"How to Be Cross Eyed" Book Announcement
From my upcoming book How to Be Cross Eyed: Thriving Despite Your Physical Imperfection — a mémoire and lifehacking manifesto
There’s that moment when you meet a new person and you can tell that they are just a bit disoriented by your weirdness. You feel that familiar little pang of embarrassment and shame because you know how weird you must look to them.
You’re physically imperfect. So am I. I know that moment as well as you do…
As its subtitle implies you don’t have to be cross eyed to read this book, but this book is also not for a general audience of people interested in personal development. It’s for that one or two percent of the population that have a conspicuous physical imperfection.
Which I fall into. I’m cross-eyed, if you’re reading this, perhaps you are too. I have fairly conspicuous Strabismus, which you can see here…
I think this uniquely qualifies me to write a book on thriving despite having a physical imperfection. There’s certainly people out there with more conspicuous physical imperfections, who have it worse than I do. However, the eyes are the windows to the soul as they say, they really are a part of nearly every important human interaction. Not having normal eyes has been a disadvantage that I’ve needed to develop a specific set of skills and life strategies to overcome.
I was talking to my lovely fiancée about this book and she asked me if the purpose of the book was to help the self esteem of people with physical imperfections.
Not really.
This book is more about the lifehacks that I’ve employed over the past 15 years; strategies, methods and tools that really work to help you overcome the challenge of a physical imperfection and thrive. These things will likely improve your self esteem, but they will also work if you have low self esteem, or no self esteem (or too much self esteem — as I’m sometimes accused of having). Self esteem is not my focus, there are better books on self esteem. My focus is on things that work.
This is not your typical self help book…
I’ve had a pretty interesting life; I’ve seduced a politician’s daughter in Medellin, Colombia, I hung out with spies in Kiev, Ukraine. I’ve almost died underwater twice, I participated in a bank robbery and I lost my virginity to a spy (yes, really!) I’m a pretty good story teller so I think a memoir is the right format for me to write a book as opposed to the problem>generalization>platitude>strategy formula that most personal development books follow.
Thanks for choosing to spend your precious time reading my book. I certainly welcome any feedback you might have. Feel free to get in touch with me on social media or drop me an email [email protected]
Getting the most out of this book
A few guidelines for high leverage reading…
I’m a big fan of digital books because it’s so easy to highlight, take notes and bookmark resources that you want to implement.
You’ll notice that the book has a lot of little chapters as opposed to a few long chapters. This is to make it more consumable and easier for those who might want to jump around from section to section.
Because of the story telling format of the book I think you’ll enjoy it more just reading cover to cover but it has been very modularized so you won’t be totally lost if you skip a chapter or two that doesn't particularly interest you.
While listening to audio programs is more convenient and allows you to multi-task your comprehension does take a hit. I’d encourage you to actually read the book if you can. When I listen to audio books that I actually want to learn something from I usually listen to the chapters multiple times and I listen to them while I’m doing something else that’s relatively mindless, like cardio at the gym or commuting.
You’ll notice that this book contains a lot of discussion of brain science and health. I’ve tried to strike balance between proving what I’m saying with scientific references and readability. If you’re skeptical of a biohack that I talk about checkout the science I cite or search on my website where I have hundreds of detailed articles in which I provide significant clinical evidence for anything I recommend here.
After you read give your mind a little downtime to metabolize the information into wisdom. I try to read in the evenings before bedtime.
Digital Format
For a lot of authors, especially of digital books, the formatting seems to be a total afterthought. I’ve almost totally given up on reading ebooks because they are often in this crappy PDF format, I have to open them up in a clunky PDF reader, sit in front of my computer and scroll down the screen as I’m reading, it’s far from the sublimely pleasurable experience of settling down with a book and flipping the pages. For that reason I’m properly formatting this book into EPUB and Mobi versions which you can read on a Kindle device, if you don’t have a Kindle you can use the Kindle app on your smartphone, failing that you can read it using the Google Play Books app.
Do yourself a big favor, if you’re going to read the online version of this book, read it using the Medium app for Android or IOS — this is one app that’s worth taking 30 seconds to download. This is a very cleanly designed app that’s a pleasure to read on; no annoying notifications, or distracting social networking features and it has a white text on black background night mode that you should enable in settings.
From chapter 5: The Secret Lives of Alpha Males. Easier on the eyes, right?The digital book format on Kindle or whatever is somewhat limited to just text on a page (what a book is supposed to be!) whereas Medium allows me to create media rich chapters with photos, videos and links to resources. If you find a chapter particularly interesting check it out on Medium.
Audio Book
I have a face for radio and a voice for radio, so I’ll be recording and producing an audio version of this book for your listening pleasure which you can download here but I’d actually encourage you subscribe to the How to Be Cross Eyed podcast feed on the Castbox app. This is the best app for listening to audio programs; it’s free (and commercial free!) and it even remembers where you’ve stopped listening when you want to resume. I’ll be uploading more audio chapters to this feed as I complete them.
Independent Crowdfunding Campaign
I’m going to be releasing, chapter by chapter this book for free here on this blog. This book will always be free to anyone that it could help. Downloadable versions of it can be found here. Please forgive my sporadically imperfect grammar, the downloadable version of this book has been more properly checked by my editor so it’s probably better to read that.
If you want to thank me for it you can buy it. In fact, if you think it might help you I’d encourage you to buy it. There’s this phenomena of sunk cost motivation; if you pay for something (even if it’s not very expensive) you’re much more likely to follow through, take action and actually improve your life.
Finished chapters published
Chapters published here on Minds.com...
The Secret Lives of Alpha Males
Biohacking Diet (with just $1)
Biohacking Sleep with Lighting, Beverages and Mindset
The Hero’s Journey from No Fap to Tantric Sex
Tantric Sex Techniques for Men
Sex and Dating Hacks for Him and Her
How to Suck at Life (But trick people into thinking you’re cool…)
The Secret Society Infiltration Model for "Networking"
Social Dynamics Secrets of Elite Socialites
The Social Anxiety Protocol for Biohacking Confidence
Aquatic Misadventures
Sex in Maseratis, Bribery in Mexico
Frequently Asked Questions
My Medium blog is read by about 10,000 people a month, so I want to address some questions I’ve been getting about this book…
Why write a book?
For 7 years I’ve had a dynamic conversation with the lifehackers and biohackers of the world via the Limitless Mindset blog and Youtube channel but recently I become aware of how non-optimal a format blogs and Youtube videos are for communicating powerful information that can be deeply transformative for those who need it the most. I read The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains and learned that the HTML formatting of information on websites and the high distraction layout of Youtube severely retards our reading comprehension and metabolism of information into knowledge. Reading books is a very different mode of thinking and a sublime pleasure — it’s one of the few ways to really reside in someone else’s head and think their thoughts. Reading books entails an intangible romance with a writer that reading blog articles or watching Youtube videos simply doesn't capture. Furthermore, all my life people have told me that I was a raconteur; a great story teller, thus this book is going to be a mémoire of my adventures, misadventures and learning experiences.
There’s already A LOT of self help books out there. Why is your’s worth reading?
Again, most self help books follow a very predictable formula that makes for uninspiring reading. I’ve instead opted to illustrate the lifehacking strategies and tools with story telling. I think this memoir will have quite a lot more entertainment value than the average self help book. Furthermore, I do something that’s disappointingly rare in non-fiction which is thorough meta-analysis of human performance studies. Every month around the world there are hundreds of new scientific trials published but many are highly inaccessible and every month many thousands of blogs and articles are published online but most of them are just rehashing what other bloggers are saying or trying to grab clicks with sensationalistic headlines. There’s surprisingly few writers like me that actually delve deeply into placebo-controlled science and synthesize it in well researched articles and writing that is consumable for the public.
Why an independent crowdfunding campaign? Why not launch it on Indiegogo or Kickstarter?
I’m choosing to do the crowdfunding here on my own website. I’m not a big fan of Indiegogo or Kickstarter because they take a significant cut of earnings for providing a very minimal amount of service; hosting an ecommerce page and processing orders. My book is also not really for the masses, it’s for a specific niche so I see little benefit in advertising it on mainstream platforms. Professional bloggers like me are often offered sweet publishing deals from traditional books publishers but this is a deal with the devil; these publishers often mutilate the author’s message and dumb the book down for mass consumption — independent crowdfunding removes any filter between me and you. It also allows me to accept payment in cryptocurrency; Bitcoin, Ethereum and especially digital gold currency.
Will there be a print version of your book available?
This is why I’m doing this as an independent crowdfunding campaign. It allows me to the gauge the interest in a print version. Obviously it’s a lot more resource intensive to print and ship books. But printed books have more soul; they don’t become lost in cyberspace if your hard drive crashes or you forget your password, you can gift them or loan them, you spill coffee on them, you can write notes in them, you can sit down with a loved one and read them, you can take selfies with them — so the print version will be available for $18.99. If less than fifty paperbacks are sold, I’ll just send the digital versions and refund the difference. I have this flexibility with an independent crowdfunding campaign.
Why is it free? You should be charging for this!
There’s a number of books I’ve read that were given to me as gifts or that the authors made free to download that profoundly changed the trajectory of my life for the better. The stuff in my book has really helped me and it can really help this often ignored and abused unsung group of people with physical imperfections. If I can liberate just one person from their self made, invisible prison of self loathing by making my book free to download it’s totally worth it to me!
So I’m going to order it today. What do I get immediately?
You’ll receive the digital versions of what is written thus far — about half of the book. Upon conclusion of the crowdfunding campaign the Mobi and Epub versions will be professionally produced and the physical versions printed.
How long is the book going to be?
It will be approximately for 250 pages or 70,000 words. So not a tome that takes months to get through but also not a brochure.
Will this be available on Amazon? Can I pre-order there?
Once the crowdfunding is complete I’ll add it to Amazon. If you appreciate my work, writing and creative analysis please support the crowdfunding. If this is fruitful I’ll be writing more books; I’ve written nine chapters of a dystopian science fiction novel and I’ve got some cool ideas for a historical fiction book.
Your Twitter bio says that you’re a “smart drug dealer” is this book just going to be an extended catalog of the supplements and biohacking products that you promote?
No. But Nootropics, smart drugs and biohacking have been a huge gamechanger for my life — I’m not aware of a self help philosophy that even comes close to the transformational bang that you get for your biohacking buck spent. For 7 years I’ve been studying Nootropics and consulting biohackers on how to use them to accomplish their goals. So I will touch on some Nootropics and Biohacking products in the book but I’m aware that not everybody can afford these things (or has access to them) so it’s really not what the book is about.
Is this book just going to be a rehashing of the material you cover on your website and Youtube?
It's about 50% new material and about 50% encapsulating what I've already written about. If you don't have the time to read the 500 articles on my website or watch the hundreds videos on my Youtube channel, just read this book as I refine my best stuff in it.
What if your crowdfunding fails?
I’ll write the book anyway. Again, my purpose here is to pay it forward, spread the knowledge that’s empowered me to really thrive whether or not people pay me for it.
How are you going to be spending the money?
I’m a capitalist and the book sales will make a big difference in growing my biohacking business and brand. It will help me reach many more people with the Limitless Mindset message of self improvement via biohacking. I’m one of the few public people on the internet that honestly critiques bad supplements and mediocre health products instead of just pitching what pays fat affiliate commissions. The sales of the book will empower my free speech and help keep me independent from bad economic incentives.
My wonderful fiancée is my copy editor, if you’ve noticed the grammar of my writing improving she is to thank! So I’ll be pampering her with at the least a very nice dinner (or a vacation — she deserves it!)
Again, I’m going to be making the book free to everyone who it might help and I think one of the best ways to get it in front of the most people would be an outreach campaign to professionals who deal with those struggling with physical imperfections; plastic surgeons, doctors, school counselors, psychologists, etc. So I’ll be investing some of the sales revenues in PR targeting these professionals.
And I’ll be spending the funds getting the actual books printed in the USA.
I don’t really struggle with a physical imperfection what should I do with this book?
I know that a lot of you in my audience are very good looking people. I’d encourage you to get this book and give it to someone in your life who is not so fortunate. It may really help them! If you’re worried about offending them I’ll include instructions for anonymously sharing the digital version with them or you can get the print version and just leave it for them somewhere that they will find it.
How do you define a physical imperfection? Aren’t we all physically imperfect? Almost all of us are less beautiful than an airbrushed Megan Fox or Channing Tatum…
Well yes, but some of us have conspicuous physical imperfections. Thanks to a birth defect, accident, medical condition or just an unlucky roll of the genetic dice we have something about us that is not within the normal spectrum of the natural human physical form. It’s likely the first thing that people notice about us when they meet us. Which is a unique challenge that cannot simply be overcome by being confident, faking it till you make it or reading books about self esteem. Really thriving despite a glaring physical feature requires an uncommon set of barely legal biohacking tools, social dynamics strategies from the fringes of polite society and rapid mindset transformation technologies which this lifehacking manifesto delves deeply into.