Let me tell you a little story. A little story that delighted me more than a whole New York cheesecake and left me wanting more. And left me wanting to share it.

The story goes like this:

There was once a man, we could call him Harold, but you would think I am still talking about Harold from Harold and Maude… So let’s call him Matthew.

Matthew was old and rich. He lived alone in his beautiful house in a similarly beautiful and rich neighborhood.

His pride and joy was his beautiful lawn. Grass… for those of you from the other side of the planet.

He took great pride and a lot of time to keep his lawn weed-free and just the right color, just the right size.

But one day he broke his foot, and just could not maw the lawn… And because he wouldn’t want to hire someone to take care of his pride and joy, the lawn was left unattended.

For a month no one noticed, but when the rains of April came, the grass suddenly started to grow… with plenty of weeds… and the whole neighborhood had a new topic of gossip: Matthew’s lawn.

His foot still wasn’t healed… but he got so angry he shuffled into his house and came out with his shotgun…

OK, that was the first dramatic turning point… in this otherwise mildly interesting story. But then the storyteller switched to skill-building.
Everyone hates skill building because it doesn’t obey the laws of man… it obeys the laws of nature.
What’s the difference? The speed and the smoothness of the road, my younglin’

And that is why I have a whole crowd of readers who, when we inquire, have NO mentionable skills.

Because the speed of skill building is a lot like the grass of Matthew… doesn’t seem to grow for a long time. No one notices, no one praises you for the hard work that you MAY put into building a skill… so you QUIT.

I took a course on article writing in May. Even going through the course was torture for me. Why? Because I had to admit that my article writing chops, even after writing five thousand articles was in need of improvement. Oh, the horror, oh the shame.

And like you, I expected myself to learn and use and practice what I learned, and be on the first page with every article I write, so you open every email, so you read, and you tell everyone about the fantastic articles I write.

By June the latest.

But oh, this is not what happened. Actually, believe it or not, my writing got worse.

It is November, and I got the first compliment an article, for the first time, yesterday.

Another sign that instead of getting better I have been getting worse is that when I refresh my really old articles, they get some attention… I used to write better.
What is it I am trying to say?
Skill building is not a straightforward process, and in addition it is slow. Slow like molasses, slow like Matthew’s grass. It grows, but it may grow with some weeds like my writing.

Because it is slow, just like in other areas of life, you opt to do things that are fast
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I have been intensely curious why something with a 7~10% truth value would make a difference for people who read it, study it, practice it, apply it to their lives.

Ultimately we are talking about 90-93% untruth… and yet. People report results… in the testimonials.

If we look, the world at large is a dark, foggy place with hordes of ignorant, mislead, slothful people.

The average truth value of what is known… meaning accurate knowledge about the world, is less than 1%. Truth value is a percentage number that tells to what degree the particular piece of information contains the whole truth, multiplied by the errors and mistaken assumptions, unproven theories, and such.

So

99% b.s. or lack of knowledge about anything.

So compared to that, a PhD, a medical doctor, a university professor, a Nobel Prize winner, a Billionaire’s 7%-10% truth value is staggering.
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