The Digital Contrarianâ„¢

Ryan Levesque

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Contrarian insights directly to your inbox.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Contrarian insights directly to your inbox.
The Digital Contrarianâ„¢

Ryan Levesque

Issue #022

| The Digital Contrarianâ„¢

How to See Hidden Patterns Others Completely Miss

(And A Simple Morning Routine that Could Change Your Life...)

Ryan Levesque

14 min read

-

My morning routine is simple:
 
Wake up at 4:45. And before sitting down to write… Step outside, take off my socks, and walk onto the cold damp ground with bare feet.
 
The idea is this:
 
Touch the earth, before touching the screen.
 
It’s an exercise that I picked up from a good friend of mine, Ali Jafarian, whom I wrote about in a piece not too long ago in homage to his framework of the same name titled Mountains, Rivers, and Cosmos.
 
Simple practice. Profoundly impactful.
 
(Go ahead and try it for yourself. It might just change your life…)
 
Now, this is easy to do when you’re at home in your familiar space.
 
But right now, I’m on the road, in unfamiliar territory.
 
I’m writing to you early this morning from the Boston Logan Airport Hilton Hotel – moments away from boarding a flight across the Atlantic for my upcoming UK Speaking Tour.
 
And when I woke up early this morning to “touch grass”, I had to settle for this little patch of green, in the middle of an otherwise gray urban jungle (yes, I avoided the dog poop):
Quick aside: For those who are traveling into London to join me – be sure to let me know by sending me an email, so I can get you a private invite to the small group meetup I’m hosting so we can hang out IRL. There are fewer than ten tickets remaining…
Now, after my adventure this morning somehow finding the world’s smallest dog park – I have to be honest: My writing environment isn’t quite as inspiring as the mountain sunrises of Vermont that I’ve gotten used to (though the psychedelic hotel wall art is still pretty groovy…)
But disruptions be damned – there are some important insights I want to share with you this week, which I’m racing to put down on paper right now before I have to scramble to catch my flight…
 
Because after all, as James Clear writes:
 
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems”
 
And times of disruption are when your routines and habits are tested.
 
Time is ticking.
 
And my stopwatch is set…
 
So let’s get right into it…
 
Because if we want to learn how to see hidden patterns others completely miss…
 
We need to first understand…

1 | The Hidden Trap of ASK-ing.

In last week’s issue of this newsletter, [#021] The Life-Changing Magic of “Strategic Obsession”, after revealing that I’ve officially started working on my next book, and asking for a handful of volunteer readers to provide early feedback on V1 of the Table of Contents (TOC)…
 
Let’s just say…
 
I was not prepared for the feedback I received.
 
Working on something for weeks, and then asking to have it (gently) torn to shreds is a humbling experience.
 
It’s hard asking for brutally-honest feedback.
 
(And even harder to receive it.)
 
In fact, in between reading every email, every note from each of these incredible, amazing readers – I had to take a moment to step away from the computer and go for a short walk…
 
Because it was just all so much to take in.
 
At the same time, it helped me tremendously – to uncover immediately apparent patterns and make some key substantive shifts before getting too deeply committed the structure of the book in its current form.
 
I’ll reveal some of the surprising patterns of feedback that emerged a little later in this newsletter, including notable differences between AI and Human response…
 
I’ll also give you a *peek* into one of the chapters readers voted that they’re most excited to read…
 
And one of the chapters about which they’re least excited…
 
(You’ll get to decide which one you’re more excited to read…)
 
Because here’s the thing:
 
The longer you hang onto any piece of work before asking for feedback, the more attached to that work you become.
 
So ask early in your process of creation – while the clay is still wet.
 
In fact, when it comes to developing any new product.
 
(Whether that’s a book, a piece of software, a service you offer…)
 
There’s an unspoken collaboration that takes place between you (the creator) and them (the consumer).
 
There’s what you want to create. And there’s what they want to consume.
 
What you want to teach and what they want to learn.
 
What you want to write and what they want to read.
 
It’s a partnership.
 
A dance…
 
The writer leads, and the reader follows.
 
And there is an inherent tension in that choreography…
 
There’s You.
 
There’s Them.
 
And there’s the question mark in the middle…
Because if you want your work to be consumed and received – the overlapping “green space” is where the opportunity for commercial success exists…
 
And this is of course where the fundamentals of ASK come in.
 
Because as we all know, the secret to succeeding in business is simple:
 
Find out what people want, and give it to them.
 
AND, as we ALSO know:
 
When you try to be all things to all people, you end up being nothing to nobody…
 
BUT, at the same time…
 
When you try to be something you’re NOT…
 
You run the risk of losing who you are as a person in the process.
 
And therein lies the hidden trap of ASK-ing….

2 | Trusting the "Contrarian Voice" of Your Heart.

So, what’s the antidote?
 
What’s the solution to this trap?
 
Well, as I wrote in an exchange with one of my TOC readers from this week – in a conversation we had about “the ten-year story arc” between my first book (Ask), and some of the ground that this next book covers:
Ask was all about the art of listening to the voices in your market…
But what about the most important voice of them all?
The voice inside of you…
The hardest voice to hear…
The voice that too easily gets drowned out in the raucous sea of social media meat heads (and meat head-ettes)
How do you know when to listen to your voice…
When your gut tells you to ignore what everybody else is saying…
What everybody else is telling you to do…
And instead trust the Contrarian Voice of Your Heart…
As quiet as that voice may be…
—
 
In short:
 
This next book is about developing conviction and courage to ignore the crowd and become a true Independent Thinker…
 
Whether that means Zigging when they Zag, Making Friends with the Enemy, Breaking All Conventional Rules – Or any one of the dozen “moves” we’ll be exploring in what’s effectively an Independent Thinker’s Playbook…
 
This next book is about…
 
The Curiosity to identify hidden opportunities nobody else sees…
 
The Conviction to develop your own deeply-held contrarian beliefs….
 
The Courage to take bold action based on that conviction…
 
And most importantly:
 
The Confidence to ignore convention and carve your own path…
 
Because when you decide to do it your way…
 
The world will tell you you’re crazy.
 
(Which in my experience, is a sign that you’re on your way to building something special…)
 
—
 
If Ask was all about learning how to listen to everybody else…
 
This next book is all about learning how to listen to yourself…
 
How to navigate the tension between your internal truth and the pressures of external reality.
 
It’s about knowing when to pounce on opportunity…
 
Before the rest of the world sees it.
 
While at the same time…
 
Knowing how to recognize your own biases and blindspots that will ruin you if you’re unaware of their presence…
 
BUT…
 
Most relevant to our conversation today…
 
It’s about discovering how to anticipate what’s coming next…
 
By learning….

3 | How to Recognize Hidden Patterns Others Miss...

In his Masterclass on Writing, the author Malcom Gladwell defines a pattern as the following:
 
“A pattern is something that appears in different worlds simultaneously.”
 
Now…
 
Throughout my entire adult life, I’ve been fascinated with the process of identifying hidden patterns.
 
Because if you can learn how to spot the non-obvious patterns others aren’t seeing, then you can anticipate what’s coming before anybody else…
 
It’s like being able to see the future in ways to which other people are completely blind…
 
In other words, pattern recognition is the skill to develop if you want to put yourself in position to be where the puck is headed – before the rest of the world has even stepped out onto the ice…
 
And that of course, is the advantage of all advantages.
 
Arguably the ultimate strategic superpower in business (and in life.)
 
In the mastermind I lead, we’re having a number of conversations right now as we speak, about this very topic unfolding in our industry… Deep dive discussions around topics like: “The Great Sea Change: Why the Digital Marketing Playbook of the Last Decade is Obsolete (& Where to Shift Your Focus the Next 18 Months…)
 
Conversations on topics like:
 
“Going Analog: The Contrarian Path to Thriving in this New Digital Era & The Least Crowded Channel to Reach Your Customers Right Now…
 
On the subject of pattern recognition and predicting the future…
 
If recognizing patterns is effectively the ultimate skill to master…
 
The question we should be asking ourselves is:
 
“How do we get better at spotting hidden patterns – especially the “non-obvious ones” that others miss?”
 
Well…
 
In the words of Malcom Gladwell – if a pattern is “something that appears in different worlds simultaneously”…
 
AND…
 
If we want to have any chance at getting better at spotting them…
 
Then we need to spend time in a lot of different worlds simultaneously…
 
In order to see these different patterns…
 
And identify them when they emerge…
 
—
 
And this is where things get interesting.
 
Because as counterintuitive as this may sound…
 
This is where struggling to fit in can actually be a superpower…

4 | The Madness of Crowds & The "Fringe" Advantage...

Growing up, I never felt like I fit in…
 
I always felt like an outsider, no matter what group I was part of:
 
The artist who played soccer. The athlete who played piano. The nerd who always fooled around in class. Always from “some other world” dropping in from somewhere else. Never quite fitting into the world in which I found myself at any given moment:
Today, I still find myself in a similar place:
 
In a secret community of practical homestead preppers where I feel like the odd man out on the outside looking in…
 
In an exclusive group of high net worth investors, where I feel like I still don’t quite belong (despite being a member for the last 4 years…)
 
Same thing with the private digital marketing masterminds I’m part of…
 
The local farming communities I belong to…
 
The list goes on and on…
 
I don’t feel like I belong in any of these groups.
 
“Who am I to be here?” I often think to myself…
 
But I believe that being on the fringe actually puts you at an advantage…
 
It allows you to see what’s happening in each of these non-overlapping worlds simultaneously – both from within and afar – without getting drunk on the Kool-aid and succumbing to the Madness of Crowds…
 
It allows you to avoid the group-think and echo-chamber effects that can often show up when you inject yourself deeply in any one (or more) of the many worlds you might find yourself in…
 
Now, being an outsider certainly comes with its costs…
 
And sure, we all have our biases and blindspots…
 
But being on the fringe and “not fitting in” offers tremendous advantages…
 
And I believe the reason for that, has to do with something known in nature as the “Edge Effect”…

5 | The Edge Effect: And the Unfair Advantage it Gives You...

In the discipline of permaculture (one of the many worlds in which I find myself not quite fitting into) there is a concept known as the “Edge Effect”.
 
In essence, an “edge” is the boundary where two different ecosystems meet, like the line between a forest and a meadow, or the shoreline between land and water…
 
The “Edge Effect” refers to the idea that ecological edges yield both maximum biodiversity and maximum productivity because they combine characteristics of multiple types of habitats and conditions within a very, very tight space.
 
So when you’re designing a Permaculture System, you want to maximize your edge, like you see here in this image below:
This image, from our family farm, where we are raising and growing about 80% of the food we eat – shows an example of how we grow food along the edges of ponds and at the forest edge along the hillside…
 
(As you can see with these Jerusalem Artichokes, aka “Sun Chokes” pictured here inside this red box…)
 
The “Edge Effect” also applies to human systems as well.
 
Because after all, the intersection between seemingly unrelated fields of knowledge is often where innovation and creativity so often show up.
 
It’s also where the most profound (and at the same time non-obvious) patterns emerge…
 
This is why being on the fringe of multiple non-overlapping worlds gives you such an advantage in life…
 
And why spending LOTS of time in multiple non-overlapping worlds like this (or putting yourself in close proximity to other people who fill this role for you…) is an incredibly valuable strategy in business…
 
Which takes us back to the beginning of our conversation today…

6 | Surprising Patterns And What We Can Learn From the Difference Between AI & Human Response...

If you’ve followed my work for any period of time, you probably know my position on using AI to write and create original content:
 
(Spoiler: I’m not a fan.)
 
This newsletter for example, is entirely written by me by hand, without the use of AI or any other human writer…
 
And it’s why it feels the way it feels when you read it…
 
The writing has a certain flavor that you can actually taste…
 
But you might be surprised by the fact that I actually use AI quite extensively to conduct some of the research behind this writing (and to help with the analysis of data that I often reference…)
 
For example, the open-ended feedback I received last week from my 10 +/- early TOC readers on the emerging “book squad” (plus a handful of friends who jumped in to offer their feedback) generated a total of 12,120 words worth of content…
 
And while I’ve read and re-read every single word that was written myself (several times over, in fact), it would’ve taken me hours – if not days – to identify some of the hidden patterns and trends that AI is able to identify in a matter of seconds…
 
Like for example, it will probably come as no surprise to you that of the Top 5 Most Exciting Chapters (voted by the TOC readers who provided feedback) the chapter titled…
 
“Making Predictions – How to See Hidden Patterns Others Miss…”
 
… Was a VERY popular one, landing at #2 here on the list:
But among the Top 5 Least Exciting Chapters (again, as voted by the TOC readers who provided feedback) one of my personal favorites – the chapter on dealing with failure, which I had titled:
 
“Struggles & Setback – Make the Skeleton Dance…”*
 
Was voted the #1 least exciting chapter in the entire book!
 
Womp womp…. :-(
*BTW – In case you’re not familiar: “Make the Skeleton Dance” is an expression I first learned years ago from a friend of mine, Ben Settle. It refers to the idea that instead of hiding your skeleton in the closet, take your skeleton out for the world to see and make the skeleton dance. In other words, that flaw your product? If you can’t fix it, feature it. That setback you’re struggling with? Share it with the world with radical transparency. When you Make the Skeleton Dance, and do it with vulnerability and authenticity, the relationship you develop with your audience and the level of trust it creates is unlike anything else…
Now, what I find fascinating about these results…
 
Is that when I ran these two chapter titles through the five-part rubric I learned from Charlie Hoehn (the book expert behind multiple million copy bestselling books, whom I profiled in last week’s newsletter) – both of these chapter titles had nearly identical high scores according to ChatGPT.
 
As you can see in the screenshot below, rated according to the following five factors:
  • Curiosity (5 points)
  • Clarity (5 points)
  • Memorability (5 points)
  • Relevance (5 points)
  • Emotional Impact (5 points)
 
“How to See Hidden Patterns” scores a perfect 25/25 Points.
“Make the Skeleton Dance” scores a near-perfect 24/25 Points.
And yet, among my initial TOC readers…
 
The former was rated as clear, compelling and among the most favorited chapter titles…
 
While the latter was rated as confusing, uninteresting, and generally received a relatively “meh” response…
 
But that is the feedback that ultimately matters…
 
(Because ChatGPT ain’t gonna be the one buying this book…)
 
I’m counting on real-life human readers to benefit from what I’m writing…
 
Which brings us back to the beginning of this issue…
 
And where I’d like to invite you to join me in today’s conversation…

7 | What I'd REALLY Like to Know from YOU...

So far, we’ve covered a fair amount of ground here today.
 
We’re approximately 2,770 words in, and you’re still hanging with me…
 
So there must be something that’s held your interest and attention here today.
 
By now you’ve gotten a flavor for where I’m taking things…
 
The type of ground and subject matter we’re setting sail to explore…
 
And this is where I’d like to invite you into this collaboration…
 
Where I’d like to invite you into this dance…
 
Because as we continue to move things forward, what I’d love to know from you is the following:
 
#1: What’s been your biggest TAKEAWAY from everything we’ve explored here today in this week’s newsletter? 
 
(This will help me understand what ideas have been stickiest and which ones didn’t land. The more specific you can be, the better – especially any specific phrases, words, or concepts that are really sticking with you…)
 
#2: And as far as NEXT week (and going forward) where would you like to see me to go NEXT?
 
(This will help me shape the direction of where we take things. There’s a lot for us to play with and explore – in both this newsletter, and the upcoming book. And this is where you have an opportunity to have your voice heard…)
 
Make sense??
 
Simply shoot me an email with your thoughts and answers to those two questions.
 
I promise to read every word you write.
 
Until next week,
 
Ryan :-)

Want more insights like these?

Get The Digital Contrarian delivered to your inbox every weekend – before it’s published anywhere else.

Read more newsletters:

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Join over 100K+ readers of The Digital Contrarian getting unconventional business strategies delivered straight to their inbox.

Want more insights like these?

Get The Digital Contrarian delivered to your inbox every weekend – before it’s published anywhere else.

© RL & Associates LLC. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions | Contact Us

The Great Sea Change

The Great Sea Change diagram from Return to Real