Steve Pavlina recently wrote about his 30 day news fast trial that he has decided to continue with indefinitely. Despite his excellent points, I’d like to write a post disagreeing with Steve on the matter.

Steve cites a number of reasons why news should be avoided, which can be roughly summarized as news is a short-sighted, biased, negative, selective, irrelevant, shallow, untrustworthy, inactionable and redundant source of information. Even with truly quality news sources these points all apply in some doses, but if most of the news you receive is inactionable then I say that the root problem is you are listening to the wrong news!

I have several fields of interest, of which business and computer technology are of highest relevance to my daily life. I like to keep on top of them for a number of reasons, and sometimes the highly summarized trendy myopic news media suffices. Where Steve has taken an extreme approach of avoiding all news, I simply stay away from the stuff that holds no value to me. I’ve found that a great way to do that this is through RSS feeds, so long as your RSS reader isn’t setup in a way that is visible during work. I have my RSS feeds setup in my GMail account, which I check roughly twice a day. I click the interesting headlines that show up, while my brain automatically filters out those that aren’t relevant.

What do I gain from not blocking myself off from the news media?

1. Inspiration. Whether I need a blog post topic or I’m on the lookout for a new business idea, being exposed to current topics provides fuel for new ideas. Sometimes the greatest breakthrough could be in taking an idea from a different discipline and applying it to something relevant to me.
2. Competitive information. Knowing how the market is doing, what certain companies are up to, and what sort of business and technology advances are out there, or just what’s hot provides plenty of material relevant to my business making decisions.
3. Awareness of trends. Since the news media is indeed myopic, profit-oriented, and controls heavily what people discuss, it provides a good idea of what the current trendy issues are in a particular subject area.
4. Avoiding becoming myopic myself. It’s fine and well to focus on and become an expert in a chosen field, but I don’t want to feel like I am living under a rock. That’s where the stereotypes like the PhD genius who is completely oblivious to the world around him come from.
5. Enjoyment. I find it genuinely interesting to know about some of the things that are going on in this world. The news media places under my nose topics that I would never actively seek out myself, such as the discovery of a new cancer cure or a NASA space mission.

I should also not forget to mention that I’ll know when the planet is evacuating long before Steve

It all comes down to expanding your horizons intelligently, and regardless of its flaws the news media is a highly valuable tool when its user knows of its limitations. Do not forget that other sources of information have their own human-induced faults and should all be scrutinized carefully. The moment a source of information becomes trusted blindly it automatically becomes a source of propaganda.

Successfully building a business around a product is a wholly separate area of expertise, not something that you kind of pick-up as you release it. Yet that’s something I very much did with CustomBar, a terrific piece of productivity software that I devoted the larger portion of 2 years of my life to developing. I was very much a software geek first and business man a distant second, consequently making many of the same mistakes as hundreds of other shareware authors. The result was making only 10% of the profit that the software could have made (a very conservative estimate).

The initial launch did fairly well and my inbox filled with sales. This is also the only time where I really thought about the marketing and spent serious time putting things together. However I lacked the knowledge that I needed to build something that would continue to grow and receive attention long after the last news article on a popular software site had sunk to the bottom.

Two years is a long time to invest in a product when you end up making a grocery list of amateur mistakes when finally selling the thing. Yet that’s one of the reasons the business start-up failure rate is so incredibly high; I was the rule and not the exception. I was very strong in a technical skill (programming in this case), had a great product idea, but not nearly enough business knowledge to make it viable.

If you are the brains behind the world’s next big mouse trap then learn from these mistakes. It’s not easy to come up with a viable business model and strategy to execute it. Top CEOs of billion dollar companies get it wrong all the time, and surely they must have a little bit more experience than simply picking-up a marketing book. Aquiring a combination of experience and knowledge will put you light years ahead of the inventors out there that dived right in. If your Big Idea will still be there in a year or two perhaps it’s best to try a smaller business first? If you don’t yet have a Big Idea then there is even more reason to start a smaller business now, as you will have the necessary experience when you do have that Idea.

Inevitably the next question that has come up in most readers minds is “but what other business could I possibly start?”. Believe it or not, you don’t need to create something new and revolutionary to launch a company and start making (or losing) money. That’s actually a very risky path compared to taking an existing product or service and simply doing a great job of providing it. Businesses that tend to be inexpensive to start are those that do not require a large investment in materials or commercial location. Digital products work well, such as software, ebooks, online courses, web services and so on. The internet also happens to be a fantastic way to get experience in marketing strategies as investment is generally low and you can accurately measure results within days instead of months. If that’s not your fancy do not worry. You can take advantage of virtually any real skill, and the less formal education it requires the better for you (it is much easier to start a landscaping business than a biotech company).

One catch is that you do have to put serious effort into the business and want it to succeed. You are starting small so that later on you have the foundation to go big. It may even be that you succeed on your first try and want to continue developing the business. My own primary business, which I plan to grow and expand for many years to come, started out as a side web hosting venture years ago by another name. You won’t get anywhere putting in a half-hearted effort into something, and you won’t learn a whole heck of a lot either.

If all that you do is Build It, the only customer will be your mom.

You want your dream to succeed. Maybe it’s a great piece of software that you are putting every bit of effort into after 8 hours of database programming in some dull cubicle (if that’s the case read this legal issue). Maybe it’s a music school you’ve been sketching plans for while finishing your degree. Maybe it’s a $29.95 product that will be sold in retail stores across the country if you can just convince them that people will buy in droves. Great products are created by people specializing in the related field, not by armies of people in suits and ties (those guys are all managers and accountants working for someone else). You don’t necessarily need a business degree to succeed in running a company. However don’t let yourself stumble so hard that the fall kills you just because you’ve never navigated terrain like this before. Aquire all the business knowledge that you can for your new company, either by getting some experience launching a smaller venture first or by finding a partner who has done it.

What happens with CustomBar you ask? It gets a new 1.1 release in Winter, accompanied by major fixes to the business model (which is where the delays on the update actually come from). That’s the first block of time I will have since Tilted Pixel’s launch in September to revisit things and get it moving again. In the meantime sales continue to trickle in, but at a much slower rate than I would ever be willing to find acceptable.

Many of the world’s problems go back to a lack of knowledge and experience. Low paying jobs, spread of disease, inefficient agriculture, and loss of income due to outsourcing or automation are just some of the “lack of education plights” that people face in North America or abroad. Education empowers you with the knowledge needed to change undesirable situations that you are in. It provides independence from relying on a particular employer or means of sustaining yourself. It provides the flexibility to adapt to changing world conditions. It is amazingly powerful if taken advantage of.

Health and education are the only two things that you need to become prosperous in this world, regardless of what the rest of your situation may be like. Starting with money certainly helps but it is completely unnecessary for success. In fact the biggest obstacle of not starting out with me isn’t the lack of money itself, it’s the self-created illusion of an unfair and insurmountable barrier that it generates. It is ok to start with little and build up intelligently. The person who knows how to do this can create a great empire, while an uneducated person with a lot of wealth will squander it all and become poor.

I am at a point where I am confident that even if I should lose everything, given time and perserverance I can build myself back up to where I am now and beyond. I hold this confidence because I know that I am able to apply existing skills and learn new ones to start making a living for myself and begin to rebuild. My future prosperity is not tied to existing streams of income and I am comfortable with the idea of completely changing how I make money in the future. Just by knowing this I am able to intelligently manage risk and keep forward, rather than being paralyzed by a mentality of fear and scarcity. That is a tremendous sense of freedom, and it is afforded by embracing education.

Education provides control over your life like nothing else can. With its tremendous role in the successful attainment of goals I figured that it’s important to post this reminder of why it should continue to be a constant element in your life. Read everything you can, pick-up highly marketable skills, and most importantly learn how to learn new ideas and concepts so that in a rapidly changing world you are never obsolete. Do not ignore the basic life skills in favor of only persuing your chosen field either. Effective communication, networking, basic financial management, and business/career management skills are vital. How versatile are you against change? What would happen if you are laid off tomorrow or your business collapses? Would this be a new opportunity for you or a crisis?