more ideas. Like the author suggests, I let my subconscious mind go to work for me. Ideas would pop into my head out of nowhere. Now I have not just one but over twenty money-making ideas in my list. (Of course, not all of them are good ideas, but they’re ideas.)

Let me tell you a little bit about how a few of my ideas went. My first idea—the one I had conceived before picking up Think and Grow Rich—was Lunch Hub. I thought it was a good idea but I couldn’t seem to coax anyone to use it. Since Lunch Hub wasn’t working, I moved onto the next thing. My second idea was Salbatoost—a site where people could suggest something for me to draw and I would draw it—but it quickly became clear that there was very little value there. I wasn’t selling a useful product or providing a useful service. Salbatoost was fun and it was more popular than Lunch Hub, so I decided going to keep making drawings for fun, but I didn’t want to invest my time in anything but my best idea. Right now my best idea is called Food Near You and I’ve even gotten a couple other people to help me with it. Our mission statement: To connect people to their local growers, grocers and restaurants. Unlike my first two attempts, this idea has to the potential to add real value—value that’s worth money—to a large number of business owners.

Anyway, whether my latest idea turns out to be successful or not, I’ll continue to remember that desire backed by persistence will eventually get me what I want. If the idea I’m working on now doesn’t work, that will be unfortunate but it will not be the end of my quest to make money.

Okay, back to the telepathy thing. Here’s what Mr. Hill says about it:

In a study by the author with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell and Dr. Elmer R. Gates, it was concluded that every human brain is both a broadcasting and receiving station for the vibration of thought.
Through the medium of the ether, in a fashion similar to that employed by the basic principle of radio and other wireless communication, every human brain is capable of picking up vibrations of thought released by other brains.

Wow! That seems…incredibly hard to believe. I’m not saying that just because it sounds crazy means its not true. Plenty of crazy things are true. But this claim is based on the results of just one study, conducted with the help of a biased author. What Hill seems to believe is that you can “broadcast” your desire for riches out into the universe and, somehow, everyone in the world picks up your thoughts and your prize is eventually delivered to you through mysterious acts of man and nature. I don’t buy that. My guess is that you don’t broadcast your desire out into the “ether” but you do broadcast it into your own head, where you’re constantly thinking about your desire and making your goals more present. Every time you’re presented with a choice, you choose the path that would take you closer to your goal. You’re always keeping your eyes open for opportunities to help satisfy your goal. That’s just a guess, but that’s what I think is probably going on.

In any case, Think and Grow Rich is well worth the read. At the very least, it’s interesting. At the most, it’s an exciting and encouraging instruction manual for achieving your goals. I give it one thumb up!

P.S. Do not by the Arthur Pell version of the book! Pell is a miserable prick who thought it would be nice to “update” Think and Grow Rich by chiming in with tidbits about Michael Jordan and Steven Spielberg. Nobody cares!

Below are the tips from Dale Carnegie’s super awesome book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book suggests offering your friends a dollar every time they catch you violating one of these principles and I think I’ll take ol’ Dale’s advice. So, starting now, I will give anyone a dollar if they catch me breaking one of these rules. The only catch is that you have to catch me doing it in person so I can give you the dollar right then and there.

Some of these rules don’t really lend themselves to this little game—for example, you can’t catch me constantly not smiling (although I plan on it, and I am right now)—but it should be an interesting exercise anyway. Here are the rules:

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six Ways to Make People Like You

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile.
3. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
6. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

Win People to Your Way of Thinking

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
2. Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge.

Be a Leader

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
5. Let the other person save face.
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

If you’re anything like me, you probably couldn’t help but scoff just a little bit when you first read the title of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. You may have thought, “How to win friends? I don’t need a book on how to make friends. I can do that myself.” True, you’re probably doing just fine on your own, but the purpose of this book isn’t really to help social outcasts find friends; it’s about dealing with people tactfully and trying to see things from the other person’s point of view. This simple principle can help you a lot in everyday life, and Carnegie gives many examples where this technique succeeds impressively where selfishness, yelling and threatening would have failed.

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

How To Win Friends is split into four parts. The first part is a lesson in the fundamental techniques in handling people. One of the strongest suggestions here is “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.” The author points out that criticism only motivates people to justify themselves and it often arouses resentment in return. Have you ever had a boss who was constantly pointing out your faults? Did that make you want to do good work for him or did it make you wish you had a different job? After reading this book, you can be sure that when I have kids, I’ll think twice before scolding them when they misbehave. Instead of criticizing our friends, family and co-workers every chance we get, we should heartily praise them each time we notice something good. It will make them feel better about themselves, about us, and it will probably give them more powerful motivation to do for us what we want.

Six Ways to Make People Like You

Do you like people who constantly talk about themselves? Do you like people who don’t pay attention to the things you say and interrupt you when you talk? I know I don’t. But I find that if someone shows genuine interest in the things I say or do, I usually like the person, even the person him or herself isn’t all that interesting. Many of the ideas in the second part of the book—Six Ways to Make People Like You—are centered around that idea. Before reading this book I considered myself a poor conversationalist. I still do, but I think I’ve improved visibly. When I’m at a party and the person I’m talking to says they’re majoring in turf management, I don’t think, “Oh, cutting grass. Boring.” I ask what exactly is involved in turf management, what can be done with a turf management degree, and so on. I’ve found that it’s a lot more fun to try to come up with questions about a seemingly uninteresting topic than it is to try to steer the conversation in a different direction, while both of you are sitting in silence in the meantime. A couple other principles on how to make people like you are so simple and obvious—like “smile” and “remember people’s names”—but it’s sad how often these simple acts are neglected.

How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

“If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent’s good will.” Ben Franklin said that. True, you might feel good if your logic conquers someone else’s faulty reasoning, but will they like you more after you’ve defeated them? Will it make them more eager to please you in the future? When I think about arguments I’ve lost, I can remember that I usually had a good deal of resentment for the victor. I usually thought I was still right, and there’s apparently a saying about that:

A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.

You can probably see the point I’m trying to convey: don’t argue. Don’t come right out and say to the other person, “You’re wrong.” That will only get resentment. Instead, start the discussion in a friendly way. If you’re wrong about something, admit it quickly and emphatically. Use the Socratic method and ask questions the other person has to answer with a “yes.” Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers. Try to see things from the other person’s point of view. These are just some of the brilliant principles on how to win people over to your way of thinking. The best part is that none of these things generate resentment.

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

The fourth chapter explains how to be a good leader. I can see that its principles are certainly valuable, but to be honest they just didn’t carry as much weight with me as the ideas in the first three parts. Perhaps they seem alien to me because I don’t often find myself in a leadership position. However, I’ll make an effort to apply these techniques alongside all the other ones because I know ol’ Dale wouldn’t steer me wrong, and hey, maybe if I start acting like a leader, I’ll become one. (Which reminds me, I need you to clean out my car.)

If someone asked me which of the first three parts of this book were the best, I would say “all of them.” The truths stated throughout the book are so simple, so self-evident and so obvious that it’s astounding how often we overlook the sum of those facts. If you’re fine with the way all parts of your life are going, that’s amazing. But if you wouldn’t mind having people like and respect you a little more, and if you’d like to get your way more of the time, why not take a couple days to read How to Win Friends and Influence People?