A Not-So-Secret Secret: Doing the Opposite

We learned back when we were still in college that in many situations the best path to take is the one that everyone else is ignoring or intentionally avoiding. As mentioned in a prior post, herd mentality is a powerful phenomenon. 95% of people will willingly take the more popular or socially accepted side even if there is zero logical foundation for doing so. This most likely applies to you too. 

Fortunately, this is something that you can remedy. Every time you are in a situation that involves making a firm decision, always go with the most rational one. This usually means doing the exact opposite of what everyone else is telling you to do. Doing so will conflict with your emotions and interfere with the well-entrenched circuit inside your brain, but that’s a good thing. Try this strategy whenever you feel stuck and want to create some lasting positive changes in your life. Start with the small decisions first and then work your way up to the major ones. 

Minor Examples

Example 1 — Wake Up Early When You Don’t Need To: Early mornings are the best time for getting work done. This is the only time of the day when you can reliably ensure that there will be zero distractions coming your way (No emails, no phone calls, no deadlines, etc), so your efficiency can easily reach 2x to 3x of what it would be at any other point of the day. Do this consistently over the span of 6 months to a year and you will build lasting gains that other people will surely notice.

Example 2 — Visit a Part of Town That Others Avoid: We do want to start by specifying that there are limits to this. It would be foolish to pack your bags and travel to the middle of a warzone somewhere in the Middle East and risk getting yourself killed. With that said, throw away your map of Lower Manhattan and take the subway to Harlem or the Bronx. Scrap your plans of going skiing in Aspen and book a Safari in South Africa. You will learn a lot more about yourself and others by visiting neighborhoods, cities, and countries that others avoid, and in the process you will become a much more interesting person. 

Example 3 — Taking Care of the Tab At Restaurants: Whenever you are dining, always offer to foot the bill. Never go Dutch. Sure, a lot of people will see this and try to freeload off of you, but you can cut them off after one or two times. The successful people, however, will take note of this and appreciate it. Over time, you will have a solid network of contacts that will generate far more value and money for you than what you were covering in restaurant bills. 

Example 4 — Tip Big At Select Restaurants: When you move to a new city you want to build a select list of restaurants that you will go back to regularly with friends, colleagues or new dates. Go try out a bunch of restaurants solo and ignore the people who judge you over this. Once you have picked a selection of good restaurants that you can frequent regularly, befriend the waiters by handing out big tips. Hand out a 50% tip before your food has even arrived. Keep doing this every single time you show up. After a few visits you will notice that these waiters are bringing your orders out much faster, giving you free drinks on the side, and helping you reserve tables even when the restaurant is already fully booked out. If you are bringing a date with you all the extra attention you get from the waiters will give her the impression that you are an important person (*Basic influencing 101*). 

Example 5 — Stay At Home Over New Years Eve: NYE is the worst day of the year to go out. There’s always a long, stationary line extending down the sidewalk of every single club, and even if you make it inside you are packed like a sardine trying to navigate between the bar, restroom and dance floor. On top of that, food and drinks are way overpriced and it is impossible to enjoy them when there are people constantly ramming into you. You are better off avoiding this frenzy by simply staying home. Ignore the cultural pressure to go out on NYE and go to bed before midnight so you can wake up early the next morning and pump some iron. You can always go out the following night for a far more enjoyable experience. 

Intermediate Examples

Example 6 — Make Calls and Sales on Weekends and Holidays: There is a very strong stigma in many cultures against people working on weekends and holidays. For example, in many European countries there are strict blue laws that mandate all shops and restaurants to be closed on Sunday. This is required by law; even if you are a shopkeeper and want to work you will end up in jail if you open up. Such laws are dumb but reflect the prevailing sentiment among most of the population: We don’t want to work on Sundays but we also don’t want to let other people who want to work do so and make money. 

If you happen to run a physical shopfront and live in one of these places with a blue law then that’s too bad. However, in such a case your number one concern should not be the blue law itself but the very nature of your business. It makes no sense to be running a physical brick & mortar storefront in 2022. With that said, blue laws can’t impact you if you work in enterprise sales or run an online business. 

So if you have never worked on weekends before, sit down on a Sunday morning, pick up the phone and call a hundred leads. Most of your competition will be at home resting and your results will be two to three times better than usual. Or you could meet up with an important decision maker for Sunday brunch (cover the full tab as mentioned above). As long as you are working in a performance-based career, it doesn’t hurt to work on weekends/holidays as this will be reflected in your take-home pay. 

Example 7 — Live Below Your Means: There is a fine distinction between minimalism and frugality. Frugality refers to the quality of being sparing and economical in spending and consumption by avoiding waste and indulgence. Minimalism, on the other hand, is the process of removing the non-essential things in your life and instead focus on spending and consuming things that add value. Unlike a frugal person, the minimalist is not necessarily bothered by the cost of acquiring something, and will willingly spend big bucks on a product as long as they feel it adds sufficient value. 

Be a minimalist by spending only on the essentials when you are early in your career. If you are making $80K post-tax then limit your annual budget to $30K and save the remainder. This will enable you to take more risks in the future to grow your net worth. Ignore all of the external voices encouraging you to splurge and buy things you don’t need. At 22 years old, others will laugh at you for driving an old car and wearing a cheap watch, but you will be the one laughing when you announce your retirement at 35 and live off of passive income generated from eight houses and two apartment buildings. 

Example 8 — Talk to the Person That Everyone Else Ignores and Laughs At: This can be very hard to do if you are part of an established group (workplace, sports team) as you risk antagonizing the other people in the group. The best way to navigate this is to reach out to the person discreetly by email or text and invite him to have lunch together sometime. 

More often than not, the outcast in a group has been unfairly targeted either due to jealousy or deviation from social norms. In high school it is always the quiet and nerdy kid who is great at math that gets picked on while the football player who is a douchebag gets all the positive attention. Do your best to befriend the social outcasts as some of them will eventually become huge successes later in life. The nerdy math guy on the robotics team who everyone avoids could go on to build a global business manufacturing high-tech commercial drones. Your kindness will forever stand out amidst the sea of disparagement he experienced growing up, and he will forever remember this. It is easy and inexpensive to give other people respect, and in the process you can better position yourself to build powerful allies whose talents you can leverage in the future.

Example 9 — Play the Game On A Higher Difficulty Level: When pursuing a sport or some other hobby, always proactively compete against higher competition whenever the opportunity arises. This is one of the quickest ways of improving as you will learn more quickly under the pressure. By taking on a challenge against someone better than you, you will also find out the most important things to work on as your biggest weaknesses get exposed. 

Do not shy away and pick the safe and easy competitor who you are confident you can beat. Yes, you will probably lose by taking on the better competitor and others will laugh at you, but at this stage you should already know to not care about  what others think. By challenging yourself to greater competition every time there is an opportunity, you will make big leaps and eventually be in position to defeat the same individuals and teams. On the other hand, picking the easy challenger is one of the worst things you can do. Do it over and over again and you will see your skills diminish. 

Example 10 — Overcome Big Emotional Upsets Through Focus: If it won’t matter in five years time, don’t spend more than five minutes being upset about it. Just got dumped by your Italian model girlfriend of two years? Good, go outside and talk to some more foreign models. Just lost $200K in commission fees because a client called you and backed out of the deal? Good, pick up the phone right now and pitch to another fifty leads. Just found out your dog got run over by a car? Okay, well that’s definitely not good. Give your dog a proper burial in your parents’ garden, then wipe away those tears and go to the gym and do an hour of deadlifts.

As upsetting and emotionally draining as certain situations may be, our time on planet Earth is so limited and short that there just really is no point wasting any time lying in bed and feeling terrible. In 99% of cases, situations that seem horrible in the moment will seem insignificant when you look back six months or one year later. Rather than feeling bad about it, refocus your mind on an activity that will improve yourself and open more doors for you later.  

Major Examples

Example 11 — Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy, and Greedy When Others Are Fearful: We are directly quoting Warren Buffett here. This applies in many instances but particularly when it comes to investing. Most people have a tendency to buy assets after they have already been hyped up and overvalued, and then sell these same assets when the market is already depressed and prices are low. We are advocating for the opposite approach: Be skeptical when prices are high and everyone else is buying, and acquisitive when prices are falling and everyone else is frantically selling. It is precisely when the markets are depressed that the best buying opportunities occur, and assets at this time can often be underpriced to a degree that represents a huge discount. Why turn a highly opportune buying occasion like the fall in stock prices into something disadvantageous? 

If you are interested in reading and learning more about Warren Buffett’s investing principles (part of the Graham School of Value Investment), we recommend checking out the following book: Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules.

Example 12 — Sever Ties With Your Family Members and Relatives: Many of you will read this point and stop reading altogether. Yes, we know what you are thinking. This is extremely harsh and we don’t have a soul. 

We are not suggesting that you MUST sever ties with your family. If you have a good family and can manage the relationship with your parents and siblings effectively, then definitely maintain contact. They can be your most important asset from an emotional and financial standpoint. However, if your family members are holding you back and killing off your potential then it is NOW time for you to think and be very honest with yourself. Is your dad constantly belittling you and your dreams of starting a business? Is your brother a drug addict who is coming to you for money every week? Is your uncle intentionally sabotaging your relationships with other people by spreading lies about you? 

If you answered YES to any of the above, then you must cut off contact with that particular family member. If they are holding you back or bringing you down then there is absolutely no point in maintaining the relationship for the sole reason of them being “family.” Yes, they will keep reaching out to you and make you feel guilty about ignoring your family obligations, but do not budge. Do not talk to other people about this either. Most people will side with your family members in such a scenario and will also judge you unfairly because that is something they would never think of doing. Which is fine. You are not trying to become like everybody else. You are reading this post to learn how to become better than other people by doing the opposite of what they would do. 

Example 13 — Address Lack of Motivation or Desire by Getting a Second Job: If you feel that you are unmotivated or experiencing a lack of desire to get ahead then go and get a second job. That’s right, instead of lying on the couch and watching Netflix, go to the nearest Burger King and take a minimum wage job in the kitchen. Do this as much as possible in the evenings and on weekends when you are off from work. 

After one or two months motivation will no longer be an issue for you and your mentality will change for the better. This is because you will take away several key lessons from this ordeal. First, you will experience just how unpleasant and painful it is to work in horrible conditions for $8 an hour. Second, you will meet many full-time minimum-wage workers (your colleagues) and get some firsthand insight into their struggles and lack of future prospects. Yes, these people have it far worse than you. Unlike you, they don’t even have the luxury of feeling boredom when questions like overdue rental notices and money for their next meal are pounding in their mind. After this experience you will more than willingly take the occasional boredom and mental challenges needed for self-improvement over slogging away aimlessly in a job that values your physical labor at the lowest comp level stipulated by the law. 

Example 14 — Do Not Flaunt Your Wealth and Success, Let Others Find Out For Themselves: This applies at every stage in your life. Flaunting your wealth or success will not do you any favors. If you are only making $60K a year and wear a $30K watch to work, the people in your office will automatically associate you with insecurity and low self-esteem. Since the watch is such a significant part of your income, the very decision to purchase it will hold you back from financial independence by multiple years. You might only think that it costs the upfront $30K you paid when in reality the cost is closer to $300K over eight to ten years (HINT: invest that money). Not to mention that given your financial situation you cannot afford to lose it. 

Some of you will become rich and successful some years from now. Continue to keep a low profile. Showing off your private jet or fleet of supercars will make you a very obvious target for gold diggers, swindlers, con artists, criminals, etc. Suddenly everyone will come up to you wanting to be your friend, and you will now have trouble separating your real friends from the fake ones. As we mentioned in a previous post, being famous is no fun and you should sidestep it at all costs. 

Try to avoid discussing the topic of money if the particular conversation falls outside of a salary negotiation with your boss or a business transaction with a client or vendor. Instead, focus on portraying a high level of competency and financial aptitude. If you are dining with a friend, you can offer to take him to a restaurant that is more expensive than what he can personally afford. If you are taking a girl out on a date and can confirm that she is long-term dating material, then feel free to bring her back to your Upper East Side penthouse. If a close friend is struggling with a problem and you can fix it easily by leveraging your connections, then definitely do so. Actions speak louder than words, so never ever brag or talk about it, just simply do it when people are not expecting it. This will speak volumes about your status and success and will draw other high-value and attractive people towards you. 

Example 15 — Volunteer At An Animal Shelter: Notice we specifically mentioned animal shelter, not homeless shelter, food bank, or anywhere else. Feel free to volunteer at any of these other places if you want, but they will not serve the purpose we will mention below.

Unlike humans, animals are extremely pure. Just as an example, while even the closest relatives of yours can backstab you for personal gain, your dog will give you its unconditional loyalty. The more you spend time with dogs or other animals at a shelter, the more attached you become and the more you want to help them. This is an extremely pure emotion and a very good one to have. It will drive you to work harder and become more successful so that you can do more to help and provide for these animals. Yes, as unimportant as many people claim money to be, at the end of the day it is those with more money who are able to help more animals and other people. 

On an ending note, be wary and extremely cautious around someone who is cruel to animals. These people are at best the kind that will take advantage of you and at worst future criminals or serial killers. 

Conclusion — And Also An Elite Example On Doing The Opposite

There are many further examples of doing the opposite that we did not mention in this post, but the above are just some of the ones we have stuck to for around a decade now. If you stick with the above for a few years your lifestyle will improve substantially. Others around you will take note too. Maybe you turned pro and became an elite tennis player after years of training at 4 am in the morning and challenging yourself to the strongest competitors in your city. Maybe you have retired at age 32 after working almost every weekend for five years in a row and making logical investment decisions that others wrote off. 

With that said, there is one more example that we have yet to share. This is probably the most obvious one, but the surprising thing is that many people lose track of this once they have reached their main goals in life. This last tip is to continue learning new things and developing new interests no matter what stage you are at. Learn to be one of those people that likes to learn and has a lot of fun while learning. This will keep you from becoming complacent and losing your competitive edge. Continue to do something new and uncomfortable every single day, week, and month. Only this way can you truly live with no regrets.