Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship pdfdrive com

event
. Behind the wins was a grueling 
process
that largely goes ignored:
relentless, rigorous training and yearly sacrifices—the daily routines that make
the event a possibility.
To the untrained brain set on an event idealism, processes that birth great
events are largely dismissed and definitely not very interesting. Awakening at
4:00 a.m. and diving into an empty pool to swim laps? Meh. On the other hand,
events grab headlines, herd eyeballs, and elicit talk around the watercooler. Gold
medals? Endorsement deals worth millions? If only I could be so lucky to have
such genetics! A twenty-eight-year-old entrepreneur who sold his company for
$50 million is newsworthy; the fact that he drove a beat-up Civic and hadn’t had
a vacation in years is not.

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The 
UNSCRIPTED
understand that uncomfortable processes precede
progress which causes the event. Without it, progress can’t exist and the event
never arrives. And whenever you try to circumvent that process, you become
event-driven and vulnerable to shortcuts. And shortcuts cost you money.
Take for example diet pills. When you buy the latest diet fad pushed by the
latest diet guru, cut the bullshit and admit what you’re doing. You’re trying to
accelerate or buy fitness (the event) instead of suffering exercise and dietary
change (the process).
When you finance a new Beemer for seventy-two months because you’re
cash short (the event), you’re 
buying
success instead of 
earning
success (the
process). Heck, if ya can’t 
be
rich now, perhaps you can 
look
rich now? Two
hours of nauseating negotiating, a signature on thirty pages of documents, and
wham, success! Never mind your rocking new ride parked on your parents’
driveway.
Another purveyor of an event modality is Hollywood, infecting young,
impressionable minds with grandiose event-driven ilk. I could write a book on it,
but for the sake of brevity, here’s a few paragraphs.
A common plot device used by crappy screenwriters is 
Deus Ex Machina
—or
God from the Machine. This is where, seemingly from nowhere, an unsolvable
problem or untenable situation is suddenly resolved by a weakly contrived and
unexpected 
event
. There’s that word again implying quick and magical results.
When you’re tied up and sentenced to death by Nazis, isn’t it fortunate that
the Ark of the Covenant spits fire and kills them all? Or how about Earth is
getting annihilated by space aliens and they just happened to fail astrobiology,
forgetting that bacterial decontamination is Space 101?
Oh, and there’s the sappy “chick flicks.” How many of them end with a
spectacular wedding ceremony? 
Hitch
. 
Runaway Bride. The Wedding Singer.
The
list is mountainous and I haven’t even gotten into the new millennium. Anyhow,
you know how the closing scene rolls: After a big epiphany that the two jilted
lovers can’t live without each other, a big wedding event is paraded; everyone
smiles ear-to-ear while jubilantly dancing with a feel-good song strumming in
the background. Bride and groom kiss at sunset. Onlookers cry and smile. Fade
out with elevation. Story ends. The credits roll. Happily ever after. Or is it?
Hollywood marriage is the ultimate event idealism and molestation of the
process-principle. In movies, marriage is always represented as a grand event.
The expensive affair has spawned the term “bridezilla,” which is code for a
woman who believes a six-hour event shall be life’s pinnacle, something

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headlining 
TMZ
and stopping Earth from spinning. For the bridezilla who’s seen
the movies— 
Pride and Prejudice
, and the 90,000 others—the wedding declares
you and your partner have arrived, and happily ever after will be your gift. Just
like Facebook, these movies present the sanitized version of marriage, the shared
experience, the party—the event. Swept aside is the real process that must come
afterwards: the compromise, the growing old together, and the hard work that
marriage naturally requires of its partners—the process.
Of course, you don’t see process. But what you do see are the credits rolling.
Your mind fills the gaps and immediately resigns “happily ever after” as an event,
not a process. Do nineteen-year-old bridezillas pissing their panties for a
wedding know it’s an hour-long event and a marriage is for life? A 50 percent
divorce rate shouldn’t shock anyone; without process, it’s just two delusional
people sharing expenses and suffocating under the shortcut scam.
The Hollywood-marriage plotline is one example of how the media
subliminally frames us into event idealism and one that is destructive not only to
marriage but to life. Events become the focus, and process becomes the
proverbial redheaded stepchild. Event idealism is the secret to accomplishing
nothing and failing at everything.
For example, another event-driven consequence evolving from shortcut
thinking is what I call: “action-faking.” Action-faking (as opposed to “action-
taking”) is when you take solitary and/or uncommitted action that is NOT a part
of a bigger process. Instead, you’re acting not to imbue real change but to “feel
good” by momentarily fooling yourself about progress. Action-faking can be
many things, from trivial busywork to data research to reading books—none of
which coax progress. You might indeed act, maybe once or twice, but your
actions aren’t directly correlated to what moves the needle. Instead, we’re
tricking our brains into secreting a momentary dopamine high, fooling ourselves
with the progress illusions, when in truth, we’re wasting time.
For the aspiring entrepreneur who wants to get rich, be his own boss, and
blah blah blah, “action-faking” is ordering business cards from Vistaprint. Look
at that, they say you’re a CEO! Woo hoo, you’re the head honcho of a zero-
revenue, zero-customer, zero-asset company!
Action-faking event.
It’s spending a fortune on office desks and equipment before you’ve landed
your first customer. Wow, look at those mahogany desks! Imagine the deals
going down there!
Action-faking event.

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This type of entrepreneurial masturbation is jerking your meat, convincing
yourself that you’re “making progress” while the sad reality persists: you aren’t
any closer to finding the love of your life, finding a customer, or making a profit.
Do you lift? Ask anyone who works out regularly and they’ll stinkface the
affirmative: Januaries SUCK at the gym. Every January, gyms experience
overcrowding as new faces storm in—event idealism “action-fakers”—New
Year’s Resolutioners who decide after X decades, this year is different! I’m
getting in shape, losing weight, and changing! And bam, three weeks later, the
gym is back to normal. Classic action-faking. In fact, anytime I hear someone
say, “I’m on a diet,” I want to throat-punch them and shout, “Action-faker!” The
word “diet” implies temporary. It implies failure. It implies that whatever you’re
doing for three days or three weeks will NOT become habit or a part of your
lifestyle. Diets die. Habits do not.
Real, permanent change does NOT come from event idealism or from
shortcuts. It comes from a daily, regimented process woven into the fabric of
your life, automatic and nearly instinctual.
EVENT-DRIVEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A FAILURE OF PROCESS
Unfortunately, wayward entrepreneurs with event modalities are the rule
rather than the exception. Examine the poor reviews for this book, my last book,
and any book relating to money or entrepreneurship. The common theme will be
that the paint-by-numbers shortcut was not bibbed and spoon-fed into the
entrepreneur’s salivating mouth. And for those lost entrepreneurs, the search
continues tirelessly, at least until their next job hunt.
For example, this is the type of frustration I feel when trying to open the eyes
of event-idealized thinkers.