When I was in my early twenties, I took a job teaching public school for a very low salary.

Frankly, I could have made more waiting tables, which was the other skill set I possessed.

The challenge was that I’d be working in an area with a shortage of affordable housing. The additional challenge was that I was a bit of a snob who had grown up on the coast and wanted to stay there. I didn’t want to move inland, far from my family (and for that matter, my job). What was I going to do?

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In 2008, I felt like a weirdo.

I was running a business and didn’t know what I was doing, even though I had read every book I could find to help me. That’s not because I was failing; rather, I was starting to progress past the point where general advice could apply.

Plus, I had read Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Work Week, which got me fantasizing about a life in which I could travel around the world, working from anywhere. But that felt like something I should keep to myself. Sharing my ambitions felt like a swift way to destroy my career as a neighborhood music teacher.

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Amateur guitarists often get stuck on strumming.

They can teach themselves the basic chords, but they end up with a tense, hooked wrist that yields an equally tense, unpleasant sound.

This is the kind of thing that people chalk up to lack of talent—and it is. The aspiring musician just doesn’t have the natural ability to strum. However, all that means is that the player wasn’t able to figure it out by herself. The problem is easily solved:

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It used to be that whatever you needed, you could find it on amazon.com.

But have you noticed that is no longer the case?

I went looking a couple of weeks ago for a simple mechanical kitchen timer. And I couldn’t find a single one that was made by a reputable company and had consistently good reviews.

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If you look up a common question on the Internet (“How to lose ten pounds,” “How to save money,” “How to quit smoking,”), you are likely to find many results.

The thing is, all of these results are the same. Page after page of the same tips, the same benign encouragement.

Finding something deeper is can be hard. You might not even know that it’s out there, but it must be. I know this because the “top ten tips” articles in my own areas of expertise are all but useless, and sometimes downright misleading or wrong.

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