As you may have noticed the blog has been relatively quiet the month of September, but my life has been anything but. I have a lot I’d like share and look forward to writing some more comprehensive life updates and keeping in touch with everyone who has been in and out of my life. But respites are few and far between the next few weeks.
Here’s a quick rundown.
Throughout the month of August all my friends from high school packed up suitcases and hopped in cars and planes, scattering around the country. Then it was my twin sister’s turn to take a 1 way to Boston and begin her adventure at Tufts University. I’m very excited for her and I know she’s having an amazing time, but it marked the closing of a large chapter in our lives and was a sad day for the Marmer Family, indeed.
As August closed and September 2009 was born I was up in Black Rock City having an amazing first time at Burning Man. What a transformative experience. Understanding cannot be shared vicariously, though I might be able to offer a few tastes in a upcoming post.
The day I returned from Burning Man I turned 19. Reflection of the last year ensued and I couldn’t believe how much had changed. It was the best of year of my life by far. But I’m confident this year will top it. The stage is set for a wonderful gap year and for the first time in my life I am in control of my most precious resource: my time. Hopefully I’m setting a trend for the rest of my life where things keep getting better all the time. Yes, you can sing it.
Many of my entrepreneurial friends who are veteran Burners described the following weeks as the most productive of the year. I must agree. I returned high on life with all cylinders firing. I clocked 14 hour days for 7 days straight without feeling a hint of lethargy and sailed straight into Tech Crunch 50, in what turned out to be the most productive conference I’ve ever attended. I did the conference the way you’re supposed to. Skipping the most of the content, because it can be had later from the comforts of my desk and instead seizing the opportunity to talk with the plethora of people in attendance I’d been wanting (needing perhaps?) to meet with.
My company took a major leap forward due to large volume of connections made, partnerships forged and targeted feedback I gathered. And after another busy day following the conference, I crashed. I woke up with a fever and was out for over a week, spending most of the time in bed, managing to get an email off every now and then. It hurt. It was a knife straight through the surplus of progress acheived in the preceeding overtime workweek. When you’re scratching and clawing for everything you can muster, being stuck on the sidelines is just agonizing.
But as the cloud over my head was lifted and the mental haze melted away the sun came careening through. As I eased back into work after a week of fitful slumber I received the news that I had received one of the 30 residencies for the Palomar 5 camp. A huge smile swept across my face punctuated by 3 forceful first pumps. The theme of the camp —the future of work— could not be a better fit because it’s so well aligned with all that I’ve been thinking about and working on. What an opportunity. So I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything done in the few remaining days I have on the west coast before I leave for Berlin for 6 weeks on October 9th.
Most people when they take a gap year decide to travel. I decided I had bigger fish to fry than to chase perspective. I wanted to create. I still planned to travel some, but was unsure how I was going to fit it in. But now I have the perfect opportunity to combine work and travel. While most of my time will be spent exploring my home base city of Berlin I hope to get in a few weekend trips traversing other magical cities nearby in Europe. London and Amsterdam top the list right now.
I welcome any suggestions or reccomendations of things to do, places to see or people to meet while I”m situated in Berlin until late November. Let me know.
Most of this blog has been about broad intellectual topics, but if you’ll forgive some self-indulgence, I’m going to begin to share some more personal anecdotes. I just finished a post on passion and what I advocate for how to find it, and now I’m going to give you a small glimpse into some of the life choices that led me here today. Though there’s a good chance that a fair amount of this is just connecting the dots looking backward as Steve Jobs likes to say, I have no way of knowing.
For most of my life, athletics were my core passion, but athletics began to fade after series of misdiagnosed back injuries, that first occurred in 7th grade, and began to develop into chronic injuries that I was unable to overcome throughout high school despite many hours of physical therapy and disciplined training.
My passion for sports began at a very young age and I’d have to consult my family for more accuracy. But I know I put myself out there when I was very little. I was more athletic than most of my 3 year old peers and was pushing myself pre-kindergarten. At my Pre-K (a year between preschool and kindergarten) I was unsatisfied spending my recesses on the little kid’s yard, so I lobbied to cross over the chain link fence where the big kids (first and second graders, big right?) were playing soccer. I don’t think this was an easy sell, no one to my knowledge had done it before, but I proved I could more than hold my own. After I made the trek over to the big kid’s side of the yard many of friends began joining in. You could say I was the Jackie Robinson of pre-kindergarten sports. Soon we formed a soccer team that played in a league outside of school. We called ourselves the Big Green (after the amazing movie, of course) and went on to become a micro soccer dynasty, losing just twice in our 5 year history and racking up a shelf full of trophies. Micro soccer was just 4 on 4 on a small field that allowed youngsters like us to develop our foot skills and teamwork more easily. I have found memories of regularly zipping through my opponents racking up consecutive goals just minutes apart.
As I got older many of my afternoons were spent practicing, many weekends were spent competing and many summers were spent at sports camps. In my downtime at home I played many video games, usually sports games. Though if I wasn’t playing sports games, I was probably playing long RPG (Role Playing Games) like the Final Fantasy series. These RPG’s were great because they weaved long complicated story lines together, frequently culminating in a big world changing idea, like a corporation that controlled the world, or a mysterious phenomenon that sent people back in time and showed how their lives we’re all interconnected. I’m sure these early influences had an effect on my current inclinations towards big picture thinking and weaving disparate theories together.
Two of my strongest passions now are for big ideas and making them happen through entrepreneurship. The life of the mind began to take root around the age of my Bar Mitzvah (in case you were wondering I now consider myself an atheist though culturally jewish), which was also 7th grade, probably coincidentally, maybe luckily timed with my injuries. Because at some point late senior year I called it quits indefinitely on my athletic career (it’s still on hold 8 months later, granted I’m still a push up and sit up enthusiast and exercise bike aficionado) for one because the frustration of not being able to play even close to my potential was becoming unbearable. I was in purgatory. I could play, just not well. I was never big, so my whole game was based on speed and quickness. At one point in middle school my teammates nicknamed me “the flash” after a string of breakaway goals in consecutive games. But post-injury my bursts of quickness could be sustained no longer than flashes in a pan. The second reason for calling it quits was that my life of the mind had been growing steadily the last few years and was now bursting at the seams, salivating for more of my time and energy.
The next 6 months were anything but fun, but I knew I was making the right decision. I knew delaying gratification was part of the deal for a better future. I was at the beginning of my startup career, I had a really big idea but no idea how to make it happen. I jumped in the deep end and tried to swim, and I did, but I got slapped around…a lot. I was putting in a lot of energy and not getting a lot of return. I would meet big fish like Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, Jason Calacanis and Saul Griffith (though the relationship with Saul was longer standing from when I reached out to him about digital fabrication), impress them in the moment, receive verbal commitments of help and be on cloud nine the rest of the night, but then be blown off the following day.
Aside: I don’t hold any resentments against any of these people, it was very much a matter of circumstance. I welcomed any positive interaction I had with them as an undeserved reward for a young kid thinking big, but coasting on potential. Any help I did get from them thereafter was greatly appreciated, but that’s not to say I wasn’t heavily disappointed when I couldn’t get my emails returned. I also must admit at the times I did get help I wasn’t always ready to take maximum advantage of it. But it’s all part of the process of growing into my own. And the interactions I did have with these people were highlights that definitely served as fuel to keep going. My thought process after rejection went something like, “I may only get a glimmer of their attention now, but if I keep going we’ll be collaborating in no time.”
I was the drunk hook up. I was the new kid on the block. I still am, but I can feel the tide turning. I can’t prove it to you now but you’ll see, the proof will be in the pudding the next few months. Now I receive comments like, “You know you’re going to rule the world, Max”, “Max, you just know everybody don’t you?” I’m flattered. But things certainly aren’t downhill from here. But miraculously they feel like it. I’ve done enough conscious mind hacking to align the dopamine reward centers in mind with working hard and making a difference. I put value out into the world and it comes back to me. I’m addicted, what can I say. But I’m not on career milestone blitz either. My goal is to live a healthy, long sustainable life, full of impact, fun and love. My first foray into adult intellectual communities was with the futurist community who deliberated on ideas of Accelerating Change and the Singularity. I interned with the Institute for the Future last summer and nearly with Singularity University this summer, and while I have scaled back my involvement in futurist communities some (to be explained in a future post), my long term orientation has not left me, and I hope it never does. And what that means is that although there’s still a big disparity for me between effort and reward I know I’m in it for the long haul, and the last few years have been a time of building a foundation and paying my dues. At some point that equation actually flips polarity and you begin to get rewarded when you barely put in any effort. I’m far from there, but things are beginning to speed up for me nonlinearly. All the hours I put in the last two years to develop myself, expand my connections and mind set the stage for the gap year I’m now taking.
But I was telling you how the last semester of high school was full of sacrifice. I skipped dances for conferences, I skipped picnics for lunch meetings, I skipped parties for the chance to finally have a few concentrated hours to iterate the next version of my executive summary. I also kept up with a very challenging and time consuming course load. I knew I couldn’t drop my studies then, as much as I knew from an opportunity cost’s perspective they were wasting my time. I also needed to do well if I still wanted my parents support and the freedom they had given me to pursue these entrepreneurial activities. And there was pressure to finish school with a good academic record after I had maintained one all four years and not drop the ball at the finish line, in large part for college admission’s sake. So I was sleep deprived and felt like I was working two jobs and not having much fun.
But I had something very few of my peers did: Passion and purpose. And the farther I began to venture into this entrepreneurial world the more disconnected and out of place I felt in the school environment. My social life was never spectacular in high school but that semester I really turned the power off and it rusted and rotted. In many ways this was a conscious decision. I was never that connected with my peers, I always felt different, (though along the way I adopted a belief that I should be able to have fun with anybody in the moment no matter our differences, but I didn’t have the skill to pull that off at the time) and I knew we’d all be scattered around the country in 6 months anyway. So I set out at first to create a new network of people I knew and later a new network of friends.
One of the great things about finding your passion and purpose before finding your true friends is that it becomes much easier to find friends you are truly compatible with on many levels. Especially, if you learn how to seek people out and social network very well like I did. Finding friends you respect at a deep level is so important because you become who you surround yourself with, and now I get to choose who I surround myself with. Most of my friends now are in the 22-27 range. I just turned 19. I stole the “I’m the youngest person in the room” card from one of my precocious 22 year old friends, who is pushing 23, and there’s usually an age vacuum between us — no competition. But my conversations with my new circle of friends are at a higher level than I ever had before (my conversations with one friend in high school excepted, who was an awesome intellectual peer and we had amazing conversations at a theoretical level for a straight year and half, but we began to diverge when our world views as entrepreneur and musician began to disagree). My new circle of peers push me every time we interact. We can hit high lofty theoretical crescendos and then bring it back down to reality, creating actionable next steps each of can take to achieve our goals. And that feeling is simply amazing. It’s soul filling.
Long awaited, I finally have the video after wrangling with file format difficulties, technical workarounds and trips that left my time in front of the computer fragmented.
This is only my 2nd or 3rd public speech I’ve given, excluding participation on panels, but I hope to do more in the future. Unfortunately due to time constraints and the density of the content I wanted to cover, this speech required written prompts. Expect future talks I give to be presented more dynamically from the heart.
A story from my childhood on the importance of intrinsic motivation for learning. On Sunday we had a family party at my house and invited many of the people who were important during the early years of my family. The occasion was a mix of both my parents 25th anniversary and my twin sister and me graduating high school.
I told many people about my decision to delay college and take a gap year. I began hearing many stories from my childhood about how I have always been a self-directed kid.
My mom recounted that when I was about 4 or 5 my memory of baseball statistics was phenomenal. Every morning I pulled open the front door, grabbed the newspaper off the front steps and poured over the sporting green. One time while driving with my mom in San Francisco I saw a street sign for Oak st. I said,” look mom Oakland!” At first she had no idea what I was talking about because we were in the heart of the city and oakland wasn’t the least bit visible, but then she realized that I had seen Oak St. and OAK was the symbol for Oakland in the baseball standings. I think I learned to read well in large part due to my regular morning excursions through the sporting green. I learned to love numbers and collect baseball cards. I then got a board game called Extra Bases and I memorized a good portion of the questions. My knowledge of athlete’s statistics and players names was then furthered when I first got a playstation. Steven Johnson discusses value of video games on kids cognitive development in Everything Bad Is Good For You.
My family didn’t pay for cable so my uncle wondered how I knew so much without even having ESPN?!. But the larger lesson here is if I was told I had to memorize all those statistics and player’s names I probably would have hated it. But it was easy immerse myself and remember far more information than any 5 year old should be able to because I loved it. The desire has to come from within and there has be a use for it, either in pleasure, impressing your friends or something you actually want to do with your knowledge in the near future.
Most introductory science and business classes require remember large amounts information and I find it incredibly dull and none gave me the purpose I needed to really commit. When I read laymen’s books about science and the nature of the universe I was much more engaged and my imagination went wild. But I found the dry equations in class uninspiring and while the fundamentals need to be learned the payoff for their mastery was so far away that I a lot of timing and motivation needs to come together for the learning of fundamentals to really make sense. I believe it’s way more important to first have inspiration and activities you care about before engaging on the long and seemingly endless slog of of building enough scientific chops to do anything of importance.
I was thrown into topics before I was ready. Not intellectually unready, I could have done it if I wanted to, and maybe I did want to at the beginning of the semester, but by the middle, I had much more engaging and intellectually fulfilling interests like learning how to build a company where I could make an impact immediately.
I still haven’t figured out how to combine entrepreneurial learning methods with science to make it engaging and energizing at every step of the way and in a way that pushes engineers to break ground on entirely new problems not just incrementally improve old solutions. Although I haven’t figured out exactly the process groundbreaking engineers go through I know intrinsic motivation, purpose and timing are critical pieces of the puzzle.
I’m going to experiment in the next two weeks posting a lot more off the cuff thoughts. Honestly I don’t have an hour or two to set aside for blog writing right now. I’m working really hard on a lot of projects that require a lot of focused energy. I do end up doing a lot of writing and reflection. But I don’t have time to write really well researched, fleshed out posts right now. So I will try out this new format for a little bit, and see what the receptivity is like. I know the ROI on these kinds of things aren’t as high as 10+ hour posts, but I figure it’s better than nothing. I’m writing I might as well share. I know a lot of people worry about doing a lot of impulse writing on the web because of the indelible legacy on their personal brand. But do you really want to live life in fear of your protecting your personal brand? The protectiveness will increasingly clamp down your creativity and put you in a box. My biggest return anyway is not from the rants and traces I leave on my website but in what I actually build …so here goes an experiment. I saw this comic and I had to include it here :
Most personal development is crap. I’ve heard 95% of the industry is crap. I think that is a good number. But it’s such a big pie that the other 5% is huge and there are a lot of valuable ideas out there. Even within the 5% you can easily waste your time, if you read it without attempting to implement anything. You just feel productive instead of actually being productive. Which is actually probably worse than not having read something on productivity at all, because then you mistakenly feel you are making progress on that aspect of life.
I think it’s important to always have a few things you’re working on implementing. If you have bitten off reasonable chunks then prioritize within the 5% of quality advice.
It’s also very important to regularly reflect. I spent a lot of time doing that while I was in Hawaii this last week with my family. And I used a book a friend gave me, LifeManual by Peter Thomas, as a jumping off point. I identified my values and the things that are most important to me and made a plan to invest energy proportionally into the things I value most.
Another thing I adopted to try to sustain progress once I’m back in the swing of everyday things is to have regular rituals. I’ve tried those a few times the last few years but I haven’t been able to make rituals a habit. The problem was that it took too much will power, and we get a very limited amount of will power everyday. So to make it stick, I automated it, eliminating the need for will power.
My ritual involves a PBWorks wiki page that prompts me to do a variety of things each morning: list the top 3 things I want to accomplish today, reflect on the previous day, visualize what I want the day to be like, read my personal mission statement, and a personal commercial to pump me up. It opens automatically every morning with iCal and applescript. I also decided I should put in an evening ritual that is similar but with different prompts.
And every Sunday I automatically pull up a page that lists my goals for each of my values. I reflect on the progress I made each week. Sunday is a good time to do reflection and I’m going to try to make it a habit of focusing on personal development projects predominantly on Sundays.
I just started most of these habits during my vacation in Hawaii so we’ll see how it goes.
By far I think the highest leveraged productivity book I’ve come across is the Power of Full Engagement.
It says the key to high performance is managing energy not time. I fully agree. There are four areas of energy that must be grown, strengthened and maintained independently: Physical, Emotional, Mental, Spiritual. I read the book a few years ago for understanding. Now I’m going back through it for implementation.
Productivity is of huge interest to me right now because I think it’s one the most important skills to learn while young because it’s basically setting the strength of the engine for the rest of my life. Of course I can do it later in life, but I won’t be going as fast in the meantime. And I’ll have more ingrained habits that are difficult to change, in addition to my time being less flexible.
I’m building the capacity to go really fast. Once I’m ready to get on the freeway I will fly.
Seniors in high school everywhere around the country have been humming in anticipation. In the last week college admission committees have sent out their final decisions to this year’s pool of applicants. The preconditions of where we will come to shape our future selves hinged on their decisions. This momentous week seemed like a good opportunity to write a personal update about much of what’s going on in my life and my thoughts on this pivotal period.
Because I haven’t had the time to write much, which will continue to be true for a few more months, I’ve been hesitant to divulge pieces of my worldview without having time to elaborate on and qualify many aspects of it, but I decided a partial picture was better than none at all. A lot of people have asked me about college and what I will be up to next year. Now I will let you know.
College Applications
I only completed two applications. I filled out the UC Application and submitted it to four UC Campuses. I got into the UC Berkeley and the honors program at UC Santa Barbara. The other school I applied to was Stanford, where I applied early decision and was deferred. This afternoon I found out I was not granted admittance.
Why did I only apply to two schools?
When I started the college search process last year I had my heart set on University of Pennsylvania. I was almost sure I wanted to go East. And I was bent on getting into their Management & Technology program. Early on in my teenage years I developed a strong but abstract desire that I wanted to do something important with my life. I didn’t yet know how, but I knew I wanted to make an impact. In my voracious pursuit of big ideas, I read lots of books on information theory, cosmology and the nature of the universe. Soon after I found the Accelerating Change conferences and downloaded hundreds of talks onto my iPod. It soon became clear that science and technology would have an exponentiating impact and dramatically transform human society over my lifetime. It was then I knew I was going to somehow be part of harnessing that power for the betterment of the world. For awhile I thought my avenue of impact would be by directly accelerating innovation through scientific research. I soon found out this was not my forte and transitioned my focus to business and entrepreneurship. But business had a stuffy, stagnant feel in a way I learned entrepreneurship did not. As entrepreneurship shifted from a desired lifestyle to an adopted lifestyle so shifted my decision about the best school for me.
I began to explore the incredible concentration of people and resources in the Bay Area. I began to start my own projects, meet more people and become more involved with the communities that previously only existed as words on a page. Working in Silicon Valley this summer at the Institute for the Future was a pivotal point for me. I realized that given my interests the Bay Area was where I was meant to be. I developed a palpable momentum driving down a path I knew I couldn’t get off of anytime soon. I couldn’t just takeoff off to the otherside of the country and start over. And I knew I couldn’t accomplish everything I wanted to by the end of senior year in high school so naturally two things happened: 1) Stanford became my first choice and 2) When my friend Ben planted the seed of taking a gap year, I knew it was something I had to do. The potential upside of a gap year is so huge and I have learned so much more the last few years outside of school than inside, that I need to find out what I can accomplish when I am in control of my time and my learning for an entire year.
The reason I applied to only two schools is because I believe in maximizing the best opportunity. Since I can only choose one school, maximizing the chances of seizing the best opportunity is more important than the number of opportunities. Quality over quantity. And because I knew I was going to take a gap year even if I got into Stanford, it didn’t make sense to apply to schools knowing if not accepted, I was going apply to Stanford again, among other schools, on my year off. Yes, it is extra work and a pain in the ass, but as I’ve heard many times college admissions is a crapshoot. Since I have the opportunity to apply again, I might as well roll the dice twice for a decision that could have such a big effect on my life. They deferred less than 5% and rejected over 80% at least I know I’m somewhere in the top 20% and am hoping what I accomplish the next year will push me over the top.
My thoughts As I Found Out Today
It hit me a lot harder even when I found out I was deferred in December. I think this is because I’m so much farther along in all my endeavors that I’m way less dependent on Stanford to get where I want to go. I’m amazed at my own composure and have surprised myself how stoic I am right now. I think it’s because my identity is so loosely tied to the school I will attend. A school is just one stepping stone on a long journey. And I’m confident I’m headed down a road that will take me challenging and exciting places.
I hate it when people rationalize that everything happens for a reason. My mind wants to go there too, but that would be wrong. There is none of this, “it just wasn’t meant to be” shit. Things don’t always work out for the best and that’s life! My ceiling is probably a bit lower. My rate of progress slowed just a bit. I’m disappointed, but I know as long as I have my health I’ll be ok.
To all of you who got into your dream school and are jumping for joy and to all of you thinking this is the worst day of life, realize that you are not where you go to college. Both the excitement and the disappointment will fade and you will have a life ahead of you wide open with possibilities that only you can shape into something you are satisfied with through hard work, persistence and a little imagination.
Going to Stanford would be amazing, but I don’t need them to get where I want to go. Clearly, I think they have the best environment of any institution in the country for helping me to achieve my goals and potential. But I don’t need an educational institution, nobody does. An institution can only help shape and accelerate potential, but ultimately it all comes down to you. Stanford would hasten and expand my opportunities. But ultimately I still have to seize the opportunities myself. And I will find and create opportunities with or without Stanford. I have a year off starting at the end of May, enrolled in no program but the one I create for myself.
Unfortunately, a fair amount of this whole admission process is out of my hands. I did all I could and put the onus on the admission committee to make the right decision, unfortunately they made a mistake. I will apply again in November a year more accomplished, a year older and a year wiser and will just have to hope that when the time comes they’ll make the right decision.
Lots of people told me they expected me to get in. I really appreciate the faith people have put me in recently. Even though my chance of being admitted this year faded, that faith and trust did not. I’m really thankful for all the people I’ve met this last year. It’s been an amazing ride and the number one reason I feel good about where I’m headed is because of the people I’ve met along the way. I’m humbled by the generosity of so many people who have taken time out of their busy lives to give me support, advice and have helped me get off the ground. I look forward to continuing to work together, to share experiences and build lasting friendships. I promise I will not let you down.
What Am I Doing On My Gap Year?
The quick list for my gap year is:
1. Reading 2. Writing 3. Meeting more people, networking, strengthening weak ties. 4. Starting a non-profit called Force For the Future 5. Internships 6. Traveling
At some point I will have more time to write about my decision making process, why I am choosing to do these things, and why I believe this is the best way to carve out a dynamic life uniquely suited for me.
I wonder where I’m headed now. I know I’ll be fine and I’m happy I’m taking the rejection well, (often there’s a disconnect between how I feel and how I know I should feel), I’ve got more than a year ahead of me and a lot of exciting things on the horizon the next few years, I just hope Stanford will still be in the cards.
It’s really bothering me lately that I don’t have time to write at all. I’ve been piling up plenty of ideas and have about 150 stashed away that I’d like to write about sometime. The sad thing is I rarely have the time to sit down and flesh out my ideas.
Rather than not posting at all I’m probably going to try to do more lists and posts with scattered thoughts and links.
School right now really is the antithesis to the creative process. The extreme repetition and regularity of rather uncreative assignments does not permit the open ended freedom I need to delve into creative process. A half hour here and there simply doesn’t work. I need less mandated work and more time to work on what I’m passionate about. We all do. I don’t even have time to go into a pedantic rant now about how schools need to change, though expect that sometime in the distant future.
I’m not going to say I don’t have the time, because it annoys me how many people complain about how they don’t have the time to do things they care about. If you care about something make time. But honestly, right now I care more about creating than talking, and I care more about learning than writing about what I’m learning. Ideally I’d like to do both. If I had more control over my life I would make time. But my high school requires an unhealthy amount of work, and ignoring it just isn’t a very realistic option right now. I have been making a lot of progress on Force For the Future and I’m really excited about where it’s headed.
Keep up with me on twitter. I’m pretty active there. But writing a lot here just isn’t very feasible right now.
