After working in West Africa for four years as a volunteer, I returned to the United States to attend graduate school. The official story is that I completed a two-year master’s degree in International Studies. The real story is that I spent $32,000 to learn about motivations.

It all started with the observation that my MA thesis was read by a grand total of three people. Each of them said nice things about it, but the audience was extremely limited. By contrast, an online manifesto I published around the same time was downloaded more than 100,000 times, by readers from more than 120 countries.

The time spent writing each was roughly the same. The difference wasn’t the work. The difference was the audience I’d chosen, or hadn’t.

I liked my thesis when I wrote it. But the manifesto opened a career, and the thesis sits unopened on an old laptop somewhere.