Paul Arden - “Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite.”
I randomly picked up this book while waiting for my family in the gift shop of the Technikmuseum Berlin. That alone is a testament to Arden’s advertising talent. It’s not a new book, it’s almost twenty years old in 2025, but I can clearly tell it inspired the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory and their 2012 “employee handbook” known as the Little Red Book. But I’m not talking about that today.
Looking through Goodreads reviews of “WYTTTO”, many people mistake it for a self-help book. I don’t think it works in that sense. What it does is to sell you on an outrageous idea. It doesn’t include the small print, the asterisks, the disclaimers. It focuses on the message to really drive home the thesis, but it makes you, the reader, responsible for balancing it within your own life. Arden won’t care if you fuck up your life based on a quip from his little book. He’s been dead for years now.
So what’s the message? To me, the book is a celebration of agency. It is talking about “skin in the game” that Nassim Nicholas Taleb often discusses. About taking matters into your own hands. It encourages the reader to take action, to choose a goal and start without waiting for the perfect moment or circumstances. To not agonize over choice, but to make it. In this sense, it follows the correct reading of “The Road Not Taken”.
Arden really drives it home by challenging the notion that ideas need to be unique (it quotes Jim Jarmusch: “originality is non-existent"), or that you need to have many of them. Just pick one and follow it. An idea not followed is just a distraction, a delaying tactic to feel good about yourself. At the same time, he does acknowledge that it’s your good ideas that put you ahead. That’s why you should rock the boat. But in the end it’s the implementation that matters. “Ideas have to be applied before they are recognized as good ideas”, he says.
The book encourages honesty. To grow, you need to accept responsibility and consider critical feedback. On the other hand, be confident in your own opinions and not easily swayed by the predominant one. Conformism is literally called “dangerous” at one point. The book tells the reader to drop the notion of ego death as it’s counterproductive. It encourages the reader to call themselves an artist, but even then, to think about money first.
Arden also talks about surviving rejection, coming to terms with novelty, and seeing obstacles as opportunities. That bit is a bit buddhist of him, ultimately it resembles the notion that “pain is inevitable, suffering is not”. He does argue for an assertive, resilient peace of mind. For perseverance. For turning up despite adversity. In this sense, the advice to be unreasonable is less about being emotionally unpredictable and more about creating a competitive advantage. “Start taking bad decisions and it will take you to a place where others only dream of being”, he says.
OK but
So the book is a battle cry. It is an inspiring coach speech at a crucial moment of the game. But if you take it at face value, welcoming recklessness into your life, you will likely end up in a bad spot. Importantly, the ideas in the book aren’t so much about risky lifestyle choices, hedonist or otherwise. This is more of a discussion about career development.
But even here, you need to be cautious. The famous stories of industry tycoons building their empires and movie stars rising to fame are riddled with survivor bias and applications of apparent causality after the fact. There’s a reason there’s only a tiny proportion of celebrities compared to the general population. There’s very few books talking about how she failed to become a star, or he failed to build a world-changing business.
Ironically, blindly following Arden’s advice is also something that goes against his advice. The book literally tells you not to conform, not to accept other opinions as your own too easily. See the title. What the book wants you to do is to choose your own adventure.
In the end, I liked this little book. It is motivating, it is entertaining, and it is aesthetically pleasing throughout. Recommended!
Ten quotes I kept thinking about after reading
- He said, “Dad, I’m in trouble.” The father asked, “Are they going to kill you?” He replied, “Oh no, no.” His father said “Son, you don’t have a problem.”
- “Most live their excitement through other people. By aligning themselves with famous rebels, a little bit of glamour rubs off on them. They imagine they’re like John Lennon, Ernest Hemingway, Andy Warhol, etc. The difference being, these people when faced with a decision took the outrageous one, not knowing where it might lead them, but knowing that the safe decision had danger written all over it.”
- “Most people are reasonable, that’s why they only do reasonably well.”
- “We try to make sensible decisions based on the facts in front of us. The problem with making sensible decisions is that so is everyone else.”
- “Advances in any field are built upon people with the small or personal point of view.”
- “Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you’ve got, and fix it as you go.”
- “Truth hurts, but in the long run it’s better than a pat on the back.”
- “How you present yourself is how others will value you.”
- “If you must have a meeting, lose the chairs.”
- “You can’t afford the house of your dreams, that’s why it is the house of your dreams.”
Other people Arden quoted in the book
- John Cleese: “It’s the goal of every Englishman to get to his grave unembarrassed.”
- George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. All progress depends upon the unreasonable man.”
- Oscar Wilde: “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
- Jean-Luc Godard: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”
- Jim Jarmusch: “Originality is non-existent. Authenticity is invaluable.”
The missing table of contents
- Fosbury Flop
- Flower photographs
- Penguin paperback books
- Choosing “Kodak” as your company name
- “Do Not Touch” in Braille
- “Nostalgia of Mud”
- Towel around your head
- Trapped because of “right” decisions
- Always wishing life was different
- Wanting something enough to get it (safe/unsafe)
- Not living vicariously
- It’s better to regret what you have done than what you haven’t
- Everything we do we choose
- A person is the raw material: who are you going to be?
- Rock the boat
- Recklessness and risk are not compatible with age
- Steady Eddie: has done nothing wrong
- Reckless Erica: grew a track record
- Be unreasonable
- Old golfers don’t win
- Over the top
- Everybody needs a goal
- Reach for the stars
- Do it, then fix it as you go
- Ask for a slap in the face
- Accept responsibility
- In you want to be interesting, be interested
- Call yourself an artist
- Ginger Baker
- Ergo Ego
- Great people have great egos
- My father was a modest man
- Half Nelson / Full Nelson
- A meeting is a performance
- Most people are other people
- There is no right point of view
- 98% of portfolios are the same
- Jan Svankmajer
- Coming to terms with novelty
- Upside down
- What is a good idea?
- What is a bad idea?
- Too many ideas is not always a good thing
- Steal
- A picture of a glass
- Bread
- Think about money, it’s honest
- Don’t stay too long in a job
- Resign
- Imagine you were fired ten days ago
- Start your own company
- University challenge
- Delaying tactics
- Go to work
- Ignorance keeps things exciting
- Bottom out at school
- The achievement of failure
- Turn up
- Get the best company in your field onto your CV
- Final thoughts
- Frank Zappa
- Don’t be negative about rejection
- Sydney Opera House
- Astonish Me
- V&A
- Adolf Hitler
- Simply change your life