If You Become Undefinable, You're Irreplaceable (And More Valuable)
Transcend the stupidity of labels. Confuse the sh*t out of people.
Labels turn smart people into morons.
Everyone wants to put what you do in a box. They wanna slap a label on you to limit your potential. At dinner parties, I hate being defined so I just tell people I still work in banking because the real explanation is too long.
The neighbors in my street think the same thing. “Wow, Tim is home a lot for a business banker with 100s of clients.”
I don’t want to be defined because I am undefinable. And that’s what makes me successful at what I do.
When you’re undefinable, you’re:
Irreplaceable
Can’t be beaten by the competition
Here’s how to do it.
Generalists rule the world, and specialized monkeys get replaced by AI
The old world teaches specialization.
Get an overpriced degree, then a highly specialized job that may not be needed in a decade.
But now that tech runs the world, you can’t just master Microsoft Excel and email, and expect to be valuable for 45 years until you retire then die.
AI is taking specialized jobs and lighting them on fire. Being specialized is limiting your potential. It’s taking one skill and saying “I know everything” then repeating it for decades without learning anything new.
Being a generalist makes you way more interesting.
It makes you a multifaceted human being. You have to be consumed by self-education. Every year you acquire new micro skills.
Your mindset becomes flexible instead of fixed, by default, because dedicating yourself to learning makes it easier for you to deal with rapid change and new ideas.
"I don't get it" equals amazing
People don’t get me. In confusing as f*ck.
I’m a dad to a one year old. But I write more essays than Ernest Hemingway did. I love house music because I used to be a DJ, and I hate classical music. Yet I listen to classical music movie soundtracks to get into a flow state.
I’ve always sucked at sports and don’t like watching football. I ridicule the masses who consume sports and nothing else. Yet I like to watch golf because it feels like meditation. I hate gym bros but I go to the gym four times a week and lift heavy.
I eat a healthy plant-based diet, but I have a craving for greasy vegan burgers that’ll clog up my heart valves with cholesterol.
My current life goal is to play drums again like I did for 10 years as a teenager. I’m a failed entrepreneur of a 100-person startup and hate VC culture. Yet I now own a 7-figure online business and have a small team.
I was bad at english in school, yet now I’m in the top 1% of online writers in the world. I hate the luxury life and Lambos, but I want to buy a Tesla and take my wife to the occasional nice restaurant.
I hate Trump, but if I were voting in the US election, there’s no way I’d vote for Kamala or Biden. So what political ideal do I worship?
I’m a walking, talking contradiction.
This is no accident. The most successful people I’ve studied are the same. You can’t define them with black and white labels, or place their ideologies into either blue or red political party.
The problem with defining who you are with labels is you place absolutes on your capability and mindset.
A few years ago, I studied personality traits through the work of Dr Benjamin Hardy. In his book “Personality Isn’t Permanent,” he proved the Myers-Briggs assessment to be bullsh*t, and that there’s no such thing as introvert or extrovert.
The best feeling in the world is when people can’t define you.That means you sit in a category outside of the norm, and by default, that makes you special and by extension more valuable.
When people try to define me they think I’m a writer. But I also run the operations of a business, send marketing emails, write eBooks, do the accounting work for the business, run my private community, teach courses, do procurement, hire freelancers, build landing pages, write copy, manage multiple social media accounts, etc.
So what is my job title? Undefinable.
Each skill on its own is insignificant in value, but when you add up the skill stack, it generates 7-figures. That’s the superpower.
Get the hell away from one-dimensional labels if you want to be wealthy.
You can do anything you want without permission or qualifications
(That’s the bottom line.)
The old factory worker world wants to define you so they can assign you a role and slap a salary number on your s*xy head.
But we’re quickly moving into a new economy with autonomous vehicles, AI, rockets going to Mars, and one-person businesses making billions of dollars.
When you’re undefinable you don’t ask any slave driver for permission. You do whatever the f*ck you want. The internet doesn’t need you to have a niche, topic, or business that sells one type of widget.
Instead of being defined by a label, you’re now defined by your story.The best storytellers have a hero’s journey. They were born, did some stuff, got rejected, failed, hit rock bottom, went on a journey of self-discovery, then made a comeback and built their own thing (empire, book, newsletter, community, etc).
When you control the story you control your future.
That’s real freedom.
You don’t need to qualify for a certificate or a rubber stamp. Your qualifications are your online social proof. YOU are the marketing machine, not an employer.
Final Thought
If you’re tired of being rejected or asking for permission, then become undefinable.
Transcend labels. Follow your curiosity until you find an obsession. Go all-in. Embrace self-education. Reject all labels. And don’t let anyone give you rules or tell you how to act.
Being undefinable is a silent act of rebellion and it’ll piss people off. Why? Because they will envy your free spirit. You either have freedom, are a slave, or are on the path to earning your freedom.
Stay focused. Find the dark place. Find your psychopath mode. Unleash your creativity and imagination. Dare to dream 10x bigger.
Be undefinable.
Tell me if you love the idea of becoming undefinable and why in the comments.
I send this email weekly. If you would also like to receive it, join the 121,000+ other smart people who absolutely love it today.
👉 If you enjoy reading this post, feel free to share it with friends! Or feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏
Best article I’ve read in a while. Becoming or daring to be undefinable is quite the job in today’s society, but so worth it!!
I love thinking about a lateral movement that will allow me to enjoy a leap forward. For example I wanted to be able to nurse my children longer than six weeks when I had them in the 80s. My job as a teacher required me to return to work after six weeks and switch to bottle feeding. I knew my first son had too much trouble with digestion and allergies to do that. My breast milk was giving him a chance to strengthen his immune system. So I quit my job.
But I never quit teaching. Within a month I had my first students that I helped learn to write well enough that they aced their university courses. After that I began taking on individual students who just found their way to my door and helping them maximize the hours they spent learning at school so each became fluent writers and confident in their own ability to excel at what they chose to focus on. I taught each of them to become flexible and responsive to change but make sure you are competent, capable, and consistent at any work you choose to do. If you do that the employer or person who hires you to make a specific product will get a return they love but don’t often get from other people. I believe you can do many things in life and embrace lifelong learning while gathering people who trust you because you deliver when you makes commitment to do so. I have had a successful home renovation business but we were too dependent on capital to handle losing 50% of our clients when the 2008 recession hit. I had to take on personal debt to pay out my employees salaries and then declare bankruptcy. We had been growing and investing for over five years when people just started to walk away from the homes we had been renovating, I learned that there was just too many people making unpredictable decisions for me to be willing to give my all to a business like that again.
It’s the biggest loss I weathered but I also learned how to come back and make sure I don’t have to keep so many plates in the air at any work I want to be creative at again.
Strangely having to call it quits before even more got drug down and lost kept my family unit intact and I had a lot less baggage.
Time to move laterally and start learning something new again.
It eventually lead me to believe I needed to invest in sharing stories about what I have learned by living a life that is built on attracting likeminded individuals to my dedication.
The best way to get people interested is to keep your head down and look happy while you’re shopping or working. Suddenly everyone is checking out what you are up to. Always learn more about better ways to communicate because it helps you learn more about yourself and others. Good questions help people share what they need to learn from you.
Most of what I learned is something I practice not just talk about.
I live my own Renaissance.