BUNKHOUSE LOGIC:
RANDOM NOTES BEFORE YOU START
Risk is the key to everything. The venture that doesn’t involve risk possesses only the most minimal possibility of achieving success. It’s a cardinal principle of all investment and speculation matters that the greatest likelihood of gain on a substantial scale occurs in enterprises with the greatest risk of loss. In the world of moneymaking endeavors, there’s the safe way—putting money into a savings account, which yields 4 percent. Then there’s the speculation in commodities contracts, which often yields 100 percent in a day. The savings account is perfectly safe against loss, while the commodities contract is dangerous. You can lose every penny in a minute (and I don’t recommend it, except as an analogy).
The risk premium is actually a factor in every area of life. The girl who sat next to you in your high school homeroom and has always had a crush on you is perfectly safe, but she doesn’t seem like much of a challenge. However, the girl who makes men walk into walls is a potential heartbreaker, but the night she tells you that she loves you is the biggest night of your life.
The job you have—the one that doesn’t pay you enough to cover your monthly payments on your Sears credit card and which features secretaries who snicker at you when you ask them to take a message—is yours for life. It’s safe and secure. But it’s not the stuff of dreams. It offers no risk, but also no return.
On the other hand, the job you want, the one where you can make it onto the executive jet overnight, will require you to take a few risks. You may have to dream up a completely new approach for how to run your department, and you may have to challenge the competence of your superiors, knowing that if you fail, the risks will be great. But if you succeed, you can feel that you’ve done something great with your formerly failed life.
To succeed in the real world, you sometimes have to step off the train completely and wait at the station until the right one comes along. You may have to quit your salaried job and live hand-to-mouth for a time. You may have to move out of your nice house and live in a small studio apartment for a while. And you may have to work for yourself so that your earnings depend entirely on your own exertions and your own success. But that success may not come for a while. You may find yourself eating Hamburger Helper more than hamburgers. But when the break does come, it can come in a big way, unimpeded by your old boss and your old job and your old limits. You will have made it onto the right track, the right job, and the right level of creativity for you. The rewards will be far richer than they ever could have been without the risk.
Bunkhouse Logic must always be undertaken with the idea that risk is inevitable, healthy, and desirable, and you may find yourself questioning whether you can tolerate so much uncertainty and possibility of failure. The answer is that: (1) The choice is between the risk of success and the certainty of failure if you do not take the Bunkhouse Logic advice; and (2) there is no success without risk, so there really is no choice if you want to get the things you’ve always wanted.
Bunkhouse Logic is a continuing process for getting what you want at all stages of your progress through life. It’s not only for getting off the floor. It’s also for breaking through the ceiling.
Since Bunkhouse Logic is the codification of the rules by which the successful get what they want, it’s useful at every stage of your transit through life. It’s just as useful in learning how to go from the $50,000-a-year level to the millionaire level as it is in getting the first job. It’s as fully applicable to the move from columnist to popular-culture baron as it is to the move from day worker to lady of the house, or the move from college graduation to captain of industry.
One of the most interesting facts of life is that once you’ve put yourself on the track toward getting what you want, no one tucks you into a comfortable bed and carries you toward your destination while you curl up reading Barron’s or Fortune. You have to work to get off the wrong track onto the right track, and then you have to work to keep moving on that track. Your momentum will carry you only a few days or months at most. To succeed takes constant effort, unstinting and unending.
Popular mythology tells us that some waitress is discovered while humming a tune. The next thing she knows she has a home on Park Avenue and a lifetime contract with a record company. The office boy makes a suggestion to his boss about how to make a cheaper widget and the next thing he knows he’s living on ten acres in McLean, Virginia.
It doesn’t work like that. Success is an incremental, step-by-step process in which you work your way up the ladder millimeter by millimeter, pushing all the time. The guides for successful action contained in this book are not only useful, but also absolutely necessary at every step of the journey to your heart’s destination. If you happen to discover the principles of Bunkhouse Logic when you’re already two-thirds of the way there, it will make your remaining trip much easier. If you happen to pick up this book when your goal is a million miles away, take comfort. It’s always a step-by-step journey for everyone. Bunkhouse Logic will be there with you every step of the way, like an old friend.
It ain’t easy to succeed, but it’s easier than failing. Put another way, Bunkhouse Logic in no way promises you that the road to getting what you want out of life is effortless downhill skiing. Far from it. Betting on yourself and winning takes persistence, endurance, and trouble. It requires strength to stay on top of the game and to play to win. To get what you want requires constant, unending application of the maxims of the bunkhouse. Sometimes that will hurt, but it will hurt a lot less than it would to not get what you want out of life.
Finally, do it now. No amount of brooding about the meaning of life or about the meaning of Bunkhouse Logic will take the place of actually getting out of your shell, your office, your home, or your apartment and going out into real life and spreading your wings. Thought is essential. Psychic preparation is essential. But they’re both slow suicide if they take the place of activity in the real world.
You must take that first step off the diving board in order to learn how to dive. You must make that first telephone call or go to that first meeting or address your adversary that first time to get the Bunkhouse Logic process on the road. The first steps will take some effort, maybe pain. But after that, everything that has to be done is real-life movement.
This book is organized into five parts. The first four (three of which you’ve already read) tell you how to get ready to play the game of getting what you want from life. It prepares you to step up to the table where life’s possibilities are passed out. The fifth part tells you how the game is played. It lays out the rules that successful people use to win. These rules will enable you to win, too.