(NOTE: This article is NOT on the topic of success with women, but the topics of will power and self actualization. In fact I’d go as far as to say that dating is more about having FUN than working hard, so don’t try to interrelate the two. Work ethic only comes in when you’re going through tough times, and you keep going out regardless—anyway onto the article!!).

Soooo, I’ve just come off one of the most challenging “work periods” of my life.

Six weeks, sixteen to twenty hours of work per day. I knew it was coming for the past few months but sort of blocked it out. Then it came.

(Incidentally I’ve just had a few days off, and tomorrow I’m off to Las Vegas to teach Free Tour / Hot Seat / Bootcamp for for Memorial Day weekend. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you attend if you can figure out a way to make it happen, it’s going to be fucken WILD!! – www.rsdfreetour.com / www.rsdhotseat.com / www.rsdbootcamp.com).

Anyway the big jobs were launching the Hot Seat, which is always a challenge, and then of course travelling around to teach the Free Tour, Hot Seat, and Bootcamps.

Product launches always are always a challenge.  If you caught me on a bad day I'd say I hate them, but when thinking more clearly and with more perspective, I have a bit of a different view..

Usually a product launch involves Nick and I taking out a loan of a few hundred thousand dollars that we don’t have, and then I have a month to prepare enough marketing and promotional materials to try to “break even” on it within the first month (to pay back the loans).

If I fail to break even, well, I’m not really sure what would happen. It would be bad, so I walk through life with a low level anxiety during the entire process.

The nastiest one was Blueprint Decoded. I swore after that after that one I was done, but then I did Flawless Natural because I wanted to use the short window to work with Tim. After that I said I was “absolutely done” and didn’t do another one for a year until Nine Ball, which was far lower pressure due to it being a book and not a DVD (far lower production costs to recoup on those).

With the Hot Seat the production costs were only the video editors and the website designers (well in addition to the camera gear to record the footage).  Still a decent amount, but no need to take out loans or get all stressed out.

A launch is a lot like being a caveman stalking an animal for a month before you kill it. You’re far away from the comforts of home (which is ironic because you’re AT HOME…but you have too many deadlines to enjoy it) and if you just keep going you’ll eventually kill the fucking thing.

Generally I find that the first few days to be the toughest, and then your brain adapts by entering a sort of “work zone” where you’d actually rather work than have fun. You actually lose the ability to have fun temporarily. Your adrenaline system kicks in and all you want to do is work.

The hard part I find is the lack of sleep. At first I get cranky and frustrated, but then the brain sort of “accepts it” and operates at about 70%, but “full-go” all the times. It gets weird when you wake up a bit early (like if you get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night) and your adrenaline kicks in and all you want to do is work.

Oftentimes I found myself waking up in the middle of the night during launches and not being able to get back to sleep. I’d just get up and start back onto it after only 3 hours of sleep, and then my girlfriend would wake up and ask why I’m up. Obviously she wasn’t too thrilled because she’d been deprived of sex for a few weeks as well.

This recent Hot Seat launch was interesting because of the way it came about.

The launch day was May 5th, and then the New York Free Tour was May 6. I stayed up all night to do the last bits of the launch, and then was hoping to catch at least 3 hours sleep before flying to NYC for the Free Tour. Didn’t happen—I just finished the launch, came back from the internet café (I don’t keep internet at home as it’s a time killer) and then packed and flew out to NYC. I don’t sleep on planes so I was stuck in this sort of weird half-daze.

I arrived in NYC and caught maybe 4 hours of sleep, then woke up and went in to do the Free Tour. I was expecting maybe 100 people, but the promotion I’d been doing caused it to fill up to 330 people. I’m half out of it, looking at the big crowd and thinking “These people don’t want to hear excuses.”

The Free Tour I did in NYC was really high quality.  Everyone seemed to really enjoy it.  I’ll be uploading some videos of it pretty soon (check back next week).

Then immediately after the tour I shot into Bootcamp with Brad. We ran the bootcamp Thursday and Friday night, and then I did the NYC Hot Seat on the Saturday, and another night of bootcamp that ran until 7AM.

The next day was my first day off in over a month. I’d been psyched about it, saying “Sunday after Hot Seat…Sunday after Hot Seat…” the entire launch. My plan was to watch Iron Man 2, but it turned out not to be all that great in terms of the lack of storyline (Robert Downey Jr. and the effects were as cool as always though).

What was weird was that during the week when I finally had a chance to get 8 hours of sleep, my adrenaline was still kicking and I couldn’t sleep for more than four or five hours. I’d wake up every morning and think “Damn I hope I slept 8 hours…” and it would always be too early. Regardless I kept everything moving, as I was accustomed to it at that point.

Next I was off to Washington D.C. for another Free Tour and Hot Seat. I had the weekend off of Bootcamp because I was attending an Entrepreneur’s Summit Series with Bill Clinton, Russell Simmons, Ted Turner, etc. The owners of the event have all taken bootcamps and used what they learned to build the business they’ve now created, so they invited me to speak at their event.

(http://dc10.summitseries.com/events/dc/growth)

It was a bit unnerving to be walking around all those high profile entrepreneur’s so dazed and cranky. I trained myself to just NOT THINK. I knew that whatever thought I had would be bullshit and negative, so I just never allowed myself to think. Mostly I’d just respond.

I was equally nervous about the speech, as I still couldn’t get any damned sleep, but it turned out to be hilarious and awesome. The microphone went out and so I had to speak the entire time with crackling static at the back of the room, but I had a great time regardless.

The whole thing was funny as hell, as it was all high profile business owners in the audience, as well as women. I was totally obnoxious and unapologetic but gave content that was undeniably solid. The women seemed to enjoy it more than men—most of them approached me afterwards and were totally psyched about it.

(Obviously the infield footage clips I showed were pretty shocking, because if you don’t come from the pickup community then it’s hard to believe that something like that is possible.)

The D.C. Hot Seat was a tough one because I started off the day cranky as all hell. I was stumbling around with the chords and gear to get everything going, and it put me behind by half an hour. I found myself sounding bitchy and frustrated at the start of the day—I could FEEL myself acting this way and yet felt powerless to stop it. I felt paranoid, like the audience thought it sucked or something. My brain was playing tricks on me because it wasn’t true.

I kept the event going until past midnight to make up for it, and found that if I pushed myself “into the zone” that I was able to become cheery and happy after the first few hours. I think the students were kind of lucky that I started off cranky because I wound up giving so much extra time to make up for it, out of personal standards to run only an awesome event.

Finally on Monday morning I had nothing to do in Washington D.C. until my evening flight, so I visited Congress and the Lincoln memorial. I started crying when I saw the big statue of Lincoln because it reminded me of the sheer willpower that it took to accomplish what he did, and how what I’d done was very little in comparison.

I got home and saw my kid, and then I felt this weird desire to just get more things done. I decided to take at least 3 days off and “do nothing” – just sit there staring at my kid. But it felt weird, like I couldn’t sleep properly or relax. I felt angry and confused that he’d grown so much while I was gone, and that I’d missed it (kids get like 1/3rd bigger every few weeks at that age).

At that point I realized that I’d “thrown my system out of wack” and that I needed to be adamant about taking more time off. After around four days I finally started to sleep 7 or 8 hours through the night, and since then I’ve felt more normal.

What I found cool about all this was that I’d planned it in advance, because I wanted to see what I was capable of. Really I sort of just rationalized it because I had certain deadlines that I wanted to make, but I thought it would be cool to work on improving my “work ethic”.

I think that a well developed work ethic is so valuable, because when you can cultivate it you can basically write your own ticket in life. Whatever you want you can have it, as long as you’re willing to work for it.

Many of my goals for the future will require a lot of long hours, and my goal is to learn to ENJOY what I’m doing as much as possible. Most of your life will be spent working, so you’ve got to find a way to find the fun in the process, not just the result.

I think I enjoyed a lot of it, but there’s a certain point where the brain just basically burns out. I could feel myself oftentimes feeling randomly sad for NO REASON, or feeling like I wanted to cry totally irrationally. My life was totally fine and perfect, but because my brain had been overtaxed it was trying to force me to slow down. Again, this is why it’s important to NOT THINK. Just “be present” as they say, don’t listen to what your brain is telling you because it will be self-defeating.

Conversely, I also believe that we should LISTEN to our bodies, and that if our brains tell us to slow down we need to listen. But I ALSO believe that you need to push your limits at certain times in order to make gains. As much as I’m describing what I did as being difficult, I also found many of my past work periods to be tough at the time, whereas right now I could do them standing on my head.

The reason they’d be easy for me now is because I’ve forced my brain to adapt. This work period would be considered no big deal at all for a lot of people, like young doctors doing their residency, or a young lawyer being bitched around by his seniors, or a coal mine worker from the 1800’s. It was only tough for me because I wasn’t adapted to it yet. And if I had to do it again, it would just significantly easier and less taxing.

In the meantime I have another 10 or so cities left in the tour, where I’ll be doing the Free Tour, Hot Seat, and Bootcamp every weekend (this is my last travelling tour for a long time so definitely come check it out—the events have been better than Blueprint or anything I’ve ever done). Then I have the World Summit coming up in August, and a few other projects I want to finish as well.

I’m about 2 years away from finishing everything I need to finish for RSD, and then I can focus on the self development company I want to build. I believe that with the abilities I’ve cultivated in public speaking, the quality of the content, and the strong work ethic, I could potentially do something really awesome and worthwhile.

(Then again, many scientists believe modern society has no future, so it may wind up an exercise in vanity and nothing more. But I try to stay optimistic.)

Mostly I’ve viewed RSD not as a business, but more as a combination between a philanthropy for people who want to learn game and an MBA (although ironically it will probably grow massively because I have the attitude of “What can I offer??” rather than “What can I get??”). Basically I’ve learned to cultivate the qualities that it takes to be successful in any endeavor by the age of 30, and I feel empowered and fortunate to be in that position.

I’ve never viewed what I’m doing as “work” in the way most people do. It’s all training for the next thing. EVERYTHING you do is training for the next thing. EVEN WASHING THE DISHES IS TRAINING FOR THE NEXT THING.

So in conclusion, ask yourself this…:

At your work, do you try to do as much as possible, or as little as possible??

If it’s the most possible, then how has it benefitted you? But more importantly, for the majority of you who do the least amount possible, how will you possibly be successful in life without cultivating a strong work ethic over many years??

(And spare yourself the bit about how you’re going to work a four hour work week and join the “new rich” unless you’ve actually already produced that result. Tim Ferris was at the event, and said himself that nobody really does a four hour workweek, it’s just an extreme example of what’s possible in a few isolated instances.)

In my experience, cultivating a work ethic is a similar feeling to when you lift weights. As you gradually get bigger and stronger, you look at the majority of people who are frail and weak and you think, “Damn it would SUCK to be in that position…To have that lack of personal control over your own physical safety and health and mobility…”

Similarly, when you have a well-developed work ethic and you look at people who get all cranky and flustered when they have to put in a few hours, you think “Damn the lack of control would suck…So many possibilities in the world and this person will never achieve them, because they think the path is to do the least amount possible for the most possible gain. They don’t realize that a work ethic needs to be cultivated over time, and that if you don’t have it you’ll rarely achieve anything worthwhile.”

Anyway that’s my thoughts on my recent experiences. Obviously it’s just subjective opinion, and other people would have very different views.

As of now the projects are done, the result is something I’ll benefit from for years going forward, and I’m left with a renewed confidence that I could do literally anything I put my mind to doing.

I think that while these experiences wear you out for a while, they also build up a lot of personal belief that you can undertake goals that will take longer periods of time. And as you knock down bigger and bigger goals, the sky becomes the limit in terms of your possibilities.

It’s not the delusional “Entourage” TV show reality of “getting paid for being cool” that people seem to dream about these days, but there’s periods in between the hustle where you really DO get to live the type of fantasy life that most people will never get to experience.

See you soon!!

Tyler

Oh and PS:  Like I said, I’m in Las Vegas for Memorial Day this weekend. Free Tour, Hot Seat, and Bootcamp (there’s one slot left for the BC because somebody dropped out last minute). I’ve got my entire crew with me from Los Angeles (the dudes I hang out with for fun) and it’s going to be wild as hell. I booked it basically as a reward for the stuff I just talked about.

Hit up the following if you want to join me…:

www.rsdfreetour.com
www.rsdhotseat.com
www.rsdbootcamp.com