The $38,000 Question.

I've always loved learning.

Books. Courses. Interviews. Lectures. Podcasts. The philosophers. The copywriters. The slightly peculiar people who seem to have found a side door into the way human beings work.

You give me a fascinating idea and a quiet afternoon, and I can disappear for hours.

Which is lovely.

Up to a point.

Because at some stage, what began as a search for a way to build an independent living online turned into something else.

I became an expert at getting ready.

Which sounds impressive until you notice that “getting ready” and “getting somewhere” are not always the same activity.

Not necessarily an expert at getting things done. Those are two very different departments.

And I was investing in the first department with a rather generous budget.

More than $38,000 on books, courses, workshops, and my own very expensive education.

Quite an impressive sum to spend in pursuit of an income, especially when the first online business experiment you were trying to improve on had earned precisely $13.46.

Now, let me be clear: I don't think that investment was wasted. Those years introduced me to remarkable people and ideas. They shaped the way I understand psychology, communication, business, and life.

I still love the teachers.

But I also started noticing a pattern.

You know that wonderful feeling when you discover a new book?

The cover promises an answer. The opening chapter suggests you're about to learn something important. You can almost see a better future assembling itself in the distance.

A new system.

A clearer plan.

A more impressive version of you.

And there's a little surge of possibility.

I love that feeling.

But here's the catch.

Sometimes the feeling of preparing to change can become more appealing than the uncertainty of actually changing something.

A new lesson gives you the thrill of forward motion without requiring the embarrassing part where you find out whether your idea works.

Because preparing is safe.

No awkward first draft. No video with three views. No risk that somebody will look at the thing you've made and think, Who does this guy think he is?

Another lesson, though?

Very respectable.

Very responsible.

Very educational.

You can spend the afternoon improving yourself without ever exposing yourself to the possibility of being seen trying.

And if you're naturally private, and you care more than you'd like to admit about what other people think...

Well.

You can probably guess why this arrangement has certain attractions.

There's a line often attributed to Abraham Lincoln about spending most of your time sharpening an axe before chopping down a tree.

It's a wonderful illustration of preparation.

And it became one of my favorite ideas: slow down to speed up. Study strategy. Learn the right skills. Don't mistake busyness for progress.

All perfectly sensible.

But then I began wondering...

At what point does sharpening the axe become a way to avoid swinging it?

Because that tree is still standing there.

And no matter how beautiful the axe gets, the tree has yet to notice.

And your axe is now so shiny you can see your reflection in it.

Look at that handsome devil.

He could probably teach a seminar on axe maintenance.

He just hasn't chopped down a damn thing.

Ha!

I don't think the answer is to stop learning.

What a dreadful little universe that would be.

But perhaps the next stage of learning is to take the ideas you love and actually play with them.

Make something. Publish something. Have a conversation. Build an imperfect first version. Test a belief against your experience.

Let the world answer back.

A famous copywriter named Eugene Schwartz had a beautifully unromantic way of doing the work: a kitchen timer.

I have to smile at that. Here I was searching for profound answers about identity and destiny, and one of the greatest direct-response minds was sitting down to work with a little ticking clock.

At some point, I started asking myself a different question.

Not: What else do I need to know?

But: What am I hoping someone else will finally tell me?

That I'm ready?

That my ideas are good enough?

That I'm allowed to make something and put it into the world?

That I don't have to become some more impressive version of myself before I begin?

It's a little embarrassing to consider the possibility that I was spending real money looking for a permission slip no one else was qualified to sign.

But also rather freeing.

Because you can love great teachers without making them the owners of your judgment.

In fact, that may be the most respectful thing you can do with what they teach you.

Try it.

Question it.

Discover what you believe.

And then make something of your own.

The mentors are the guests. You still own the house.

I even ended up collecting some of my favorite thinkers into a rather unusual little library.

Yes, I hear the irony of creating a collection of mentors immediately after admitting I spent too much time collecting mentors.

Life is an excellent comedian.

But this time the collection is meant to point somewhere else.

Back to the person doing the looking.

Not to prove that the teachers were wrong. To find out what their lessons can actually help you do.

You.

And, in my case, me.

Perhaps that's the difference between a search driven by the fear that you're missing something and a search driven by the joy of discovering what's possible.

The books haven't become less interesting.

The adventure has just become a lot more interesting.