Mark Manson
Medellin, AT
Male, 28
I am a professional blogger, internet entrepreneur, and world traveler. I've been to over 40 countries and am currently working on my second book about long-term travel and how to work/live abroad. On my blog I write about self development and creating a unique lifestyle for yourself. Feel free to ask me anything.
Before when I was primarily a pick up and dating site, my competitors were obvious: the other pick up businesses and coaches. Now that I've branched out into more self development and lifestyle and focused much more on my personal brand rather than specific advice, my competition and market has become more ephemeral. I think my biggest competition are the modern men's sites: AskMen.com, ArtofManliness.com, Men's Health, etc. But I think they are competition less in what they sell, and more in the space they occupy in pop culture and in men's perceptions of themselves. Ultimately, the goal of my site is to redefine what masculinity is and how a new generation of men perceive themselves. So while some sites or businesses may compete directly with my style product or my dating product, ultimately I'm competing for a space in the mind's of men at large. It's a lofty goal, but hey, dream big, right?
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I'm a night owl. Over the years, my sleep schedule usually ran from 4AM to 11AM or so. I usually made it a goal to be up by noon. Although the past few weeks I have been experimenting with polyphasic sleeping (google it), so I've been going to bed at 4AM and getting up at 7AM recently. Being up that early feels... weird.
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I worked in a bank for a short period of time, maybe 2-3 months before quitting. My entrepreneurialism was unplanned and a bit serendipitous. I wrote about it on my site here: http://postmasculine.com/kill-your-day-job
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Sometimes my parents call me up feeling really guilty when I do a post about my emotional baggage or childhood issues, haha. But generally, no. Most of the people either don't care, are mildly flattered, or never find out because they don't read me. The exception is girlfriends. My ex could get pissy/happy depending on how I referenced her in various posts. And the current girl I'm dating actually cried when she read a post I wrote about her (it was the good kind of cry). Honestly, it's surprising how little blowback or drama I've gotten considering how personal I do often get.
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Private Detective
What's the best Sherlock-Holmes-worthy detective work you've ever done?
Wills and Estates Lawyer
Can I leave everything to my pets?
McDonald's Manager
Were you proud or embarrassed to tell people you worked at McDonald's?
Yes, I do. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got related to this actually came from my high school math teacher. He was an old dude and had been teaching for 40 years or something. And he told us that he noticed that when kids were stumped on the test, if they started writing something, anything, their brains would naturally start to trial-and-error their way into the problem and come up with something. But if they just sat there and stared and thought, nothing ever came of it and they only got more and more frustrated. On my site, I refer to this as the "Do Something Principle" I apply the same concept to writer's block. When I have writer's block I force myself to just start writing, even if I think what I'm writing is total shit and silly and useless, I just keep going. And inevitably what happens is I find one or two things I like and want to keep and then expand on those, and then that gives me new ideas and I continue until I'm over it. But it often takes a number of attempts. What I've found is that some article ideas give me a lot of writer's block while others come out of me effortlessly. Not completely sure why.
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For articles and blog posts I set deadlines for myself because it's important to post content consistently and keep readers regularly engaged. For larger projects like books or products, I don't set deadlines but rather progress goals, i.e., "I want to write 5,000 words this week," etc.
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It's penetrating further and further. I think it's inevitable, the social and economic changes happening, as well as the philosophies of the younger generations are converging on this type of lifestyle. It's kind of our version of the "free love" revolution I suppose. They are hard ideas to grapple with, but change always is. I think a decade from now people's attitudes towards this type of lifestyle will be quite different it will be considered a lot more mainstream.
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