Hi friends,

Greetings from Austin!

The day has finally come... I just published a 17,000-word guide to writing. It's by far the most comprehensive thing I've ever published about writing for the Internet.

Here's what I want to share this week:

1. What Neil deGrasse Tyson Taught Me: I've had exactly one conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson. When I asked how he speaks so eloquently, he said 95% of what he says in public are things he’s written down before. Here's the clip.​
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2. Why You're Christian: If you live in the West, your life is shaped by Christian values, even if you're not religious. Ideas like morality and justice began as Judeo-Christian frameworks and have been adopted by secular people who don't appreciate the religious underpinnings of their beliefs. Here's my essay.​
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3. ​Podcast Interview with Jim O'Shaughnessy: I was interviewed about online writing and the writing program I'm building for high schoolers. For a taste of our conversation, here's a clip about our "students first" approach to writing education and another about obsession-driven learning. (Listen here: YouTube | Apple | Spotify)​
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4. I'm Hiring a Chief of Staff: This person will report to me as one of the most important roles at Write of Passage. If you want to be a CEO someday, this is the best learning you can do. Apply here.
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Mr. Beast's Obsession

Mr. Beast has 103 million subscribers, making him one of the world's top YouTubers.

Nobody thought he'd become such a standout success. Growing up, he was a terrible student. He didn't do his homework and routinely skipped class in community college. YouTube was all Mr. Beast cared about. He cared so much that fellow classmates thought he was a total weirdo.

His obsession flipped from a liability to an asset when he met a small group of people on the Internet who shared his obsession with YouTube. Their group met daily for over 1,000 days to deconstruct the mechanics of viral videos (everything from optimizing titles, to editing, to thumbnail design). He said: “We were very religious about it… they say 10,000 hours to master something, but we probably put in 40,000-50,000 hours."

Never has there been a better time to have such an obsession. The architecture of the Internet gives everyone a global market for their ideas, so there's never been a better time for niche obsessions.

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You Can't Choose Your Obsessions

I like Scott Alexander's idea that we live in a Lottery of Fascinations. Since you can't choose what you're obsessed with, and some curiosities are more valuable than others, there's an element of luck in what you become obsessed with. For example, in today's world, mathematics and machine learning are extremely lucrative. Being obsessed with them automatically makes you a millionaire (citation needed).

Whenever I become obsessed with something, I feel like an invisible being has taken reigns on my life. My obsessions are in charge, not me. I can't really influence them. The best I can do is make productive use of them.

Most obsessions won't seem valuable at first, which is why people belittle them. But because obsession is so rare, we should double down on it, knowing it has potential to become our greatest asset.

Obsessions are different from interests, which are rational and pragmatic. For example, I’m interested in American tax law because of the money it can save me on April 15th, but I’ll never be obsessed with it. The flames of obsession transcend reason. No matter how hard you try, you can't rationalize your way into an obsession. This is what the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer meant when he said: “Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”

Each obsession is as unique as the human fingerprint. Obsessions makes you one-of-a-kind, and one-of-a-kind people are precisely who the Internet economy rewards.

Say you're obsessed with Assassin's Creed. If you live in a town of 100 people and don't have internet access, it's virtually impossible to build a career out of it. But if you know how to use the Internet properly, you can turn that obsession into an invigorating social life and 7-figures of annual income.

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Obsessive People are Under-Served

Growing up, kids spend almost half their waking hours inside schools that don't nurture their obsessions. The way schools squash innate differences and push people towards being the same reminds me of the Greek tale of Procrustes, a cruel robber who made victims fit onto a bed, either by stretching them out or cutting off their legs. In a quest for sameness, the victims became incapacitated.

Schools aren't so different. Obsessive kids are hurt by rigidity. Moving every kid through the school system at the same speed means obsessive kids move slower than they want, which robs their curiosity and limits their potential.

I experienced the pain of our Procrustean approach to education in college. During my senior year, I was obsessed with the business of media. I remember skipping parties to devote a weekend to reading everything ever written by BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti. I even wrote my college dissertation on how media business models needed to change for the Internet.

And yet, despite my obsession, I got a C in my senior year Entertainment Media class. It moved too slow and the discussions were elementary. I wasn't more intelligent than the other students –– I just cared much more. Like... I read the industry blogs for fun. For homework, I was just asked to memorize inconsequential dates and names. Eventually, I got so bored I stopped doing it. At the end of the semester, my teacher summoned me to her office. "You know more about this topic than just about anybody on campus, but you got one of the worst grades in the class. What went wrong?"

One of my core missions in life is to identify obsessive people who feel directionless and give them a path to success. So many people like this are stuck. They feel they have nobody to share their obsessions with, and keep them private to avoid being teased.

Schools incentivize "well-roundedness" at the expense of obsession. They reward students with an equally distributed work ethic. You know, the 4.0 GPA types who put the same effort into mathematics, English and biology.

But in reality, obsessions are lumpy. Obsessive types go all-in on their interests, ignoring everything else. Our schools discourage this intense focus even though, as the story of Mr. Beast shows, obsession is the posture of excellence.
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Photo of the Week

Years ago, I visited the Ford factory in Michigan. The image above is the only one I snapped because they're so strict about prohibiting photos.

Visiting the factory was illuminating because it's the pinnacle of 20th-century capitalism — huge scale, giant production lines, and ultimate efficiency.

Many schools prepare people for this type of factory line job. Hyper-specialists stay in one place and do the same thing repeatedly, like screwing in the same nail on the left side of an F-150 hood.

Training people for creative work (by helping them follow their obsessions) is much more inspiring to me.