Tony Hollowell's blog

Did you ever do a science fair project that turned out a disaster? I did. I tried to determine whether or not there was a statistical relationship between full moons and earthquakes. An interesting idea, I know, but the theory was that perhaps the position of the moon and the increased gravitational pull would somehow disturb the equilibrium of the crust and result in a greater tendency to have an earthquake. After poring through 120 years of seismic activity and full moons, I determined that there was absolutely no correlation between the two. My project was a complete dud.

Now this is hardly an acceptable way to conclude a science fair project. However, I noticed that if I removed a few of the data sets from the 1930’s, my correlation coefficient would increase slightly, and while the numbers were still inconclusive, I would have at least something to say. I could comment that “there seems to be a potential relationship that requires more exhaustive analysis than I could conduct in the last few months.” Translation: “I just put this together last night but will you PLEASE still give me my bonus points for science class?”

Now some people would brush this off as dishonest (I agree) or at least skewing the numbers (I agree), but I eventually learned that this kind of “science” could win me the Nobel Prize!

You see, science really isn’t very scientific at all. Sure, there are some purists out there, but science isn’t always about the truth. The history of science is filled with people who found the truth, but the truth was not according to their hypothesis, so they changed the numbers.

Need examples?

No one is really afraid of failure. No one has fear of trying something and then failing. What people truly and deeply fear is criticism.

I wrote a math book last year, and when I was writing it, I would occasionally get filled with fear. I told myself that I was afraid of failure. I told myself, “You are afraid of putting much work into this book and then nobody wanting it.”

But when I looked at my fear, I found that I had no fear of failure. My greatest fear was not that the book would go unwanted, but that people would criticize me for it. I feared getting emails that said, “This book is horrible. Why would I ever use it in my math class?” I feared meeting someone who had used the book and having them tell me, “I can’t believe how many mistakes there are in the book. It is embarrassing.” I feared somebody telling me that my website is confusing and useless.

Fear causes a person to cave in on their selves. I often thought to myself, “Why put myself in a position of criticism? Why shouldn’t I just write a small manual for my students? Why should I risk criticism?” The fear at times was crippling, but it was NEVER because of the fear of failure. In fact, the fear actually caused me to occasionally desire failure. I would think to myself, “If I never hear a comment about this book, that is good, because no comments mean that I didn’t make anyone upset.”

I have a very simple process for finding work that I love.

1. Do a bunch of different jobs.
2. Quit the jobs that are boring and suck life from my bones.
3. Keep doing the work that is left over.

Notice that this method of “finding your calling” is all about elimination. You do a bunch of different things, and you just STOP doing things that you don’t like. What is left over? Things that you DO like. A basic mathematical equation of this phenomenon looks something like this:

(All possible work) – (the work that is boring) = (Work that is NOT boring)

I am a great quitter. I am one of the best quitters in the entire world. If there is ever a Quitters Hall of Fame, I will be a first ballot candidate. I have 23,821 different projects that I have begun that I never intend to finish. You know why I quit doing these things? Because they sucked out life and failed to light me on fire. And being a quitter has made me very happy because I quit everything that is boring and that sucks life out of me, which means that everything that is left over is something that lights me with a roaring blaze of intensity. When is the last time you have done work that makes your fingers tingle? For me, it was approximately 0.13 seconds ago, when I wrote that last sentence.

I remember when I was in college, I spent so much time trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Well, that was a complete waste of time. It is much easier to figure out what you should NOT be doing in life.

Have you ever had the chance to visit a National Park? Have you seen the sun set over the rim of the Grand Canyon? Have you walked through alpine tundra in the Rocky Mountains? Have you hugged a giant sequoia that shoots 300 feet into the sky?

If you haven’t, you should.

If you have, then you owe a large debt to those who gave these great gifts to you. You see, I am a great lover of democracy. To me, democracy is about the freedom to create a world that is better than you found it. It is freedom to give yourself to a good cause. And here in America, there is a never-ending fountain of democracy-loving people who laid the foundations and passed on gifts of splendor to future generations, and our national parks are one such heritage.

People continue to ask me, “So what do you want to do with your life? What’s your plan?” I just put on a flabbergasted look and say, “Plan?”

I don’t know how to put this any more bluntly: I have no plan. I have no pre-set future. I have a whole lot of possibilities, but I certainly do not have a plan. I’m like the weatherman: I’ll give you a whole lot of estimates, but not a single certainty.

I always thought that accomplishing a dream is a simple process, but this was before I accomplished any dreams. Now I know better. Every dream I have fulfilled has followed a set of stages, and these stages all have their own unique timing and characteristics that make up the lifecycle of a dream. If you want to live a dream, and not just to think about your dreams, be prepared for the stages below. (Note: if you want to prevent fatal collapse of your dreams, be sure to read stage #8).

I never thought of myself as an artist. To this day, I draw stick men that would not get awarded an honorable mention at a kindergarten art contest. I eventually resigned to the fact that I must be a scientist because I am good at math and because I think Shakespeare’s writing is boring. I always thought that these two qualities (good at math and bored by Shakespeare) thrust me into an inevitable life of crunching numbers and talking about graphing calculators for eternity.

The act of creation takes work. It is demanding. It calls forth. It is not “easy”. It is not necessarily “happy”. It demands something. Energy must be invested in order to create, and the same is for discovery. To discover something, you must invest energy. It takes work to discover something.

If you want to create a work of art, prepare for stress and anxiety. If you want to discover new lands, prepare to get bruised, mentally and physically.

I often think that if I never learned to say “no”, it would have been the death of me.

I have a secret: I’ve been employed for 9+ years in various jobs, and I have never turned in a resume to get a job. Ever.

How did I do it? It was very simple: I realized that nobody hires a piece of paper. They hire people.