My $200 Lesson

If you want to kick ass in life, it helps to wear ass-kicking boots.

I paid $200 to not attend a conference today. Let me explain.

There's this "professional blogger" conference in a Silicon Valley city today.

That's just over the Santa Cruz mountains from me, albeit via the notorious Highway 17, which basically has eight miles of twists, turns, and drops that turn deadly with darkness or rain. If this road didn't exist the way it is, I am convinced that Santa Cruz would not be some smaller beach town and instead would be Northern San Diego, gobs of housing reaching all the way from the ocean to the front doors of Facebook and Google.

But I digress.

My reason for not attending this conference (that I had paid for) had a little to do with my lack of desire to drive a rainy 17 in a deluge (where it would probably take me two hours to make the 46-mile trip), and more to do with the fact that most conferences suck.

There I said it. Gasp or nod your head, I don't care.

I just know that almost every time in life that I've found myself in a hotel ballroom with a group of people for a "professional" conference, I was excited only if I was a speaker or if the people at my table were a blast and we had fun making fun of the speaker.

Sure, I learned a thing or two at conferences, but usually I could have learned most of that stuff on the internet. Conferences feel so pre-Internet to me.

But conferences are popular. Why? Three reasons.

The first is that they give us something to look forward to, sort of like a business vacation.

We get to meet people and have drinks and it's a company expense. We make connections. Awesome.

Second, they make us feel important.

"I have to go to a conference" is totally legit. You can schedule everything around it, because that conference — and you — are super important.

But, most of all, conferences allow us to procrastinate.

We get to talk about doing the thing instead of doing the thing. Think about it. This is the basis of all our social networks: procrastination. Gobs of working hours lost every day to procrastination.

On my Twitter feed this morning was an article called something like "7 Ways Not to Procrastinate." Perfect. Procrastinate by reading and sharing an article on procrastination, so more people can procrastinate.

Why do we procrastinate?

Because we're scared. I have a friend who posted on Facebook that she wanted to write something but wasn't sure what, so she was asking for ideas. People gave them. I told her she already knew what to write but was scared to do it. Was I right? I don't know, but my gut gives me an 85% chance on that one.

Now, I'm not saying all conferences are bad or boring or a waste of time.

I'm sure there are medical conferences that save lives, spiritual conferences that uplift, and all sorts of conferences that add value to the lives of everyone who attends. But what I am saying is that you should determine why you're attending conferences and if they're a good use of your time. Then make your decision.

It's easy to spend a lot of time talking and thinking, harder to spend a lot of time producing and shipping.

In my case, I'm not so sure this conference was worth it.

So I didn't go. I called it My $200 Lesson, and instead pulled on my favorite boots and jeans and flannel shirt and headed to a coffeehouse, where I now stand, typing this blog before I launch into the work I want to accomplish.

I cleared my schedule for two days for that conference, right? Instead of sitting in a hotel ballroom with a couple hundred strangers, I'm attending a private writing conference featuring me for two days. And I don't even have to wear a name tag.

Boom. Time to get shit done.