Executive Summary

• Hard Work
• Persistence
• Luck
• Systems Thinking

If you have not yet read Part 1: Collapse Is A Process, Not An Event, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

I have a formula for success.  It works really well for me and I want to share it with you.

Fair warning: not everyone is going to like it.

Ready?  Here it is.

Work hard.  Keep at it.  Be lucky.

Work Hard

I know I lost some people right here at this step.  Based on watching people around me my whole life I understand that I am in the top percentage of people who get things done.  I thrive on challenges and so I set the bar high for myself.

This helps to explain all the degrees I have, which include a PhD (Duke), an MBA (Cornell), a BS (Lewis & Clark College) and an AA (Simon’s Rock College).

It explains why the past owners of the house in which Evie and I live may not recognize it only part-way through our first year of owning it.  Every single day, without exception, there are projects being done here.

An important facet of this step is also working intelligently.  As a minor example, when I am off in search of a tool from the basement, I also ask if anything needs to be brought there, and if there’s anything else I could retrieve, saving potential future steps.

As a larger example, I will research the living hell out of a project before I begin, usually finding that somebody has already taken the learning lumps and posted something very educational on Youtube.

I recently bought a sawmill, a Norwood HD36.  It arrived in about 30 boxes as literally several hundred disassembled components.  I read and I watched other people assembling theirs.  I studied the assembly guide carefully re-reading anything that wasn’t 100% clear until it became 100% clear.

The sawmill started right up on the first try, I got the very delicate saw band adjustment/tensioning process right on the first try, and the very first log cut true as did the next twelve.  I never once called the company’s 1-800 helpline which probably makes me a bell-curve outlier.

This is how I learn – by doing.  So I do a lot of it.